Vision Cones [Feedback]

[Myazaki]

Vision Cones PR

This PR gives player characters a 90-degree cone behind themselves that blocks viewing mobs, or things grappled/pulled by mobs. Except in cases where those things are grappling/being pulled by the player themselves.

- Visual, but not audible, emotes are blocked within that cone.

- It allows you to set the opacity of your darkness cone.

- Laying down gives you 360 degree vision.

 

The intent behind this change is to allow for antagonists to do things stealthily, and use distractions more effectively. Also I hope to include mechanics in the future that depend on the ability to be behind people, e.g. a proper pick-pocketing mechanic with failure chances.

Also, if I figure out a nice way to cones with arbitrary angles, it could lead to aliens / damaged eyes / robots having different angled cones from normal humans.

---

At the time of writing, a version of this code is testmerged onto the server. So please let me know what you think and any bugs to be addressed. 

Please check the list on the PR (in the initial post) for bugs that have already been addressed.

 

Thanks,

Myazaki,

Edited August 6, 2020 by Myazaki

[ImmortalRedshirt]

First off, I'd like to apologize for my conduct on the Discord. I had plenty of grievances to air, and a desire to make them heard.

Space Station 13 is a highly abstract game. We can only see seven tiles in each direction, we see the world from above, and we see equally in all directions, unless there is an obstruction. I'm not trying to make an appeal to tradition here, but it's worked very well for all servers.

My first issue is one that is very subjective, and may be a non issue for others. Having played a round where this was testmerged, I can see this as a constant issue despite the bugfixes. That issue is the fact that turning in a direction completely wipes out every person behind you from existence. For lack of a better word, it's disorienting.

The OP mentioned how it would impact stealth, but SS13 has a different and I feel much more interesting definition of stealth. Simply put, it's less like a typical stealth game and more about your surroundings and your social skills. This creates a much more unique and interesting approach to stealth, that relies less on someone else's lack awareness and more on your skills. Trust is the best method of stealth.

My last point is more of a question. Does this, in the round-to-round experience, enhance the enjoyment of the game, whether through gameplay or roleplay? I, personally, do not think it does. If anything, it makes the game more frustrating when that is not the intent of the developers.

Change, in of itself, is not a bad thing. Often, it provides even greater benefit to us all. But wherever there is positive progress, there is progress that provides no benefit. It is often a habit of SS13 players to decry any change made, but neglects that those changes are what got us to such a fantastic game. In that same time, however, some things have remained constant because changing those mechanics would not be beneficial to the players.

And that's all I have to say about that. I hope it made sense.

[Chada1]

I like it, but it definitely needs to be made less resource intensive, while it adds a lot to the game and mechanics, if it causes massive strain on the server, it might be too detrimental to keep -- We should try to fix that

[niennab]

I like the vision cone a lot. There are times I have to catch myself from turning around and interacting with someone despite my character facing the other direction prior to. It's easy to get in a habit of responding to what one sees, despite what one should see realistically. If someone takes an axe out behind me, I shouldn't be able to know just because it's in the chat or in the visuals.

I am a bit worried what this might mean for people walking away from someone who is typing to them. There are tricks people sort've do to wait for a post, and the cone may cause people to walk off unknowingly. I don't use the bottom bar so I don't have the typing icon.

Nonetheless I wanted to suggest possibly extending the cone a bit however. It feels strange to me that the diagonal tiles behind my character are lost. I feel as though a persons peripherals shooouulldd at least give them those diagonal behind tiles. Example below. With the tile straight behind me, I found it a bit weird that while dragging someone on a chair, I couldn't see them. However I understand if the team wants to keep the behind tile hidden.

[Pratepresidenten]

This is one of my grand dreams of SS13. To obliterate the 360 degree all knowing vision of the spessman.

I do hope this is doable in the long run without the server burning to the ground.

All my love!

[Scheveningen]

Uh. Well, I suppose if we're going to keep this, which I hope we do, ninja invisibility needs to be nerfed massively so that it is only good in the dark and pretty much stands out very clearly in the light. Do something like stealth boy-esque graphics or just a shadow tracing if you want to keep it simple with minimal animations.

