Some more ideas

[Stephen]

I hope it will not be too difficult to see these wands as 'user sprite option'.

No, not difficult... it's just that I've been too busy to spend any time on Knights recently.
Hopefully will get round to it soon, although I can't say when at this point.

I voted to join Sunday's game btw :)

[Moo]

1) Most game types have Kills and Deaths columns in the player list. How about a similar system for Deathmatch, so instead of current Frags (believe this is being changed to Points), there's Kills, Deaths, and Points.
Although, not all deaths reduce your score... It'd really need two deaths columns, one for ones that do reduce your score, and one for total deaths. But that's silly, so maybe just a Deaths column for score-reducing deaths and ignore the other deaths.

2) It's possible to start a deathmatch with no time limit. This isn't really sensible, so maybe it shouldn't allow it.

3) When someone opens a door into a room you're in (from outside), nothing is heard. Bug or feature?

4) How about a new game mode where killing a zombie gives you a point. Whoever has the most when the time runs out wins.
This could be extended by having deaths wipe your score, or reduce it by 1 or something, or maybe only certain deaths, so being killed by another knight doesn't change your score but being killed by a zombie wipes it. There could also be a setting when creating a game for a target amount. Whoever gets to the target first wins. A time limit could be optional then. This would also work well as a team game, or could work as a coop game where everyone has to work together to get the total points before the time runs out. This would work better if zombies roamed between rooms.

5) Another idea for a game mode: First to explore 100% of the map wins. This wouldn't work so well as a team game, unless the map was shared between team members. The player list could show the percentage explored. A new supersize map option could be useful for this mode to make longer games. Presumably the "escape" conditions would be as normal.

6) Why is the official server not shown as knightsgame.org.uk in the server list any more? This makes it look somewhat less official.

7) When facing the "special" pentagram, "hitting" with an axe swings it rather than throwing it as normal. I'd say this is a bug, presumably resulting from the pentagram being "hittable" when most floor spaces aren't.

That's all for now. On another note, I've seen 6 or so new players in the last 2 days. Ones that actually talked, or at least played properly. Let's hope they stick around.

[K9]

Very cool stuff.  Enjoyed our game times recently.
Hopefully we'll see some of your ideas in place over time.

Love to hear you've seen some new players.

[Stephen]

Thanks for the bug reports Moo, they're always helpful.

1) I added something to Trac for this.

Incidentally, are we happy with the current scoring system for Deathmatch? I was basically copying other FPS type games, so you get +1 for killing another knight, and -1 for a "suicide". For monsters I wasn't sure what to do, so I just said you get zero points if a monster kills you. It's all a bit arbitrary, but it seems to work OK :)

2) Agreed.

3) Bug. Probably related to #100 (which is: if another knight teleports away from your current room, then the teleport sound is only heard by one of the two knights). I think the bug is that sounds are only played in one room at a time, so if a sound is audible in two different rooms, it will only be heard in one of them at the moment.

4) & 5) I like these ideas. Indeed, it would be nice if I could keep adding new quest types (maybe one every 2-3 months?) as it would keep the game interesting and give players a reason to keep coming back. (Time permitting, of course...)

Someone suggested a "zombie survival" mode a while back, which was basically that the dungeon would be filled with zombies and you had to fight your way to the centre. I did make a quick prototype at the time, but it wasn't much fun because the zombies don't really provide that much of a challenge. (You can basically just stand in a doorway and take them out one by one.) However, if you had to kill a certain number within a time limit, that might be more interesting...

The "explore 100% of map" one sounds quite interesting too. Would probably be quite easy to program, as well.

Please keep quest ideas coming :)

6) That's because I moved the server from a VPS to a home server. (There was an old blog post about it a while back.) This was to cut down on hosting costs. Unfortunately it means the wrong host name shows up, I could fix that but it didn't seem important at the time.

7) Yes, you're probably right -- the pentagram has to be "hittable" for the destroy book with wand quest to work. Sounds like another special case is needed (sigh...)