Re: CF: Bottles (was Re: ice cubes)

[Hwei Sheng TEOH <hsteoh@cs.toronto.edu>]

On Fri, 10 Sep 1999, David Andrew Michael Noelle wrote:

[snip]
> Hwei Sheng TEOH wrote:
> 
> > Exactly what I have in mind. Liquid will have to be transferred from container
> > to container. I'm not sure about allowing someone to pour it out on the
> > ground. How "realistic" is it to be able to pour water (or any liquid for that
> > matter) on the ground and be able to collect it all back into the bottle? :-)
> > I guess I'm thinking about how exactly does a player collect something like a
> > water elemental's residue? Certainly he won't be able to collect every last
> > drop... which means that some of the stuff will be lost if the player pours it
> > out and tries collecting it again. Or maybe just make it simple and disallow
> > pouring out completely, and only allow transferring into another container.
> > (or make pouring out completely waste the liquid).
> 
>     I'd say that pouring out a liquid should completely waste it.  For now,
> the only things that should be able to hold liquid are potion bottles and
> cauldrons.  Possibly a chalice, but that's debatable.  Fountains are good
> for filling bottles with water, or whatever the fountain happens to be
> filled with.  And perhaps pouring a different substance into a fountain
> should pollute it.  On the other hand, pouring a bottle of poison into a
> town's fountain would be a pretty nasty trick.  Maybe town fountains are
> magically purified, but random dungeon fountains (which might hold some
> potion liquid) can be contaminated.

Hehe, polluting the town fountain perhaps should be possible, but it's get the
guards on your back. Trashes your reputation (if that is implemented), and
basically make you unwanted until you make a recompense. Or, just get the
guards on you if you try to pollute the town fountain, but not actually
pollute it.

But then again, fountains should slowly purify themselves over time anyway,
unless we're assuming 100% recycling of the water.

> > Also, we'd have to differentiate between containers like bookshelves and
> > cauldrons -- while cauldrons may contain objects other than liquids, they can
> > also hold liquid, so that we can pour out the contents of our potions into the
> > cauldron when brewing something. But I don't think you'd want to let players
> > "store" liquid in a bookshelf. :-)
> 
>     A "watertight" flag for containers might be in order, but you better be
> careful about pouring a potion of fire into a bag full or scrolls.

Hmmm, although this might be nice for realism, it could potentially get very
annoying when people accidentally click the mouse over the wrong inventory
item.

> > >  The problem is actually applying it.  If you have to open the container, and
> > > then apply the liquid inside the container to drink it, that makes things more
> > > difficult, especially in combat.
> > >
> > >  I suppose you could add a new command like 'drink'  which does both those
> > > steps.
> 
>     A better idea might be to leave drinking the potion as the "apply"
> command and make "open" and "close" the new commands.  Bottles don't have to
> be normal containers.  When you mark a bottle and "open" it, it doesn't open
> like a container, but is marked "open" and set FLAG_APPLIED.  You can pour
> any liquid into it if it's empty or more of the same liquid if it's
> partially full, by dropping other bottles or picking up residue from the
> ground or water from a fountain.  To pour out the contents, into a cauldron
> if you have one open, or onto the ground to discard it, drop the bottle
> while it's marked "open".
>     This also introduces the idea of partially full, which implies that
> potions might have a number of doses.  I would suggest three as the maximum
> number of doses per bottle for normal potions, with stat potions filling
> whole bottles.

Didn't Raphael mention something about using the weights of the liquid as a
measure? It might make things very complicated (player may want to specify
exactly how much of a liquid to pour out), but it's also very realistic. We
might want a minimum weight of for a potion to be effective -- ie. a few drops
or dregs from a stat potion would be useless. Or half a potion of heroism may
not give you the normal stat boost.

[snip]
> > Also, is it really necessary to be able to open a bottle when you apply it? I
> > guess this is for transferring the contents of the bottles -- but if they can
> > only hold one thing at a time, why not just make it so that you can only
> > "open" empty bottles, and be able to transfer the contents of another bottle
> > into the empty one by "dropping" it (like we do with bags and stuff now)?
> > Is it safe to assume that applying a non-empty bottle means you want to drink
> > whatever's in it?
> 
>     Yes, exactly.  Although it's often not safe drink unidentified potions,
> "drink" should remain the default action for all sorts of bottles and
> potions.  Except for empty bottles, in which case "open" becomes the
> default.  Note that we still need to be able to open full bottles, even if
> they can only hold one dose, so that they can be poured out and emptied.
> 
> 
> > The only reason I mentioned this was to avoid having to create new graphics
> > for existing potions which already have their own "look". I was thinking that
> > by restricting potion contents to "potion-shaped" bottles we might avoid the
> > need to create a dozen or so versions of a healing potion, etc.. But I suppose
> > it's better to go for the general solution.
> 
>     Let's at least start with the general solution.  Special cases can be
> added later if necessary.
> 
>     I think I can implement this change within the current object
> structure.  All it requires is adding a "liquid" object and an empty bottle
> and adding the "open" and "close" commands.  That's a non-trivial change,
> though, so I'll wait for some feedback before I get started on this one.

Hmm, you'll be adding a LOT of archetypes (have to split the potions/drinks
from their containers). Plus, change a lot of code for randomly-generated
items (so that random potions are properly generated with the containers and 
contents). Plus update every single map that contains potions/liquids to use
the appropriate object combinations (from one object to a nested object, one
for the container, one for the contents). Plus add lots of new graphics to
display the various containers with the various filled-states. (Unless you
want to start off with having only one kind of bottle that contains every
known liquid in the game and add more gradually).

I suppose Mark/Peter has the final say on this, but it seems to me that this
might want to be done on 0.96.* instead of the current branch? This way, we
don't have to worry about patching existing stuff to work with the new
feature.


T

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