Sneaking

[kevin.granade]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:18, topic:14360”]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.

Just remove 360° FOV and everything will be ok with sneaking. I’m not right?[/quote]
I’ve looked into it, up to and including protyping it, but I can’t get it to not suck

[Sayurime]

it might be too big a change for CDDA.

This is must have change if you want good sneaking system and for better using of noise system. This is only way to do good.

I’ve looked into it, up to and including protyping it, but I can’t get it to not suck

What exactly «sucks»?
Reduce FOV to 180° and make better wandering system for zombie. Lock view direction to movement direction. Add eight keys for changeing view directions without movement and one key to lock current view direction while movement.

If you need help with technical implementation I’m sure people at this forum can help you with it and with other prombles too.

[kevin.granade]

There’s about 10x as much navigation in buildings and similar environments in dda as in urw from what I can tell, a control scheme that’s mildly annoying but acceptable in urw is a non-starter in dda.

Possibly with some extensions to allow reasonable auto-move in some circumstances, and you switch to micromanagement of movement when it matters, but I’m sceptical it will ever work in dda. Frankly I don’t think there’s any good reason for the player to have their fov restricted to enable stealth in most circumstances, things rarely sneak up on the player, we want to enable the opposite.

[NuG]

Yeah I’m not sure I’d like the view restricted. I tried to get into UW before trying CDDA, and I think the view mechanic was part of what turned me off of UW. I still want to go back and give it another shot though that I have more experience in turn based rogue-likes. I always felt like in CDDA even though we aren’t moving while standing still in a tile, our PC can still rotate his head to scan his surroundings.

[DemAvalon]

Well the player can sneak in adventure mode of Dwarf Fortress, and there the player has a 360 vision, I have no Idea how it works though,Elona also does this and everything has 360 vision there, I think it does a random rolls and checks that vs your sneaking ability but I don’t know

Yeah I’m not sure I’d like the view restricted. I tried to get into UW before trying CDDA, and I think the view mechanic was part of what turned me off of UW. I still want to go back and give it another shot though that I have more experience in turn based rogue-likes.

You should definitely try, UW has one of the best outdoor survival experiences of any game, tracking animals and people, night ambushes, winter survival its fantastic, cataclysm has a whole different feel that is why I never felt like sneaking was missing from this game, combat is also (in my opinion) much more interesting.

[NuG]

[quote=“DemAvalon, post:25, topic:14360”]Well the player can sneak in adventure mode of Dwarf Fortress, and there the player has a 360 vision, I have no Idea how it works though,Elona also does this and everything has 360 vision there, I think it does a random rolls and checks that vs your sneaking ability but I don’t know

Yeah I’m not sure I’d like the view restricted. I tried to get into UW before trying CDDA, and I think the view mechanic was part of what turned me off of UW. I still want to go back and give it another shot though that I have more experience in turn based rogue-likes.

You should definitely try, UW has one of the best outdoor survival experiences of any game, tracking animals and people, night ambushes, winter survival its fantastic, cataclysm has a whole different feel that is why I never felt like sneaking was missing from this game, combat is also (in my opinion) much more interesting.[/quote]

I really didn’t try to hard to get into it, like I did for cataclysm. I’m an avid outdoorsman myself, which is one of the things that originally drew me to it… so I’ll definitely be giving it another shot sometime soon. I didn’t dislike it completely or anything, I just didn’t give myself enough time orient myself with all the controls and stuff, IIRC.

[kevin.granade]

To clarify something I said, if you want to allow the player to interact with vision cones in order to sneak up on targets, it is the targets that need their FoV restricted, not the player. Only if we have monsters we want to sneak up on an unwary player so we need to restrict what the player can see*.
If we want to restrict monster FoV, the much trickier issue is how to communicate to the player what direction monsters are facing, or more generally what areas the monsters can currently see, so that the player can try to avoid their vision.

• I actually do have an idea for implementing this in limited circumstances. If a player is aiming through a rifle scope, it is reasonable to restrict their field of view to the forward arc, because there is a non-negligible cost when exiting the aiming interface. So if a player were sniping at a group of distant enemies over a protracted time, they may find themselves vulnerable to ambush.

[harison86]

If we want to restrict monster FoV, the much trickier issue is how to communicate to the player what direction monsters are facing, or more generally what areas the monsters can currently see, so that the player can try to avoid their vision.

It could be handled the way Dwarf Fortress handles it in Adventure Mode: when the player is in sneak mode the field of view of enemies is indicated with colored cones.

[Adragis029]

I think the way to implement enemy stealth (besides the obviously supernatural like shady zombies) should just be their coloration. Triffids are already hard to tell apart from forests if you’re not being slow.

[Coolthulhu]

Restricting FoV angle would work terribly with current “AI” of monsters. FoV works in games where creatures have something to do, not mill about mindlessly.

