Making Sense Of Huge HRPT Scenes, Mass Combat etc

[jmordetsky]

I wanted to post this thread, as it's been touched on in other threads but more from the POV of how combat "should" occur.

I don't want to discuss that, but rather, how you as a player RP, make client side modifications, or any other techniques or practices that would help to increase the playability of some of these scenes for both yourself and the people around you.

Also, I wanted to state that this is not criticism of the HRPT. It was great fun, organized and I think told a very cool story. My issue here is that at various points, I was dealing with streams and streams of text, and personally found it to be very difficult to get an idea of what was happening. I felt like I was blindly typing "kill such and such", watching my prompt, and trying desperately to get in odd emote.

A few issues I want to discuss were emoting in crowds, techniques for gagging mass combat effectively and anything else anyone might suggest to adding clarity to one of these scenes, but .....without really starting to talk about revamping the combat engine.

[Bestatte]

Some preparatory guidelines might be in order as well:

If your sdesc or any keywords have names of animals in them, please do everyone a favor and don't get involved in an HRPT. It'll just make you end up dead, and the killer feel bad for the error (or not - maybe they'll just roll their eyes and say "stupid mantis-tattooed idjit stepped RIGHT in front of my blade").

Alternately, don't create a character with sdescs or keywords with the names of animals in them, unless you -truly- don't mind dying to a mistake.

As for dealing with the screen scroll, I have nothing to offer. I don't deal well with it if it gets too bad, so I usually just avoid it. Macros and triggers and highlights give me a headache so I don't bother with them.

[Carnage]

If your sdesc or any keywords have names of animals in them, please do everyone a favor and don't get involved in an HRPT.

Or, instead of carrying around that little attitude, you could type ass target beforehand and make sure you're not going to hit them. Seems like it'd be a lot easier than requesting that people not go to the RPT because of their keywords.  :roll:

[Agent_137]

sorry, if everything is spamming so fast I can't see anything but grey blur, i'm not adding to the spam and then scrolling up and trying to find out if they are a bad guy or not. And that's the only time I'd need to assess before I attack because of keywords. If it wasn't scrolling, I'd look in the room, see the mantis tattooed guy, and work around it.

edit:

ON TOPIC, i usually highlight every string with my sarge or buddy in it. Or, if i'm in a group, i try to give them all a highlight that's of a slightly darker grey.

[Callisto]

If your sdesc or any keywords have names of animals in them, please do everyone a favor and don't get involved in an HRPT.

Or people could just learn to control themselves and think before typing out kill or assist.

If anyone should be expected to sit out of an RPT (and no one should, imo), it shouldn't be the people with suitable short descriptions, it should be the people who don't think before hamming out a kill or assist command.

The biggest problem with group combat is that the people placed in a position to lead others into these situations and command NPCs aren't able to manage the stress and panic, often resulting in chaos, death, or the Byn falling off the shield wall again. As long as people are promoted based on sparring power and how much they've put into the clan time sink, this will continue to be a problem.

[ashjpd]

One thing I remember said a long time ago, is during these big battles, no kicking, disarming, or anything of the sort, cause you might just add more trouble to you, I think that is how my last character died in one of the past hrpts.

[SpyGuy]

One thing I remember said a long time ago, is during these big battles, no kicking, disarming, or anything of the sort, cause you might just add more trouble to you, I think that is how my last character died in one of the past hrpts.

This is a good point.  I'd like to add, don't lead off with kick/bash/kill/etc.  If combat has already begun, type assist.  That way its not your fault if its a keyword death because you're just helping someone else, who may or may not be targetting the right person.  And, if you have time and I agree that most dont, look and make sure.

[Some Dude]

The problem I had with using assist...is things were flying by so fast every time I tried they wouldn't be fighting by the time it went off, so they you have the problem of standing there like an oaf doing nothing.

assist dude

*beep*

He's no longer fighting anyone.


assist another dude

*beep*

He's no longer fighting anyone.

Aarggh!


Then when I decided screw it, I'd use the keyword...went fine for hours.

Until we ended up joining with another group of people and there were so many I couldn't see them all...didn't know someone with that keyword had joined us.

