Cardinal direction discussion derail

[Quirk]

The fact you can't look in those directions is, in my mind, offset by other factors such as easily being able to outrun a creature 50 times your size who's legs are bigger than your entire body.

Well, I'd also like to see creatures that do begin hunting you to speed up to a run - you shouldn't be able to spamwalk away from anything. To address your point, though, huge creatures often aren't capable of sustaining a high speed over a distance, if we look at our knowledge of larger mammals on Earth. A 7000 kg African male elephant may be 70 times the mass of a large human male, but cannot run 70 times as fast, nor even twice as fast, and it can sustain its top speed of approximately 40 km/h or 25 mph for only about 100 metres.

This was in fact my initial complaint - that you can outrun creatures given a lag-free connection and a lack of typos, but being careful cannot preserve you from unlikely situations IC such as stumbling within chasing distance of a mekillot on an open plain without seeing it as you approach. The way I'd like to think of desert travel would be a party navigating carefully across the sands, keeping a weather eye on the horizon and suspicious-looking dunes for potential dangers, instead of that party walking their kanks speedily under the noses of large predators and away again before the predator has a chance to react. At present, the second behaviour seems to be better rewarded by the code. Making predators move faster in pursuit but be easier to spot would shift the balance, I feel.

If you're surrounded by bad guys like in your situation, you're surrounded by bad guys. Tough luck. You'll probably find out then you'll have to deal with it. Doesn't look like the survey command would really help even if it was implemented. There's ways around it.

Actually, if you look more closely at my last example, you'd be able to use the survey command to navigate the one clear route through quite easily. And the entire point of my somewhat detailed explanation was to demonstrate that there isn't any generalised "way around it" that won't get you jumped in an open space for some configuration of threats even when a way through exists. With the survey command, however, you'd only be at risk of being jumped on corners, not open spaces, if you were careful, and if no clear path through existed you'd be aware of this before you stumbled into an unsafe area.

I do like the survey command, the only iffy part to me would be if you're in a tavern able to look northeast and northwest outside along the road. Arm's mapping system isn't ideal in all places for the survey command.

Already covered this in the method I suggested in my response to you. Firstly, it would fail under the proposed terrain type test - you wouldn't be able to "survey" indoors. Secondly, you wouldn't be able to access the rooms north-east or north-west out of the tavern by going both north, east and east, north, or north, west and west, north, which would clue the algorithm in to the fact you weren't in an open space.

Also, I'm not agitating for the addition of northwest and northeast as moveable or targetable directions; I'm just suggesting that it would be nice to see what's there when you're in a wide open space, given that creatures will charge at you from one room away and you can see them from three.

[rufus]

Creatures fifty times my size are generally considered impossible on land, due to being crushed under their own weight.

DINOSAURS!!  RAWR!!

I am inclined to concur.
I like the current system.

[Halaster]

Well, I'd also like to see creatures that do begin hunting you to speed up to a run - you shouldn't be able to spamwalk away from anything.
This was in fact my initial complaint - that you can outrun creatures given a lag-free connection and a lack of typos

Yeah, I think that's what I was trying to say.  You can get away from them easier than you should be able to.  However, that's offset by not being able to look northeast, etc.

I'm not saying it's the best system.  I would like to see both improved, but, because they balance each other (in my mind at least), I'm not concerned enough that I think it requires immediate attention.  One day, maybe.

[Pale Horse]

Now correct me if Im wrong(and I'm sure that I can count on you guys to do just that), but I seem to recall that the listen skill, once worked to a high enough level, alows one to get an occational message of things that happen in other rooms, other than just the say commands..

Once, some time ago, I had a ranger that continued to get occational messages of something that had arrived into a room just off of is own, and on several instances, it told me when something had arrived north and east of my position.

Either this was a figment of my imagination(but the things were actually there when I looked after the message), a rememberance from a different mud(couldn't be..I havn't played another mud in years), a staff memeber was messing with my bRaiInnZzzZ, or this is no longer an actualy effect of the listen skill...

Has anyone else run into this, or am I just out of my mind(a valid possability in it's self)?

[rufus]

Solution - Armageddon: The Third Dimension.

[Synthesis]

RE: Pale Horse

The room you were in was coded to be a "lookout" room.

There are several (many?) rooms in the game that you can sit in and the game will echo entrance and departure messages to you from the surrounding area.

It's not based on any skill, though.

[Pale Horse]

RE: Synthesis

Oh, I'm aware of the lookout rooms and such, but in the instances that I remember this happening, I was out in the middle of the desert riding a kank and I got a message of a sand raptor moving into the area north west of me.

