Re: Item Units

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu>]

Lincoln Peters wrote:

> I experimented with control-range in a game module involving
> necromancers and undead armies.  The idea was that undead units would be
> helpless if they were more than 16 cells away from the necromancer,
> except for vampires and liches, which can function normally up to 24
> cells away and can relay orders.
> 
> It seemed to work decently, but it was around the time that the
> pathfinding code was radically re-engineered (and later radically
> un-re-engineered), so I ran into a bunch of problems that may have been
> totally unrelated to the control code and eventually lost interest in
> it.  Maybe I should take another look at it.

Yes. I bet it will turn up some bugs. Depends on how well the 
actor/agent (unit/unit2) separation has been honored and enforced in the 
kernel action code.... Actors are units which have ACP's and are doing 
the controlling, whereas agents are being controlled and using the 
actor's ACP's. Or, at least, that is my understanding of the code.

> I tried to implement armor in a game module I wrote a while ago (the
> game module was never interesting enough to add to the library).  I
> discovered that I could not provide more than one kind or armor without
> running into the following dilemma about how the armor "occupies" the
> knight:
> 
> 1. If I use unit-capacity-x, I can prevent a knight from wearing two
> suits of plate armor, but I can't prevent a knight from wearing a suit
> of chainmail over a suit of full plate.  (If I was to allow a knight to
> wear two suits of armor simultaneously, I'd want to find a way to adjust
> their ACP's and hit chances accordingly.)

Encumberment should be able to be modelled with the 'occupant-adds-acp' 
table. I am thinking that I forgot to test it with negative values, but 
did deliberately set it up allowing values between TABLO (-32768) and 
TABHI (32767), and so it should be able to be used to model negative 
effects on ACP as well as positive ones.

> 2. If I use generic capacity, I can ensure that a knight can wear one
> and only one suit of armor, but I lose the ability to do anything
> similar with other items (different kinds of shields, helmets, magic
> rings...).  I would have to make various kinds of armor, shields, rings,
> etc. fit in generic capacity; therefore a knight could wear one suit of
> plate armor normally, and one on his finger in place of a ring of
> protection (now *that's* a silly mental image).

Don't forget the 'occupant-max' table. You can set the total capacity 
high, and then limit certain types using 'occupant-max'.

One exercise you can do is:
Sit down and draw a square, say a 5x5 square, representing the unit's 
total capacity. Then, place, say, a 3x3 square inside the larger square, 
and let it represent the "armor slot". Then, lay out other squares and 
rectangles representing other contents the unit may have. You can, of 
course, use rectangles for your container instead of squares.

After this, you have a crude visualization of your space consumption, 
and can fill out the various tables accordingly.

>>Yeah, no kidding. And I thought it was 10000 in order to win the magic 
>>donut.
> 
> I guess I need to get back to work on knights.g!

I thought it was 'red-wizard.g' now. But, whatever it is called, I think 
it did have promise last time I looked at it.

> A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
> unless there be two.  -- Seneca

Quite true.
(Publilius Syrus is still my favorite Roman author of such sayings, but 
Seneca isn't too bad either.)

Eric