It was extremely frustrating.

[SpyGuy]

Its frustrating and understandable, but likely as not using assist will concentrate the attacks and prevent most keyword errors.  But it does have its own drawbacks.

Another tip:  If fighting a dark crimson mantis...don't use dark or crimson as a keyword unless you have to.  Dark will cause a world of pain, crimson isnt much better.  That said, having mantis, etc. in your Sdesc is asking for trouble, simple as that.

If your sdesc or any keywords have names of animals in them, please do everyone a favor and don't get involved in an HRPT.

Or, instead of carrying around that little attitude, you could type ass target beforehand and make sure you're not going to hit them. Seems like it'd be a lot easier than requesting that people not go to the RPT because of their keywords.  :roll:

Or you can not pick a keyword of gortok if you know your going to be fighting gortoks.  If you think everyone is going to go through the list and assess-v gortok, assess -v 2.gortok etc etc in a desperate battle, you expect everyone to do a lot of shit just for your sake.\

Not to mention that in a whole lot of spam one gortok might of died and that number is NO LONGER VALID. Bah.

[jstorrie]

The problem I had with using assist...is things were flying by so fast every time I tried they wouldn't be fighting by the time it went off, so they you have the problem of standing there like an oaf doing nothing.

assist dude

*beep*

He's no longer fighting anyone.

It was extremely frustrating.

If you think that's bad, try using backstab.

[spawnloser]

If I kill you because you are the scrab-tattooed, gortok-faced person, I will not feel sorry for you.  When there are people dying around me, I'm not going to take the time and have to sort through the scroll to 'ass gortok' 'ass 2.gortok' etc until I sort through all the other gortok- people.

[Gar]

OR if you have a cloak that gives you a sdec be careful.  Like a tembo-embroidered cloak with the hood up you become the figure in a tembo emboidered cloak.  If you and some folks are hunting tembos, you could be in for a big surprise.

[slipshod]

Strictly addressing the original poster's point, I can only offer this one bit of advice...

Setting your client up ahead of time to filter out what could potentially be important text strings has as many drawbacks as it does benifits.  The only sure-fire way to make sense of mass combat scenes and other spamiful situations is to do so after the fact.  I always log them and when the action has died down, I take the time to read through the text at a scroll rate of my choosing.  Sure, you still don't get to realize what's happening to you at the moment it occurs, but it's not unthinkable to consider that would be the case for your character as well.. surrounded by screaming and chaos.. but then that night on his cot... replaying the scene in his mind and making some sense of what happened.

This was suggested in another thread, but I would really like the ability to mute combat scroll for everyone except those in your immediate group. That would go a long way toward making the combat more manageable.

[jmordetsky]

I wonder if it would be possible to slow down the combat for RPTs. Maybe displying messages every X milliseconds instead of Y, or something of that nature.

[Majikal]

I tried not to use assist as much, though I did see alot of code error deaths I had none myself. Everytime I saw enemies scroll in I typed 'kill mantis', worked out great for me.

Although one thing I did have a trouble with was backstab  :cry: Took me about two or three tries to catch something before it was already dead.

Also after the battle I had a few people who came up to me because they saw me do a backstab. It upset me that they felt they 'knew' I was a sneaky type character because they understand the coding. Personally I don't think it would be too hard to skew something in a vital area in the middle of a battle. There is so much going on I wouldn't think it would take much skill.  :roll:  shit happens I suppose.

[Morrolan]

[ramble]

Yeah, I use G-Mud (cheap bastard that I am) and so I do not have the ability to flag color changes on specific text...or at least I have not figured out how to do so.

What I do use is sound triggers.  My most popular are for the word "you" (really useful in a busy tavern) and any officers who happen to be around if I am in a military type organization.

That way, when someone is "fighting you" or "slashes you very hard on your head" I get a wake-up call--especially if I am off typing some pretty emote.  And when a commanding officer calls retreat, I notice that it was him/her, and not some jumpy private.

I also agree about the logging and looking later.  It makes for better stories to tell later, can be justified through "dust of war", and can make it more satisfying when you die, that you know what did it.

[/ramble]