RE: CF: RE: Size scale vs. time scale and new graphics

[dragonm <dragonm@leech.org>]

By the way, I'll reiterate what Mark has already said.  I'm subscribed to
the mailing list, so I don't need to be specifically Cc:'ed.  I get
duplicates when you do that, and I think it should be obvious to others from
context (and quoted text) that you're addressing me.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Andrew Michael Noelle
To: ''crossfire mailing list ' '
Cc: dragonm
Sent: 9/9/99 6:02 PM
Subject: Re: CF: RE: Size scale vs. time scale and new graphics

<snip>

    No, I meant the same thing Mark did.  I think the part that confused
you was references to covering the same space on two different maps.  That
was something you could do in Wasteland that I can't think of any examples
of in Crossfire.  Basically, if a 32x32 town map appears as a 3x3 square on
the world map (as Scorn does now), it should take as long to travel 32
spaces in town as to travel 4 spaces outside.
----------------
Ah.  Makes sense now.
----------------
    I was suggesting that the player's speed should be in meters per
tick and not squares per tick, so the apparent speed in squares per tick
would be much higher on small maps than on the world map.  I was also
suggesting that players should be able to move much faster on the world map
with transportation devices (horse, boat, magic carpet, broomstick...) but
those same devices wouldn't speed up small-scale movement at all.
----------------
We could try it.  I'm suspicious the results would be laughable.  I recall
Doom, where if you held down the Run key, your character was capable of
running at a virtual 50 miles per hour, if you took his height to be a
virtual 6 feet.  I get the impression that if movement in one scale is a
"proper" speed, movement in either of the two other scales you mention below
is going to be either intolerably slow or wickedly fast.  I dunno though.
This is one of those questions where intuition fails me.  Try it and see.
----------------
    Personally, I think I'd prefer three map scales, world,
town/outdoor, and dungeon/indoor.  If each square indoors is one square
meter and each square outdoors is one square kilometer, there should
probably be something in between.  Right now, I'd guess the world map scale
to be around 10km/square, just to pick a round number.  Magnify it by a
factor of 10, and you'll still have one square on that map representing 1000
x 1000 squares of the smaller scale.
    One possibility that would be similar to what we have now would be an
indoor scale of 1m/tile, a city scale of 32m/tile, and an outdoor scale of
1024m/tile, which gives the same 32:1 ratio between indoor and city as
between city and outdoor.  It should definitely take more than a single day
of travel to walk across a continent, even if you're not wearing a full suit
of plate mail.  So, here's the part where we balance playability against
realism.  Personally, I lean toward realism, and try to appease
playability by increasing realism in interesting, new ways.
----------------
A reasonable proposal.  As I said, at this point I say implement it and
experiment.  Personally, I prefer ONE scale.  But that's mainly because I
have an eye on a 3D future.  :)

DM
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