So I was having some fun blasting zombies and such as we all do. I noticed when I wanted to dissect a zed that every enemy around me wanted to bite me before I had the pause that would otherwise give me the heads up to avoid getting munched.
So my suggestion on this topic is to ask everyone if a radius is a sound idea? (toggle, optional of course)
I was thinking of a 2-3 tile radius around the player character to have as an option pause. Simply pausing the action you are attempting because your toon can SEE an enemy is not enough. The enemy can be half way across the reality bubble. Then it is ignored right up until it takes a chunk out of your ass! That wouldn’t happen in a real situation of course. You want to see it and ignore it. Then have it get only so close before you stop what you would be doing and take action against the imminent threat.
Yeah, I’ve run into this a few times. I don’t care all that much about some zed that’s 57 tiles away, but I want to be warned before he gets to 3 tiles away. Given that most zeds seem to notice the player around 35 tiles are so away, I’d say that’s a decent cutoff. Although, given that I can tell when a creature has noticed me (by the ! in front of his name or the red indication on the compass display), maybe just notifying me that I’ve been spotted is the right way to handle it. When I’m doing a dissection, I don’t care about critters or zombies at long range that haven’t noticed me, but once a hostile does notice me it’s a safe bet it will start closing range, and that’s when I care.
Of course, the current behavior may be to simulate the character being focused on what he/she is doing (a complicated dissection procedure), and not keeping a close eye on things in the distance, and only really noticing them when footsteps are heard. “Huh? Oh, shit! Where’d that thing come from! I wasn’t paying attention! Run away!!!” In that case, maybe it should stay the same and we should just avoid starting things that require full attention when potential threats are in sight. Just haul the corpse a few tiles farther away and re-engage safe mode before starting.
Just quoted it so ppl can see it twice, the only reasons i seem to think for you both to have a problem with that is:
-somehow safe mode got deactivated by accident.
you were near a terrain position that made you unable to see it at a safe distance, like a mob that is just around the corner (like literally being blocked by a wall tile, most common with flying mobs, since sounds activate safe mode too)
both of you got a bug.
This makes me think of Perception being higher could allow a greater percentage roll on noticing sooner…but it would also assume the toon has blind spots, such as direction of line of sight. Which, as far as I remember when I mentioned this very thing. Everyone on the forum thought it should not be added to the game. Sooooo…yeah. That being the case, it seems all the more logical to add the suggestion. =D
Safe mode seems to behave like a overly paranoid dog on crack every time I turn it on. It seems to do the same thing as default with it off, except I still have no use for the pause literally every enemy that is anything past 3-4 tiles away.
If you have the time to explain how this can handle exactly what my topic is regarding. I’m eager to learn.
I only care about enemies 3-4 tiles away from my center. Even the default seems annoying most of the time I play. I dunno if this can be turned off or just continues to be useless pausing every time a zed dances in view half a mile away.
Not sure if I get this right from the top of my head, but I’ll try:
Setup the following rules:
Enemy Name, Distance, Alignment, Warning
*, 0, Hostile, Whitelist
*, 0, Neutral, Whitelist
*, 0, Friendly, Whitelist
*, 4, Hostile, Blacklist
*, 4, Neutral, Blacklist
The asteriks is a “catch all”, while a distance of zero means “as far as I can see”. List “Hostile” and “Neutral” seperately, since I remember having problems when set to “Any” (might be fixed, I don’t know). Not sure if “Friendly” has to be stated specifically, but do it anyway…
The rules 4 and 5 specify to only cause safe mode to engage when there are enemies 4 or less tiles away.
Be aware: It reads the list from top down. It means, colliding rules (as in: *, Hostile, Whitelist & *, Hostile, Blacklist) will cause the rule higher in the list to get (partially) overwritten.
Also, before you may leave out the “Neutral” part, remember that some monster will stay neutral, but you might still want to be warned of their presence (like necromancer).
Not sure if that will fix your problem of “getting warned about seeing zombies”, but it should prevent them getting close enough to take a bite out of you.
If i’m reading this correctly, what about the option (can’t remember what it’s called) that lets you set proximity warning radius?
I’ve got mine set to 10, so if i’m in the middle of crafting, etc and a monster gets within 10 tiles of me I get a warning with the options of continuing my activity or stopping.