Re: [crossfire] Item stacking

2005-08-27 Thread Brendan Lally
On 8/27/05, Mark Wedel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Brendan Lally wrote:
 
  updating the maps isn't too hard, in fact the following is a diff that
  does just that. (I haven't included much context here, partially for
  brevity, partially because anyone playing with these maps in the
  editor will probably break this diff anyway.)
 
  I'm tempted to reduce the accuracy of some more of these, express them
  in furlongs, or maybe even miles (or leagues), since I doubt anyone
  seriously goes around counting the squares, the screens maybe.
 
   IMO, the numbers could be less accurate (more round numbers), but please 
 leave
 the numbers roughly as is
 
   Basically, right now, as said, 1 space = 1 mile.  Thus, those signs describe
 how many spaces the towns are from you.  IMO, this is a good thing, especially
 for now players (how far do I hav to walk to get to navar?)

Yeah, the issue is whether you count distance in screens or squares.
Certainly I know from my own point of view, I consider a map to be
'small' if it fits on my screen in one go, and to be 'big' if it
doesn't.

However I can see how a non-fixed screen size would confuse that (and
how such an effect would get worse as the default screen size alters
in the future as more players switch to the gtk2 client). So probably
you are correct in that keeping to a square-based system of
measurement is best, even if it means that the numbers are big and
ugly.

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Re: [crossfire] Item stacking (was: Map cache)

2005-08-26 Thread Brendan Lally
On 8/26/05, Anton Oussik [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I don't really like junk losing the properties of original junk. Sure,
 lying in a pig pile it seems like junk, but you are occisionally able
 to extract useful items from piles of things if you look hard enough.

I never suggested losing the properties, merely putting the items in a
'container' that would be dynamically created. Taking items out of the
pile they would be the same as they always are.

 Volume brings up the question of how big are things? Outside towns one
 square is one mile. Inside a town one square is half a building or a
 small house. Inside a building one square is somewhere between the
 size of a ring and the size of a dragon. This is not a complaint or
 anything like that, stylised representation of items is needed for
 playability and works very well, but it still leaves the question of
 how big things are and how many of them you can put on one tile.
 
ok, currently one square holds one person, even if they stretch out
their hands, they don't occupy more than one square. This therefore
suggests that the squares are sides of at least 1 fathom (that being
the distance of someone between their outstretched hands. This is
consistant with a bed being 1 square. Given that one tick is about 1
second of game time (not real time), and that a player moves 1 square
a tick at speed 1, this gives a walking speeed such that at speed of
1.0 a mile is covered in  (1 mile is 8 furlongs, is 80 chains, is 880
fathoms) 880 seconds, or 14.7 minutes (which is about correct).

The indoor maps are smaller on the outdoor maps, it tends to be the
case, that 1 square outdoors correlates to 8-12 squares indoors. If
the indoor squares are 1 fathom across, then the outside ones are
about 10 fathoms across. Or almost 1 chain (11 fathoms). Since the
value of 11:1 is well within the range of values that are used, and
since it is a round number. It seems reasonable to consider each of
the world map squares to be 1 chain. All the more so since this is the
size used for buildings, and buildings have in the real world been set
out on a scale of 1 chain for a house.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_%28length%29
In the laying out of towns in Australia and New Zealand, most
building lots in the past were a quarter of an acre, measuring one
chain by two and a half chains, and other lots would be multiples or
fractions of a chain. As a consequence, the street frontages of many
houses in these countries are one chain wide — roads were almost
always one chain wide (20.117 m) in urban areas, sometimes one and a
half (30.175 m) or two chains (40.234 m).

In game most roads are 1 or 2 squares wide, which also fits in nicely.

Furthermore, by adopting this standard, it means that 10 squares on
the world map is 1 furlong, which gives a nice way to measure
distances, because it is also about 1 screen (default is a map view of
11x11 IIRC). in the gtk2 client, it is about twice that, so you see
one furlong in all directions.

Ooh, and it also makes the distance from scorn to navar about 9 miles
(75 furlongs), which is a somewhat saner estimate than 1000's of
miles. 9 miles says 'you /can/ walk this but probably don't want to do
so very often'.

In terms of dealing with volume calculations then, if each object is
measured in cubic links, then there are about a thousand cubic links
in a cube 1 fathom by 1 fathom by 1 fathom (who said imperial units
were complicated :) )
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Re: [crossfire] Item stacking (was: Map cache)

2005-08-26 Thread Anton Oussik
And this is what happens when you allow developers from England to
post to the mailing lists ;)

Yes, your estimates seem very good. If others agree it would probably
be a good idea to document all this somewhere and update the signs and
so on in the game and maps.

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Re: [crossfire] Item stacking

2005-08-26 Thread Mark Wedel

Brendan Lally wrote:


updating the maps isn't too hard, in fact the following is a diff that
does just that. (I haven't included much context here, partially for
brevity, partially because anyone playing with these maps in the
editor will probably break this diff anyway.)

I'm tempted to reduce the accuracy of some more of these, express them
in furlongs, or maybe even miles (or leagues), since I doubt anyone
seriously goes around counting the squares, the screens maybe.


 IMO, the numbers could be less accurate (more round numbers), but please leave 
the numbers roughly as is


 Basically, right now, as said, 1 space = 1 mile.  Thus, those signs describe 
how many spaces the towns are from you.  IMO, this is a good thing, especially 
for now players (how far do I hav to walk to get to navar?)


 Changing to obscure units IMO doesn't add anything - it either results in 
players having to go to google to figure out how many furlongs in a mile, conver 
that, and then know how far the town is apart.


 I think for ease of use, the numbers as shown on the signs should represent 
number of spaces.  If we want to call them some other unit, I don't mind, but I 
don't want them changed to some value and then have new players lost because 
they traveled 75 spaces in the right direction and didn't find anything.  Things 
are already obscure enough - no reason to make them harder for new players.



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