Thoughts on death (echoes, mostly)

[vitaminR]

Don't think this should take too much effort from the coding side, but I think at least SOME echoes when someone (especially you) dies would be neat.
Having quite a lot of experience with death - in fact I think that's the side of Armageddon which I know the best so far! - I must say it is somewhat... well... Hard to express my feelings. But when you die... I'd really want to see something else than

A sandy-haired desert tarantula bites your body, wounding you.

You may:
    (C) Disconnect from character      (V) Toggle ANSI/VT100 mode    
    (B) Toggle 'brief' menus               (D) Documentation menu        
    (M) Mail menu                             (S) Stats of your character  
    (E) Enter Zalanthas                      (X) Exit Armageddon          
    (?) Read menu options        

This is kinda tasteless.
Would be neat to see something like, well I don't know... Maybe a few randomly chosen echoes, based perhaps on race and some other conditions, like...
A dwarf warrior could see something like...

As the evil monster strucks its final blow upon you, you feel your consciousness leaving, the world around you fading away...
All the colors slowly revert to one shade of grey... Darkness envelops you for a minute... an hour... an eternity...
Then suddenly the grey void explodes with a multitude of voices and colors. You feel yourself rising, pulled somewhere far away, into another dimension...

Bright torches bathe this immense undeground hall soft orange light, providing just enough illumination to see a delightful feast raging on. Ale flows freely, and huge stone tables are almost breaking under the weight of most wonderful meals. Hundreds and thousands of dwarves - spirits of warriors which fell in battles - enjoy themselves in this endless celebration, filling the air with thunderous laughter as they share stories of the great battles they witnessed.
For the years of struggle spent in your previous life, the gods saw fit to reward you with an afterlife that a dwarf could only dream of!
Perhaps a day shall come, and you shall return into the world of death and pain that you have left behind, but for now, you may enjoy this endless feast...


Of course, that's just what I think would be cool, but at least SOMETHING would be better than just ... wah :p
And I'm not sure but I think there isn't a room echo when a creature dies in one room with you, either? Wouldn't it be more logical for it to echo something like,
a filthy elf falls to the ground in heap, as mighty warrior's slice disembowels him.
Or something.


Oh and the message with afterlife thing could have another funky application - which will probably never happen, but can't I dream a bit?
Something like, dead chars could still be possible to log in, but they would go into the "afterworld" room, respective to their race and/or guild. People that are bored could go and rp as ghosts of long dead people, wouldn't that be fun :P


and forgive my lame spelling/grammar/etc :p  my english is about as good as my sk1||z at surviving in Armageddon

[Bestatte]

Arm is permadeath - hopefully that won't change any time soon. It's what makes the game so...morbidly addictive.

The final echo that -other- people see is something like this:

The noob tarantula hunter crumples to a heap on the ground.

And then both parties hear a beep (assuming you have your sound turned on).

Then - you see:

WELCOME TO ARMAGEDDON!

That beep - THE beep - has to be the single-most jarring thing in the game. But again, it's probably what makes the game so morbidly addictive.

Fear the beep.

[DustMight]

I agree with the lovely Bestatte.
The beep and the Mantis head are signature pieces of Armageddon and help to underscore the world's harshness.

You're dead, NOW.
End of Game.
Period.

[wizturbo]

Yes...I think the mantis head and the beep do a good job as saying farewell.  If only there was some way you could be physically slapped upside the head at that exact moment too....but...i'm sure some imm is working on that as we speak *grins*

[Kill4Free]

I accidently turned the volume on my speaks up really loud, then minimised arm for a moment.  Then I hear a really loud BEEP, I was like, "nooooooooooooooo" Fortunaetly it was just a problem with AIM, but it really freaked me out

[sarahjc]

Though the Beep and head are very abrupt and jarring.. making things final. I would love the game to give you thirty seconds for a death emote or two.  I think that would be cool. Especially when you are in a really cool fight, or get speared or shot to death with arrows.

Maybe something pops up saying, You feel darkness taking hold of you..

30 seconds.

The pink rhino falls to her knees, her eyes glazed over as she wraps her hands around the arrow in her chest.

The Pink Rhino limply attempts to pull an arrow from her chest before gasping and falling in a heap to the dusty ground.

Beep
Mantis
Welcome to Armageddon!

[mansa]

Though the Beep and head are very abrupt and jarring.. making things final. I would love the game to give you thirty seconds for a death emote or two.  I think that would be cool. Especially when you are in a really cool fight, or get speared or shot to death with arrows.

