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Re: LOS



Let's say you're running down a corridor with a grimreaper in hot
pursuit. You turn a corner, and the grim reaper is no longer in your
line of sight. What would you see?

a) Everything (the old way)
b) You would see monsters emerging in areas you've explored.
c) When an areas falls out of view, the graphical representation of it
   becomes static, ie. the grimreaper would look like it was frozen in
   its tracks.
d) Like above, but living objects would "disappear".
e) Only display what the player is able to see from his position (the
   new way)

I doubt anyone will favour option c) or d), they are much more
confusing than the current system. xconq uses c), and it works there
because the play is much slower.

b) wouldn't be LOS, it would be auto-mapping. That's not really an
objection, though. However, all the options b) thru d) would all mean
that the server must keep a copy of the map (or a similar structure at
least) for each player. The server currently only saves what the
player's window looks like at any time.

I think crossfire uses enough CPU and RAM as it is :-) (at times, it
has used more than 50% CPU on a Sparcstation II, but I think Frank has
done some optimizations since then.)

\begin{spurious_idea}

BTW. Frank has tried to get profiling statistics on crossfire, but has
failed since we don't have statically linked libraries. Can anyone
else do this for him / us? I.e. compile it with gprof, play a game
with a couple of players for half an hour, and mail him / us the
result?  (I hope you don't mind I bring this up on your behalf, Frank :-)

\end{spurious_idea}

I think e) is wonderful when playing. It really gets your adrenalin
pumping when you know there's a grimreaper *somewhere* in a maze of
passages, and it suddenly appears two squares from where you're
satnding! (The outside of the old mansion is a good example :-)

The black squares may look ugly at first, but just how are you going
to simulate 3D vision viewed from above?

One small improvement on the current system would be that squares
could *hinder* view, not merely block it. I.e. you could have hills
where you could see two squares far in every direction. I'm not sure
how the LOS-algorithm works, so this may range from almost easy to
very difficult to do...


Ramble on!!!


Kjetil T.