Movement within One Locale

[Folker]

Greetings.

I would like to describe a certain coded feature that I once viewed in another game. While I have no inclination of joining this new mud and grafting it into a replica of some other, this mechanical feature did spring up in my mind when I read all those 'roleplaying dangerous' situations thread. So I figured I'll describe it here, and you'll tell me if it's good or bad, possibly or impossible, and worth the trouble or ... not. Yes, I could've just Idea it, but ... I got no access to the mud right now due to a necrotic state my last character is in.

Basically, the feature involved travelable locales, where 'anything' had to be approached first to be interacted with, including the exits. Unless ofcourse you were already near those coordinates within the locale. At the same time, characters have a set of skills, available to all. Skills like desert travel, or ... forest travel, or whatever ... skills that basically designate how fast or how slow does a character travel from point a to point b within the same locale.

Granted, it doesnt at all have to be complicated as that. It's possible simply to add a delay with an 'approach' echo to say ... all exits, and mobile objects. And be able to emote out anything during this, it'll also encourage roleplaying out a scene instead of insta spamming movement commands, because a person will know that no matter how strong or powerful the being he meets in the middle of nowhere, unless they got a crossbow/fireball aimed at ya, he will still have atleast 'some' seconds to get away and be more courageous in roleplaying out of scene without fear of being insta-attacked.

That's the catch 22 I'm getting in the 'roleplaying dangerous situations'. People insta kill in fear of people insta running, and people insta run in fear of people insta killing. At the same time, there will be a chance to catch a person running away, should your hiking skills be higher then your victims.

Well, let's hope I described this accurately ... so what do you think? I will try to idea this unless a GM will tell me this is a no-go right here, but at the moment I do not know how 'idea' function works, and if it even allows that much text.

[Larrath]

I'd love for something like this to go in, presuming it won't be too spammy and cumbersome for us players.  Being able to manipulate distance would really be great - units of fighters could have the mages stay in the back where only ranged weapons could reach them, or the templars could stay surrounded by fighters to avoid getting taken out in the first round of mass-combat.

Looks pretty complicated though, all in all.

[Folker]

mm, there is probably a possibility of adding some kind of command that'll allow one to prevent the approach of someone to the one you're guarding. I think the mud already has something like that, only in this case 'all' up close interaction would've been prevented.

So you wouldnt be able to poke a templar, if he had a bodyguard half-giant shielding him, for to poke a templar you gotta approach him meaning you'll become further away from exit, and will need to bypass the half-giant first to do the dreadful poke. Which from things I read, probably means your character will live longer.

[Jakahri]

I like this idea. I think I have seen it in another mud before. It appeared to work well.

[WarriorPoet]

Godwars has it's entire movement system based on something like this. Sort of... Kind of amusing at first, I guess, and it can make ranged combat, magick battles, an a few other thing VERY interesting. Saturday downtime might be a good time to pop into Godwars and look this over. It's kind of fun to toy with.

But, it gets extremely tedious after a few days. I prefer the simplicity of the 1room=1location system we have now.

-WP

[Folker]

whoa, there's a submissions forum, this post should've probably went there. Oh well, guess it's too late to post there, unless some gm will move it.

[RogueWarrior]

Well, I really think that as far as just movement in a room, that sort of thing should be left to simply roleplaying it out. That is what Armageddon is about... roleplaying rather than all hard-coded manipulation. I do, however, think that this sort of system should be implimented for combat. Like Larrath said... mages and archers in back, while the combatants take the front lines. Even have the cavalry flank from the sides without actually having to leave the room. Possibly even have the different units (mages, archers, frontliners, cavalry) seperated into different groups, such as you might do with Age of Empires, making it easier to target certain enemies (which is where the stats of the attackers vs. the stats of those between them and the target would come into play and so on and so forth).

I really hope that wasn't too confusing... it is a bit late.  

[Maybe42or54]

For combat, I think it would be fine.

For movement. It would be so annoying, I'd shoot myself.

Approach north
n

App n
n

app n
n

So annoying.

[Folker]

Would it really be so different then just n,n,n, ? instead of approach n, n. Approach n, n. And so on. I suppose it's possible to add a command that'll allow you to automatically restart walking into a direction you used to walk when you enter the next locale, so walking appear seamless.

Say ... travel north, and it'll automatically start you approaching n, then go n to enter the northern locale, and automatically start you approaching n again. I'd be against such a command in current state, since it'll be basically spam walking. But with delays in places, it's not that big a deal to automatically restart walking. This way, it'll look like the mud is one big locale, and not a thousand of little ones.

[Rindan]

I used to play Harshlands a little years back and they had this sort of code.  While that game never really clicked for me, I really did like their movement code.  The delay before moving really does wonders to solve a lot of issues that come up in Armageddon.  The problem in Armageddon is that you can be standing face to face with someone and unless you are already actively engaged in combat, if they will receive no penalty for turning their back to you and running.  It should happen that if your dwarf decides he is going to run from your elf, not only can he not escape, but he is going to leave his back exposed.  As it stands now, there isn't a chance in hell to catch someone once they start running.

