Storms

[Rhyden]

Long live Xygax!

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Xygax said it best.

[Dracul]

The weather code has almost killed me. Directly killed me.  (okay...maybe indirectly...but pretty damn close)

And I loved it.

[Ghost]

I hope you finish those additional codings soon about the subject.   That would be great.
Thanks a lot again Xygax.

[fearwig]

The main problem I have with storms isn't that they're annoying, or frequent. The main problem I have is actually one of realism:

Now, I'm not an oldie here, by any means, but I certainly don't think that having your vision obscured a bit is going to make you do an about-face and walk blindly in the opposite direction from that which you've been struggling toward for hours, that you could continue to follow with your eyes entirely closed.


No, I think storm severity should have a CHANCE of making you lose your direction, like darkness should. Darkness should have a flat chance, maybe 10%, if that feels right. The *worst* storm should make you lose your bearings 15% or 10% of the time. No more. It's incredibly artificial, the way it is.


I realize that not all storms seem to make you lose your bearing now, so if what I'm describing is already implemented kindly ignore me. I know very well that it's not implemented in this way for darkness, yet, and I suggest that humbly (ha ha, me, humble).

[jmordetsky]

I haven't experienced this code first hand yet, but like 90% of the people who do talk about it says it sucks....

I think there is something to be said for that.

Thought, I had a char that wasn't a ranger and I used to wander around outside of allanak with out much trouble.

*shrug*

[joyofdiscord]

Let me be a big doink and just copy and paste my long post to another thread on this topic, explaining why I think the storm code is hunki-dori, and why trying to go east and actually going west -does- make sense.
---
Navigating in the wilderness can be HARD. It's easy to think you are walking "in a straight line" but slight deviations in your gait can send you off in circles so gradually you won't even notice, especially if the sun is very high so you can't use it as a compass. I know this by experience. I lived for a couple weeks in the National Forest around Williams, Arizona, a Grand Canyon town. Really scrubby, rocky land with short, gnarled trees. Reminds me of the Scrub Plains or Grey Forest or something. Well, I decided to take a super-short walk a ways out, then turn around and come right back. I was camped near the fence, so even if I veered off enough to hit the fence at a different point, as long as I recognized the general area or could even SEE THE TOWN quite a ways past the fence, I would be fine. But I didn't even manage that; that super-short walk turned into several hours wandering rocky terrain hopelessly until I stopped a person driving a truck down a faint path toward private land and he directed me toward the town, which I reckon must have been a couple miles away by now.

Now, I am definitely not super-wilderness man. In fact, if I was an Arm char, I would probably be a Burglar/Jeweler (I don't break into homes, except my own sometimes, but I think I fit that skill set the closest... hmmm, this sounds like an Idle OOC thread to me.), so it makes sense for me to lose my way, not knowing all the ways to orient oneself well in the wilderness.

Now, in wide open plains where you could follow one distant landmark (which you KNOW) to another, that phenomenon might not be a problem. In denser terrain, or in storms, the landmarks would have to be pretty close in order to follow, and you're still likely to end up veering off course just by picking a landmark a little more northward than another, etc.

Real wilderness isn't actually divided into "rooms", with one in each cardinal direction. A character with 1 room visiblity can't see four distinct regions and choose which one to wander into. He sees 360 degrees of largely indistinct terrain which is quickly swallowed up by sand just a little ways out. I think in these situations, it is very realistic to lose your way.

It seems jerky to type 'e' and get blown back 'w', but that's because we use a map grid. You aren't actually getting caught up in a big gust of wind and carried backwards. Those wilderness squares are huge, if you try to go east and end up going west, it's because you got turned around (perhaps virtually turned around over the course of your last 6 leagues of travel). And even turned around, you still magically know which way is east in order to try again, which seems pretty good to me.

The storm code seems pretty realistic, except for some minor issues like city gates, in my ever-so-humble opinion, and we ought to be happy our characters' magic internal compasses still function even way out in the Salt Flats or the Scrub Plans, etc.

[Cenghiz]

By the way.... Some folks might need storms actually.. The game's balanced. Something bad for you -very hot weather, harsh storms, lots of agreessive creatures, gith, harsh winds making shooting arrows impossible- may be good for other characters. As I said before a few times, it's possible to survive in blinding sandstorm for days which I've experienced a few times with a character who was not a ranger. If you can't, it means you shouldn't have been outside the gates in the first place. I'm bored of desert wandering lone merchants and hoping to make raider clan on the North Road with my next character to stop it.

[Xamminy]

To rephrase what someone else said.