This would be abused, in my following example:

the tall, muscular man It was the one armed man with one leg.
the tall, muscular man I fucking hate you you fuckin' twink.
the tall, muscular man I'm going to make another character and kill your ass.
Curse on you who steal from the tall, muscular man.
Curse on you who attack the tall, muscular man.
the tall, muscular man prays on all the ancient and evil gods of the world to reek havok and revenge on you.
the tall, muscular man please tell my brother that I love him and the key is underneith the flowerpot. (brother -> sathis)

[sarahjc]

Yeah, maybe.. Or.. It might promote good RP, cause you really want to avoid a scene like that. Besides, I am sure that the staff would nip that in the butt right quick.

[sjanimal]

Vitamin R,

I think you're on to something, bud.  I don't think the IMMs will like all of your ideas, but maybe they'll implement some of them.  Good luck.

By the way, when I was in college, we used to call Ritalin Vitamin R.  Or at least I did.

=-)

yours,
sjanimal

[Rindan]

I think the chances for abuse are minimal at best for sarahjc's idea.  If you really want to pass on information after your character is dead, I imagine AIM would be far more efficient.  Further, if someone was stupid enough to do anything like what you did in your example, then simply reporting it to the staff would be a simple solution.

I see only two reasons why this idea might not fall through.

First, death is supposed to be abrupt.  There is something about watching someone just die with no drama that makes it seem more jarring.  Back in the days of uber gith that would throw four completely undodgeable spears at one poor bastard, I was out with a unit of military folks.  Out of nowhere four spears sunk into one of the people who we were with.  He was a good warrior and a neat character.  He was also dead instantly.  It really sinks home the idea that anyone can die at any time, and some times it just doesn't matter how bad ass your character is.  You can still die.  If everyone got some last emotes in, the chances for melodrama could raise and the brutality of death might be lessened a little.

Second, coding it so it flows might be ugly.  You need to make it clear in the sdesc that the person is about to die and not walking around all happy, yet you really can't have 'the corpse of the six fingered man wavers melodramatically in the air, before hitting the ground with a final sigh'.

One potential solution would be to expand the region where you enter critical condition and make it so that if you enter critical condition below a certain point -5 HP or whatever, your HP rapidly start to drop.  Once you hit -50% of your HP, you die.  Set it up so that people have a few seconds to be in critical condition before dying.  If you need to do a dirty deed quickly you can still simply not pause and kill the victim giving them no last emotes.  On the other hand, letting someone bleed to death over the course of a few seconds could improve the atmosphere.  I imagine it is pretty rare to simply –die- instantly.  Short of having your head removed or heart skewed, most people probably spend some quality time bleeding before kicking the bucket.  The idea wouldn't be to give them a chance to speak or do anything melodramatic, just let them explain the gory details of how they died.

In the case I described, it might look something like this:
(spam of four spears hitting here)
hp:-6/80 resting> The ugly ass dwarf crumples to the ground.
hp:-10/80 resting >A look of wide eyed shock crosses the ugly ass dwarf's face as the four spears slam home into his torso and through his armor, and after a moment's delay he crumples to the ground.
hp:-20/80 resting >Sprawled out on the sun blasted salt flats, blood begins to seep from the ugly ass dwarf's body into the thirst ground, staining the pristinely white flats red.
hp:-30/80 resting >The ugly ass dwarf struggles in draw in final breath, but succeeds only producing a bloody gurgling rasp.
hp:-35/80 resting >A soft sigh escapes the ugly ass dwarf's lips as his body goes limp.
hp:-39/80 resting >As the ugly ass dwarf's lifeless eyes stare vacantly off into the distance, a trickle of blood drips from the corner of his mouth.
*beep*

[Hicksville Hoochie]

Too bad ASCII pics can't be animated... Could you imagine how insulted you'd be after a stupid death that you'd wanna kick yourself for, if the mantis head laughed at you...

Personally, I like the way death goes now, it's just so... GAH! when it happens to you, and very, Ah man... When it happens to a friend; so much for final good byes!

Though one think that might be decently cool is perhaps for those in negative hit points to have a random chance of staying awake during this time, but perhaps be in a coded paralyzed state, allowing only emotes (which of course would be up to the player to keep in realistic fashion to his injuries.) and speech, thus on occasion giving that little dramatic moment where said friend sits over dying friend with a sad smile, unable to do anything... Or said raider gets to rub it in with a happy dance that only that dying PC will see, hehe.

[Agent_137]

Good ideas, Rindan, sarahjc.

