Proposition: Eidetic Locator CBM

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

The Lore

Using the cutting edge technology in neural stimulation prior to the Cataclysm, with this CBM you possess the uncanny ability to recall the location of any item you’ve ever seen, smelled, heard, touched, tasted, or otherwise sensed, no matter how faintly. Because no one fully understands how the human brain works, the designers themselves cannot provide an accurate explanation for some of the results. Originally the CBM was designed to jog the user’s memory universally. All that is known is that the neural stimulation proved to yield quite different results than initially expected, and astonishingly so. Users simply report “an irresistible draw, and an undeniable mental association to a previously visited, or a nearby location, when desiring something they have no access to at the moment.” This ability seemed to show only few limitations. Latest theories speculated that the human brain is subconsciously able to pick up and permanently store subtle fluctuations in the quantum fields on a massive scale and in unimaginably fine resolution, which would effectively mean that each human being is subconsciously near-omniscient, limited only by personal travel experiences, and a perfect data collector. Even when the target object is moved, some users reported they can still sense a faint “trail” long afterwards if they have a chance to focus. In addition to proximity requirement, there are other limitations as well, for example, recalling forgotten skills or literary knowledge does not occur. But you might track down the physical item from which you possibly studied the information. It also appears the human mind is not able to control the memory flood very well in case a commonly occurring object is recalled. So please don’t try to remember where you saw a “rock”… You’ll just make yourself disoriented and confused.

Anyway, this ability is potentially very useful for backtracking. You could recall the general area of a rare piece of equipment that you know to look for, equipment that your conscious mind and powers of observation might have missed. Or if you’re just hungry for some particular snack, you could search the deepest recesses of your mind to locate some potato chips as well. Activate the CBM, enter a search word, such as “gunsmith repair kit”, and a maximum of 5 hits (locations) will be marked on your map, chosen randomly if more than 5 hits are found. You’ll PROBABLY never lose your car keys again.

Ramblings of a demented madman

The inspiration to this came when I became frustrated for not finding a gunsmith repair kit after such a long time. I kept thinking that I might have walked by one, which would mean its location would be in the savegame files. I did have to look up the ID for it (large_repairkit), but other than that the process was pretty straightforward to me. I did happen to have the software for searching text strings within non-txt files. The overmap coordinates are there but you still have to manually search the vicinity in the game. I didn’t find a gunsmith repair kit, but it occurred to me look for some other stuff and I got some hits which I hunted down. And then I realized, “Why couldn’t this be a CBM or a mutation?” It turned out to be surprisingly fun because it was pretty much like self-imposed scavenger hunt, and I found the stuff I wanted in an unexpected place: “Oh that drawer there next to the bed? Yeah, probably just clothes.” Wrong. Going back I found out it actually contained a lot of guns, ammo and accessories. I sure as hell won’t be that dismissive about bedroom drawers again. I have faith that this CBM could teach lessons to other longtime players, too, depending how thorough they usually are, or they THINK they are. Of course we could for example limit the search area distance, too, if the ability itself seems overpowered.

Curiosity and uncertainty

Basically the tech behind this CBM would rely on performing a text search inside the savegame files, using savegame data as the database, and return the coordinates to the overmap. Is this dodgy? Or doable? Or… sensible? I wouldn’t want to thrash anyone’s hard drive or cause an inconvenient 5-minute pause while the search does its thing. Is all of the savegame data loaded to RAM when a previously saved game is loaded?

2

The sheer number of items to parse would make the whole thing take ages on any feasible computer.

3

Maybe limit to ten items and you choose them? “Damn, i really need to remeber the location of every solar panel I encounter but I already know 10 items…I guess I really don;t need to know where every single rock ever is…”

4

That’s a fascinating method of searching for an item somewhere in the map files. It would take longer and longer the more you explore your world though, doesn’t seem feasible as an in game mechanic. Maybe someone could make a script and create a companion utility for us though, that would be pretty awesome.

5

For something like that, I just leave notes everywhere on my map if i need to go back to a place for something.

6

I say no. It 1) would be really hard to code 2) would slow the game down massively and 3) makes no sense in game.

7

Dungeon Crawl actually has this as a base feature, so it’s not totally infeasible. Obviously brute forcing it isn’t desirable, but acting like search is something a computer can’t do without grinding to a halt is a tiny bit hyperbolic!

Now granted, DCSS maps are smaller than Cata’s (which unless I’m mistaken are potentially very large indeed), and there aren’t quite as many items. But I could still see this working, especially if limited to a smallish pre-arranged subset of items… if someone wanted to put the time in (which is the real million dollar question).

I can’t see it adding that much to the game that you couldn’t get from an expanded note system though, and that would be a lot easier to implement.

8

Dungeon Crawl has much lower item density, much less data per item, no segmented maps, no active items, no save concurrency and much less overhead for processing field of view.

In Dungeon Crawl, you could easily store all items on each map in an array and parse all items in the whole game in unnoticeable amount of time.

Here it would require building caches on unload, but more importantly managing the visibility limitations.
Visibility is hard because:

[ul][li]It has to be calculated fast[/li]
[li]It has to be stored per-character[/li]
[li]It has to remember the state at a given time, not just boolean seen/unseen[/li][/ul]

All of that is doable, but all of that means extra work.

9

Just as an example, I did an in-file text search on my save folder for ‘potato’ and that took 30 seconds. It’s a 300MB folder, 23k files. It’s about a 100-day-old game, with item drops at default 1. Thirty seconds is kind of slow but we’re really talking about a 100% voluntary function that doesn’t probably occur more than a few times per game using a CBM that should probably be rare to find and difficult to install. If any indexing or cacheing is done, all subsequent searches will be much faster (presumably until the game is restarted).

Also, it wouldn’t have to be a CBM or a mutation, but a limited-use, unreloadable item. Basically a genie in a bottle, hehe.

I admit it might be challenging to make it work smoothly or elegantly.

The program I use to peruse inside files is called Effective File Search (freeware, Windows only). The first search is always slow but the following ones are always super fast (seconds). Not sure if it’s the program or the OS that does cacheing. And this is with a mechanical hard drive.

http://www.sowsoft.com/search.htm

10

It wouldn’t be too bad if the range were limited to something like say the reality bubble, and it rechecks as soon as you load a new submap, BUT I don’t think there would be any good way to tell if it was an item you had seen before or not. Like, you could be looking for a probability travel CBM, and you walk past a bank vault with one inside. You had no way of knowing it was inside the vault, but the CBM would go off anyway. It doesn’t make sense.

11

It does and it doesn’t make sense. You’d have to read the lore section. Ongoing X-Files series tickled my paranormal and sci-fi spots. Just because you can’t smell the beer, doesn’t mean there isn’t beer nearby. Just because you can’t feel the center of gravity, doesn’t mean you won’t be pulled toward it. See? SEE?! I’m NOT CRAZY! O_o

Get your Mulder on.

12

I read the words “eidetic” and “CBM” and instantly assumed you’d be suggesting a CBM which grants you a “fog of war” view of previously explored but currently out-of-view areas. Although I never envisioned it as a CBM til now… Someone please mod this in lol