[ThelonTV]

 

3 hours ago, Scheveningen said:

Uh. Well, I suppose if we're going to keep this, which I hope we do, ninja invisibility needs to be nerfed massively so that it is only good in the dark and pretty much stands out very clearly in the light. Do something like stealth boy-esque graphics or just a shadow tracing if you want to keep it simple with minimal animations.

What does the vision cone have to do with ninjas? If you played it smart before you were invisible to the human eye 100% of the time; just because you can't look behind yourself doesn't mean that a, subjectively speaking, strong antag role needs to be nerfed?

[Scheveningen]

Because keeping invisibility mechanics when we implement mechanics to have positional-based eyesight tilts this incredibly hard into ninja's favor. Having an invisible person sneak up behind you and brain you with a double barrel shotgun and then re-invis to do the same shtick again would not be fun to deal with. At least a traitor that does this has the merit of not being able to become 100% foolproof invisible and run away.

I'm not saying "we can't have both." I'm just saying get rid of true invisibility while we're also at it with implementing vision cones, which is already a great mechanic from my experiences with it. I'm calling the oversight now before it becomes a legitimate "state of the game" problem later.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Scheveningen

[ThelonTV]

8 minutes ago, Scheveningen said:

Having an invisible person sneak up behind you and brain you with a double barrel shotgun and then re-invis to do the same shtick again would not be fun to deal with. 
 

Could be done before aswell, right?; uncloak, click, cloak

 

10 minutes ago, Scheveningen said:

Because keeping invisibility mechanics when we implement mechanics to have positional-based eyesight tilts this incredibly hard into ninja's favor. 

Ninja game mode as a whole is incedribly ninja favoured IMO, which isn't necessarily a bad thing

 

11 minutes ago, Scheveningen said:

 I'm just saying get rid of true invisibility while we're also at it with implementing vision cones, which is already a great mechanic from my experiences with it. I'm calling the oversight now before it becomes a legitimate "state of the game" problem later.

I believe if it comes to getting rid of true invisibility, it would be smarter to first try out giving cloaking and decloaking a cooldown, or make it gimicky so they have to throw a smoke bomb or whatever

[Itanimulli]

16 minutes ago, Scheveningen said:

Because keeping invisibility mechanics when we implement mechanics to have positional-based eyesight tilts this incredibly hard into ninja's favor. Having an invisible person sneak up behind you and brain you with a double barrel shotgun and then re-invis to do the same shtick again would not be fun to deal with. At least a traitor that does this has the merit of not being able to become 100% foolproof invisible and run away.

I'm not saying "we can't have both." I'm just saying get rid of true invisibility while we're also at it with implementing vision cones, which is already a great mechanic from my experiences with it. I'm calling the oversight now before it becomes a legitimate "state of the game" problem later.

Someone who does that would have the same consequences thrown at them than if they were to do literally the same thing with full invis today:

 

They would get banned. Very fast. So, basically, bad take.

 

 

 

Besides, trying to throw in other things with an implementation is not how an implementation of a new mechanic should go. If this gets added, I just want to see how thinga play out. You forget: the ninja can't see behinf * themselves* yoo 

Edited August 7, 2020 by Itanimulli

[ThelonTV]

8 minutes ago, Itanimulli said:

Someone who does that would have the same consequences thrown at them than if they were to do literally the same thing with full invis today:

 

They would get banned. Very fast. So, basically, bad take.

 

 

 

Besides, trying to throw in other things with an implementation is not how an implementation of a new mechanic should go. If this gets added, I just want to see how thinga play out. You forget: the ninja can't see behinf * themselves* yoo 

Was about to mention the RP believability part aswell, but yeah basically what you said

[MattAtlas]

I supported before and still do support vision cones. Anything we can do to add to the paranoia of ss13 is good in my books. I also like to think of the RP you can get out of people sneaking onto you, be it to incapacitate you or just to talk to you. If used creatively, the cones can be very nice.

Regarding antagonists, I wouldn't worry about them for the time being. There will need to be a period where people have to get used to it first before we can think about nerfing them. Currently people don't know how to play around the vision cones on both the defending and attacking sides, so our perception of what to change would be skewed.

However, I'm not averse to reverting some security nerfs. Specifically I wouldn't mind them having maintenance access back, now that there's ways to play around them. In fact, you'd be able to surprise officers a LOT MORE than right now if they have maint access from the start.

