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Revision: 1.2
Committed: Tue Dec 23 19:44:12 2008 UTC (15 years, 10 months ago) by pippijn
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-2_82, rel-2_81, rel-2_80, rel-3_0, rel-2_76, rel-2_77, rel-2_74, rel-2_75, rel-2_79, rel-2_90, rel-2_92, rel-2_93, rel-2_78, HEAD
Changes since 1.1: +1 -1 lines
Log Message:
- fixed grammar mistakes and typos
- Hero => G<Hero|Heroine>

File Contents

# Content
1 Design notes.
2
3 Prince onefang's ice castle was designed as if Prince onefang designed it
4 himself. The general principle is that it is made from enchanted icecubes.
5 Like an igloo, this does not cause the internal temperature to be very low,
6 so everybody can quite happily live inside. The enchantment stops them
7 from being carried away, melted, or otherwise vanished. The floor at ground
8 level is also enchanted, to stop spells & prayers, and to make everybody
9 feel good. The layout is designed to make it look like the university face
10 used to represent the castle from the outside. The icecube face changed
11 between the server version I started this on and the version I am using now,
12 let's hope that the university face doesn't change. The icecubes looked
13 better in the previous version.
14
15 The suites don't fit into the university layout, but I fixed that by putting
16 them above the clouds, with a very thin elevator going up to them.
17
18 The icecubes use the same total internal reflection principle that make fibre
19 optics work. Like fibre optics, a 90 degree bend causes a flaw that lets light
20 leak out. Like fibre optics, light comes out of the ends. I may not have been
21 consistant. On the other hand, some places needed more light, so I either
22 put in a brazier or lit up an icecube as needed (provided a flaw for light to
23 leak out of). The source of the light is not on the map anywhere.
24
25 No icecubes on the outside of the castle are lit up, because Prince onefang
26 doesn't want the place that easily found. For that reason, and the fact that
27 elves like living in the middle of large woodlands (Prince onefang is an elf),
28 the castle is in the middle of the Dark Forest, with no paths leading to it.
29 Moving the castle to somewhere else will be tricky, as there are many maps
30 with unblocked views of the forest.
31
32 A lot of attention to detail went into this, I hope that players appreciate it.
33
34 I ignore some of the map making guidelines, but so do a lot of the standard
35 maps. I ignore the shop guidelines because the high price of powerful items
36 provides balance, no need to keep them out of shops when PC's can't afford
37 them anyway, assuming the system calculates prices correctly. Prince onefang
38 wants his shops this way, gives him a reason to go shopping. It also represents
39 the kind of thing that the Prince will dump at the shops after his own
40 adventuring, he is their main supplier of +3 and +4 items.
41
42 Yep, I created a town, but it is not your standard town.
43
44 Some areas are for Prince onefang only. The lever that closes the main gates,
45 and the treasures on display (both in the same place) are the main ones.
46 Portals to these and other places are in the suites unique to onefang when
47 he is a PC. Prince onefang should be played by the DM, with DM privs set, but
48 you should not need them much.
49
50 Some areas are designed to only allow access if Prince onefang opens the door.
51 This allows the Prince to be a rich and powerful patron to anybody that meets
52 his criteria. Currently, they must be elven worshippers of Lythander. A
53 quest or three may be added later, when I can think of some. These areas include
54 the part behind the temple that contains the standard equipment handed out to
55 onefangians, and the private magic library at the top of the mall. Force
56 "onefangian" is given to anybody that is let into the behind the temple area
57 via the door. Force "onefang" is only held by Prince onefang. The standard
58 equipment is all godgiven, so onefangians must carry it around always, or lose
59 it. The spell and prayer books in the private library are nailed down. Check
60 the quality of them though B-).
61
62 One quest currently under construcrion is to find out what happened to the
63 party of onefangians sent to clean out the ants. While the Prince should
64 really clean out the dragon section himself, he could take the newly
65 baptised onefangians with him. See "Floyd of Pink" below for another quest.
66
67 The altars to Lythander in the residential areas can be reconsecrated by anyone
68 with Wisdom 20 or higher. In the suites, the server operator should do that
69 with an editor.
70
71 The strange looking flooring on the malls ground floor represents wear patterns.
72
73 Sometime between server version 1.0 and 1.4, the nearby nest of dragons seemed
74 to have given up hope. Now they just sit there and let you attack them. While
75 probably it hasn't been updated since some server behaviour changed, it at least
76 fits in with the onefang plot. He cleared them out once, has now setup camp
77 close to them, and with the Whisker on display to rub it in, so now dragon morale
78 is low.
79
80 The Imperial Post Office scripts don't work on my server, something dodgy with
81 the database stuff. Using a database for this is overkill, and everything else
82 in Crossfire is text based anyway, so I converted the scripts to use
83 text files, and renamed them so they can live with the originals.