[Sayurime]

Kevin Granade, I mean that game too easy now (not becouse lack of content). Just play at the night, and if you do everything right, nobody can kill you, but you still be able to loot all types of buildings, becouse you don’t need light to see something even in the cellar without windows (this is also very stupid thing). Restricting FoV is good way to revive day-gameplay and for more dangerous night-gameplay, also I think this will make game more harder. Maybe only I think so, but game really is too easy for me (with any types of settings and starting conductions). Maybe only for me.

You can make this like on/off function, if you want. Just think about it. If you think what this is stupid idea - this is your choice.

[Alkheemist]

If you want to increase difficulty, making it harder to play the game isn’t the way to go. Restricting FOV will just mean people have to manually scan the environment, instead of the current implementation where the survivor scans the surrounds automatically. Because, y’know, they don’t want to be jumped and you can easily look in every direction in the span of 6 seconds.

The counter to night raiding was supposed to be shady zombies, and adding FOV doesn’t really make night raiding any more difficult because without any lighting gear you can still only see a few tiles without night vision. And if you think that FOV will allow zombies to sneak up on you, shady zombies are invisible until 1 tile away in very dark conditions.

If you’re looking for a challenge, try playing CDDA totally blindfolded. You can still interact with the world though adjacent tiles, but since the game lacks map memory you’ll have to get really good at recognising all the walls you bump into to navigate. Bonus points if you put on noise cancelling headgear too.

[Sayurime]

Restricting FOV will just mean people have to manually scan the environment, instead of the current implementation where the survivor scans the surrounds automatically.

So this doesn’t mean that you will need to be more attentive and that you will get punishment if not? I disagree with you. Restricted FoV - this is realistic feature, so that not just “hard to play” thing.

And if you think that FOV will allow zombies to sneak up on you, shady zombies are invisible until 1 tile away in very dark conditions.

Nah, this stupid zombies - can’t do anything serious, unless there is a hundred of them around you. In zombie apocalypse zombie has only quantitative advantage, not brains. But they also can come to you from behind (that always happens in normal zombie world) and kill you, if you are not attentive enough. This is in my imaginary zombie world. But when you have 360 degrees of FoV and only one or two zombies, that at same time can see you at the night and try to attack - what can happen at all? Nothing serious, at least with me. Never.

If you’re looking for a challenge…

I’m looking for interesting gameplay, not a gameplay for preschoolers, which is enough for me for 1 hour. IMHO.

[Coolthulhu]

So this doesn’t mean that you will need to be more attentive and that you will get punishment if not?

It means that - but in the worst possible way. It would make the whole thing very tedious, to the point where all the attempted realism would be lost because looking around would be too much work.
Realism is only actually realism when it produces realistic effects. If a “realistic” feature makes everyone act less realistically, it was never realistic in the first place.

I have recently played a game that did restricted FoV angle really well - Darkwood. The problem is, it’s not possible to translate this to DDA due to control scheme differences and turn based vs real time.
So the best we’d get would be some copy of DF or UW mechanics. And those would SUCK here due to crafting, reloading, enemy AI, limitations on provided information (“you hear footsteps” - rabbit’s or hulk’s?) and so on.
Not saying they don’t suck in DF or UW, just that they would surely suck here.

IRL, if you want to look around, you turn your head from side to side. This is completely intuitive and thus not tedious. In the game this would require manually looking around, making the characters act less realistically when they don’t do that, which would be most of the time.
IRL, if you wanted to say, rip apart a t-shirt while making sure nothing ambushes you, you’d look up every now and then and scan the area for threats, or put your back against the wall and lift the shirt to the air so that you see everything in front of you. The former is already simulated (the only thing that would need to change would be some perception roll penalty), the latter one would be much, much more tedious in the game than in real life, so it would be anti-realistic to make people avoid doing it in the game.

So limited angle FoV is certainly nowhere as simple to do non-badly as it seems. And so far no one provided a brilliant idea to fix the massive problems that would come with it.

[Sayurime]

So limited angle FoV is certainly nowhere as simple to do non-badly as it seems. And so far no one provided a brilliant idea to fix the massive problems that would come with it.

K, I agree with a lot things that you say. But ordinary zombie can come from behind and kill you, if you will don’t hear him, right? This happen in most times when survivors dies, with another case, when the survivor was driven into corner. This is two ways how normal man can actually die from zombie. So how this frist way can be implemented into the game without angles? With sneaking like skill and perception? This is will work and look even more stupid than angels, think about it.

I have recently played a game that did restricted FoV angle really well - Darkwood. The problem is, it’s not possible to translate this to DDA due to control scheme differences and turn based vs real time.

But this will be the best choice if you want to do well, not somehow. Anyway UW have angels and also turn-based, no?

[Coolthulhu]

But ordinary zombie can come from behind and kill you, if you will don’t hear him, right?

Not really. Currently you could be woken up by a zombie bite and would spring up into action and fight it back.
Zombies aren’t good at assassination - they just hit things. Even if there was a major penalty for being surprised, most zombies couldn’t utilize it well. Hulks and predators could, but hulks are huge and loud and both of those zombie types are rare.
The worst thing that can happen is a NPC headshotting you. NPCs can use that extra time to aim, so they do benefit from sneaking. But it’s a terrible thing for gameplay to be insta-killed like that.

