Mines Malingerer
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Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.
Mines Malingerer
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asdu wrote:I agree that square LOS would be the ideal solution to the issue, but if that doesn't go through, I'd rather live with the current inconsistencies than play a grid-based game where diagonal movement costs more than orthogonal.
Btw, is the test verion with square LOS still available somewhere?
Mines Malingerer
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dpc wrote:The only people "suffering" because of that would be the one that are constantly using tricks with current scheme.
Mines Malingerer
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szanth wrote:What's the advantage?
Mines Malingerer
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jpeg wrote:dpc wrote:The only people "suffering" because of that would be the one that are constantly using tricks with current scheme.
That is not true. Knowing that N steps always take the same amount of time, no matter the direction, is worth a lot. Currently, you can look at the grid and count the number of squares between you and a monster/the stairs to safety. With sqrt, that wouldn't be possible anymore. Yes, you'd know that "diagonal takes longer" but you'd have to take out your calculator to try and find out which of two routes out of danger (one diagonal, one straight, or maybe a mixture of both) would involve taking less hits from e.g. a stationary monster. I'm probably overgeneralizing, but hopefully you know what I mean. Mind, making diagonal movements taking 2 turns would be easier to understand, but I doubt anyone would want that.
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szanth wrote:I don't know what you mean; dungeon exploration is done with the 'o' key and happens pretty fast. And I don't really know of any special tricks you can do by moving diagonally in battle, because theoretically your enemies can move diagonally as well. What's the advantage?
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Mines Malingerer
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szanth wrote:... No, still don't get it. I mean, yeah, diagonally, if the enemy is three diagonal spaces away from you, it takes three turns. But that's the equivalent of it being three horizontal turns away from you.
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Mines Malingerer
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szanth wrote:*shrugs* I guess. It seems like if they made the LOS square then making the diagonal movement cost more will, in effect, not actually affect anything. So, I'm all for more LOS. 'Tever.
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ryak wrote:+1 vote for square los.
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Mines Malingerer
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ryak wrote:Since this probably would have already been implemented except for a vocal minority of people objecting on dubious aesthetic grounds, i think people should be allowed to voice their support for an idea.
ryak wrote:With all due respect, critiquing the contents of someone's comment like that just needlessly takes us off topic and certainly doesn't add to the discussion.
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dpc wrote:If the enemy is one square away from you and you both are going diagonally with the same speed then both are the subject of the same geometry and one square distance will not change. No math required. And if you have to do some math to know if you're going to successfully escape or not -- that's what I call a trickery. In the real life (yeah, I know that DCSS is not a real life ) you would not measure the real distance when escaping but would take a guess based on estimation. In fact, with euclidean geometry of 1.4 diagonal move cost the estimation is more natural.
Or, an "x" could show how much time it takes to reach marked point.
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Mines Malingerer
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asdu wrote:What if you're trying to escape from multiple enemies, coming from multiple angles, each having possibly a different speed and maybe even differently ranged attacks? While it's true that probably even with the current system I would try to judge the situation at a glance rather than painstakingly plot the most efficient course (but I'm a rather lousy player, I suspect better players than me would be more precise), with diagonals having different cost things would get much more complicated and likely result in a lot of unexpected tactical errors.
asdu wrote:I'll admit that I'm terrible at math, so maybe I'm overestimating the impact of it. You could even be right in saying that estimating distances would be more natural (I'd have to try it to belive it, though), but most arguments in favour of that system I've read on the wiki are either for purely aesthetical reasons ("square is ugly") or because it's geometrically more elegant, and rely on grossly oversimplificated examples of gameplay. Likewise the argument that square LOS makes diagonal movement vastly more efficient is in my opinion almost completely meaningless when it comes to playing the game (a lot of which consists of travelling down orizonthal and vertical corridors), as someone pointed out on the wiki. Sure it'll make finding timed portals a bit easier on open levels (which you could easily compensate by making the timer shorter on "big room" levels, or by reducing the chances of portals spawning there), and it'll shave a few hundred turns off the current speedrunning records, but Crawl is far more about surviving in a hostile environment than covering the most ground in the least time.
Mines Malingerer
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evilmike wrote: There are a bunch of reasons why it is a bad idea, and I could name them if anyone is interested. Suffice to say galehar and jpeg are correct in saying it will cause more problems than it would solve.
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danr wrote:Which raises a game design philosophy issue: should success in the game be influenced by one's awareness of and ability to exploit anomalies in the game world's geometry?
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galehar wrote:To everybody that says aesthetic is not an issue, keep in mind that if we make the LOS square, then the following things should also be squared (or we end up with another hybrid system and haven't solved anything):
- explosions (storm spells, immolation, LRD)
- tornado
- silence
- halo
- sanctuary
- Leda's Liquefaction
Have I missed anything?
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dpc wrote:evilmike wrote: There are a bunch of reasons why it is a bad idea, and I could name them if anyone is interested. Suffice to say galehar and jpeg are correct in saying it will cause more problems than it would solve.
I'm all ears.
