Enemies following you on stairs


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Mines Malingerer

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Post Sunday, 25th August 2013, 00:49

Enemies following you on stairs

Hi all. I'm a PhD student in the social sciences, and I've been trying to get into the academic side of game discussion for a little while. I'm currently writing a thing about the concept of "unavoidable death" in games, and I'm using Crawl to illustrate a few points. However, I have a quick question. When I go back up a staircase, surrounded by enemies, sometimes they all seem to follow, sometimes only a few do, and sometimes none do. Does anyone know what exactly determines if an enemy follows you back up the stairs or not?

Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 25th August 2013, 01:28

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

The rule is that all adjacent enemies will follow apart from some that are "too stupid to use stairs" which mostly means zombies and skeletons. Monsters further away should not be able to follow you barring some very unlikely events (sometimes a monster, or also you, gets a double move).

Oh, by the way Crawl comes with a design document which has something to say about unavoidable deaths. Press ?n in the game to read it.
You should also be aware of the existence of very long streaks (a single player winning games back to back -- the online playing mode means that cheating is not possible). This basically means that, given enough experience and care, almost every game can be won. However, only very few players can pull this off.

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Dis Charger

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Post Sunday, 25th August 2013, 01:46

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

btw, it seems that they don't only follow you, but they hit you too. Probably to prevent too much stairdancing?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 25th August 2013, 02:00

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Well, it takes over 2 turns to climb or decend stairs (2.3 to be specific) so if I was an enemy I'd certainly whack you for free :)
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Mines Malingerer

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Joined: Sunday, 11th November 2012, 00:19

Post Sunday, 25th August 2013, 12:35

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Thanks for the replies all! I've read the manual piece which I think is a very interesting exploration of the idea (indeed, I think all the "game philosophy" bits for Crawl are tremendously interesting, and I'm drawing on quite a bit). I hadn't appreciated the stupid/intelligent distinction, I think that would explain most of the times some of the enemies I'd been surrounded by had been left behind. And don't worry, I'm being very pro-Crawl in the piece! It shines light on some aspects of what we mean by the word "unavoidable" and how we understand the point at which a player dies, and what "caused" that death. I will obviously post here if it gets off the ground : ).

Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 25th August 2013, 12:45

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

URR: Many thanks for the praise! I feel flattered because I wrote that section :) The philosophy just came about because I tried to help future design at a time when the got considerably larger, by understanding what makes Crawl work (it had great replayability even back before DCSS) and incorporating lessons learned from Nethack. These days, newer games can (and do!) learn from our mistakes.

We're waiting for your document then!

Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 25th August 2013, 17:47

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Be very careful when using examples of unavoidable death in crawl. It exists, but it takes an extremely good player to identify when that is the case, and when it was possible to escape. Generally when people claim a death was unavoidable, the replay will reveal that some tactical error (or more likely, several) was made leading up to the death. I'm not talking about small errors either.

Vestibule Violator

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Post Friday, 30th August 2013, 15:56

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Hm, I once got paralyzed by a sphinx right after opening a door, then shot to death by the yaktaur captain next to it before I could react. I was even wearing a MR ring. Granted, it was a vault, so OOD enemies were to be expected, and I was with Ash so I knew for sure there was a very dangerous enemy behind that door. It was avoidable by simply leaving that door closed and going somewhere else, but it certainly didn't feel fair.

One death that also felt really unfair but can be clearly attributed to severe mistakes on my part is from back when bolt bouncing was not limited to two hits. I was in Zot, without rElec, despite knowing that there are enemies with powerful electric attacks. After stepping into the entrance to a room I saw a storm dragon. It was in a really really nice position for bolt bouncing and immediately trizapped me. I was dead instantly, as a DD with 31 AC, 28 EV, and IIRC significantly more than 100 current HP. It must have gotten very nice damage rolls. Much more avoidable than the other death, but not fun.

Both of these games went from no enemies in sight to dead without any reaction being possible.

Unavoidable deaths are much more common in the early game of course. Still pretty rare though, as the streaks some players have gotten prove.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 30th August 2013, 16:00

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Galefury wrote:
Unavoidable deaths are much more common in the early game of course. Still pretty rare though, as the streaks some players have gotten prove.


I think certain species are more prone to insta-death than others and suspect streakers avoid those.
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Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Wednesday, 11th September 2013, 22:09

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

crawl_burnted.jpg
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Blades Runner

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Post Wednesday, 11th September 2013, 22:29

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

^ Of course, if you go through a hatch instead of stairs, to a level you haven't cleared, you're basically taking your life in your hands anyway.

