Re: What's up with LOS?

Stefan Dorn wrote:
Ray Dillinger wrote:

I call this
ability "autochase." You have to be careful what monsters get to
use it and how much; before the player gets teleport, autochase
can make most levels unwinnable if a lot of monsters have it, or
if more than a few have it all the time.

I was wondering how this works if the player is blind. Do you still run
the LoS algorithm? What about mirrors, windows or the like? It seems
very strange (and hard to maintain) to make your AI dependant on the
player's LoS. (It's even quite unfair because monsters use information
they shouldn't have, but you already mentioned that.)

If the player character is blind, I still run field-of-view because
blindness does not make him/her invisible. If the player is a member
of a short-sighted species, I still run FOV out to normal sight
range because s/he can be seen from further than s/he can see. If
some of the monsters on the level are humans or crawling eyes, or
otherwise have longer than normal sight ranges, I run FOV out to
that distance even if the player character can't see that far.
If it's dark, I still run FOV for the benefit of grues and other
things that can see in the dark.

I think of autochase as a way to simulate information monsters *do*
have: scent tracking, acute hearing, intimate knowledge of the map,
ability to recognize disturbed items or areas, etc. And I try to
limit its use consistent with simulating that type of info. Autochase
is perfectly fair for all monsters who can see the character. It's
also fair for most monsters who have just seen the character run
around a corner, or who can hear rapidly-accelerating footsteps
receding down a hallway, or who can tell by scent-tracking which path
he took, or for telepathic creatures who can detect his mind and know
where he is. I try to avoid inappropriate (unfair) uses of autochase,
but there are a lot of fair uses.

And I think autochase behavior is much less stupid-looking, and also
much less of an indicator of "mysterious" information sources, than
the behavior of creatures in most games, who bunch up against a blank
wall the PC is on the other side of.

My dungeons don't have mirrors or windows. It will be interesting to
implement FOV in the presence of mirrors, if I ever add them.

Bear


.

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