Sneaking

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

I recently had a playthrough of a pacifist character, who avoided combat and just raided stuff. My longest run was 70 or so days, but I still had around 120 kills and I really think a sneaking skill would be a great game mechanic. The leveling of the skill could be based on successful sneaking rolls (just to avoid DF mechanics where it’s super easy to level up in sneaking). The success of sneaking should be mostly centered around the weight of everything on the character and the sneaking skill + any sneaking traits.

I hope that one day pacifist (aka raid without combat) characters can be a thing…

2

My idea on sneaking:

Sneaking is visual camouflage. It is the minimum distance between you and a monster without you being spotted, when LoS is not blocked. It is based on your clothing, movement and the environment. Let’s name it “S”.

Given that it’s sunny, you, naked, unmutated, DEX 8, stand on dirt, outdoors, no wall or tree nearby, and the monster is a regular zombie, S = 40.

When it gets dark, S is obviously smaller.

When your clothing pairs well with the terrain, you sneak well. When you wear leather clothing and stand by a winter tree, your clothing and the terrain are both “brown”, S is smaller. When you wear a dark green coat and stand in a bush, your clothing and the terrain are both “dark green”, S is smaller. When you wear red jeans and swim in magma…

The clothing should cover at least 80% to have effect. Those designed for camouflage - military gear for example - have extra bonus.

Uneven terrain covers you better than flat terrain.

Some mutations improve sneaking when in right surroundings. Plant ones blend you into forest, while lizard ones make you an obscure bulge on rock wall.

When you moved in previous turn, most of the bonus goes away. High DEX helps in retaining some.

3

[quote="§k, post:2, topic:14360"]My idea on sneaking:

Sneaking is visual camouflage. It is the minimum distance between you and a monster without you being spotted, when LoS is not blocked. It is based on your clothing, movement and the environment. Let’s name it “S”.

Given that it’s sunny, you, naked, unmutated, DEX 8, stand on dirt, outdoors, no wall or tree nearby, and the monster is a regular zombie, S = 40.

When it gets dark, S is obviously smaller.

When your clothing pairs well with the terrain, you sneak well. When you wear leather clothing and stand by a winter tree, your clothing and the terrain are both “brown”, S is smaller. When you wear a dark green coat and stand in a bush, your clothing and the terrain are both “dark green”, S is smaller. When you wear red jeans and swim in magma…

The clothing should cover at least 80% to have effect. Those designed for camouflage - military gear for example - have extra bonus.

Uneven terrain covers you better than flat terrain.

Some mutations improve sneaking when in right surroundings. Plant ones blend you into forest, while lizard ones make you an obscure bulge on rock wall.

When you moved in previous turn, most of the bonus goes away. High DEX helps in retaining some.[/quote]
This seems more like hiding than sneaking though…

4

Probably…

5

“hiding” logic is hard, but would be nice, I guess.

“Sneaking” seems more like the ability to move slower in return for less noise.

So, say, double movement cost for 1 noise instead of 3. If we were to add a skill, then as the skill rose, the extra movement cost would go down.

1 Like
6

However only noise reduction still wouldn’t add much to the game, it should also make you ‘less visible’.

7

I don’t disagree, but a) it doesn’t match the flavor/feel of the game, and b) if there was such a mechanic, it would need to apply to enemies as well, and I don’t think anyone wants THAT.

8

there are very few creatures that would be even remotely considered “stealthy” most that could potentially call claim to this category would only do so by accident. shady zombies would be the biggest exception I can think of.

using the same system proposed:
A skilled perception character being able to see shade Z from further away would make sense. So I don’t see a gameplay problem there. Triffids and such would get a small bonus for being ‘in the woods’ and such, but that shouln’t count for much, since they are walking around not attempting to be stealthy. But maybe things like that would be harder to notice for say… a running character?

Thinking along the lines of same roll for perception that mines get, with possible extra penalties for the sprinting, and out of breath/recovering breath turns (if mines don’t already get this same for them)

  • sorry I feel like Im bababling, I am running on 5 hours of sleep around noon, after having not slept the previous night and its currently midnight 1 in the morning agian. If anyone needs I’ll clarify my deranged thoughts later.