Another time I was in the grasslands and I kept getting messages of tandu moving into and out of areas just one room away.  Got really confusing for a moment.

Perhapse I was simply on a higher section of land that got coded as a "lookout" area...it would make sense.

Thanks for the correction.

[Dalmeth]

DINOSAURS!!  RAWR!!

I tend to think of the largest predators being somewhere around 30 times my size.  I mean by volume, not weight.  It's my guess that weight increases at a rate far faster than size as far as land creatures go.  Maybe some of the larger herbivores would be about that size. but no one confuses those things as fast.

[Armaddict]

I'm perfectly fine with not being able to look northeast. Oh, I think it'd be really swell if it was doable, but I think we're just fine without it, too. The fact you can't look in those directions is, in my mind, offset by other factors such as easily being able to outrun a creature 50 times your size who's legs are bigger than your entire body.

This pretty much mirrors how I feel.  The factor stated aside...this is just simply not a big deal at all.

Things have been pretty much built around the system as is.  I'll say that statement again that everyone hates and rails on...we've always just done things this way.

You can say that always doing things that way doesn't mean it doesn't warrant a change or what have you, but really...we've dealt with things in this way for SO long that it really has become unnecessary to change or modify it.

[Agent_137]

You can say that always doing things that way doesn't mean it doesn't warrant a change or what have you, but really...we've dealt with things in this way for SO long that it really has become unnecessary to change or modify it.

bullshit.

daze.
changes to sneak and hide.
stop.
bloody weapons.
the future of northern nobility.
addkeyword
nosave options
scan vs invisible altered
watch
rest and stand on mounts
stamina drain added to ranged combat
disengage

I stopped flipping through "staff announcements" at the end of page three.

Don't ever shoot down an idea just because "we've dealt with things in htis way for SO long that it really has beome unecessary to change or modify it."

Again, bullshit.

[Armaddict]

I didn't say that changes shouldn't occur, Agent.  Please read more carefully.

What I said was that this, considering the workload with the benefit, is not something I would like to see as a huge priority.

I'll say that statement again that everyone hates and rails on...we've always just done things this way.

Considering I called out that it was a hated statement, I'm surprised at how violent you sounded.

Don't ever shoot down an idea just because "we've dealt with things in htis way for SO long that it really has beome unecessary to change or modify it."

That was perfect support for the above quoted statement.

I did not say that Armageddon should be in a perpetual state of non-change.  But when you move into projects that immortals, and not you, will be working on...I merely tried to offer my input, and my opinion, on where the priority should stand on such idea.

[spawnloser]

Basically, Agent, you gotta understand one thing...

Halaster has told us that this would be a MAJOR CODE CHANGE, HOLY CRAP, THAT'S A LOT OF WORK!!!11!1!1!!11one11!

Maybe not in those words...but changes to the code?  Okay, maybe not huge.  Going from room to room to room to room...all immensely huge number of rooms, figuring out if ne, se, sw, nw should be added?  That's a LOT of work.  A lot of tedious work, I'd wager.

I wouldn't want to ask the staff to do that unless one of the staff members REALLY wanted to take that on as a project.

[Quirk]

Basically, Agent, you gotta understand one thing...

Halaster has told us that this would be a MAJOR CODE CHANGE, HOLY CRAP, THAT'S A LOT OF WORK!!!11!1!1!!11one11!

Maybe not in those words...but changes to the code?  Okay, maybe not huge.  Going from room to room to room to room...all immensely huge number of rooms, figuring out if ne, se, sw, nw should be added?  That's a LOT of work.  A lot of tedious work, I'd wager.

I wouldn't want to ask the staff to do that unless one of the staff members REALLY wanted to take that on as a project.

As has already been explained, however, the survey command would be near-trivial to implement and I gave a brief possible algorithm detailing how. Changing the mud so that ne, nw, se, sw links were added to every open area - yes, that would be a hard task, but no-one in this entire thread has suggested doing that, except for Halaster pointing it out as the "complete" solution which would be too much work.

It's slightly frustrating to see someone repeating a misconception that came up on the last page and was answered there. Please, please read the whole thread before you post?

[spawnloser]

Hey, I didn't know exactly what Agent was talking in regards to.  I know what's been suggested.  Survey?  Okay.  If a coder wants to pick it up, and the staff can decide how it would detect things.  I don't think it's that big of a deal that any pressure to do so should be used.