Anyway UW have angels and also turn-based, no?

Yes, but UW has very little creatures, buildings, scavenging, city exploration and so on. You don’t peek around corners in UW, you don’t drive vehicles, you don’t look through clouds of smoke or goo on your eyes.
The problems that are tiny in UW would be huge here.

[Sayurime]

Not really. Currently you could be woken up by a zombie bite and would spring up into action and fight it back.

I mean that this can happen in normal world. Like I said:

This happen in most times when survivors dies, with another case, when the survivor was driven into corner. This is two ways how normal man can actually die from zombie.

So zombies are not dangerous at all. They can’t do anything to kill you, unless there is a lot of them and you are lost legs and brain. They are just useless. Avoid hulks and predators and game will be casual. Right? You don’t think, after this, that game too easy, if you can own everything without anything? And please don’t say that angles are not solve this problem, becouse this is only first step to make creatures more deadly and game more harder.

I can explain why I started this discussion with angles, if you want. But reason is very simple and I think you know it.

[Coolthulhu]

So zombies are not dangerous at all. They can’t do anything to kill you, unless there is a lot of them and you are lost legs and brain.

Introducing annoying limitations to vision will surely not make zombies dangerous if they have problems killing a sleeping player.

And please don’t say that angles are not solve this problem, becouse this is only first step to make creatures more deadly and game more harder.

But it has to be said. Angles aren’t a solution to this problem.
Angles can be introduced as the last step, certainly not the first one. If your solution relies on first introducing the angles and then figuring out what to do later, you don’t have a solution at all.
And even if angles somehow were relevant to the solution, you haven’t explained how, other than “sometimes zombies could sneak up on you”, which is a very shallow explanation that doesn’t account for how the gameplay would look with angled FoV and how players could prevent zombies sneaking up on them.

[Alkheemist]

Unless you’re batman, turning your head and checking your surroundings every six seconds is trivial.

Consider gameplay if FOV is a requirement:

[ul][li]Walking around, you have to constantly hit up and down to check your surroundings. If this doesn’t decrease your speed by a third, it is still 3 times more keypresses per distance travelled[/li]
[li]While looting, you have to check the “List all items” menu up to eight times, just to see what’s in the same room as you[/li]
[li]In your base, you have to keep all your crafting components in view and have your back in a corner[/li][/ul]

This doesn’t make the game harder, it makes it more tedious. You want a game that is difficult, not difficult to play. But even then, if you implement FOV for the player, then you’ll also be implementing it for monsters (otherwise there’s no point reason for the PC to have limited FOV). This makes night raiding easier, since you only aggro less than half of the zombies that would normally detect you but have their back turned.

Difficulty will come from more specials and mechanics, not from limiting player view and increasing tedium. If we really want to implement angles, the one case I would say it makes sense is when aiming with a high magnification optic, since you’ll be more focused on your target and less aware of your surroundings.

[Sayurime]

Angles can be introduced as the last step, certainly not the first one. If your solution relies on first introducing the angles and then figuring out what to do later, you don’t have a solution at all.

Agree with you here. I only try to say that only way to do good sneaking system is angles. Not a skills, random rolls and same trash.

And even if angles somehow were relevant to the solution, you haven’t explained how, other than “sometimes zombies could sneak up on you”, which is a very shallow explanation that doesn’t account for how the gameplay would look with angled FoV and how players could prevent zombies sneaking up on them.

Look Project Zomboid and there is no need for explanation. This is 3D game but essence is same. Game is positioned as survival, which implies a certain realism (unless stated otherwise) and realism is not about 360 degrees radar on your head, so you don’t need to look around and be careful.
If you think that angles not make game harder but boring - ok. This is your position, but I think that this borings things, that needs to be done, are the key to make player responsible for the mistakes, even if they happens once per game. How to make these mistakes more deadly - different story.

This doesn’t make the game harder, it makes it more tedious. You want a game that is difficult, not difficult to play.

Most of things that you said sounds for me like “Oh, why I need to look around in real life? This make my life boring and take my time. I need radar and sonar and picture from satellite in my head”. You can’t see what’s behind you. This is at least stupid and then cheating.

But even then, if you implement FOV for the player, then you’ll also be implementing it for monsters (otherwise there’s no point reason for the PC to have limited FOV).

Yes, and this make the opportunity to pass most of zombies unnoticed during the day, if they will have some wandering AI.

This makes night raiding easier, since you only aggro less than half of the zombies that would normally detect you but have their back turned.

Night gameplay - this is just an huge unbalanced thing. We will not talk about it.

Difficulty will come from more specials and mechanics, not from limiting player view and increasing tedium. If we really want to implement angles, the one case I would say it makes sense is when aiming with a high magnification optic, since you’ll be more focused on your target and less aware of your surroundings.

Ok. Ok. I half disagree with you, reason in third paragraph of this reply.