Space-time bubbles/bullet time and monsters running

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PowerWyrm
Balrog
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Space-time bubbles/bullet time and monsters running

Post by PowerWyrm » Fri 27.03.2009, 12:53

I've taken a look at the space-time bubbles/bullet time code and found that quite awesome, so I decided to implement it for my variant. The result is great, but a major issue has risen... and I really don't know what to think about it. Here's the issue:

1) Current behavior: the player can run only when no hostile monster is in sight; monsters never run

###########
#@............
#.#########
#.#
#o#
#.#

so after running east (player and monster at same speed)

###########
#o...........@
#.#########

This really helps spellcasters kill tough monsters from a safe distance... the monster will walk at low speed, the player will run at high speed, as soon as the monster is out of LOS, and so put some distance between him and the monster

2) Space-time bubbles/bullet time behavior: the player can always run; if the player runs, all monsters in the same time bubble run

###########
#@............
#.#########
#.#
#o#
#.#

so after running east (player and monster at same speed)

###########
#.........o..@
#.#########

This will make spellcasters tricky to play... the player will never be able to outrun a monster having the same speed, by using corners (or potions of blindness...) to lose LOS, because the monster will start to run as soon as the player does so.

I don't know what to think about this. A bug? A feature? What does everyone think about this? Should the current behavior be changed? Should the new behavior be changed back?

Ace
Crystal Ooze
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Re: Space-time bubbles/bullet time and monsters running

Post by Ace » Sat 28.03.2009, 01:00

Theoretically running is cheating or ? How is it in Angband... ?

Emulord
King Vampire
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Re: Space-time bubbles/bullet time and monsters running

Post by Emulord » Sat 28.03.2009, 06:00

I actually dont believe in time bubbles. I think that the bottom is just a tad too fast. Since people are so fast, it should just be slowed down more at the bottom. Gives more reaction time and running still is fast enough. It would be comparable to lvl 1 at 50' speeds.
As far as I know the main reason for time bubbles is that high level fights can be stupid if you are unlucky (2 round death). Pretty much all other instakills can be avoided (stairing to hounds (dont stair up), out of depth monsters (detect), lack of resists (get resists).)
I dont belive in time bubbles in general in real-time games. Bullettime has always seemed a cop-out.

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Warrior
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Re: Space-time bubbles/bullet time and monsters running

Post by Warrior » Sat 28.03.2009, 22:29

The point with time bubbles is to make the game faster where it's currently too slow (resting for example) and make the game slower where it's currently too fast (first time MAngband player who runs into cave spiders (or more likely townies), dies and never returns).

One can set the time bubble to "appear" at 60%, 50, 40, etc health or at 0% if you'd like, which means that the slowing down of it will only occur at those points,but the speeding up will always be there. So running will be like whats described in the first post, which, of course is the same way it behaves in Angband.
Our MAngband specific speed "bonus" has basically just been a cheat, for expert players to take advantage of, and we'd rather want the new players to have an easy (or at least similar to angband) game, not just the good players who already know how to do well in the game.

Thats my understanding, anyhow.

:)
-- Mangband Project Team Member

Jug
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Re: Space-time bubbles/bullet time and monsters running

Post by Jug » Sun 29.03.2009, 12:37

I don't know what to think about this. A bug? A feature?
It's a bug fix :-)

After the move from turn based to realtime the question arises "how the hell do we implement running?". The original answer was to simply give the player a temporary speed boost, and this is what we've had for ten years. As Ace suggests, this could be considered cheating.

One of the things time bubbles do is to take us back to Angband balance and allow us to remove this exploit of ultra speed boosting to escape monsters. With time bubbles, to run away from a monster you actually have to have a higher speed than the monster, which is how it should be.

Emulord
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Re: Space-time bubbles/bullet time and monsters running

Post by Emulord » Sun 29.03.2009, 20:18

having a time pass in a stable way actually made me better at roguelikes in general since I know how long resting and running takes, so I know to expect more monsters to spawn. All we can do to protect noobs is to tell them to be careful and expect to die until they get good. Having time pass strangely will probably just confuse noobs more.

Maegdae
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Re: Space-time bubbles/bullet time and monsters running

Post by Maegdae » Fri 03.04.2009, 01:56

Emulord wrote:having a time pass in a stable way actually made me better at roguelikes in general since I know how long resting and running takes, so I know to expect more monsters to spawn. All we can do to protect noobs is to tell them to be careful and expect to die until they get good. Having time pass strangely will probably just confuse noobs more.
Familiarity is in the eye of the beholder. For time to slow down in combat sounds quite intuitive.
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PowerWyrm
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Re: Space-time bubbles/bullet time and monsters running

Post by PowerWyrm » Mon 06.04.2009, 11:14

Jug wrote:
I don't know what to think about this. A bug? A feature?
It's a bug fix :-)

After the move from turn based to realtime the question arises "how the hell do we implement running?". The original answer was to simply give the player a temporary speed boost, and this is what we've had for ten years. As Ace suggests, this could be considered cheating.

One of the things time bubbles do is to take us back to Angband balance and allow us to remove this exploit of ultra speed boosting to escape monsters. With time bubbles, to run away from a monster you actually have to have a higher speed than the monster, which is how it should be.
As I thought...
This feature just needs a few tweaks and it will be awesome. I hope it will make into one of the next MAngband releases (1.2 or 1.3).

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