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danr wrote:Those are the problems of having sqrt(2) movement, correct? I think part of the problem is that it sounds like you would still have square melee rules - e.g. it takes as long to attack diagonally as it does to attack orthogonally.
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evilmike wrote:This also highlights another problem: what to do about diagonal melee attacks? If diagonal movement costs 1.4x more, should diagonal melee also face the same costs? That could work... but then, what about diagonal ranged attacks? Would it make any sense for the game to make you take more time to shoot arrows at enemies diagonal to you? Probably not (LOS is already limited in those directions). Same goes with spells (and these also have range limitations diagonally). But, you can use ranged attacks (or cast spells) on enemies diagonally adjacent to you. If they cost the same amount of time regardless of the direction you are firing them in, it becomes faster to use ranged attacks on monsters that are in melee range but diagonal to you.
evilmike wrote:Another way to put it is this: right now, movement is a simple, straightforward process where you aren't penalized or rewarded for a huge number of non-obvious things. It's a good system, because it's simple and does what it is supposed to. Increasing the cost of diagonal moves would only complicate things, even if the resulting system would be more consistent. I believe that in this case, simplicity is better than consistency. Or, if you prefer, "worse is better".
Mines Malingerer
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evilmike wrote:dpc wrote:evilmike wrote: There are a bunch of reasons why it is a bad idea, and I could name them if anyone is interested. Suffice to say galehar and jpeg are correct in saying it will cause more problems than it would solve.
I'm all ears.
The best way I can illustrate a few of the problems by coming up with a few simple examples. In every one of these cases, assume that all actions are normal speed (thus, "average" attack speed, human movement speed, monster speed 10). The problems exist just as much for other speeds, but having everything equal simplifies things. I'm also not going to consider energy randomization here (even if I did, it wouldn't make a difference).
clear and straightforward gameplay.
evilmike wrote:
You are @, and O is an ogre. If you retreat one square to the left, the ogre can simply follow you by also moving left. You'll probably be safe for that turn, though. However, if you move one square down-left, you would be less likely to be safe: this is because if you spend 1.4 turns to move diagonally, the ogre could just move 1 square to the left and be adjacent to you again, and would sometimes be able to attack you. Again, this means that if you want to be as careful as possible, you should retreat orthogonally.
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TGW wrote:galehar wrote:To everybody that says aesthetic is not an issue, keep in mind that if we make the LOS square, then the following things should also be squared (or we end up with another hybrid system and haven't solved anything):
- explosions (storm spells, immolation, LRD)
- tornado
- silence
- halo
- sanctuary
- Leda's Liquefaction
Have I missed anything?
No problem with changing these.
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galehar wrote:There is also balance issue to consider. An explosion of range 2 covers 21 cells in round, 25 in square (+19%). For range 3, we go from 37 to 49 (+32%).
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danr wrote:If there is a delay penalty for moving diagonally, but no delay penalty for attacking diagonally, then you have a significant inconsistency in one of the most critical game situations: where a character is wanting to move out of melee range and the monster is wanting to melee the character. That inconsistency can hurt or help the character, and the devs need to decide whether they want that to be a significant aspect of gameplay. Perhaps it should be in there as a trick that the player can use, I don't know.
danr wrote:But then you've created a euclidean world in which the actors are somehow arbitrarily confined to acting from the centers of square boxes.
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szanth wrote:I don't see how just because the LOS is changed, the AOE shape of spells has to change. Hell, I'm surprised there aren't different types of AOE as it is. They don't all have to be the same. And they aren't the same now, even; there's radius and line AOE already in the game, and not even all radius AOE are the same. Fire Storm certainly has a higher AOE radius than Mephitic Cloud does.
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dpc wrote:All the situations you're describing assume that both player and monster start at "the zero action point". Which seem to be the exact misunderstanding with people saying euclidean system "is just bad".
Depending on the how did you (player and monster) get into such position the Ogre should have a possibility to hit you even if you move left. The Ogre can be like 0.8 ahead of you with the movement points and will hit you because moving left requires 1.0 and he will have a chance to hit in 0.2 moves. So before you leave the tile. Or something similar depending on the exact model the developer choose.
The euclidean system requires counting everything in more continuous space-time. Many times knowing the exact value of fractional movement of monsters around you will not be possible because they could appear in players LoS at different point but indistinguishably from the players perspective. So there's no possibility of tracking this, and no possibility of taking advantage of "trickery" and "knowing the game tricks". All you have to be aware of is: "you move diagonally, it takes a little more time".
dpc wrote:Attack diagonally should not take more time. Slashing with a sword takes the same time no matter in what direction you do it. Obviously attacking diagonally is atacking something which is 1.4 farer but I don't think this is a big deal.
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danr wrote:I just think "square" would fit with how dorky this game really is. If you want real-world type game dynamics, play World of Warcraft. Don't try to get too cute or real with a game that is ultimately based on an 80x43 ASCII box. It can't be done without introducing some weirdness that is non-obvious to the player and can be exploited to game the game.
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