Edited August 7, 2020 by MattAtlas

[KingOfThePing]

I may not had the time to play the past few weeks so I did not have the opportunity to check it out, but I support this nontheless because of the reasons stated above. I think it's a good change, despite the top-down vision a player has as a default and the reduced vision the cone gives. I like it and will try it out this weekend, hopefully.

[Peppermint]

It makes me feel ill, so I'm a little biased. Less so the cone, and more the flickering movement of things appearing and vanishing on the screen. It's especially bad in combat, but I hope this will get better if the cone preference changes go ahead.

 

In general I like it, but not entirely sure how it fits well into the game. I also don't think stealth works for some of the reasons Gem spoke about. Maybe it should just be a thing in the dark? I dunno.

 

Reserving judgement in general, though.

[Myazaki]

30 minutes ago, Lemei said:

It makes me feel ill, so I'm a little biased. Less so the cone, and more the flickering movement of things appearing and vanishing on the screen. It's especially bad in combat, but I hope this will get better if the cone preference changes go ahead.

Preference for the alpha of the cone is in, so you can set how dark it is. You can find it in the character setup under global, at the bottom. Set it to a value 1 to 255, where 255 is darkest.

[SynysterSparx]

20 hours ago, ImmortalRedshirt said:

Does this, in the round-to-round experience, enhance the enjoyment of the game

In my experience, no. It was jarring to me, as others have said. I also agree with it being weird that you can't see someone in your diagonal periphery. 

It also makes 25% of our screen useless empty space that might as well not be there.

I just don't think vision cones lend themselves well to this top-down medium. I only played part of a round with the test merge in, so I may just be knee jerking "change bad," but I just don't see the good outweighing the bad for me. 

[Susan]

I do not like this.

Vision is not anywhere near realistically simulated in this game. You look at it from a top-down perspective with a serious limit on how far you can see (like 7 tiles) when realistically I should be able to stare all the way down the hallway at traitor mcman. There is absolutely no way for SS13 to properly simulate the five senses we have in reality. You don't really need to be looking at someone to know they're there. Humans tend to have a presence, a sort of unquantifiable sensation you get when you know someone is, say, staring at you for too long or coming up on you. You smell people. You hear them. You can sense them.

You can't do this in game. None of this game has been balanced with limited visibility in mind. 

[SgtSammac]

Only played a half round so far and it's been.... interesting. 

Not really sure where I stand with it. Honestly, I found it a bit too jarring/difficult to work with but probably one of those things that would mostly take getting used to?

[Myazaki]

17 minutes ago, Susan said:

Vision is not anywhere near realistically simulated in this game

We do already have line of sight effects and dark tiles. I don't agree this is too far from that, or that the game mechanics don't support this. It'll enhance some antag modes that rely on stealth, horror and paranoia -- and give us options we didn't have before.

Quote

Humans tend to have a presence, a sort of unquantifiable sensation you get when you know someone is, say, staring at you for too long or coming up on you. You smell people. You hear them. You can sense them.

I'm looking at adding visual cues for footsteps behind you and the like, depending on what people think with play-testing. As well as going through the footstep sounds and making sure they're properly audible at proper distances. Hopefully that would improve that bit for you. @SusanCan you think of any other cues I could include in that nature? 

You will still see (and hear) things like airlock doors opening behind you as someone enters ofc.

18 minutes ago, SgtSammac said:

Not really sure where I stand with it. Honestly, I found it a bit too jarring/difficult to work with but probably one of those things that would mostly take getting used to?

Let me know what you think with more playtime, @SgtSammac

47 minutes ago, SynysterSparx said:

In my experience, no. It was jarring to me, as others have said. I also agree with it being weird that you can't see someone in your diagonal periphery. 

It also makes 25% of our screen useless empty space that might as well not be there.

The exact angle is something that can be adjusted, although it is harder to do one that isn't a multiple of 90 degrees due to the nature of the engine being based on square turfs. I went with the easiest angle first because we needed to know if the extra calculations would lag the server or not (fortunately performance seems good!)

I don't agree that it makes 25% of the screen *useless* -- The area behind you still lets you see non-mob objects and their animations, and I'm considering adding visible cues for audible effects, e.g. footsteps, airlocks opening, people using items, behind you in that space. 