In the dark or in a storm, you should NEVER type 'north' and go 'south.'  No matter how confusing the storm or darkness, that's unrealistic.

If you're travelling down a corridor, let's say, a place with cliffs on both sides, or a place with walls on both sides, and you're following one of the walls, how could you get turned around?  It's happened.  I've experienced it.  It sucks and seems very...arbitrary and artificial.

[joyofdiscord]

Hmmm, perhaps because the code has a hard time telling if you are following a wall/ledge, and there'd have to be special code on all such areas.  Plus, if, when going north, a mixup sending you south was impossible, then you'd only end up veering back and forth east and west, and the net result is that you'd still probably end up walking exactly where you wanted to go.  And, in many terrains, getting turned around -does- make sense, lots and lots of sense.  Maybe not in a canyon or hallway, but those are special cases.  Typing "north" does not mean your character is insta-teleporting into the center of another rectangular area directly north of the rectangular area he is currently standing in the center of, even if that's what the code does.

[Xamminy]

If the code was restricted from choosing 'up' and 'down' (I've been in a room with [NESW] as exits and seen that I couldn't move that direction when being turned around.  It was an odd sensation.) or the direction opposite the one typed, it would mostly solve that issue.

Walking down a corridor, you'd occasionally see that you can't go that way, but you won't go backwards.

Another solution would be to have the code 'change' orientation on you randomly.  So that from now on, when you type 'north' it means 'east' and etc around the compass.  You have to get out of the storm to reorient.

[Xygax]

In the middle of the desert, when you can't see sun and stars to navigate by, you don't know your way, and you have no landmarks (certainly no landmarks with which you can associate a cardinal direction), or worse, the landmarks are actually being -moved- by the enormous winds, and oh yeah, you mostly can't open your eyes unless you want them to bleed....  yes, you can lose your way completely and go north when you meant to go south.

-- X

[Xamminy]

So how about a room flag that could flag some rooms, when you would have the ability to follow a wall or the like, to prevent the storm code from turning you around?

[Xygax]

I think that would be a lot of data to add to soften a feature which I think mostly works about right as it is.

[Dracul]

Yeah..it -sucks- It REALLY sucks.               Awesome.

It almost killed me a few times when I had a non-ranger down near red storm though.

I still like it, and Im not playing rangers.

[jmordetsky]

The more I think/hear about it, the more I like the idea that there should be storms that "execute" the darkness code. (stumbling in random directions).

However, I think a big problem is that from what I hear, these storms are "EVERYWHERE", "ALL THE TIME"....

If thats the case, why not just tone it down a bit? I mean is the realism of an eyeball bleeding sandstorm worth X% of your player base hating the game?

Not to point finger Gax, but when I read your posts on this, it makes me cringe. I fee like your wielding this vorpal code sword and basically saying to the players, "We have storms now and your going to like it. Xygax has spoken".

From what I can tell a good deal of the player base is really put off by this code.  Why are you so adamantly for it?

[Maybe42or54]

And it gives those Rangers a chance at earnin' respect when they are the only one in a group of warriors that knows where the hell they are going.

[Xamminy]

The problem is, you can still get lost when following a ranger.  The rangers in the group are the only ones that won't get lost.

While I love the fact that rangers are made actually valuable in the wilds, some of the somewhat unrealistic executions of this code do bother me.

[Maybe42or54]

Really? I havn't seen that.
Xygax said something to the opposite, didn't he?
I believe him, from experience and his word.

[Delirium]

If you're directly following a ranger you won't get lost.

[fearwig]

I want to make my complaint clear:

I am walking in a tunnel with no intersections in sight. Suddenly, my torch goes out. I start walking the same way I've been walking.

Now, if I relight my torch, I have moved X random steps in random directions, putting me (on average) right back where I was. In a TWO WAY TUNNEL.

Which indicates to me that the code itself could use some rethinking, that's all. If it's screwy on this scale, it's similarly screwy on a larger, wilderness/storm scale. I do, however, think it should be easier to get lost in the dark or a storm if there are 4+ allowed directons.

[jhunter]

Hrrrmm, if it's not already taken into account that sort of code should take into account the number of exits when generating whether or not you'll get lost.

Makes sense to me.

[Nidhogg]

With 0 visibility, when being buffetted by a high wind, I would think getting turned around is a viable possibility.

[jhunter]

Right but if you've a rock wall on one side of you all you have to do is keep it on one side of you and you can keep on in a certain direction.

Out in the wide open I can see it, but not when you've something that you can stay close to by touch even to keep on your path.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I remember a hallway in game where you got turned around without a torch.  Has nothing to do with storms, though as it was indoors.