If any of you remember the “Run” command from Moria, Angband, &c., you know what I mean: I would like an option to travel a significant distance with one keyboard command.
My initial thought is two options:
[ul][li]Choose a direction. Your character travels in that direction until they reach a landmark of some kind (building, road, intersection, &c.).[/li]
[li]Choose a destination (either on the regular screen or on the map). Your character travels in a straight line towards it until they hit an obstacle or reach their destination.[/li][/ul]
In either case, auto-travel would be interrupted in the same fashion that crafting is interrupted: with, “You have spotted a zombie! Continue traveling? (Y/N)” and similar pop-ups.
I feel like with the proper implementation, this could be a cool feature, but with the vast, diverse, and useful vistas of the cataclysm, one would probably be better off just walking/driving, so as not to miss out on any sweet loot opportunities.
Well, sure. But if you’ve already explored an area and you just need to get over to the other side of it, having the ability to do so with less busywork seems nice.
Excellent point, I’ve often found myself spending absurd amounts of time trudging across the wasteland. However, at that point, I’d recommend getting some sort of vehicle.
As for fast/auto-travel features, I’d personally like to see the portal generators work as a sort of waypoint system, where you can place a series of portals, and warp to them at your leisure, perhaps with the occasional possibility of nether creatures finding their way out with you, in addition to like, portal sickness.
Either auto-travel, where you don’t have to hold the button to get to point X, or Fallout-style overmap travel where you take longer if you’re not using vehicle, and will use up fuel if you are. Or both!
@Barhandar: I think auto-travel could be implemented in vehicles. The tricky part would be stopping auto-travel early enough that the player could be sure not to ram head-on into … whatever.
Frankly, the game-mechanic metaphor I had in mind was the old-school Moria “run” command. The fact that Cataclysm:DDA takes place out in big open areas and rooms instead of narrow videogame corridors makes things trickier, otherwise I would suggest stealing that algorithm wholesale.
Run in a direction is totally reasonable, as is following roads.
Overmap-style fast travel is a possibility, especially as run in direction or follow roads with a vehicle will be significantly harder than doing the same with a player.
Portals as something the player can easily manipulate is thematically problematic. The best you’d get is finding a portal that points somewhere that happens to be useful, and leaving it set like that.
Maybe if you’re in a vehicle, the route is explored and cleared of certain flagged obstacles, it could ‘teleport’ you to a certain destination.
The world is kinda too nasty for instant foot-travel to even be a thing. You’re loaded down with a ton of loot, two broken arms and casually walking out of that dungeon to go home through ants/fungus/triffids/zombie town, ect seems unlikely. A vehicle, you can plow through all that crap in record time if you know the route.
I once made my base in an inconveniently located LMOE shelter and I went forth with pointy sticks and made a road through the fields to the paved roads leading to towns and whatnot. It’s drugery making the same milk runs for pipes and wire and sheets and zombie bits down the same boring route you always go, a fast-travel option would be awesome, but it should’nt get you out of too much trouble.
[quote=“Burnt Earth, post:9, topic:8821”]Maybe if you’re in a vehicle, the route is explored and cleared of certain flagged obstacles, it could ‘teleport’ you to a certain destination.
The world is kinda too nasty for instant foot-travel to even be a thing. You’re loaded down with a ton of loot, two broken arms and casually walking out of that dungeon to go home through ants/fungus/triffids/zombie town, ect seems unlikely. A vehicle, you can plow through all that crap in record time if you know the route.
I once made my base in an inconveniently located LMOE shelter and I went forth with pointy sticks and made a road through the fields to the paved roads leading to towns and whatnot. It’s drugery making the same milk runs for pipes and wire and sheets and zombie bits down the same boring route you always go, a fast-travel option would be awesome, but it should’nt get you out of too much trouble.[/quote]
Nothing stopping Fallout-overmap-travel from checking what mobs are nearby and stopping you if there’s too many or they’re too strong. It’s not instant either case, just faster than the tedium of long walks or riding.
Maybe even have almost-crash-into-tree events if your driving is low or fatigue is high. Spawning the vehicle back in going at cruise speed not very far from a tree, so if the player doesn’t notice, tree gets hit.
Actually, if auto-drive is strictly one direction, it would be easy to automate corrections to keep the car in a straight line - and then stop auto-travel when an obstacle is within 10% of (a) stopping distance or (b) turning radius, whichever is larger.
(Turning radius should probably be double stopping distance, but I don’t know how the driving engine works.)
Fast-travel by teleportation is pretty much off the table. if we do it, it’ll just be continuously auto-moving, possibly skipping some redraws to speed things up. Departing from the existing systems for enemy proximity, spawning, etc is just asking to break all kinds of things.
Is it okay for me to say that I don’t like fast-travel by teleportation at all, feasible or not? Fast-travel is awesome for convenience purposes, but I want it to be within the same structure as the rest of the game - using up food at the same rate, using up time at the same rate, taking the same risks - and Elder-Scrolls-style fast-travel simply doesn’t do that.
Yea, a bunch of those things are major issues.
there might though be in-game fast travel, like if there are NPC factions and they have a convoy, you just join up and ride it until your destination, unless something happens that is…
If you want to fast-travel that bad, just use the long-range teleportation in the debug menu, if you think it’s fair.
Obviously it’ll simulate walking, because you can’t teleport a car, but if you think the game would be better for you if you could fast-travel, do it yourself. You can.
Obviously I would advise you to police yourself about it if you want to be an honest gamer (and only teleport where you’ve already been), but if you think it’s fair to use this feature and you know that it will make the game more enjoyable for you, then you have the ability to do it.
What I was talking about what more of an auto-move function, where I don’t have to press or hold a button to make my character move.
Fast-traveling with vehicles would be ridiculous to code. It’s not even worth asking to have implemented.
Come to think, impatience does incline me towards driving with a lead foot, and that is a recipe for hilarious. I will go ahead and withdraw that suggestion.
A highly simplified version wouldn’t necessarily be.
Dropping accuracy, pretending that the vehicle can only turn at some hardcoded low speed and bailing out of auto-travel as soon as serious problems start would get us a much easier problem to solve.
It wouldn’t work well in cities, on shrubby fields and on blocked roads, but could easily get you from one city to the other, assuming they’re connected by roads that aren’t blocked.
