Strange things that break hide or don't break hide

[nauta]

If you see a hiding person, you can "point" to them and reveal their hiding place to another person or everyone in the room, but that doesn't mean they can't find another hiding place (re-hide).

Yeah, I dig that idea.  It more-or-less is the current system with what breaks hide (totally, possibly) spelled out in terms of a prompt, with the addition of a 'point' feature.

One thing -- this is a bit of a side-track but that line reminded me -- that does bother me with hide is how it interacts with 'watch'.  Two things really -- both related and falling under the general head of: 'hiding while in the same room with someone'.

1. I think if you do an overt action (one that totally breaks hide) you should have a longer lag before you can attempt to hide again.  Hence, you can't:

Code Select Expand


say (waggling ^Me arms) Boogity boogity boo!; hide; e


2. Hide and watch are strange (and IMHO it is a bug).  I think if you are watching someone, any attempt to 'hide' from you should be much much much harder, if not impossible.  After all, you can shadow someone even if you can't see them.  But I've noticed that people can hide even while you are watching them -- and it seems relatively easy for them to do so -- even people I'm pretty sure have newbie novice hide can do so on someone with fairly high-level watch.

But how would I escape from people that watch me then?  The same way you escape from someone that shadows from you: flee self.  (See help flee.)  Except here you'd have to flee self, then run somewhere out of view, and reinitiate hide -- this would break the watch -- which is, well, exactly how I'd expect you to escape from someone watching you.

[Beethoven]

Yeah, I dig that idea.  It more-or-less is the current system with what breaks hide (totally, possibly) spelled out in terms of a prompt, with the addition of a 'point' feature.

Not quite. The prompt only tells you if you're attempting to hide, not if you're hiding. So you could be attempting to hide and not have managed it. You WOULD know if you "broke hide" with an overt action, but it wouldn't really break hide, it would just reveal you to people in the room. New people entering the room wouldn't necessarily see you. If you failed a hide check, you wouldn't suddenly just forget to be hiding from then on. You would be hiding poorly, and if you sneaked into another room you might find very well a better hiding place there.

[Riev]

2. Hide and watch are strange (and IMHO it is a bug).  I think if you are watching someone, any attempt to 'hide' from you should be much much much harder, if not impossible.  After all, you can shadow someone even if you can't see them.  But I've noticed that people can hide even while you are watching them -- and it seems relatively easy for them to do so -- even people I'm pretty sure have newbie novice hide can do so on someone with fairly high-level watch.

I've certainly been watching people with my (what sure seems to be) max-level watch and when they try to hide, I notice that they try to hide and it persists like a "watch shadow". I hate to say "git gud" but watch is a very quirky ability. Sure, someone who is a master at hiding will probably know when you blink your eyes, and disappear again, but that's only because there's a ton of +hide gear in the game, and like no +scan or +watch.

Related thought: Someone mastercraft a tracking method for uranium paint.