Low Priority Projects
From LSWiki
This is a list of developer projects that would improve "polish" (player-side usability or ease of reference for developers) in some way, but are not of immediate concern. Updating this page is a way of saying that you thought about something but are too lazy (or busy, if you want to feel better) to do it yourself. The projects here are of widely varying difficulty levels, and as such might be appropriate for a developer wishing to improve their familiarity with core-leaning functionality.
This is not an Ideas page for player modification.
Adjust the utilize / locate name process such that privately named objects are chosen last when executing a command with any of the object's generic names.
For example, "shoot arrow" when the user has a silver arrow named Wolfslayer and a pile of 'regular' arrows in their inventory would always use a regular arrow first, regardless of the order of acquisition.
Create user-configurable settings for displaying combat messages; for instance, the ability to turn off the part of a combat result that says "...despite its attempt to dodge".
This is a player-requested feature that was suggested may aid new player comprehension.
Redesign the Wandslinger vigil raids into an extension which can be incorporated into the basic designs of a city. The creatures used for the invasions can be defined within the city's definition structure, and pretty much customized on a city level as well as interacting with the current wandslinger ability.
Set up some sort of functionality to add more descriptions into the air space above a 3d region, to break up the monotony of 1000's of rooms of empty skies. Note: Some of this was done with several of the maps in Almeria, with different strata of the air having different descriptions and altitudes.
Create a basic alchemical conversion process which can convert one material into another. With that, establishing basic chemical properties and interactions between the current materials, establishing basic processes for crafting potions, and adding more depth to the potions available.
Add a description to the 'help <race>' files so that players have some idea of what a venescera, for example, is.
Expand the selection of herbs available, as well as their application/consumption methods.
Expand the selection of diseases available, as well as defining various vectors for transmission.
Expand the selection of poisons/venoms/toxins available, as well as defining conveyance and toxin types (nerve toxin works differently than a conversion toxin, and will affect certain races differently).
Write up some basic functional help files for the tracers and evals with some commonly used examples. Exceptionally good for training a new developer.
Write up help files for most of our man files.
Write up documentation of the privs, including what new commands are available.
Develop a semi-functional crafting system that incorporates raw materials converted into a finished product. As a low priority project, it doesn't have to be fancy but at least it would be a start.
Develop the basis for clockwork mechanism/autonomon.
Clarify Undeath and develop it in terms of defining the different levels of undeath, similar to the varying levels of sentience. With this comes an update to the turn undead ability.
Expand and define the different types of demonic entities.
Expand and define the different types of faeries, both Seelie, Unseelie, and beyond.
Update the Quest for Trivial Knowledge so that it no longer makes reference to places that were updated years ago.
Establish the basis for competitive games, such as drinking games, archery tournaments, jousting tourneys, and sports.
Establish a system for gladiatorial combat.
Establish a gambling system that handles betting, odds, and pay outs.
Create a simple, dynamic community that starts as a single building and expands. Example: Immediately after boot, a potion merchant sets up a small stand at the wsp and makes money off of the many adventurers that gather there. After four hours, another merchant joins him, and the potion merchant has a building built for him. As time passes, more merchants show up and build their own buildings. Killing the merchants resets everything, and at the first interval after reset, a potion merchant sets up a small carts from which he dispenses his wares.
Create a basic lifecycle that allows a creature to develop from a newborn to maturity, with different phases of its life defined. This would add much greater functionality to time magick, aging, aging retardation, and age reversal.
Establish an illusion extension, which can be easily applied to any number of objects.
Tweak the weather daemon to be affected by terrain or by region. This will become more important once we have entire regions of a desert climate. Note: This was started with the Northlands with the removal of the messages dealing with 'hot air', and shifting the precipitation to snow and sleet. The basis of the weather is centered around humidity and air temperature, which fluctuates on a regular cycle. It works, but the code is old and not easily modified by terrain or climate, nor does it integrate easily with many other parts of the mublib.
Tweak the weather system to include all the phases of the moon. One of them is currently absent.
Develop an extension that can be loaded into a guild that can be used to track in-guild quests
Develop a means of actually altering the environment via spells. This can include changing the weather (Call Rain, or Create Fog), changing the temperature, converting ice to water, causing vegetation to wilt, etc.
Develop alternate sensory methods, such as tracking by sense of smell, insectile vibrational sense, infravision, or heat pits.
Go through all of the files in /obj and update the code to semi-recent standards.
