Turning like unreal world?

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

if someone don’t know:
++*++
+++++
++@++

    • see

- unsee

@ - craracter

    • facing
2

We’ve discussed this… and it got shot down.

3

I hate turning like that, so I’m going to say no.

4

It doesn’t make sense from a design or realism perspective.

Yes the human eyes see roughly 170 some odd degrees in a cone, but our skulls aren’t fused to our bodies. With our ability to turn our heads and hips we’re quite capable of quickly visually observing everything around us. And we can do that while moving in any direction. Our spacial acuity is really top-notch, compared to other animals it’s like we have a 6th sense for marking objects in relation to eachother in our immediate environment.

It’s all part of that tool usin’ primate thing we got going on.

So cutting our perception in half and forcing the player to manually spin around in place to keep track of everything all the time makes me think you’re playing a game where you are not a person but maybe a cow or maybe some kind of reptile or large bird. Ostrich mode?

I hate when games do this.

5

I explored several different control schemes to try and make this workable, but in the end I decided all of them were way to clunky.

I’d consider adding in some kind of restricted FOV in special circumstances, like if you’re aiming a gun with a scope, you’d get a large perception bonus to your accuracy, but in turn you’re forced to focus in one direction, but for general walking around I just don’t see a way to not make this a terrible interface.

6

this would be good as a mod. the turning stuff is a bit of a hassle, but its the kind of thing a group of people might like and good for challenge games. when we get the mod engine going, i think this would be an excellent mod for hardcore mode.

7

I’m not sure any sensible mod system is going to be able to do that, the FOV code is some of the most highly optomised and complex code in the game, and putting in mod hooks will slow it down, even if you don’t use them.
Also with z-levels it’s only going to get worse, are you going to restrict vision to a 3D cone? That’d be a nightmare in both implementation and code.
I love this kind of thing in a real-time game with mouse support, but I don’t think it’s workable in a turn-based game that isn’t specifically built around stealth and LOS.

8

Especially considering that each turn is 6 seconds, which is plenty enough time to take a look around and see the nearby area.

9

I’ve heard it described as the “windmill effect”; when players are forced to change their facing to examine everything around them, they inevitably start spinning in circles as they walk to survey everything. Which is just silly.

10

I feel like someone…

WANTS TO CHANGE THE FOV CODE

No, unless you give me 50$ I shan’t code this in.

11

Only way I can see this happening is if that turning took no turns… Which is kinda false.

12

I think that this will be a nice effect to have for flashlights during night (so that you could be ambushed from behind if you dont turn often), but other than that I ll not like it

13

Do we even have single square rotation in game?

14

Maybe having it take 1/8 of a turn? So, to look all around yourself, you should waste a turn.
I like the idea, and i approve it. But what about having it working like in the Beta Darkwood game? (you can “see” everything, but you will not see the monsters or the items if you don’t turn to it and see it. So we should have 2 FOVS, the want that makes things pitch blank (you will be eaten by a grue) and the one that makes you only see the items that you turn to see. I really like the idea, but is really hard to code, i guess.

Cool idea too. Really.

15

For special situations this could work, like using a flashlight, binoculars, or other kind of scoped-in situation.

Outside of that it’s not realistic or fun. It’s just a clunky hassle. You may as well be adding manual breathing and blinking controls as well.

16

You are not being a bit exaggerated? I’d like to be attacked silently from my back by a zombie in the middle of the night.

17

…and that happens currently if you walk around at night without a flashlight, night vision, etc.

Perhaps making more perception rolls so that things inside your line of sight aren’t always visible at longer ranges would make sense as a representation of “you don’t always see everything around you”.

But as is, with the way time units and turns work out, making people spin around in circles to look around is ridiculous.

18

I’d only support this if other entities see the same way as the character, but the amount of coding to make that happen is probably going to knock it beyond possibility.

19

This is not a coding issue, facing isn’t even that hard to add, the sole issue is that I don’t have a way to do the UI that doesn’t totally suck.

As has been said, in situations where you’re highly focused and micromanaging time, like scanning with binoculars, firing a scoped weapon, or possibly firing a ranged weapon in general, there could be a feature where your view is narrowed as you concentrate on a target, but for just walking around it’s just too cumbersome, whether it be your field of view or where you’re aiming a light source. For static light sources, or perhaps even cameras or mirrors, restricted field of view makes perfect sense.

An alternate way of doing this that might just make sense would be to shift your view area in the direction you’re moving, so where now it looks like (walking north):

Before      After       Or for circular FOV heretics
########### ########### ########### ########### 
########### ##.......## ########### ###.....### 
##.......## ##.......## ###.....### ##.......## 
##.......## ##.......## ##.......## ##.......## 
##.......## ##.......## ##.......## ##.......## 
##...@...## ##...@...## ##...@...## ##...@...## 
##.......## ##.......## ##.......## ##.......## 
##.......## ##.......## ##.......## ###.....### 
##.......## ########### ###.....### ########### 
########### ########### ########### ########### 
########### ########### ########### ###########

It’s a lot more subtle and less literal than having a field of view arc, but also a lot less harsh and demanding in how you manage it.
This would auto-update based on your move direction. A major reason for actually adjusting the FOV instead of sticking in facing and related perception checks is it makes the situation visible (ha) to the player, basically you should be able to develop a feel for how likely you are to spot something based on how close to you it is, and if we shift the FOV like this, that feel would easily translate to how far from the center of the viewed area the enemy is.
I’m not at all sure I’m even going to implement this, for one thing it requires loading more map, because right now you can see all of the loaded map area, so if the FOV were shifted we’d have to load more map to make the extreme area visible. Just an idea I’ve been kicking around.
Increasingly unreasonably large examples:

Before After Or for circular FOV heretics ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ####.............#### ##################### #######.......####### ##################### ####.............#### ##################### ######.........###### ####.............#### ####.............#### #######.......####### #####...........##### ####.............#### ####.............#### ######.........###### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### #####...........##### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####......@......#### ####......@......#### ####......@......#### ####......@......#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### #####...........##### ####.............#### ####.............#### ####.............#### ######.........###### ####.............#### ####.............#### #####...........##### #######.......####### ####.............#### ##################### ######.........###### ##################### ####.............#### ##################### #######.......####### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### ##################### [/spoiler]

Before After Or for circular FOV heretics ######################################### ######################################### ######################################### ######################################### ######################################### ########.........................######## ######################################### ###############...........############### ######################################### ########.........................######## ######################################### ##############.............############## ######################################### ########.........................######## ######################################### #############...............############# ######################################### ########.........................######## ######################################### ############.................############ ########.........................######## ########.........................######## 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Pfff, I put in the next level up, but the forum won’t let me post it.

20

[quote=“An0n3, post:15, topic:3237”]For special situations this could work, like using a flashlight, binoculars, or other kind of scoped-in situation.

Outside of that it’s not realistic or fun. It’s just a clunky hassle. You may as well be adding manual breathing and blinking controls as well.[/quote]
Weeeeell, it would be nice to have a “body function” menu to do things like close your eyes and hold your breath. Not as high a priority now that smokers are being successfully nerfed, but could be interesting.