melee and missile noise


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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 26th October 2018, 04:46

melee and missile noise

missile noise (made at the square the missile lands in)
blowgun, thrown stone, throwing net, awkward throw: none
hunting sling: 1*
hand crossbow, tomahawk: 2
javelin: 3
fustibalus: 3*
shortbow: 5
longbow, large rock: 6
arbalest: 7
triple crossbow, Sniper: 9

*if the attacker uses a sling bullet instead of a stone, also makes 1 noise at their location

melee noise (made at the attacker's square)
silent if a stab, otherwise equal to damage dealt divided by 4 and rounded down, with a minimum of 1 and maximum of 12

Spells, like ranged combat, make fixed amounts of noise.
The approach to noise is completely different for melee and ranged combat. This seems bad to me. The melee noise formula is short and makes a reasonable amount of sense flavour-wise, but the high variance in melee damage - combined with the fact that players are never told how much damage they're doing - makes it rather unclear in practice, imo.

Both approaches have the problem that you might want to swap to a weaker weapon (or spell) for trivial monsters, in order to make less noise. I don't think this is really solvable without getting rid of trivial monsters themselves, or giving players stricter time limits (even if you made all attacks make the same noise you could still lure trivial monsters to places where that noise doesn't matter).

Ranged combat noise is extremely generous to the player. First of all, the loudest missile attack is still significantly quieter than the cap on melee attacks. Second, the noise is made on a square that is distant from the player - it can actually be beneficial!

I think that missile noise should either:
A. use the same formula as melee noise when it hits, and just be silent when it misses (like melee)
or B. if it keeps the fixed noise behaviour, make the noise at the attacker's location instead of where the missile lands. And don't have all these tiny variations in noise by launcher, the stuff below shortbow is quiet enough it might as well be 0 outside Tomb. Just make them all 7.

You could also go the other way and make melee noise constant. Just don't have a bunch of tiny differences between the weapons' noise levels like ranged weapons currently do, please - you could get away with giving the different weapon classes different constant noise values (e.g. 1 for short blades, 10 for maces, 5 for the rest) but nothing more than that.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 26th October 2018, 07:01

Re: melee and missile noise

There are also 2 other issues with current melee noise:
1) Player is punished for lucky damage rolls
2) Player is punished for having high weapon skill (it does not make any sense flavor-wise IMHO)

Can we change melee noise so that the higher weapon skill PC has the less noise it does? As an extra bonus it could be another reason to keep training weapon beyond min delay. For instance, at (min-delay) + 5 skill the weapon would do no noise.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 26th October 2018, 07:44

Re: melee and missile noise

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Can we change melee noise so that the higher weapon skill PC has the less noise it does?
If anything the noise system needs fewer variables, not more. Maybe I should have mentioned this in the OP: calculating melee noise used to be a lot more complicated. It was changed for good reason.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 26th October 2018, 07:48

Re: melee and missile noise

duvessa wrote:If anything the noise system needs fewer variables, not more. Maybe I should have mentioned this in the OP: calculating melee noise used to be a lot more complicated. It was changed for good reason.


I agree that having more variables is bad yet I believe having more options can be better. I mean I see nothing wrong if player can choose to train weapon to 27 to completely remove noise for some weapons (not all, executioner's axe can keep making some noise even at Axes 27).
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Friday, 26th October 2018, 16:18

Re: melee and missile noise

Has anyone ever noticed a difference beyond 0 (stabs) and positive (not stabs)? I haven't.

Swamp Slogger

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Post Friday, 26th October 2018, 16:21

Re: melee and missile noise

On one hand, simplicity is a virtue; on the other, having more skill should never be worse than having less skill.

It seems like a reasonable change would be to:
A) Give every weapon, whether ranged or melee, a base noise that it makes when used, with larger/heavier weapons making more noise. This noise is made at the player location (ranged weapons could still create noise at the target if/when a monster shouts, but that's a different mechanism).

B) Make the base noise modified by weapon skill, rather than damage. High skill = less noise.