Dig into the race and culture code to set up more specific physical features for certain cultures. Certain cultures can be more limited to just fair colourations, while others are all predominantly dark complected. Sekh can be diversified by start regions as to what their fur pattern is.
Incorporate colour patterns into materials, such as Pattern_Tabby for Material_Fur, or Pattern_Veined for Material_Granite.
Update the vehicle code and incorporate into the game.
Create environmental hazards, such as heat causing dehydration, extreme cold causing cold damage and frostbite, hail causing impact damage. Note: This may eventually be incorporated into the weather daemon, which can be specified for each individual region/project.
Create destructible terrain, so that buildings can be set on fire, walls can be smashed apart, vegetation can be wilted away/burned, etc
Write up the actual cultures, including literature, origins, appearance, religion, visual arts, music, economy, trade, craftsmanship, science, theatre, entertainment, sports, cuisine, customs, and holidays.
Design an actual economy with limited resources, various coins/mints, coin exchanges, and alternative currencies (barter or tokens)
Establish a division of real estate that can be purchased and developed by the players, giving them minor customizable features via in-game mechanics. This can be things like hiring a painter to make the building a certain colour, importing certain materials to use in construction, paying for certain features to be added into a room, buying carpetting and artwork to decorate the building, or hiring a decorator who works within a predefined framework (select the main colour and two accent colours for the house) and having them generate the interior description. Leaving it to the players to make descriptions out-of-game has been tried before and failed miserably, and in-game mechanics gives a player much more to do than submit a long description for someone else to code.
Establish and publish a calender of events and holidays. A comparison of real-time vs game time and a listing of the days of the week and months of the years would also be helpful.
Convert over some of the older guilds to a definition structure that can be more easily expanded and upgraded as time goes on. Just simply getting the conversion done with no further upgrades is a great starting point, and makes it so much easier fo newer content and abilities to be added.
Expand the numbers and types of mounts available to the players, particularly paying attention to the less human-sized races.
Develop the vehicle system to allow for sea-faring vessels, wagons and coaches traveling between major cities, and long distance caravans.
Re-execute older projects to use more up-to-date coding practices. Even if it is the same layout with a new system of describing the same rooms, it will be an improvement and a solid foundation that we can build from.
Set up better communication between the weather daemon, light levels, and effects on the physical environment. Cloud cover could reduce light level (storm clouds even more so), night time can actually be dark, dusk and dawn can alter light levels, rain can increase the humidity of the environment(possibly dangerous to fire creatures), etc.
Update the sensory module to better deal with variable light levels. Current setup is either you can see with full clarity, or you see nothing, with no levels in between. This would also play into heliocausticity, so that damage only comes into effect above a certain light level. At 0 light level, an average human would hardly be able to see anything (possibly not being able to see the description details of a given room, only knowing that they are in an open field, or in a forest), but at 0.25 light level, that same human could see their immediate surrounding, but nothing beyond (much like how paravision only affects the immediate surroundings). With this, we can update the race definitions with various ranges of vision (heat vision to 10', night vision to 100', as an example).
Set up some sort of optional neophyte academy that keeps truly new players safe while giving them an interactive mechanism to learn the mechanics of LS.
Adjust the movement mechanism for alternate means of flight. Gliding, levitating, and drifting are much different than true flight, but are currently handled the same way. With this can come various means of reducing the effects of falling (feather fall effects).
Expand the stealth mechanism.
Apply seasonal effects to room descriptions.
Add a mechanism for subdual in combat, rather than fighting to the death.
Add in preferred combat styles for animal sentience. Most animals will prefer to flee, some will fight to the death unless they are outnumbered, some become more aggressive during mating season or when protecting their young, some have thick hides and will take a lot of abuse before they strike back, and others can be rather docile while full but capable of dismembering and eating humans when hungry.
Adjust the combat maneuvers to be based upon certain anatomies. This would eliminate the mastodons trying to eyegouge, but could be replaced with race specific attacks. Constrictors can wrap around a target to crush them or wolves can bite and shake. This could lead into a lot of different combat maneuvers being created.
Create active defensive combat maneuvers.
Add in more 'dungeon' areas to shift the hack-and-slash away from inhabited, civilized areas.
Enhance the autonomon spec distribution to be absed around more professional or personality based paths. Current emphasis is on survival in combat, despite being coded as a simple peasant, farmer, politician, or merchant. This will probably entail coding in some sort of disposition that can be inherited within the individual autonomon, which adjusts the priorities of developing certain skill sets.
