Crossfire Wiki

<|kshinji|> It would be nicefor mapmakers, if they only had to put wall anywhere they need it, and client would decide which graphic to show on which tile, depending on soroudnign tiles.
<|kshinji|> Either client, or editor itself before saving the map.

• No reason the server couldn't either — Alex Schultz 2006/12/20 17:48

I've written this when i didnt know about auto-joining. Now, the idea is a bit different. I propose that walls are represeted by single “wall” arch, and the client computes which graphics should be put where. This is more like in reality, thus many things in future could be done easier. Fe, wall building, which now requires alteration of surrounding wall arches, would be just about adding single arch.

• The problem with this IMHO, is that it reduces the flexibility when mapping. There are valid aesthetic/visual reasons to have walls connecting in ways other when what auto-join tries to do, so trying to do something like that which would 'force auto-join' wouldn't really be a good idea. — Alex Schultz 2007/02/21 08:29

This could be default behaviour, while creator could be able to set certain walls to be fixed.

But what's the advantage of putting behavior in the client or server that's already handled fine by the map editor? Why chew up extra cycles in the client or server every time a map is loaded, when the editor only has to do it once? — Aaron Baugher 2007/02/21 19:53

Agreed on Aaron's comment. Also noting though, it might be nice for the editor to perhaps improve it's auto-joining interface, perhaps by making auto-joining objects be merged together in the arch list, that's as a tree can be expanded into the individual wall arches. One would select the group for auto-joining and select a sub-section inside of it for non-auto-joining. Not sure I like that idea for improving the editor interface to it, but just throwing the idea around a bit. — Alex Schultz 2007/02/21 20:11

Generalized, my idea is that objects should not contain any information about how they should be visualised, aprt from what they are and where they are. If it was applied to all object - it would be easy to make fe. player turn around. For the client, this computation is no problem.