Stealth mode!

[Nikolai_Don_Bonavitc]

Stealth mode!

Who wants to see some kind of “stealth mode” added?

The way I see it, you would press " twice (or maybe without shift).
This would put you into stealth, where you speed would drop by 33%, walking noise would be reduced, and you would be alerted whenever a creature or NPC saw you. Additionally, you could have an associated skill, and every entity that was in range to see you would have to make a stealth check.

SkillLVL * Dex + Dex/AmbientLight.

So, trying to scoot around in broad daylight would be a terrible idea.
You would also need to throw in some random variables, and possibly a penalty for encumbrance.

[Noctifer]

Seems like a neat idea. When you need to tip toe to your (now dead) neighbors house for more nails.

[Midaychi]

Eh. Cata already has a stealth mode, called ‘night time’. Just get light step and a good night vision or tentacle legs, and be careful about what you do, as long as it’s dark out.
If it’s light out, then no amount of magic tiptoeing beyond what you can already do is really going to hide you without the aid of some of the already implemented cbms.

As a mod though, maybe? I guess?

[StopSignal]

Nah, night time is night time, not stealth mode. Crouching and going to the ground were discussed a lot before, with hiding behind tables and counters made possible with them. Making noise to make zombies go somewhere else, or lure them. They were awesome features, yet really hard to add, surely.

[Midaychi]

Throwing objects and hiding behind objects for cover, sure. Game has all the magic tip toeing it needs already implemented, though. Unless you’re talking about bethesda crab walking.

[kevin.granade]

I’d like to add a more comprehensive stealth system, but various parts of it are rather involved.

The easiest thing is to add together various vision modifiers already in the game and have a periodic check to see if things in the game can see each other. This would make it where moving within a creature’s field of vision would not necessarily cause them to spot you immediately (on the other hand, we’d probably stop restricting creature field of view, and make it where they just have a lower perception score). The tricky part about this is everything would need to maintain a map of enemies it’s aware of, though with zombies we could perhaps cheat and have them only able to spot one enemy at a time, making them more single-minded.
After that would be a system that enhances how vision interacts with various obstacles, situationally giving penalties for different creatures to be spotted.
Part of that would be adding player stances (standing, crouching, crawling perhaps?) that reduce move speed but can allow using smaller obstacles as cover (crawling through tall grass or a ditch would be the canonical example). The hard part of that would be informing the player when they are in cover relative to various enemies.
I’ve considered a system where there is a fine-grained FoV calculation based on the height of obstacles, but that may well be too complex to bother with.

[Litppunk]

hmm perhaps in front of whatever mechanics are used you go with a simple ||||| display system for how well hidden you currently are, or just a numerical value that show in the HUD at all times. Once you can figure out how best to implement I’m all in favor. The ability to add camouflage and such to lessen others ability to see you would be nice, ghillie suits anyone? Similar system tied in for scent. would mean finally having a good use for early game tainted meat!

[Midaychi]

The first thing you could do is make objects create clattering and noise when they land after you throw them, based on the floor terrain and the weight/material of the object.

Zombies and the like already investigate loud noises, so a clattering tin can would work wonders.

The second thing you can do is either have a stealth skill, or have various stealth styles.

If the former, then the higher you get, the more techniques you unlock. Could tie lockpicking into it, and silent crowbarring. As your skills go up, your footsteps get quieter and you gain debuffs to enemy sight ranges if you’re next to walls or objects.

If the latter, then I guess you could have stealth techniques that focus on different things. Ninjitsu stealth would be different than say, navy seal stealth.

[kevin.granade]

Displaying your current stealth level doesn’t help much, what you really need is something that lets you know how concealed nearby squares are so you can plan your movements. I don’t know a good way to do that offhand, except maybe changing your vision mode a bit when you’re sneaking and drawing an overlay of some kind on the map. Even then computing that gets quite expensive, so that might be a tricky thing to do as well. I think it’s doable, but it’s going to take some work.

[Noctifer]

Maybe use a system where the lower the chances of being spotted then it displays accordingly.
For example: If by crouching you make less notice and are behind cover. The hud will display “concealed”. If you are just crouching then it says “silent”. Of course the actual chance of being spotted will be a calculation with many variables but that should give you an idea.

[CIB]

A stealth mode just for noise would be pretty doable at any rate. Reduce movement speed, reduce noise made by various actions (movement, opening doors, etc.)

Speaking of noise, does low stamina actually increase noise due to heavy breathing?

[Zombies-R-Us]

[quote=“CIB, post:11, topic:10711”]A stealth mode just for noise would be pretty doable at any rate. Reduce movement speed, reduce noise made by various actions (movement, opening doors, etc.)

Speaking of noise, does low stamina actually increase noise due to heavy breathing?[/quote]

I agree with doing this as a simple patchwork solution for now, as currently having no stealth options at all outside of Light Step is a bit disappointing.

[Litppunk]

sprinting should definitely have stealth penalties

[Arek_PL]

i think there should be two ways of stealth

1. sight, modifing stance, using camo, hiding in objects
2. sound, you can stand tall and walk without almost any noise but its hard to walk that silently while crouching and of course type of floor make diference, its realy easy to sneak on solid ground like metal, floor, pavement, wood if not squeaky than on less stable floors like dirt, grass, sand and snow (snow is realy loud) alslo running on metal or floor is louder than running on dirt

[Litppunk]

that is not entirely true. From personal experience I would have to say that a half-crouch is often the quietest stance, not standing. Loose rocks and leaves are terrible for sneaking, I think snow mostly just SEEMS so loud because of the lack of other sound. Snow seems like it traps sound really well, so it only SEEMS lound when you are walking on it, but it doesn’t travel all that far. not that I have extensive experience with snow since I live in Texas. Leaves are definitely worse though

[evilexecutive]

that is not entirely true. From personal experience I would have to say that a half-crouch is often the quietest stance, not standing. Loose rocks and leaves are terrible for sneaking, I think snow mostly just SEEMS so loud because of the lack of other sound. Snow seems like it traps sound really well, so it only SEEMS lound when you are walking on it, but it doesn’t travel all that far. not that I have extensive experience with snow since I live in Texas. Leaves are definitely worse though

Yea, I can confirm that fresh snow actually acts as a Dampener, preventing sound from traveling as far by readily absorbing the sound waves. That’s precisely why the whole world feels so much quieter when it’s snowing.

[Arek_PL]

winter is comming, maybe i will check again how loud snow is

[Litppunk]

winter is comming, maybe i will check again how loud snow is

get scientific with this! measure decibels at distance and in hand. Can’t wait to hear the results. May help my irl sneaking too!

[Valpo]

Depending on the snows deepnes and struckture it will make a destinctive noise when steped upon which one can easily heare across the street.

Especialy fresh deep snow will make noise if you step on it.

[Litppunk]

Yea… true I guess. So one footstep can be heard clearly from a distance?