And you should definitely mention that that is a screenshot from an old version of crawl (back before the kenku->tengu rename)

Vestibule Violator

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Post Thursday, 12th September 2013, 14:32

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Siegurt wrote:Well, it takes over 2 turns to climb or decend stairs (2.3 to be specific) so if I was an enemy I'd certainly whack you for free :)

Because it only takes them 1 turn to go up the stairs. Makes perfect sense...

Vestibule Violator

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Post Thursday, 12th September 2013, 14:46

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Galefury wrote:Hm, I once got paralyzed by a sphinx right after opening a door, then shot to death by the yaktaur captain next to it before I could react. I was even wearing a MR ring. Granted, it was a vault, so OOD enemies were to be expected, and I was with Ash so I knew for sure there was a very dangerous enemy behind that door. It was avoidable by simply leaving that door closed and going somewhere else, but it certainly didn't feel fair.

One death that also felt really unfair but can be clearly attributed to severe mistakes on my part is from back when bolt bouncing was not limited to two hits. I was in Zot, without rElec, despite knowing that there are enemies with powerful electric attacks. After stepping into the entrance to a room I saw a storm dragon. It was in a really really nice position for bolt bouncing and immediately trizapped me. I was dead instantly, as a DD with 31 AC, 28 EV, and IIRC significantly more than 100 current HP. It must have gotten very nice damage rolls. Much more avoidable than the other death, but not fun.

Both of these games went from no enemies in sight to dead without any reaction being possible.

Unavoidable deaths are much more common in the early game of course. Still pretty rare though, as the streaks some players have gotten prove.

I think we need to differentiate between "unfair" deaths and unavoidable deaths. Falling off a wall in spider form onto a bolt trap and dying is an unfair death. It is entirely avoidable by only traveling where you have already traveled and not going farther than you need to when at low HP. Taking a crystal spear to the face from an ancient lich and dying from almost full HP feels unfair is definitely not unavoidable and is probably not even unfair.

While I can't easily go through all my morgues, I can think of other actually unfair and possibly unfair deaths, but I think I've only had a few unavoidable deaths, mostly dealing with D:1 entries and fast monsters like roaches and jackals.

Vestibule Violator

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Post Friday, 13th September 2013, 12:15

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

rebthor wrote:
Siegurt wrote:Well, it takes over 2 turns to climb or decend stairs (2.3 to be specific) so if I was an enemy I'd certainly whack you for free :)

Because it only takes them 1 turn to go up the stairs. Makes perfect sense...

Actually the more I think about this, the less logical in game terms it actually is. A monster that is a step away from the stairs is able to
  • move to the stairs (generally 1 turn for most monsters)
  • go up the stairs (2.3 turns for a player)
  • attack you while going up the stairs (generally 1 turn for most monsters)
All the while the player is unable to dodge and I don't know without code diving if AC is applied.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 15th September 2013, 05:22

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Uh. That's not correct at all. If a monster is a step away from you when you start ascending, it might hit you, but is explicitly banned from following, even if it's a hasted killer bee and you're a slowed cheinaga casting Leda's. Yes, I just checked; it got four attacks against me but didn't follow. And you get your full defences against any such attacks.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 15th September 2013, 05:46

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

I think he meant "A step away from the spot where the player needs to be to ascend the stairs" (i.e. adjacent to the staircase) at least that's how I interpreted it the second time I read it.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Monday, 16th September 2013, 17:25

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Correct. @ is on the stairs. Everything else is a step away, no?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 16th September 2013, 18:09

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

I usually refer to that as adjacent, and think of "a step away" as having one square between me and it.

Vestibule Violator

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Post Monday, 16th September 2013, 18:22

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Anyhow, I want to make it clear that I'm not advocating for any change in behavior (other than perhaps allowing the player to dodge and soak attacks if it doesn't currently work that way), just noting the oddity that the player and all his/her allies are barred from action when traversing stairs whereas enemies are not.

Perhaps the tutorial should note this in some way so that a brand new player wouldn't be confused by the incongruity?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 16th September 2013, 18:24

Re: Enemies following you on stairs

Really I think of walking up the staircase as this swirly magic whirl-windy kind of process where, while you ascend, creatures adjacent to you kind of get caught up in a magic vortex-y thing and swirl around you and whack on you for a bit, then you both kinda pop out at the top of the staircase.

Things that don't start next to you can come up and poke at you while the vortex spins up, but they aren't caught in the vortexy bit itself so when you disappear and reappear upstairs, they don't come with you.

The truth is that Crawl doesn't have real staircases, it has overly-complicated magic rube goldberg machines.
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