RavenRed: Minor idea. Well... it's a minor idea with moderate-sized ramifications, but a minor idea nonetheless. It revolves around stealth and uses therof.

My idea revolves around developing an intermediary AI set between Asleep and Savagely Attacking You (er... awake) . Basically once a monster wakes up, it doesn't immediately spot you. That requires a second "failure" of stealth before you are noticed and the Monster AI resumes its usual slavering assault. The Actions of the monster during the intermediate stage (lets call it Alert) would depend on the monster. These are not player-centric, and work independent of the player's actions.

Mindless monsters would correspondingly have mindless (TOTALLY random) movement.

Animals would have a simple routine (pacing the floor, more or less)

  1. Pick Random Direction
  2. Continue in random direction until a solid obstacle (water/Lava/Wall) is reached, at which point another random direction is taken.
  3. Repeat

Intelligent Monsters would have a more complex routine.

  1. Initially Pick Random Direction
  2. Continue Random direction until reaches a solid obstacle
  3. Head for nearest door in room.
  4. Continue along passage/corridor until another room is entered.
  5. Repeat

All the while this is running, standard stealth checks are being performed. Once this check is failed, the monsters becomes Awake and will then begin to perform according to normal AI. This should also happen should they take a hit or have a spell cast on them.

(You could always insert a chance that the monster goes back to "sleep" from the Alert (though not awake) state, but that might become unbalancing. )

This is to give stealth a second lease of life. You've woken the dragon up, can you make it to the door before it wakes up and crisps you.

With the new armour penalties coming in 3.0.0, stealth will become a far more specific attribute than it is presently. Sneaky characters will now be able to use their sneakiness in more varied and interesting ways. This might require a bit of coding, but the end effect would add significantly to the game's complexity and strategy...

2cworth and counting...

Chatter

ReenenLaurie: Wow! Sounds great! And one would like to have some kind of "wait" command that increases your stealth for that move. I believe at the moment standing still is just as stealthy as moving (correct me if I'm wrong). Then obviously setting yourself to snail movement and coward will help the check too.

(Or maybe this key could just be setting it automatically to these settings (maybe not snail movement), and pressing 5, then setting it back to your original settings).

Though standing still is still in essence more stealthy than moving, whilst moving around on these settings by default would be the same stealth as this implementation of standing still.

SimonSorc: well I think it's time for groups to be waked up when one of their members gets an arrow without getting killed (at least monsters next to it); at the sound of clashing melee weapons; when monsters next to them are set on fire (fireball, etc); at quake-type effects (it this won't wake up a monster, it's getting silly), and when things explode (potions, traps, spells). A new monster flag, MUTE, might explain why some monsters won't warn the rest of his gang but orcs and such should definitively have more group behavior.

I can't wait for an orc to say "he's over there!!" and all the orcs suddenly get a new dice roll at spotting you. Makes stealth more of a "make it or break it" as it is in real life. (-;

IdeaArchive/Stealth, AI and 3.0.0 (last edited 2005-02-16 21:47:34 by RavenRed)