You probably don't want NO noise, even at high skill, except for light/small weapons, but you could get even heavy weapons to reasonably quiet at high skill. And as mentioned above, it'd be another small motivation to train past mindelay.

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Post Friday, 26th October 2018, 17:58

Re: melee and missile noise

duvessa wrote:melee noise
(...)equal to damage dealt divided by 4 and rounded down, with a minimum of 1 and maximum of 12

So if you are hitting an orc in plate mail that makes less noise than hitting an orc with no mail, am I right?

I love it that crawl code is full of these terrible design blunders, and Minmay/Duvessa occasionally digs one up.

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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Saturday, 27th October 2018, 23:52

Re: melee and missile noise

I think it should just be constant. I barely even knew that melee made any noise and it hasn't adversely affected me in any way, so it's probably redundant for it to be too intricate, mechanically.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Tuesday, 30th October 2018, 04:15

Re: melee and missile noise

I think that ranged noise should definitely happen at the attacker's tile, not where it hits. It's better for gameplay and the flavor can be argued either way just fine(some weapons it makes more sense for most of the noise to happen at the attacker, like shooting a crossbow, others more sense at where the projectile lands, like throwing a large rock, but that much complexity isn't needed for something that opaque ingame)

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Post Monday, 5th November 2018, 12:51

Re: melee and missile noise

Direct player control of noise is a bad idea at a level that cannot be addressed through reforms like those suggested in this thread. If different weapons make different amounts of noise, the player can take advantage of that. This creates an avenue for optimization through tedium.

In a system compatible with design principles of crawl, noise would have to be based on monster actions and combat position. You can't put the most significant noise-making actions in the player's hands. It's just asking for trouble.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 5th November 2018, 13:16

Re: melee and missile noise

tealizard wrote:Direct player control of noise is a bad idea at a level that cannot be addressed through reforms like those suggested in this thread. If different weapons make different amounts of noise, the player can take advantage of that. This creates an avenue for optimization through tedium.


I agree with that. Killing popcorn with flail when you have great mace at min delay leads to tedium, for example.

In a system compatible with design principles of crawl, noise would have to be based on monster actions and combat position. You can't put the most significant noise-making actions in the player's hands. It's just asking for trouble.


I cannot agree here. I often find I avoid casting fireball on new level while I use it freely when the level is almost explored. It can lead to interesting choices (kill safe/fast but risk getting more monsters in view or kill with different tools but minimizing risk of new monsters). Also I don't see anything wrong with giving players more control, I liked that I could train Traps&Doors to reduce trapping chance.
Basically I think players should be able to train weapon category to reduce noise from melee/ranged, magic schools to reduce noise from spells and stealth to reduce noise from walking and opening/closing doors.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 5th November 2018, 15:59

Re: melee and missile noise

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
tealizard wrote:Direct player control of noise is a bad idea at a level that cannot be addressed through reforms like those suggested in this thread. If different weapons make different amounts of noise, the player can take advantage of that. This creates an avenue for optimization through tedium.


I agree with that. Killing popcorn with flail when you have great mace at min delay leads to tedium, for example.

In a system compatible with design principles of crawl, noise would have to be based on monster actions and combat position. You can't put the most significant noise-making actions in the player's hands. It's just asking for trouble.


I cannot agree here. I often find I avoid casting fireball on new level while I use it freely when the level is almost explored. It can lead to interesting choices (kill safe/fast but risk getting more monsters in view or kill with different tools but minimizing risk of new monsters). Also I don't see anything wrong with giving players more control, I liked that I could train Traps&Doors to reduce trapping chance.
Basically I think players should be able to train weapon category to reduce noise from melee/ranged, magic schools to reduce noise from spells and stealth to reduce noise from walking and opening/closing doors.

Hm, what if stealth reduced noise from attacks and spells as well as opening doors? (Just spitballing here)
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Shoals Surfer

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Post Monday, 5th November 2018, 17:52

Re: melee and missile noise

Siegurt wrote:Hm, what if stealth reduced noise from attacks and spells as well as opening doors? (Just spitballing here)


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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Monday, 5th November 2018, 18:45

Re: melee and missile noise

Stealth is already pretty strong.

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