84
85 SERVER CODE CHANGES
86
87 common/button.c - fix inv checker object matcher
88 common/map.c - fix inv checker (FIXED in 1.5)
89 server/skills.c - fix written text not initialized
90 common/time.c - added tod_to_errmsg() to support web page
91 server/weather.c - creates weather image each tod tick and major tweaks
92 common/living.c - adjusted SP,GP per level
93 server/skill_util.c - adjusted exp from using skills
94
95 TODO
96
97 Finish ant farm.
98
99 Make castle flyer friendly, if possible, tiling might do it. Replicate more
100 stuff upwards, tiling will do it. Tiling is limited to 12 squares between tiles.
101 Tiling would have helped a lot, but the LOS restrictions make it tricky. I
102 looked at tiling, lighting effects are broken, LOS restrictions have to be broken
103 (but only for one more map), and the maps would end up too fragmented. Next time
104 I need a break from serious programming, I'll try to add map stacking. That is
105 putting a smaller map on top of a larger map, and tiling effects as per usual.
106 The changelog mentions map overlay, which may be the same thing, but it is not
107 documented anywhere that I can find.
108
109 The tiled dragon map consistantly crashed the server when the dragons attacked.
110
111 Do junk mail B-). Do basic RFC headers, Python has RFC libraries, include
112 date, postmark (name of map sent from).
113
114 Do money orders, cheques, interest, loans, ATM / card / PIN, B-Pay,
115 account keeping fees, credit cards, government tax, etc.
116 Use this as a source of income for onefang. Deposit boxes that can hold
117 jewelery, keys, scrolls, and other small valuables.
118
119 Have an IPO in every major city, complete with long queues. In /onefang/suites
120 have Karen give writing paper with IceCastle letterhead as a free service. Have
121 a crazy postal worker in some post offices armed with a crossbow.
122
123 Let's go crazy, pawn brokers, loan sharks, bank robbers, photo copying service.
124
125 BIG WORLD
126
127 Big map world_110_118 34,24 - 38,27 = university arch as before.
128 Extend the forest from the Dark Forest area, to around these lakes, and
129 to the other lakes to the south west. Basically, the entire north west
130 end of the valley. forest.pl will extend the forest, see it for details.
131
132 While I have converted the ground level map to Big World, none of the other
133 maps have been converted, so we still have breath taking views of the small
134 world maps. Overlays may do the trick for these.
135
136 For aome strange reason, when dynamiclevel is set to 1 or above, the Ice castle
137 will be invisible sometimes. I like it B-).
138
139 The dragon lord maps look to be in about the same sort of position relative
140 to the new castle location, so everything should still link up. DragonLord
141 city is at world_111_117 31,43. AntFarm now becomes part of under_world. I
142 should double check the scale of things here.
143
144 There is a bit at the top of the world that looks like an obvious place for
145 a protected harbour. I should search out such places, and also places where
146 people and animals would normally form tracks, then add harbours, harbour
147 cities, animal and walking tracks. Then we can setup trade routes, and have
148 a proper civilization grow.
149
150 Write some animal foraging code, to form animal tracks the natural way, and
151 have animals changing the landscape like the weather does.
152
153 FANCY MAGIC ITEM (Floyd of Pink)
154
155 Actually, it's five magic items that combine to produce their effect. Basically
156 the effects of Amulet of Bling Bling, the left and right onefang rings, plus
157 speed and levitation boots. They all look identical (big pink / purple gem),
158 and have an identical name (opal of flawed beauty), but you have to put
159 them on in the correct order, in the correct place. Otherwise, all hell breaks
160 loose. You cannot wear them while sleeping, otherwise you wake up with one HP,
161 no SP or grace, not wearing the items, and something is summoned to fight you.
162 The correct places are - one on each foot, one on each hand, and one for the
163 soul (head, neck, or body). The various enhancements are distributed logically,
164 dex for the hands, speed for the feet, live saving for the soul, etc. Once you
165 have them placed correctly, a backpack of utopia appears on your back, and
166 disappears when you remove any item. There is a small chance that everything
167 in the backpack disappears with it. A bigger chance that it all spills out on
168 the floor, but mostly it all will remain in the pack for the next person who puts
169 it on. The items are scattered randomly at the end of ten of the most dangerous
170 maps. Rumours and clues detail the various attributes of the items, and all ten
171 locations. Sprinkle Pink Floyd lyrics into the clues.
172
173 Each item has a story, as you look deep into the gem, you see a flaw in the shape
174 of "several species", "small, furry animals", "a cave", "a groove", "a pict".
175 That is their order, although the places each is worn are chosen randomly and stored
176 in a file. The five monsters carrying the gems are "Dave" (Dave), "Mr Wright" (wight+),
177 "Nick" (galeo troll+), "Syd" (cunning gnome+, and crazy), and "Roger" (Evil master)
178
179 Don't rely on the unique flag to make sure there is only one of each. Each gem gets
180 a unique identifier, but only the first five are part of the item, the rest are
181 "opals of flawed beauty" and their flaws look like a cow, brick wall, prism, dog,
182 sheep, pig, worm, gnome, dark side of the moon, and other Pink Floyd icons.
183
184 The story. A powerful ancestor of Prince onefang had them made for his own use.
185 His lover was kidnapped and killed by someone. Ancestor got drunk and went on a
186 rampage, where he lost each item one at a time. He didn't clear out the areas
187 he rampaged through, and they rebuilt stronger than ever.
188