targetting and LOS

[PowerDiver]

I think there is a fairly clean way to approach targeting and LOS. It requires a single change in viewpoint, but then everything flows.


Currently, walls are considered to take up entire spaces. If you change that
perspective so that walls in a corridor only extend halfway everything becomes easy. Define two squares to be visible with respect to each other if the line connecting their centers does not pass through a wall. Consider a passwall monster in a wall to be centered at the center, but partially extending outward if the wall is adjacent to a non-wall. After all, at a minimum the mouth has to be outside the wall if it can breathe at you.


Then for anything like

################D
@

the @ and D have LOS on each other, even if the D is an ethereal dragon in a wall.

The boundary case is

##D
##
@

and it could go either way without any particular benefits or disadvantages I can see. Probably it is better to say not visible.

IMO it is absolutely vital for

#m
#
@#

to be a case where the @ can see the death mold. Also, the player is allowed to move diagonally which does not make sense if the walls completely fill the #s and thus would touch. Once you accept these points, I think the argument proceeds in a straightforward manner to the interpretation I give above.

Even if you don't like the interpretation, it leads to a clean model with good gameplay properties, and that is the important thing.

[Magnate]

Seconded. This approach is used in wargaming for good reason.

[Donald Jonker]

The boundary case is

##D
##
@

and it could go either way without any particular benefits or disadvantages I can see. Probably it is better to say not visible.

Besides making more intuitive sense, if that case remained not visible, it would offer a nice tactical wrinkle where you (or a monster) could flee around a corner.

This all looks very good.

[will_asher]

I like that idea.
(wanted to just thumbs up the idea without having to leave a message with four words because I don't really have anything to add..)

[d_m]

This proposal is good--in particular it addresses some annoying inconsistencies with the current treatment of passwall.

Also, I assume your LOS would be symmetric. I consider that one of the most sorely-needed features.

[buzzkill]

AD&D (d20, new version) I think, has a detailed method dealing with LOS and targeting enemies with partial cover. I'm not very familiar with it, but I think it's similar to what's being proposed here. Something like if the center of the players grid can 'see' any portion of the enemies grid (or vice-versa).

I presume hat this method has already been extensively tested and works well.

I'm just throwing it out there. Please don't hurt me.

[PowerDiver]

AD&D (d20, new version) I think, has a detailed method dealing with LOS and targeting enemies with partial cover.

When I see D&D and LOS in the same sentence, I remember the rules that made it harder to miss something in between than to hit your target.

"No, no, I'm not shooting at the bat. I'm aiming at the tree behind it. Before you tell me the AC of the tree, let's see if I make the roll to miss the bat."

[d_m]

"No, no, I'm not shooting at the bat. I'm aiming at the tree behind it. Before you tell me the AC of the tree, let's see if I make the roll to miss the bat."

Kind of like learning to fly in the Hitchhiker's Guide...

[will_asher]

When I see D&D and LOS in the same sentence, I remember the rules that made it harder to miss something in between than to hit your target.

"No, no, I'm not shooting at the bat. I'm aiming at the tree behind it. Before you tell me the AC of the tree, let's see if I make the roll to miss the bat."

The thing wrong with this is that the roll to-hit something assumes that you're trying to hit it. It seems to me that any competent DM would make it very unlikely to hit something like that bat in between by accident.

[PowerDiver]

The thing wrong with this is that the roll to-hit something assumes that you're trying to hit it. It seems to me that any competent DM would make it very unlikely to hit something like that bat in between by accident.

Either it is hard to miss something when targeting something else, or it isn't. The rule, which ISTR was described prominently in the early rules, erred ridiculously in the direction of "it's hard to miss".

The rule was introduced to stop players shooting "through" party members. However, it is exceptionally hard to get these things right and still playable, and the D&D combination of evasion and damage reduction into a single value called AC makes it impossible. The only way to fix the rule is to throw it away. That is a lesson to be considered when thinking about things like "cover" bonuses in an angband framework.

[will_asher]

Either it is hard to miss something when targeting something else, or it isn't. The rule, which ISTR was described prominently in the early rules, erred ridiculously in the direction of "it's hard to miss".

The rule was introduced to stop players shooting "through" party members. However, it is exceptionally hard to get these things right and still playable, and the D&D combination of evasion and damage reduction into a single value called AC makes it impossible. The only way to fix the rule is to throw it away. That is a lesson to be considered when thinking about things like "cover" bonuses in an angband framework.

The nice thing about pen & paper role-playing games like DND is that when the rules don't work, the DM can change them. How good the DM is makes a whole lot of difference in how good the game is going to be. It's what makes the game playable because it's nearly impossible to make rules that work in every situation that comes up. ..But now I'm way off-topic so maybe I should shut up.

[takkaria]

+1 from me too.

[etaomyx]

Apologies if I have misunderstood, but in cases like

............      ........
.@.###.....M  or  .@......
............      .....#..
............      ........

1. Is M visible?
2. Do the walls even cast shadows?

(As a random observation, this LOS system would be totally awesome if Angband were represented in unicode, and so you could print those box-drawing glyphs for walls: then LOS would be completely consistent with the visuals. But I don't know, the # symbol looks rather like it should take up a whole tile?)

[PaulBlay]

(As a random observation, this LOS system would be totally awesome if Angband were represented in unicode)

*ahem*

Anyway to answer your question in cases like the following I think it is only logical to assume that those walls cannot exist. This would necessitate a change to the dungeon generation routines and vault maps.

............      ........
.@.###.....M  or  .@......
............      .....#..
............      ........

[etaomyx]

those walls cannot exist

Yep, that's what I had thought. But it also means that rubble would need to be treated differently than walls for LOS, and some occasional strangeness when using stone-to-mud or encountering burrowers ... I don't like where all of that is going.