Scan Skill Enhancement

[Cerelum]

Alright, so we all know anyone who looks East on the ivory road will see the pillar at the end.

Certain items are coded to show up in L direction prompts.

What I think would be an awesome addition to scan would be the ability or failure to see dead bodies, be it player or dead body of a critter.

Because ultimately it's silly that I can see you three rooms away, sitting on the ground, relaxing over your dung fire, making some smores, but if you're dead, lying next to your dung fire, smores getting ruined due your dead inattentiveness, I can't see you.

It would allow more than hiding critters to test scan, and would be a more useful part of the skill I believe.

What do you think?  I have to assume it wouldn't be terribly hard to do.

[th3kaiser]

That's just a fun idea.

[MeTekillot]

Some dead bodies do show up in rooms with look, iirc, like half-giants?

[John]

What if prone people auto hide at 3 rooms away unless you have a good scan skill? And then dead bodies and prone bodies can always be seen 2 rooms away (unless the actual hide skill is being used for a living person)

[Alesan]

I really just want to be able to see more things using "look <direction>" in general. I don't think scan should be needed for all of it. Probably for dead bodies more than a room away, but definitely not when "near" them.

You can see a mortally wounded guy lying on the ground from three rooms away, but if he dies, he becomes invisible. It makes no sense.

[Cerelum]

Some dead bodies do show up in rooms with look, iirc, like half-giants?

Unless something has changed recently, this is not the case.

I played a hunter in Tuluk back when Tuluk was a thing, and made friends with a half giant who was also a hunter.

We played pretty regular and were pretty buff animal killing wise and would make a ton of money hunting down scarier poisonier shit and selling it to city walkers.

I lost him after we retreated from a very large critter and was able to way him and we both were rangers so had wilderness quit so we quit out separately.

Days of RL time go by and I can't find his mind, something like a week goes by and I'm randomly caught in a sandstorm so bad that it cause me to misstep and wander south one room instead of east towards my destination.  Now the whole time I've been looking for my giant buddy, I have been riding through this area, literally dozens of times at least.

If you ask any staff who's ever watched me walk anywhere, I move a room and type l n l s l e like a crackhead. Never saw anything out of the ordinary.  But this one misstep south brings me upon my dead friend from however long ago, just sitting there, dead and stiff, one room away from what was my Tuluk wilderness superhighway that I travelled forever.

So now corpses decay, I don't think they did back then, so potentially you could miss all bodies by one room with no idea and that's sad.

[th3kaiser]

You can see hg corpses from adjacent rooms.

[Namino]

The ability to see items, including corpses, from adjacent rooms is dependent on their weight. If it's heavy enough, you'll see it.

[X-D]

You can see HG bodies from at least a room away.

I like the OP idea and most the others as well.

[Brokkr]

The ability to see objects from adjacent rooms depends on the size of the object.  I can't remember the exact cutoffs, but it might be possible that smaller HG corpses don't show and larger ones do.

[Alesan]

The ability to see objects from adjacent rooms depends on the size of the object.  I can't remember the exact cutoffs, but it might be possible that smaller HG corpses don't show and larger ones do.

Would it be accurate to say then, that there's no interest in changing the way looking works so that you can see corpses in adjacent rooms?

[Cerelum]

The ability to see objects from adjacent rooms depends on the size of the object.  I can't remember the exact cutoffs, but it might be possible that smaller HG corpses don't show and larger ones do.

If that's how it works, maybe that's how the scan difficulty could be triggered:

For Example:
Bird corpse, small corpse = Master Scan
Small animal corpse or plants= Advanced
Elf and half-elf corpse= Journeyman
Human= Apprentice
Half-giant= Novice or nothing required, just instant success.

I mean I'm sure there could be some easier way to code this, but I don't know Javascript or C to save my life, or how armageddon is coded, besides the fact it's roots are in Diku.

I don't think it would take reinventing the wheel, just some skill checks.  Only thing I would ask is that it's not as fickle as scan with shadows and blurs.

Look
*You see a shadow here*

look shadow
You don't see a shadow
look shadow
You don't see a shadow
look shadow
This elf is sneaky and lots of other shit!

[PriestlySiren]

Why would half-elf or elf be different than humans? Elves are typically taller than humans, even if they are skinner. Breeds can be the same size as a human or an elf.

[Cerelum]

Why would half-elf or elf be different than humans? Elves are typically taller than humans, even if they are skinner. Breeds can be the same size as a human or an elf.

I mean ultimately I'm just spitballing, I have no say on anything if they adopt it or not.

However, my logic is that elves are weaker than humans and muscle weights more than fat or just skin and bones.  So the stronger something, the more it weights.

[Alesan]

Realistically, mass doesn't necessarily equate to strength, though.

[Cerelum]

Realistically, mass doesn't necessarily equate to strength, though.

Yeah I guess you could roll a fat ass elf if you maxed weight and lowered height.

[Alesan]

That's... not *at all* what I meant. But I guess I could see how you could see it like that.

[Lizzie]

It'd need more rework I think. Consider a massive bed, a floor-to-ceiling wardrobe, a stack of shelves, and an elaborate multi-drawer bureau in someone's apartment. When you "look west" into that apartment from the hallway, you see none of this. Why then would you see the dead occupant, who is smaller than every single one of these furniture items?

[Alesan]

It'd need more rework I think. Consider a massive bed, a floor-to-ceiling wardrobe, a stack of shelves, and an elaborate multi-drawer bureau in someone's apartment. When you "look west" into that apartment from the hallway, you see none of this. Why then would you see the dead occupant, who is smaller than every single one of these furniture items?

Who's to say you shouldn't be able to see all those large furniture items, too? Since the mechanic is related to the size of the item, maybe we can be allowed to see things smaller than gargantuan sized items. Yes? Because at present it feels like we can only see things that are literally the size of a small house.

[X-D]

Meh, for the most part I would consider furniture as part of the room itself.

[Veselka]

If anything I'd like for some function of scan to have an active component rather than just passive. If you watch a shadow, you stop scanning. And you can't interact with a shadow unless you watch it, and there's no way to reveal someone hiding (that you can see) beyond subduing them or attacking them.

We've circled this drain many times, but I'm curious if there's some sort of solution. It sucks to have to spam 'look' and 'look shadow', it seems rather clunky.