monsters and water

[igroglaz]

The last cheezy breach which left in PWMA is water. A lot of monsters can't pass water (while player can ezpe!), so it's possible to kill monsters by cheezing from another shore. It looks especially stupid when there is only 1 water tile between monster and player.

There is RF_LEVITATE flag, but we can't give it to all monsters, eg orcs, 'p'ersons etc..

There could be several solutions to avoid this cheeze:

1) add RF_CAN_SWIM flag which will work in special way, eg --- when monster swim - he spend 2 turns of energy to pass 1 tile (btw the same thing could be implemented for player) --- when monster stay inside in the water - he got malus in attack paramater (also could be + to player)

OR

2) make monsters search another way to player, not to stay stupidly near the border of water... so if monster 'see' that player can't be accessed cause of water - he tries to find another pathfinding toward player

Also maybe there are another ways to solve it, lets brainstorm

[igroglaz]

OR

3) give new flag RF_JUMP which gives monster possibility to jump over 1 tile of water towards player.. someking of phase door thingy.. so lets leave wide waters as it is, but at least 1 water tile monsters could pass. Ok, lets add it to new point:

OR

4) RF_PASS_ONE_WATER - flag which allow monster to swim over 1 water tile

[igroglaz]

btw I wonder how TomeNET solves this issue... can't remember exact way, didn't played it for 2 years. But I suppose there was some workaround as I don't remember cheezing this way

[igroglaz]

another way to rabalance it - make water much more dangerous than now for player.. I suppose it's the TomeNET way. make equipments rust, scrolls dissolve, make water dmg more etc/ quite good solution too.

[draconisPW]

There is somewhere in V code a check about damaging terrain and mobs able to cross if the damage doesn't exceed a fraction of their HP. I need to look for this and adapt for every damaging terrain.

[s88100]

TomeNet uses A pathfinding algorithm (A-star) tomenet/src/common/defines-features.h _Allow monsters with AI_ASTAR r_info flag to use A pathfinding algorithm?_ #define MONSTER_ASTAR tomenet/src/server/melee2.c Purpose: Monster spells and movement Get monster moves for A* pathfinding get_moves_astar()

in V src/mon-move.c This function is responsible for deciding where the monster wants to move, and so is the core of monster "AI". get_move()

[igroglaz]

T solution for monster's water walking: https://github.com/igroglaz/Tangaria/commit/d856512c95f90f436b7d70e0e324649b9b32cf4f

[igroglaz]

Not sure should this ticket be open as it's was /rfe for T and it's implemented (a bit crude, I'll continue to polish). So for now I'm closing this; it could be reopened if needed.

[draconisPW]

No idea why this was closed, it was planned for 1.6.0.

[draconisPW]

This will be really tricky to fix because:

• nothing in the code allows to check what the "next" location will be for monster movement until the monster actually moved, so there's no way to tell a monster that after crossing a damaging tile the next tile will be "safe"
• by default, damaging tile induces "fear", so even if a monster could walk on damaging terrain the code would put it back on the starting spot the next turn
• terrain damage is a fixed 100+d100 damage, which is higher than the max hp for half the monsters in monster.txt
• terrain damage is checked a crapton of times in mon-move.c forcing to check every case separately

[igroglaz]

what do you think about T implementation? https://github.com/igroglaz/Tangaria/commit/d856512c95f90f436b7d70e0e324649b9b32cf4f (it might be changed a bit since that old commit, don't remember). Simple, but yet works good ;)

[draconisPW]

Ok looking at the code in mon-move there is only one thing to do here:

• leave sound and scent alone, if there is a damaging tile, the monster will try to find a path around
• remove check for damaging tile if there is only one tile between a monster and a player in LoS and the monster can sustain the tile damage
• don't "flee" if damaged by "voluntary" terrain damage
• monster takes min(half its max hps and 100+d100) damage from voluntarily going into the water

Hope it works this way.

[draconisPW]

Works fine except a tiny problem: when the player is faster than the monster, the monster spend multiple turns on the damaging tile and the damage is applied multiple times. In this case, the damage should be only applied once.

[draconisPW]

In fact, damaging terrain ticks every game turn, not every player/monster turn. For example, a monster at normal speed gets 10 energy per game turn and is able to act once it has 100 energy, meaning every 10 game turns. If that monster stands on damaging terrain, damage will be applied 10 times. Until V dev team takes a stance about this, I'll apply the damage only once per monster turn.

[draconisPW]

Implemented as above.