Visibility code and garbage collection (Page 1 of 2)

Sounds like good progress is being made Zer.

One little peeve I have with Faldon's current stat system is that you must have mixed up stamina and constitution... constitution presently decides your energy regen and stamina presently decides your health points.  Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Oh so much to argue about... Im looking forward to it.

Mmm,

Make static trade routes.  For example in this client, a caravan could travel from Valour to Midguard (a new town on a different map which is connected by a brick road directly to valour), but could be robbable.  It would have to be difficult to rob but increasingly so as the average level of, say, the top 500 players rose.  It would also need to have increasingly more gold. 

Special monsters that spawn only once a week or once X period.  These monsters have a X chance (fairly high, something like 25%) of dropping this one item.  On saturday night at midnight every week, there's a scramble to get to these general locations where these monsters spawn.

The problem with town guards attacking monsters is that in the olden days players abused it.  They would lure a monster into town and allow the town guard to attack it.  When it was weakened, the players would kill it for the experience and/or take the drops.  The current behavior of the guards ignoring monsters is a direct result of that.

Even if the map is setup so that hard monsters are far away from town (which I agree with), it doesn't prevent people from LURING monsters into town.  Which is what used to happen.  The ungodly demon of doomspike might not have spawned anywhere near town... indeed, it could have been all the way across the map.  But, if a player gets close enough to be targeted by the monster then starts walking to town, the monster will follow them all the way.  If we make the AI such that monsters don't continue to follow, now you have the issue of players taking a few shots at the monster, running to heal, coming back and repeating till dead.  Kind of lame, imho.  Now, perhaps with the new system wherein all monsters could be scriptable, we could have different styles of AI.  Something like a woodland creature would be much more likely to run away until somewhat cornered or unless it felt it was stronger than the aggressor, but not pursue if the attacker runs away.  A common monster, such as say a goblin, might attack but run if it finds itself losing and perhaps will give chase up to a certain distance... after it's left it's "home" by, say, 100 tiles, it tires and wanders back.  But, perhaps a more aggressive monster such as a wraith would follow its target to the ends of the map (and perhaps through portals?). 

I think that if guards are to attack monsters, it should be the UO approach:  if a monster is attacked by guards, it's instantly destroyed leaving no drop and no chance for a player to attack the weakened monster.  This could be literally destroyed, or perhaps simply just warped back to its spawn point (so that any items it has picked up are still on it - that way if you drop your uber sword of coolness when the monster kills you and it picks it up, it didn't die when the town guard nuked the monster).

Well, I'm a fan of the idea of getting xp based on the amount of damage you do to it.  I've proposed the idea before and I would hope that Zer will consider it during the rewrite.  The problem that has been brought up about it is the concern of monsters healing.  If I do 99% damage to the monster and let it heal then kill it, do I get 199% experience or 100% exp?  If I would get 199% exp, now we have a clear opportunity for abuse.  If instead, I only get 100%, then how is it all based on?  If I attack a monster and get it down to 1% HP and it kills me, then it heals to 20% and someone else kills it, do I get 80%? 0%? 99%?  Then the problem also becomes, assuming you only get a small percentage of exp if someone already has attacked a monster, what happens when someone attacks a monster and lets say takes it to 1/2 HP and dies.  If the monster wanders and heals to 100% and you come around and kill it, do you get 100% of the exp or only 50%?  It wouldn't be fair if you had to only get 1/2 the exp despite having to do 100% of the required damage.  There are serious flaws in the idea because of monster healing.  But, if a workable solution can be found, I'm all for it.  I think it's really, really lame that players level by spawning masses  of slimes and then kill the monster with one hit.  Or, the idea of a low level player stealing a kill at the last second and gaining lots of exp when they did nothing.  So, if we can brainstorm some ideas, that would be good methinks.

I have some ideas regarding the experience system that I will post in a new thread to keep from changing topics here and so that replies to it will all be relevant to the topic.

By the way all, Squirrel's GC now works with mine, pathfinding and the visibility system kind of get along (I'll rewrite it later on, the implementation is at least sufficient now), and accounts can take on any name. I have account registration web-based right now along with e-mail verification, and characters are created in-game. Since accounts are working, so are tells and says. Still haven't put the default channels in yet.

Pathfinding and the object link code are going to need some serious cleanup.

Hmm.
Actually I prefer swear filters to be optional; that way people who don't like them won't actively try to evade them.
That's what we do in the current Faldon client... maybe if I just made the messages not appear at all with the filter enabled instead of just bleeping. But the words aren't the problem, the content of what people are saying often is IMO, and no swear filter is going to be able to fix that

The problem with a 'report' feature is that with Faldon players, they'll simple fill them out complaining about whoever for no reason and send them to us.  Essentially spamming us and making the report feature worthless.

Well of course some anti spam features are added. Lots of games have a report button so there must be some use to them. Maybe only can report the same person once a day, can only report every 20 min, and max 5 reports a day. Then anyone still abusing the report button can be warned and then a ban if have too.

Well I rather people try to spam the reporter then a Gms email. The reporter can be just optional, and if Gms are always hidden(no gm title in chat) to the public next client there has to be some way for player to report cheaters and people harassing other players.
What you mean punished unfairly?
If the Gm see that player do something bad as what the report says then he should be punished. Of course wouldn't just trust the player that reported. And for people logging other chars to spam reports just make it max 5 reports per account per faldon day or per account email or per ip. Or all 3 if your that worried heh.