Re: Just an idea....(I gotta lot of those)

[Mark Wedel <mwedel@scruznet.com>]

Conner Peirce wrote:

> The spell 'magic mapping' is VERY useful, upon being cast, a new window pops
> up (this is w/ the Win32 client, havnt cast it in linux or others, so i dont
> know how its displayed) with a map of the surrounding area. I was thinking
> maybe (since there are so many open spaces on the screen (for players), there
> could be a place where a 'mini map' could be displayed somewhere on the
> clients (if the person doesnt have the spell or hasnt cast it, then an open
> space), and with this

 This is purely a client issue.  That doesn't mean it can't be improved. 
Currently, none of the clients pops up a window.

 Note of course that the window gets out of date, so it would need to be
abundently clear to the player that the magic map may not really represent the
current state of affairs to the player.


some sort of timed spell casting could be integrated
> into crossfire, some command that allows commands to be activated with a time
> argument, so when a player types(remember, this is just an idea):

 Certainly some more advanced scripting language to the client could be added. 
No one has implemented this, but there is lots of stuff that the client could
watch for and take corrective action.

 The design implemention of the client/server does not provide any information
to the client that the player should not know about - we presume that the
clients are untrustworthy, so don't give them any extra information and don't
take their word for it on anything they tell the server.  As such, as complex a
scripting language as is desired could be implemented with no security concerns.

 But more likely, the client should instead provided various basic checks with
the player providing actions.

 For example, one might be hp.  If the players hp falls below a certain
percentage of total or below some absolute value, client does some action
(invoke major healing, apply potion of healing, etc)  This should probably be
done by a window which you fill in a couple of the boxes.

 Same for automatic issue of commands - you could do it by time, or by how many
places the player has moved (more useful for magic mapping - no reason to cast
spells if the player is standing still) and so on.

 So I think its a good idea.  Now you just have to find someone to implement it.