On 06/26/11 05:28 AM, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
Hello.
In the code is support for "NEW_MATERIAL_CODE".
Enabling it randomizes the material for many items, leading to proliferation
of items with different materials and properties (more damage to weapons,
different resistances, and such).
Material support is half-written for multiple combinations (iron + paper for
instance), but not totally everywhere.
I wonder whether to enable that (extended material) support by default and fix
issues, or totally remove it.
Leaf did pretty well summarize the issues, but there was another annoyance I
found with it:
For most items, the material made very minor difference. So following on
Leaf's example, no only would you have 6 different boots of speed (instead of
them stacking), but save for maybe 1 point of resistance here or there, or one
being a little bit lighter, they were all basically the same.
So you got a lot of inventory clutter for very little gain. And the way the
code work, it would find something of 'iron', and then randomize the material
for all the things that could be iron. Some materials might make a difference
for armor, but not weapons, and vice versa, but the material code itself had no
way to restrict that. so you would have 6 times of metal armor, with maybe only
one or 2 of the materials being different enough to really care about.
So I would say that the material logic could be removed. If one was to
improve it, these are my thoughts:
1) Make it more like the artifact code, where one can restrict it to different
items. Thus, a yew bow may be really good, so you would find normal wood bows
and the better yew bows, but wouldn't find pine, spruce, etc. OTOH, this starts
to look like just another stack of item bonuses, and is it worth it to do it via
material instead of just making some bows better and in the description say they
are made from yew?
2) Ability to regionalize materials. It might make perfect sense in the area
far to the north where only pine trees grow that the vast majority of wooden
items would be pine, in a jungle area, bamboo, etc. That would sort of
eliminate some of the stacking problem - since you would typically do your
adventuring within an area and then go to the shop to sell at once, most of your
items would be made from the same local material. But even then, I would have
to ask if the changing of materials really gains that much?
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