">watch mekillot" "You begin watch for them"

[BadSkeelz]

This was an idea I floated in the RAT thread (RIP) that I decided to bring up again for discussion.

I wish you could watch [for] something without necessarily being in the room with the something.

Code Select Expand

Outside the Gate
>watch mekillot

You begin watching for them.


Now, if a mek enters a room to your North, South, East, or West (or Up, god help you) you get notified of it without having to be watching that specific direction.

I see this being of most use for watching for mekillots, bahamets, and other large dangerous animals. You could also use it to "watch [for] figure" if someone ran off before you could directly target them... but this would give hits for every cloaked figure you saw moving. Not necessarily useful for chasing a specific one down, unless you used a more specific keyword.

Watching like this wouldn't help you for detecting sneaking targets any more than watch currently does.


A related idea, raised by nauta

Neat idea.  I also wish you could cast watch to 'near' and 'far', so you could do:

Code Select Expand


look s

[Far]
A harshly tanned dwarf is standing here.
[Near]
A figure in a tattered cloak is standing here.

watch figure far south


Also, a watch all -- with a smaller chance of success.

[Case]

Should just be able to auto see big animals, esp on diagonals, when in a room.

[Armaddict]

I think this gets dicey due to keywords to things you can't currently see.

I.e. I can type 'watch for <known raider>', and regardless of what they're wearing or how they approach, I'm waiting for it, and will automatically know it's them despite their attempts to make it otherwise.

[BadSkeelz]

Yeah, I hear you. I thought about restricting it to certain keywords - mekillot, bahamet, dwarf, human, man, etc.. Maybe also make it so you can't get a hit for a "hidden" keyword. If you watch for Amos, but Amos is wearing a cloak with a hood up, his name and his sdesc keywords are "hidden" and don't trigger an alert.

Though if you get that notorious (with your name, favorite cloak, or sdesc keyword becoming common knowledge) maybe you should be subject?

[nauta]

If the code can distinguish between an sdesc and a name, then you could just force it to accept only sdescs.  I'm not sure if the antecedent is true.

[Armaddict]

Limited to mobiles, this would probably work out.

[Riev]

If the code can distinguish between an sdesc and a name, then you could just force it to accept only sdescs.  I'm not sure if the antecedent is true.

If so, that would be maximally efficient. watch for linen.cloak would, hopefully, only return when you see someone with an sdesc of linen cloak.

UNFORTUNATELY, I could also see this being a "simple trigger" on the client side to highlight or beep on certain words. Not that I advocate for client-side coding all the time, but since we'll never get diagonals, big beasts will always rumble our bumbles.

[lostinspace]

What if I use the . wildcard? "watch for ." Would I see whenever anything entered any of those rooms, because that would be crazy powerful.

Now, if I could "watch mekillot s" so that even if it circles around I will see it coming, that seems more on par, and very useful against big things you are near as well as people trying to circle around and shoot arrows at you.

[BadSkeelz]

Well, under my original proposal, you would get a ping every time the mek entered a room you can observe. Typing "watch mekillot south"  (per Nauta's idea) would let you track that particulary mek if it looped around, but it seems like a weaker advantage to being able to see any mekillot that's entered an observable room.

[Harmless]

huge animals should send an echo to nearby rooms they enter or exit. It should send an echo to far away rooms for those who pass a listen check dependent on size.

half giants and other large but not huge critters should throw an echo nearby if someone has a very good listen skill maybe and itd be more likely if said critter were running?

[Culinary Critic]

huge animals should send an echo to nearby rooms they enter or exit. It should send an echo to far away rooms for those who pass a listen check dependent on size.

This.  Once upon a time, staff animated a met to come charging at a bunch of us.  The ground was trembling, the thorns were shaking, there was bellowing and roaring noise and it was a lot more exciting and realistic than "a you-stomping met has arrived from the east". 

LOVED IT.

Thanks staff!

[Asmoth]

I sorta wish this game had a command like SOI had once upon a time, where you could SCAN (think that was it) and see a BEAR far away NE.

That whole walk north.
OMFGPWNYOU WALKS IN
Kills you.

Thing has killed so many of my characters.

[Ath]

huge animals should send an echo to nearby rooms they enter or exit. It should send an echo to far away rooms for those who pass a listen check dependent on size.

This.  Once upon a time, staff animated a met to come charging at a bunch of us.  The ground was trembling, the thorns were shaking, there was bellowing and roaring noise and it was a lot more exciting and realistic than "a you-stomping met has arrived from the east". 

LOVED IT.

Thanks staff!

I know I like doing this with Meks and Mets.  It can be fun to animate.

[Miradus]

Mobiles have a size variable.

All that would be needed to do is to add a check on movement. If size > X then echo the movement to all exits. That would cover meks or any other weird thing that's really huge.

[Majikal]

I think this gets dicey due to keywords to things you can't currently see.

I.e. I can type 'watch for <known raider>', and regardless of what they're wearing or how they approach, I'm waiting for it, and will automatically know it's them despite their attempts to make it otherwise.

This was the first problem that came to mind.