Annoying Dogs (and prompts)

[Binky]

Hello,
I’ve been playing one of the latest experimental builds (possibly not the latest, but only a day or two out) and I’ve been finding dogs incredibly annoying as they usually don’t attack, but constantly are listed as a hostile causing prompts every two or three seconds. As it is, it’s impossible to build anything outside without being constantly hounded (lolz) by prompts due to dogs.

I wouldn’t be adversed to having dogs as a non hostile (like squirrels) and ‘feral dogs’ as always hostile, although that might be a bit too simplistic. I’m not sure what a better way is, but currently it’s driving me mad.

(By the way, I do have animal empathy turned on - I don’t know how much of a difference that makes)

[kevin.granade]

Have you tried hitting ! to ignore currently visible enemies? Although they might approach close enough that they trip the failsafe “they’re right on top of you” alert.

[Binky]

Yeah I’ve been using that, but they still trip it when they get close, and now that there is a lot more sometimes hostile wildlife about it still goes off a lot. Also, sometimes I don’t want to worry about the dogs around me, but a coyote off in the far distance I might want to be reminded about.

I’m unsure how the mechanics of it work though, do they every turn (or whatever) have a chance to turn hostile, or are they always friendly or hostile? if it’s the second then it’d be easy to just flag them, but if it’s the other I’m unsure of the best way around it.

[kevin.granade]

The problem is with e.g. bears, which aren’t hostile until they get close enough, so when they do go hostile it’s too late if we’re triggering off of agression.

I think the problem though is the “failsafe distance”, I was skeptical about that when it was added, and now I think I’ll just pull it, if you say ignore and a monster is 3 tiles away, the game should respect that input and ignore it instead of overriding it because “but it’s really close!”.

[Binky]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:4, topic:3817”]The problem is with e.g. bears, which aren’t hostile until they get close enough, so when they do go hostile it’s too late if we’re triggering off of agression.

I think the problem though is the “failsafe distance”, I was skeptical about that when it was added, and now I think I’ll just pull it, if you say ignore and a monster is 3 tiles away, the game should respect that input and ignore it instead of overriding it because “but it’s really close!”.[/quote]

Good idea, I’m sure that’ll clear a lot of it up!

[kevin.granade]

ok, I was reading the code wrong, and this should already be handled. If a monster is dafe to be around, hit ’ and it will ignore it until it narrows the gap by 1/2, but that just means hitting it a few times if a dog gets right up on you, then it won’t bother you anymore.

[Binky]

ok, I was reading the code wrong, and this should already be handled. If a monster is dafe to be around, hit ’ and it will ignore it until it narrows the gap by 1/2, but that just means hitting it a few times if a dog gets right up on you, then it won’t bother you anymore.

Could this be changed to 3/4’s? this’d mean that it’d only ask you again if it was completely on top of you which is probably desirable, but at half distance its still some way out.

[kevin.granade]

The way it works now seems reasonable, when you first see the monster (at 50-60 tiles), it probably doesn’t see you, so you’ll probably just ignore it and go back to what you were doing. Once it’s closed by 1/2 that distance (25-30 tiles), it’s probably closing because it sees you and is intentionally approaching, we want to warn before it’s right on top of you so you have a chance to respond. You might or might not get a third warning, but if you do it’s right on top of you (12-15 tiles). Let me put it this way, if it’s a moose, do you want to go straight from ignoring it at 60 squares away to having it warn you at 15 squares away (or worse, go from 40 to 10)? That seems a bit close for comfort.

If anything, it might be reasonable to expand the exclusion zone from 6 tiles out to 10 tiles or so to make sure you don’t get one more pointless interruption. I’m also thinking we want to scale this with view distance, if you spot something lurking at the edge of your flashlight range and ignore it, I think you won’t get even a 2nd warning.

[Binky]

…If anything, it might be reasonable to expand the exclusion zone from 6 tiles out to 10 tiles or so to make sure you don’t get one more pointless interruption. I’m also thinking we want to scale this with view distance, if you spot something lurking at the edge of your flashlight range and ignore it, I think you won’t get even a 2nd warning.

Good points all round. An extended exclusion zone would be good. Would it also be possible to tag creatures that enter your view (which you then ignore) and then re-enter soon after as still ignored? This happens a lot with randomly moving things (wolves for instance) which can keep popping in and out every turn or two?

[kevin.granade]

That’s already done, it flags the actual monster now, so unless it moves off the map and then back it’ll stay ignored.