Mansa, potential for abuse exists with every idea and every ability. It's been long established that abuse potential should be looked at and handled. Unless the potential is sky-high, it shouldn't keep an idea from coming to fruitition.

I been thinking lately it'd be neat to be able to watch the scene around your dead character more. To see what's happening. I've seen other posts about this, people wishing they could know more about what happened after they died.

But then, at the same time, the quickness that everything is over . . . that holds a certain charm in itself.

Like the point made in Bierce's "Parker Anderson, Philosopher."
I don't have the book handy, i'm at a university computer lab, but it went something to the effect of death itself is painless, instant. The process of dying isn't death. One moment you are here, and the next moment you aren't.

But yes, in response to the original poster, there should be no coded afterlife. If there is a coded afterlife, it takes away from all the ones that your character could believe in.

Also, I love the beep. One of my characters was in this one brutal battle that involved high numbers of PCs. I'll never forget hearing the sporadic, but rapid beeps in those first five minutes. It was positively eerie and completely unsettling.

I looked over to my girlfriend, said, "Those beeps are people dying. Here comes mine."

BEEP.
Welcome to Armageddon.

[wizturbo]

I personally would like a 30 second period after you "die" to emote and see the emotes of others.  It would allow for a brief cinematic end, which I believe is good, and it allows for the PC to see some emotes that they might not be able to see because the person was concentrated on the fight not the emoting.


You crumble to the floor and feel life slip away....

emote groans loudly as he feels the dagger slide home into his vitals, and collapses to the ground choking on his own blood, grasping in vain at the air in front of him.

emote begins twitching on the ground, as life slips away.

Someone kneels over your body, wiping their bloody dagger off on your clothing, grabs some pouches on your belt and then slips off into the shadows once more.

[Angela Christine]

A fun thing to do when you suspect someone doesn't have 100% of their attention on the game is to use the "beep" command.  :twisted:


As for the initial post, the idea is interesting, but honestly the first thing that sprug to mind when I read the example was "OMG, when people in Zalanthas die they go to the Forgotten Realms!"  :lol:



AC

[Delirium]

I gotta admit, I'm a fan of the "whap, beep, WTF?!" deal we have going on right now. It's so.. appropriate.

Besides, I always found those dramatic "your life slips away with a last labored gasp of air, blah blah" a little cheesy. That may be just me though.

[Savak]

Well, hmm.  Most of you won't remember, but at one time when you died on Arm you got transferred to a maze and could try to walk out and back to your life.  Halaster & Ness are about the only ones I can think who might remember that.  Then there was this permadeath thing... but I digress.

I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to add an echo to you, the victim, when you die.  But I'm fairly sure it wouldn't be any more useful than the dreaded, and let's face it..traditional.. "Welcome to Armageddon!"  In fact, the only thing that I've thunk of that I really like is "Life sucked, and now you're dead." followed by "Welcome to Armageddon!"

But, tradition aside, I can also see some merit in allowing a victim a single emote within X time frame of their own death (but with zero input from everything else happening in that room since their death).  Codewise I can smell potential problems, though that's out of my depth.

What I don't think we'll ever see, certainly not for the general populace, are lengthy echos describing a transition to some sorta afterlife.

Last point -- I'm pretty sure there are a few ways a character can die without sending a proper echo to the room, such as "The fairy explodes in a shower of blood, dead," and instead merely gives a blank line and a beep.  Generally these shouldn't exist, only I'm not 100% sure what instances these echoes are missing; I'd be happy to filter through these if they are emailed directly to me & I can submit them all in a single block, otherwise putting them in as a bug would be useful.

-Savak

[Intrepid]

Maybe a compromise?

You could have a death message preset that echoes something
fitting to your pc as he/she/it dies.  This way, the imms have
something that can be monitored for abuse and mellodrama,
players have a single message to expire the way their pc would, and
there is still the general "instant death" experience for everyone.

The death message has to be short and be a physical emote,
basically.  Something appropo to the character and the Arm
environ.

Thoughts?

[Tamarin]

Interesting idea, but it would have to fit with all possible deaths, up to and including the following:

:arrow: spear through the face
:arrow: falling off the shield wall and splattering onto the ground
:arrow: being burnt alive by a krathi
:arrow: being tortured by a black robe
:arrow: being stomped by a mekillot
:arrow: drowning in the sea of silt
:arrow: being torn apart limb from limb by a silt horror
:arrow: having a mindbender explode your brains from the inside
:arrow: being turned into undead and then used to do nasty things to your own mother...(no, I don't have any repressed childhood issues... :shock: )