Seeing critters over long distance

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

It pretty weird that the character can see small critters such as squirrels and bullfrog even when they are at the outer most of his vision range. Perhaps creature’s size should determine how close the character must go before seeing said creature? So creatures with TINY size should be invisible before coming into 20 titles close to the character (a normal character can see in 60 titles radius in daylight)
My proposal for vision range:
TINY: 20 titles (squirrel, rattlesnake)
SMALL: 35 titles (weasel, dog)
MEDIUM and larger: 60 titles (zombies) Basically the same as before.

This can filter out harmless critters and make the sidebar much cleaner to look at, also more realistic. This of course should stack with traits and sight-enhancing items like the binoculars. Having visibility depends on size can create potentially interesting scenarios too, like a small but fast and dangerous critter that can only be seen when you get close enough; we can also make crawling zombies smaller (MEDIUM to SMALL) for interesting effect - sorta like a unpleasant surprise.

Finally, not related to this suggestion, but the game seems to ignore certain critters, mostly flying ones like mosquitoes dragonflies and shrews… Are there any reason for this discrimination?

2

This could possibly be a coding nightmare to implement, as well as creating an arbitrary distance where you can no longer see the snake you were looking at 6 seconds ago.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I would like to see this mechanic, perhaps with creatures at the ‘edges’ of their visual detection range having a chance of being ‘lost’ visually each turn, with the chance increasing as you get further away and decreasing if you’re more perceptive.

Also; Could you clarify on what you mean by the game ignoring certain critters?

3

I spawned several mosquitoes using debug mode and the game doesn’t show them in the sidebar, the mosquitoes are there, I can displace them, but they aren’t shown in the sidebar.

4

Mosquitoes and shrew (centipede, slug, …) are taged as vermin and vermin do not show up in the sidebar.

5

Ah thanks, I didn’t know that. :slight_smile:

6

Rather than a static range limit, the plan is to do a stealth system with several inputs, but it would be somewhat “sticky”. So you have a chance to spot a monster on any given turn, and once spotted, there’s a chance to lose track of it, but the probabilities would be pretty divergent, so once spotted you wouldn’t lose something until it got a lot more hidden (or has LOS blocked entirely).