targetting and LOS

[PowerDiver]

I did say "enter it" not "stand in the entrance to it".

I guess I do not understand what point you are making. I agree that you can make visible walls in conjunction with expanding pillars consistent, if you are willing to violate one of the properties I suggested about passwall monsters.

[PowerDiver]

I'm a purist about this sort of thing. I only remove stone in order to get at vaults. And I think V would be better if that were the only case in which you could remove stone.

There's a game mechanic for stone you should be able to remove. It is called rubble.

I agree the quoted view, but I am lazy. Also, I'd rather wands of stone to mud not be junk. I allow myself to cast stone-to-mud to open up a path between rooms so that after I phase away from a monster we can get reacquainted more quickly. Once I decided I was willing to do that, I also decided to use it to create shortcuts between rooms when I am heading for the stairs.

[PaulBlay]

The property I am talking about is not visibility from the entrance or square with the door etc. You can do whatever you like there. I have a preference, but I wouldn't argue if it went the other way. The important property is what you see after you take *another* step into the interior of the room, getting out of the row or column of #s that make up a wall. Visibility from there is what conflicts with expanding cones in a symmetric model.

I did say "enter it" not "stand in the entrance to it".

I'm quite happy with a situation like Fig 22.

[PowerDiver]

I don't think you should be able to see monsters in the walls for the whole of a large lit room when you enter it adjacent to a wall.

The property I am talking about is not visibility from the entrance or square with the door etc. You can do whatever you like there. I have a preference, but I wouldn't argue if it went the other way. The important property is what you see after you take *another* step into the interior of the room, getting out of the row or column of #s that make up a wall. Visibility from there is what conflicts with expanding cones in a symmetric model.

[PowerDiver]

I think you should not be able to see through such walls let alone move. You should have to tunnel to to do so.

This is about the advantage of hexes over squares. In a hex map, two adjacent tiles share a vertex iff [if and only if] they share an edge. In a square map, it is possible to share only a vertex.

In the current system, diagonally adjacent #'s are assumed not to touch. Changing that would be a big deal.

If you really want to change this, you should widen the discussion to include switching to a hex map where there is no problem, by design.

[buzzkill]

One of the big questions about Angband is what constitutes abuse. As far as I am concerned _any_ digging meant to establish a better tactical position is abuse. Yeah- it's in the game. But it allows you to reduce the worst enemies in the game to walking treasure boxes. I don't consider any win that used ASCs at any point a real win.

Every once in a while I wonder what I could do if I really used everything in the game. I could stair-scum- but I guess that's meaningless when scrolls of Deep Descent show up in the BM. I could kill big summoners in ASCs- I guess that is actually done pretty frequently. But I'm a purist about this sort of thing. I only remove stone in order to get at vaults. And I think V would be better if that were the only case in which you could remove stone.

OFF TOPIC: I sometime use STM/tunneling to take a shortcut around some scary monsters on my way to the stairs. Also, on occasion, when surrounded in a long corridor, I'll dig an alcove in the wall, then step inside it, to break LOS with most of the breathers crammed in the length of the hallway.

[Rizwan]

Should you even be able to step diagonally between two walls like that?

I think you should not be able to see through such walls let alone move. You should have to tunnel to to do so.

[PaulBlay]

Zaiband implements points 1,3,4,5. [Point 5 is "the projection algorithm is smart enough to calculate the trick shots for you and the monsters."] Point 2 is the "nobody can ambush worth anything" property; as such, I find it bad for gameplay.

Could we see some diagrams for Zaiband?

[PaulBlay]

So you don't think you should be able to see the outline of a large lit room when you enter it adjacent to a wall?

This is a key question. If the M horizontally next to a # has an expanding cone of shadow, it cannot see the @. By symmetry, the @ cannot see all of the walls of the room. There is no way around this without changing one of those properties.

I missed this one (I think).

I don't think you should be able to see monsters in the walls for the whole of a large lit room when you enter it adjacent to a wall. I see no reason why walls can't be "special cased" to display when adjacent to lit, visible, floor tiles. Exact details would need to be decided on.

[aeneas]

I think everything is up for debate - including dungeon generation.

I think there are only a few vaults where you have to be able to go though gaps like that, 違いますか。

Chigaimasu yo. There is, for instance, a very common small vault that requires that you pass through that sort of gap. Beyond that you'd have to really rethink Destructed areas, and they are more important than you might think... they're a pain in the ass under most circumstances, but they are very useful for killing certain uniques. Including Morgoth....

You really would have to do some hard thinking to eliminate that.

[PaulBlay]

You have to be able to, given the current dungeon generation routines. soreha atarimaedarou..

I think everything is up for debate - including dungeon generation.

I think there are only a few vaults where you have to be able to go though gaps like that, 違いますか。

[aeneas]

Should you even be able to step diagonally between two walls like that?

You have to be able to, given the current dungeon generation routines. soreha atarimaedarou..

[PaulBlay]

The overriding restriction I suggested is that you should see a death mold a knights move away in the situation

m.
.#
#@

so you don't step next to it, but I'm not sure even that has universal appeal.

Should you even be able to step diagonally between two walls like that?

[aeneas]

Just a quick question - what problem are we trying to solve here? Is it hockey stick/knight's move attacks? Is there anything else?

I think that's about it. And I think it is a feature when it comes to monsters that move. Hounds are balanced with that in mind. If you can't kill them in one shot they can still overwhelm you.

But there's another problem- you can dig out a sequence of knight's moves, or an ASC. I don't ever dig to gain a tactical advantage- I think it is really cheap. I think that almost all walls should be permanent, and I play as if they are.

I don't know how long you've been playing bands, but I wonder if you remember Lev. He was King of Bands at one point. He won Z in <50K by abusing every game mechanic he could. I'm still pretty impressed with Lev- he was a very good player. But I have a different philosophy- I only abuse a certain number of things .

One of the big questions about Angband is what constitutes abuse. As far as I am concerned _any_ digging meant to establish a better tactical position is abuse. Yeah- it's in the game. But it allows you to reduce the worst enemies in the game to walking treasure boxes. I don't consider any win that used ASCs at any point a real win.

Every once in a while I wonder what I could do if I really used everything in the game. I could stair-scum- but I guess that's meaningless when scrolls of Deep Descent show up in the BM. I could kill big summoners in ASCs- I guess that is actually done pretty frequently. But I'm a purist about this sort of thing. I only remove stone in order to get at vaults. And I think V would be better if that were the only case in which you could remove stone.

[PowerDiver]

Just a quick question - what problem are we trying to solve here? Is it hockey stick/knight's move attacks? Is there anything else?

The problem of the hockey stick suggests the goal of symmetric LOS. A separate goal is visible equivalent to targetable. These have not been proven to be good goals, but they have some appeal at first glance.

The overriding restriction I suggested is that you should see a death mold a knights move away in the situation

m.
.#
#@

so you don't step next to it, but I'm not sure even that has universal appeal. At least I haven't noticed anyone complaining about it yet.

The game is in flux, and if sweeping changes are coming, now is the time to consider them. The drops are currently broken, and game balance in general is off, so it's perhaps less of a burden to break something else now than it may be in the future.

I suppose the point of this thread was to discuss what the LOS/targeting goals should be. I suggested a particular model/implementation to show an example of what could be achieved, but I probably got too excited and presented it as direction rather than an example. In my defense it is a cool model. Later someone posted a link to a better model. Then we started bickering over details related to visibility blockage due to a single # inside a large open area.