Im letting Daz Z take too much of my time…

9

I don’t disagree, but a) it doesn’t match the flavor/feel of the game, and b) if there was such a mechanic, it would need to apply to enemies as well, and I don’t think anyone wants THAT.[/quote]
How doesn’t it match the flavor of a post apocalyptic world? I feel like the people who didn’t try to fight would survive the longest (at the cost of only simple loot)

10

I already added a “sneaky” trait, that makes sneak toggleable like running and walking, it uses the same key.
While sneaking you move slower and the sight range of monster is reduced a random distance between 10 and 20.

It works very well with shadow step trait, that almost nullifies walking noise.
Still need to make somehow a scent masker, as zeds still gets you by it scent. But in general I think that the scent is one of the biggest problem for sneaking as almost all monsters fall back to it to track you.

11

Scent’s not that big of a deal, provided you’re careful.
A ways back (before starting scenarios were finalized, I believe) I used to use some settings that would cause you to start out inside a house in the city, and I got a lot of practice sneaking in the game as-is. I’d have to move around the house carefully, using the X peek command a lot, slip up towards windows unseen so I could close the curtains, allowing me access to more of the house. I’d usually get all the windows shut and then strategize based on the loot and the zeds I spotted outside, then I’d usually wait for nightfall and slip out with whatever I could quietly use from the house.
Moving around behind houses was the safest, it always paid to avoid the streets where possible.
Scent and sound would sometimes cause zombies to stumble in my direction, but there were no shady zombies with night vision yet so you could easily lose them if you were careful. Scent is a pretty unreliable tool for finding you, and they would often follow my trail backwards, or just lose it and wander off in some other direction.
If I had to return to the starting house for some reason, I’d always leave a side window open, so my scent trail from leaving would be at the back of the house, and the trail from re-entering would be in the alley to the side. This way I didn’t increase the strength of my scent trail at one of the openings, which seemed to make it easier to find me. Two faint trails are better than one stronger one, basically.

12

[quote=“Alec White, post:10, topic:14360”]I already added a “sneaky” trait, that makes sneak toggleable like running and walking, it uses the same key.
While sneaking you move slower and the sight range of monster is reduced a random distance between 10 and 20.

It works very well with shadow step trait, that almost nullifies walking noise.
Still need to make somehow a scent masker, as zeds still gets you by it scent. But in general I think that the scent is one of the biggest problem for sneaking as almost all monsters fall back to it to track you.[/quote]

could go the I am legend route and throw down some bleach where you don’t want to be smelled, maybe an acid. Or get very wet or very dry somehow. Some kind of CBM could be a solution, or a scent changer mutation to make scent suddenly change to something completely different, maybe an advanced version of chooses what you smell like and when.

13

anyone know if corpses or meat/body parts are good at throwing predators off by scent/hunger?

didn’t even realize the bleach thing, that’s pretty nifty.

14

I think “chunk of meat” scares animals.

15

Specially when said chunk of meat is traveling at several Gs towards the animal.

16

[quote=“TooDAMNMuch, post:13, topic:14360”]anyone know if corpses or meat/body parts are good at throwing predators off by scent/hunger?

didn’t even realize the bleach thing, that’s pretty nifty.[/quote]

Scent is very biological, and dogs in urban areas will frequently try to find the sent on any greenery nearby because it holds scent better due to the plants having an optimum water concentration (or something like this) to high and it dilutes/covers/masks it, to little and the nose doesn’t work as well, something like this. So changing the water concentration where the scent is can vastly alter the scents longevity.

Bleach hits the source more driectly breaking apart organic compounds including those that give organic material scent.

Don’t quote me on any of this, I am going off things I heard that one time combined with this one thing I heard from mythbusters etc…

17

Specially when said chunk of meat is traveling at several Gs towards the animal.[/quote]

“id”: “mon_wolf”,
…
“placate_triggers”: [ “MEAT” ],

Blobbed wolf is scared of “MEAT”!

18

Meat doesn’t mask scent or create more scent, but some creatures are distracted by it.

The main problem with sneaking is the main mechanism is breaking line of sight, and we don’t have good mechanisms for doing that other than going behind walls.

In the distant future, I want to have some kind of voxel engine setting elevation of individual tiles, but that requires diving back into the shadowcasting code, and I need to recover some sanity before I do that again.

1 Like
19

Just remove 360° FOV and everything will be ok with sneaking. I’m not right?

20

Just remove 360° FOV and everything will be ok with sneaking. I’m not right?[/quote]

You mean like giving everyone cones of vision like Unreal World does?, that would require changing the control scheme, I think it works well on UW once you get used to it but, it might be too big a change for CDDA.