[Scheveningen]

12 hours ago, ThelonTV said:

Could be done before aswell, right?; uncloak, click, cloak

It being a problem long before today doesn't make it not a problem.

Quote

Ninja game mode as a whole is incedribly ninja favoured IMO, which isn't necessarily a bad thing

It is a problem. Ninjas who focus more on the roleplay than the action aspect are incredibly rare, because every aspect of the ninja kit promotes screwing with and fighting people.

"But ninjas have this limitation too" is not necessarily true, due to the strength of Ctrl Arrow Keys and having the ability to turn thermal goggles on to see people through walls.

Quote

Someone who does that would have the same consequences thrown at them than if they were to do literally the same thing with full invis today:

 

They would get banned. Very fast. So, basically, bad take.

What I mentioned is not bannable. It does not violate the rules to do that, otherwise ninjas would not have true invisibility. Maybe your take is the bad one.

[Susan]

@Myazaki Footsteps indicators are good. I feel like that would really negate most of my issues with this; it feels, currently, that it's just like you have a wall right behind you and the only indication of anyone's presence is if they speak.

Perhaps if you turn away from someone, mobs stay but slowly fade away after a few moments?

[Myazaki]

13 minutes ago, Susan said:

@Myazaki Footsteps indicators are good. I feel like that would really negate most of my issues with this; it feels, currently, that it's just like you have a wall right behind you and the only indication of anyone's presence is if they speak.

Perhaps if you turn away from someone, mobs stay but slowly fade away after a few moments?

I tried that initially, having mobs disappear after a random amount of seconds 1-3 as they entered your cone. It felt a bit weird... but maybe if I made some sort of fading out animation it'd be more 'fluid-feeling'. I'll experiment...

[Scheveningen]

I think little visual "pings" to illustrate noise movement would be great. I think it'd be preferable than mobs fading in or out of vision.

[cheap31]

Alright, here's my thing. I really really liked this idea in theory. When I first saw it testmerged, I was very intrigued to see stealth action in our spaceman simulator.

HOWEVER, I find that it has come to be more of a hindrance to roleplay which is The most important aspect of this game and server. Without my rear vision cone, I cannot see when someone is typing when I'm walking away which means that I am missing out on some continuing roleplay opportunities even though, technically I have already left the conversation. When it comes to antags 'sneaking', I don't think this is as viable as one might think. In a game centered around roleplay, where we have to notice the other person initiating or talking to us, this merge severely hampers the crew's ability to notice or initiate. If an antag has a stealth gimmick, there are already means available to help that antag accomplish that without unfortunately blinding the other players to the people behind them. 

If an antag's gimmick involves sneaking up behind people in their blind cone and gimping another player or sneaking around and never getting caught, they need to re-evaluate their gimmick, because it does not facilitate roleplay which is the paramount task that antags have as their responsibility. Period.

I also, don't like the lag. But even if that's fixed, my main gripe still stands.

[Myazaki]

10 hours ago, cheap31 said:

Without my rear vision cone, I cannot see when someone is typing when I'm walking away

You're *supposed* to have an indicator for this (see attached image for an example) - I need to track down why that stopped happening in the recent testmerge version.

10 hours ago, cheap31 said:

When it comes to antags 'sneaking', I don't think this is as viable as one might think. In a game centered around roleplay, where we have to notice the other person initiating or talking to us

Talking is exactly the same whether you're invisible or not (when I fix that indicator thing) so I don't agree with this.

Quote

If an antag's gimmick involves sneaking up behind people in their blind cone and gimping another player or sneaking around and never getting caught, they need to re-evaluate their gimmick

Think about it from the Antagonist's perspective; they may have goals they want to complete before they can get to the RP-heavy portion, things to steal, places to go, people to kidnap -- If they're just murdering people from the darkness, then that breaks the server's antagonist guideline rules. This is a game that is not purely RP-driven like a MUD, and the antagonists need tools and mechanics that cater to them.

Quote

I also, don't like the lag.

Were you looking at this while the Goonchat testmerge was also happening? If so, it is more likely that. We've checked out how much CPU time the vision cones stuff is taking and it shouldn't be causing any lag.

 

Thanks for the feedback, I'll sort out that chat indicator thing. (EDIT : Actually it does seem to be working properly. I somehow managed to make my test mob deaf, smart!)

Edited August 9, 2020 by Myazaki