Yeah absolutely, though I’m only talking about vision as hearing is already covered in-game. In my reference to URW, I just meant how players interact with the system and control their character, not the exact implementation. i.e. you have a facing and there is a clear sense of direction in how players move forward, backward, and turn around. Specifically in CDDA, it could probably recycle a lot of the vehicle control and facing code for it, but it doesn’t appear there’s a desire for it.
In a broader context, I always thought a good implementation of FOV in a roguelike would give the player closer to 270° of vision. This would represent not just peripheral vision, but also reflect how quickly someone can snap their head from side to side (far quicker than most lengths of time represented by a “turn” in a roguelike). This great FOV would be mediated though by having the peripherals show reduced information, with substantial perception penalties to the outer-most arc, gradually moving to no penalty with the forward-most arc and maybe even a perception bonus for something centered in your FOV. This sort of implementation could lead to seeing a creature’s movement off to the side, but you wouldn’t see it clearly and you certainly couldn’t take proper action against it until you turn to face it (or in a horror game, just nope-ing right out of there without looking at it, especially if looking at it could fry your brain!).
This is more just me daydream designing my own roguelike at this stage, but I imagine you could have a lot of fun with a system like this in CDDA. You could be getting mutations that shuffle your eyes to the side of your head (think birds, fish and other flight-response animals) giving you a greater FOV but stiff perception penalties, or perhaps going full owl mode with a massive perception bonus but a terrible FOV. I think these sort of changes to gameplay deriving from mutations are far more interesting than flat attribute bonuses and penalties. I had fun thinking about it at least.
