Sight through walls & floors & AI elevator blindness

[William]

Greetings. 

Many barrels of plump helmet wine to you for making this a registrationless forum.

Sight through walls and floors
The ability to see through walls and buildings really needs to be improved.
1 - None of the four isometric views allow you to see ground in thin orthogonal alleyways between buildings.

My only idea is to make whole walls semi-opaque, but this is not aesthetically optimal.

2 - I can't shoot from one building to another mainly because I can't see targets in the next building.  Otherwise I am not sure if the engine allows this, or if it treats the same floor between two different buildings as different areas ( that can't both be 'active' at the same time ).

If you do implement building to building combat, it would be nice to be able to target a floor different to yours.  ie shoot people on the ground from top of building, assassinate target on 4th floor from a 3 floor building, etc etc. 

On the other hand you may want to limit such things to create a different style of gameplay.  This suggestion might make the game too easy.

Elevator Blindness
I rode the elevator to level 4 of the quarry's building and a guard walked in as soon as it stopped at the top.  He left at his floor and walked away, never noticing me during the entire process.

In-elevator combat?



Apart from a crash I can't reproduce after planting the 'electric surge' on a car I have not come across any other issues. 

Thank you for providing these alphas for free.  I'm a very grateful Arch Linux (x64) user. 

On a different topic, do you host your own webserver Christian, or is this provided by a company?

[Christian Knudsen]

Thanks for the feedback!

1 - None of the four isometric views allow you to see ground in thin orthogonal alleyways between buildings.

Can't you see the ground where you're standing when the x-ray effect is on? Apart from that, then yeah, the view can be a challenge sometimes. I think I just have to keep this in mind when designing the maps, so that there's almost always visibility from at least one of the four directions.

2 - I can't shoot from one building to another mainly because I can't see targets in the next building.  Otherwise I am not sure if the engine allows this, or if it treats the same floor between two different buildings as different areas ( that can't both be 'active' at the same time ).

If you do implement building to building combat, it would be nice to be able to target a floor different to yours.  ie shoot people on the ground from top of building, assassinate target on 4th floor from a 3 floor building, etc etc.

You can shoot at targets in another building if they're on the same floor and visible to you so that you can right click on them. I'm considering having floors above the player character be stripped away from all buildings and not just the one you're currently in. But that impacts gameplay and level design quite a bit and I'll have to do some testing on that.

Being able to select and shoot at characters on different levels is something I've considered almost since I started work on the game. It will require some pretty large changes to different parts of the engine, though, so I'll hold off on that until I know for sure how much that'll actually be needed for the game.

I rode the elevator to level 4 of the quarry's building and a guard walked in as soon as it stopped at the top.  He left at his floor and walked away, never noticing me during the entire process.

In-elevator combat?

If you were standing in the elevator, unarmed, the guard shouldn't be reacting to you, as the elevator isn't a restricted area.

On a different topic, do you host your own webserver Christian, or is this provided by a company?

I'm paying for a web hotel from a company.

[thenewguy]

As a follow-up along these same lines, I have two questions/comments:

1. How does one turn on x-ray mode?

2. I've tried shooting guards from across the street in another building. As soon as I equip a gun they see me and run to the elevator, cross the street and enter the building where I am "hiding". Not sure if this is by design, or perhaps the guards shouldn't see me/ It does make sniping difficult.

[Christian Knudsen]

The x-ray is just the circle of transparency around your character. It should be on by default.

Hmm. Guards definitely shouldn't react if you're in another building. Sounds like an AI bug.

[William]

Can't you see the ground where you're standing when the x-ray effect is on? Apart from that, then yeah, the view can be a challenge sometimes. I think I just have to keep this in mind when designing the maps, so that there's almost always visibility from at least one of the four directions.

The X-ray provides some view, but it would be nice if it were larger.

You can shoot at targets in another building if they're on the same floor and visible to you so that you can right click on them.

I will have to test this.  I was not able to kill the target in the first/main level because he was obscured by the roof, but other targets may be possible.

I'm considering having floors above the player character be stripped away from all buildings and not just the one you're currently in. But that impacts gameplay and level design quite a bit and I'll have to do some testing on that.

Are you worried that the player will be able to observe the layout of other buildings too easily?  Currently they have to take the risk of entering that floor to observe what's happening in it.

Being able to select and shoot at characters on different levels is something I've considered almost since I started work on the game. It will require some pretty large changes to different parts of the engine, though, so I'll hold off on that until I know for sure how much that'll actually be needed for the game.

It could possibly make the game easier, which is not always something you want.  I don't think it would be a very important contribution to enjoyable gameplay, but it could be implemented in a clever way ( ie with limitations ).

If you were standing in the elevator, unarmed, the guard shouldn't be reacting to you, as the elevator isn't a restricted area.

Wow!  I will have to try this out.

I'm paying for a web hotel from a company.

I asked because because I was impatient and clobbered your sever with a 10 connection download.  I should have thought twice before doing this to an indie developer's server.

Apologies   I hope no one else was trying to view the website at the time.




On a different note I now know what made my game crash.  Placing the remote device on a vehicle while playing in fullscreen mode crashes the game and leaves me at my desktop.

It throws some line numbers:

Code: [Select]

An unhandled exception occurred at $000000000050C9DA :
ERangeError : Range check error
  $000000000050C9DA line 210 of interactions.pas
  $000000000050D403 line 307 of interactions.pas
  $0000000000488E3D line 7735 of hostile.pas
  $000000000048FAB0 line 8458 of hostile.pas
Same error every time, even with different vehicles.

Specs

Code: [Select]

Arch Linux 64 bit
Kernel 3.5.4-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Sep 15 08:12:04 CEST 201 ( from repos )
fglrx/catalyst 12.8-2 ( AMD proprietary )
X.Org X Server 1.12.4
SDL 1.2.15-3

1920x1080@60 screen
No compositing manager or any openGL applications running

I don't know what other information would be useful.  If you want me to collect some more I will be happy to do so.

I am not very familiar with SDL or openGL, but it might have something to do with the higher screen res in fullscreen mode.  That and the fact ATI/AMD drivers are famous for being dodgy.

Regards, William

[William]

I can confirm it's the screen res - the problem still exists when at 1920x1080 in windowed mode.

Regards, William

[William]

Tested with 0.1.3 -- same problem, different memory locations.  Debug executable does not provide any more info

Code: [Select]

valentine ~/Hostile Takeover $ ./hostile\ \(debug\)
An unhandled exception occurred at $000000000050F91A :
ERangeError : Range check error
  $000000000050F91A line 210 of interactions.pas
  $00000000005101C3 line 307 of interactions.pas
  $000000000048CA0A line 7767 of hostile.pas
  $0000000000492544 line 8498 of hostile.pas
log.txt does not have anything useful in it.

[Christian Knudsen]

Looks like there's an issue when calculating where to place the Electric Surge device button on screen. Should be an easy fix. Thanks for reporting it!

[thenewguy]

I have found that the "elevator blindness" is a very effective way to win fights. The guards will not shoot at the player if he does not leave the elevator. This allows the player to take the elevator to any floor, shoot at the guards (without any return fire). I've managed to kill all the guards in the building without taking any shots in return.