Crossfire Archive
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Re: CF: hello

Mark Wedel (mark@siemens-pyramid.com) wrote:

> > > The idea that an intelligent client that does stuff for the player is
> > > somehow cheating strikes me as odd.  If CF is boring and predictable enou
..

> > Not necessarily. When we find a new server, we don't "play" crossfire.
> > We just go ahead and "build" a character. This is a mechanical
...

> 
>  Is the point of the above to just have the highest score on the server?

Sort of. But the fun of crossfire is the multiuser thing. In particular,
if you go ahead and collect all those neat items, other people will
want these, too.

>  Maybe it might be interesting to add a recording of how many ticks the
> character has been played.  Thus, a character that gets to level 10 in 5,000
> ticks is probably aa more impressive accomplishment than a player that gets to
> level 10 in 10,000.

I don't like this. We also like to play around with newbies, or just stand
in Scorn doing nothing, except maybe answering a question or some such.
Having a tick-count with the character would actually punish players for
being social, since they don't get any exp or items from it.

>  But I will agree to the extent that at some point repeat play becomes less
> interesting when you know all the maps.  It is a lot more fun the first time
> you go through a map and are not sure what to expect compared to repeating it.

Indeed. But that's the case with many adventure and RPG-type games,
so it's not something that's "bad" about crossfire. Crossfire is not
nethack.

>  Some of this could perhaps be improved by some better randomization of the map
> (different monsters each time or something).

Different monsters don't make a difference, since you still know the map
(puzzles and items). It might be an incentive to do the map again, hoping
for exp-giving monsters, but that's about it. IMHO there is no easy way
to get around the "I know all the maps"-"problem", since randomization
would have to invent new puzzles, invent new items & monsters etc.
Heavy AI :-)


> But unless new maps are
> constantly created, at one point you do have pretty much the entire map set
> under your belt.  I don't really know to much what can be done to improve on
> that.

Oops... just what I was saying :-)

> walls, etc).  However, the number of wall types is pretty limited, so a wall
> following robot would not be hard to write.  Know waht to attack and how to
> attack it could be the harder part.

Nope. This is very easy to figure out; the automated player would just
have to know about the monsters (which, of course, can be learned the
hard way).  When you know the attacktypes of a monster, the automated
player can decide whether he should retreat or attack, based on the
exp and equipment he has.

Of course, things become very simple when the player builds the character
before letting the automated player use it :-) With the current map set
there are <10 monsters that can kill a properly equipped character,
plus a couple of dangerous walls. The "run though the monsters" tactics
would work great for the automated player.

>  I think some maps are certainly better than others.  Ones which have a quest
> or common factor are more interesting than those which just have a mess of
> monsters you slice through for no greater purpose.

Personally I found this to be true while exploring these maps and
solving the puzzles. And, of course, while trying to give a few hints
to newbies :-)

>  Same coudl be true for fire immunity.  Into the dragon cave, fire immunity is
> almost needed.  But if fighting one wyvern, do you really want it?

I choose fire immunity because it is free (a prayer). So it doesn't
matter if you get it automatically whenever there is fire in sight.
Fire immunity is also a classic example --- if one only has mithril
chainmail of winter (on old servers...) you still have to cast it.
I'd still want to decide myself whether I want to use a
cold/shock/magic immunity potion.

>  I guess basically it would affect efficiency of these items.  Having the AI do
> it would probably be safer, but not be used as efficiently as doing it
> manually.   At some point, this may not be a big deal (one you get piles of
> money, you probably won't care that maybe you used an extra potion there.)

Player knowledge :-) One doesn't need many potions until one can get a
white dragon scale mail. Don't forget to pickup the cloak of magic
resistance on the way; it helps against some fire&ice spells until you
get the mail...

Christian


-- 
Christian Stieber        http://www.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~stieber
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