All of that said, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a change in the code.  Messing around in the guts of the movement code means breaking everything[/b].  NPCs, NPC scripts, skills, and stuff that you couldn't even imagine will all break the second you touch the movement code.  Any change in the movement code would require a massive overhaul dozens of different codes and even then, stuff WILL break.  Even swapping the delay so that it happens before movement instead of after movement would break countless things.

It would be awesome if an imm felt particularly masochistic and dug into it, but I would put changes to the movement code of this nature to be as insane and difficult as rewriting the combat code.

[Yokunama]

Not many will be able to run on foot very far in the wilderness, because the do not have the stamina. You also have your hot, gritty winds blowing in your face as well as the rays of Suk-Krath beaming down on you. If you are not elf, traveling on foot from location to location is highly discouraged and probably laughed at in some cases.

[Anonymous]

I fail to understand your point Yokunama. So ... dont travel on foot, travel by an animal.

[Yokunama]

I fail to understand your point Yokunama. So ... dont travel on foot, travel by an animal.

The skills the original poster stated dealt with traveling on foot.

[Anonymous]

Erm, pardon. I'm the original poster heh.

That's fine, I suppose any different animal can have different travelling skills and be able to travel at different speeds over different types of terrain. This will actually allow all sorts of different types of mounts. Some are slow paced, but with an extreme amount of stamina for example, while others tire much quicker and yet have reasonably high hiking skill in certain terrain. Things can actually get fun then, since long necks will be able to scurry for different terrain in order to lose a mounted persuit, in hopes that the mounts are ill suited for travelling in the terrain they're trying to reach.

[Maybe42or54]

I fail to understand your point Yokunama. So ... dont travel on foot, travel by an animal.

The skills the original poster stated dealt with traveling on foot.

Elves don't ride animals.

[IAmJacksOpinion]

I don't really like this idea. It seems like it would get tedious and really slow things down quite a bit. But, something does need to be done about the spam-fleeing guys (or worse, the spam sneaking!) The guys that will turn and run without an emote, or sneak away while you're looking at them.

My proposal though, is something much simpler. Maybe this is the place to post it, but post it here I shall because I thought of it while reading this thread.

Concentrate! (name negotiable) So that you can attach a coded slowing to this poor bastard!

ex:
say (as he approaches bob on the street) Bob! Gimme those perty shoes or you die, Bob!
concentrate bob
You begin to concentrate on Bob.
(bob types "s")
Bob turns around and begins to flee!

And when you see the turns to flee message you can either start to follow him, or attack him or whatever it is you want. I think it's a good idea.

[Maybe42or54]

And it really doesn't solve spam fleers.

You enter a room and the target apparoaches the southern exit.

You approach the target and the target left the room. So now you are always a room behind.

[Yokunama]

I fail to understand your point Yokunama. So ... dont travel on foot, travel by an animal.

The skills the original poster stated dealt with traveling on foot.

Elves don't ride animals.

I know that.

[Anonymous]

The way it is addressed in the thread 'roleplaying dangerous encounters', it is described as a coding problem, aswell as a roleplaying one. For example, should a roleplay come to conflict of arms, then the two characters will duke it out, and their stats and skill rolls will determine who of the two is more skilled and therefore ... who won in this particular roleplayed out conflict.

In the problem of insta-attacking/insta-fleeing, there is no code to match between two characters, so whomever pressed 'east' faster, is now ahead. With this proposal, travel, and the speed of crossing from one point to another becomes a matter of skill code. That's how insta-anything is being solved. Alongside with additional benefits like travel time increased, allowing more emotes to be acted out in a more or less comfortable environment, instead of 'escape first, emote later' ... you'll be able to start escaping first, and emote during.

Yes, a number of times it was mentioned that in this case travel time becomes too lengthly. And ... that's true, say it takes 10 seconds to cross from the beginning of one locale to it's end, and boom ... the whole world of Zalanthas is 10 times bigger, and it takes 10 times longers to walk across the globe (or to be more precise from southernmost point to the northernmost) Though the sizes of locales would probably differ from humongoes caves, to narrow rooms. But once again ... is that really that bad? Doesnt it give the whole sense of 'distance' between far apart city states and so on? In any case, to ease on up on the travelling speeds, it might be possible to set up the travel by roads to be faster then via wilderness. Say ... 3 seconds instead of 10, down to 1 second with a maxed skill or ... something.

Yes, in a long run ... it really 'doesnt' solve the problem of whoever typed quicker ... wins. Because should two characters with maxed out hiking skills meet, they'd still go down to the same basics. But hey ... atleast they'll have time to emote out a bit of interaction before the attacker would finally finish approaching and starts smashing, or the victim finishes approaching the exit line and leave the locale.