vision cones

[moltenkore]

It would be neat to have vision cones in-game so your character can only see 140 degrees (or whatever value) in front of them.

Perhaps making it so that me's and say's still can be viewed and heard from behind the character with a brief static mark showing where the person was located behind.

It would antags a chance to sneak up on people as well as add additional RP if you ever wanted to just generally sneak around.

[Kaed]

I remember someone suggesting this before and it being met with general dislike, and people saying 'this isn't lifeweb'.

Personally, I like the idea a lot. But I"m also not sure how mechanically feasible it is in our current code.

[Sytic]

No, it's very very annoying to manage, especially in combat. People have spatial awareness, they understand when there's someone behind them.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

No, it's very very annoying to manage, especially in combat. People have spatial awareness, they understand when there's someone behind them.

 

I can't even tell when there's someone in front of me half the time

[Bauser]

Make it 180 degrees in front of you, so a very generous periphery, and I would be on board

Otherwise, I would agree with (what I expect is) the majority that it would be more cumbersome than it is beneficial

[SleepyWolf]

i don't think 180 would be good. 270 would feel better

[JMJ_99]

I've seen this is in FO13 and honestly it makes combat a complete nightmare, if your vision was tied to your cursor I think it would be a lot better

[Saudus]

I could get behind the idea of 180-270 degrees of this but don't think it should be pitch black darkness in the out of LOS area. Maybe more like when wearing a welder mask?

If it's found to be good it could then be expanded later on into darkness rather than obscured.

[Scheveningen]

It's feasible through code but it's an incredible hassle, yes. I have like a year or so of experience playing Lifeweb and I had the most difficult time adjusting to the vision cone obscuring. Lifeweb also has a lot of ambient noise which is thankfully tied to direction of its source relative to your own position that blends really well. It emphasizes an atmosphere of paranoia and so on, but...

It's an incredible hurdle to get over. You can die instantly just because you didn't check the statue you walked past for an assassin with a knife aimed at your brainpan. Vision is an important part of the metagame in playing isometric top-down-view games.

At the same time it's impossible to expect people to not act unrealistically because most people who play ss13 already have it ingrained to respond to anyone on their screen that's a hostile regardless of where they're facing. Vision cones exist in the other SS13 servers to make it so that they don't have this mechanical advantage but also play to the weakness of senses not being 100% reliable.

It's a cool idea but many people would hate it strictly because of the implications of ganks from behind being more powerful, and how difficult it would be to get used to it.

[Bauser]

I would also be in favor of >180-degree views (E.G. 270), though at that point I feel you might get some diminishing returns on the obscured area. It would still be useful for stealthily approaching someone from behind in hallways, so the function isn't lost.

Re: Lifeweb

You're less likely to die instantly from getting ganked in Aurora from facing the wrong way, relative to Lifeweb. If vision is important to the metagame, maybe that's even more of a reason to trim it down; we don't necessarily want this metagame to exist. On the contrary, the "atmosphere of paranoia" you mentioned could be much more enjoyable, after people adjust to the change.

For every person who's annoyed that it's easier to get ganked from behind, you get another person who's helped because it's easier to gank someone from behind, so that balances out. So given the potential benefits, I don't think the barrier (people getting used to it) is necessarily prohibitive. People have gotten accustomed to big changes before.

EDIT: Also, instead of making it pitch-black in the areas outside of your vision cone, as has been mentioned here, make it so structures are still shown (floors and walls) IF you could see them otherwise - so darkness and walls still block things, obviously - but not objects/mobs/critters/etc. This is the implementation that I've seen on other servers, and it's palatable.

[AmoryBlaine]

Actually, combat with this wouldn't be so hard. We already have vision direction locks with alt+arrow key. It's the same as maintenance combat. Lock your vision in the direction of your opponent. As long as while you can run, you can blindfire behind you by clicking the 'dead' vision area, I'm fine with this.

[SeniorScore]

Could make hostage taking a bit easier as well? Potentially, anyway. You're pretending you're important in the bar when suddenly you see a familiar aiming reticule on you and a scream to get down.

[LanceLynxx]

i really really REALLY like this idea because of various reasons.

1-Adds to immersion and RP. You can't really just stare at a wall and still know what goes on around you. You need to actively look around and have spatial awareness and sort-of remember your surroundings when you aren't looking at it. A careless character would just be aloof to details while a paranoid one would check every where, all the time, in a way that other players and characters would notice (someone looking at all directions all the time for no reason is quite odd)

2-Adds to stealth tactics, not specific to combat only. Which I think is nice.

3-Sort-of curbs the meta of knowing where anything or anyone is at any given time.

As for "muh combat", like it was already said, alt+direction already locks your sight to a direction.

I'm all for this, my enthusiastic +1

[Bauser]

And a counterpoint to the claim that this makes combat harder could be: so what? As long as it's making combat more difficult evenly for everybody (which it necessarily does, on average, since it affects everyone the same way), then it wouldn't create any new imbalance or anything. It would just add a layer of complexity so combat gets a higher skill ceiling. And considering how much of our current combat is just disarm spam, a higher skill ceiling would not be a bad thing.

[MO_oNyMan]

vision cones would be pretty neat. 180 degrees plus a tiny tad bit more for peripheral vision would be sufficient enough. As for combat it's really easy to use shift click to keep tabs on the opponent or even use alt+dir. Bision cone generally increases immersion and realism and introduces more options for gameplay without taking a huge toll on combat (since it's pretty easy to work around it and everyone stays in the same conditions).

The only problem is the difficulty of implementation but i don't think we're in a rush

generally +1

[Bauser]

If the combat viability problem is too severe for some reason (not that I think it is), one possible workaround would be to make it so the 8 tiles around you are always visible (representing basic tactile feedback, I guess), even the ones outside the cone of vision. This would mean you can always attempt to attack someone who's right next to you, and it wouldn't stop sneaky people from getting the jump on you.

[Trazz666]

I've always liked the idea of vision cones. However, I feel it will never be implemented. The main reason is, lets be honest, fear. Even with a generous 180 degree field of view, people in incessantly complain about it. People suddenly wouldn't be able to meta see the guy with a gun behind them, or examine every 'Unknown' walking down the hall. It's a great idea, and it has my support, but I'm. Not holding my breath.

[Pacmandevil]

From experience, Vision cones rarely add anything to play. and yes I've coded a fully functioning implementation of it to test.

even with the ability to lock your vision cone onto a target, it becomes more frustrating than it's worth, and really doesn't add anything but annoyance to combat. and doesn't really add anything to stealth either.

if stealth is something wanted, there needs to be mechanics that actually support it similarly to hiding in lockers.

Hiding in crates/under tables would be a good start, I'd imagine. perhaps similar plants to goons, but a vision cone in general is shit.

Edit: Yes, and it was tied to a cursor when the user was holding shift. this didn't actually change anything. it was still clunky as fuck.

[keinto]

EDIT: Also, instead of making it pitch-black in the areas outside of your vision cone, as has been mentioned here, make it so structures are still shown (floors and walls) IF you could see them otherwise - so darkness and walls still block things, obviously - but not objects/mobs/critters/etc. This is the implementation that I've seen on other servers, and it's palatable.

 

Yes, please. Attacks from behind are something that would really add to roleplay and so many great shenanigans would come out of a 180 degrees cone of vision.