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[ParaSait]

Okay, we've all been chattering and complaining about em briefly here and there, but I think these 3 things are really important issues to address, since they are essentially exploits, but since they're exploited so widely, so much of the game's balance became built on the existence of them, and every sensible player embraces cornershooting, radarshooting and detecting enemies using their sound, and views them not as an exploit, but as a basic tactic.
Therefore I think we cannot go and just remove these "features" for it will seriously screw up not only the balance but also the basic gameplay experience. Instead, the game (not just it's balance, but it's mechanics) should IMO embrace these as features. Here are my suggestions on how this can be effectively realized...

Cornershooting
The 3 main issues here are, 1) you can shoot but not look behind a corner, 2) enemies cannot hit you, 3) afaik you still cannot cornershoot from every angle with a shotgun (which most clearly of all shows how it's more a bug than anything).
What I propose is that when you stand at a corner, you should be able to see what is behind it, and you should also be able to shoot enemies from there no matter in what direction.
Enemies CAN see and hit you when you're standing behind a corner, however, there is a certain chance that they hit the wall instead. This would adopt cornershooting as a feature similar to sidestepping, and one that can be properly balanced.

Sound and radarshooting
Listening to sounds to detect enemies and get an idea of their location also plays a very important tactical role, but it's OP, since it's essentially like a free Int2 where the exact location is not explicitly shown, however the exact location can technically be inferred. To clarify, if for instance an AI were to play this game, sound would be an actual Int2 since it can measure it's sound on each audio channel and logically infer the exact location of any sound source. Ultimately the exactness just boils down to "how well you can listen".
Here, I would suggest that you can only hear the sound of entities that are currently within the character's vision (or intuition) range.
To give this a counterbalance (and because this would almost completely destroy the merit of radarshooting), if an enemy gets hurt within a certain distance beyond your vision range, it's sound should be played, and an intuition-like indicator should appear for 1 turn on the position where the sound was heard. This makes sense too, since cries of pain are louder than random murmurs.

Notice that both of these features have a numerical value to be decided, ie. the cornershooting hit chance and the radarshooting distance, so that would mean that they would be under proper control and they can be precisely balanced out.

Discuss!

[Sereg]

I like the idea of partial cover - something you can see around or through, but which provides a reasonable miss chance to attacks against you. Of course, it should be applied both ways, which might make taking down enemies in certain positions a lot more frustrating than it currently is.

As far as sounds... I don't entirely understand how that exactly works as it currently stands. Your suggestion sounds logical to me, but... I don't really see how that's much different from the current system. Can we currently hear ambient sounds at ridiculous ranges? I don't think so, since I have trouble finding remaining enemies on a floor sometimes... I'll briefly get within range of them, then move and lose them, and not really have any idea of the direction. If it was smaller, I'd have a better idea where to look, but a harder time getting into range to hear it in the first place.

As far as an intuition-like indicator, I'm all for that... reminds me of how certain FPS games place a red ping on the minimap when an enemy fires a weapon.

[Nick]

Maybe angle indicator? Bigger for Techs, smaller for Scouts and randomly placed over the actual monster position so you can be sure the monster is somewhere in the marked area but can't be sure where exactly this pest is.

[Nick]

You can see the text indicating WHAT I hear and the area marker indicating WHERE it was. Maybe quiet sounds ("random murmurs") should be marked with bigger indicators than loud ones. Also, explosions can eliminate this ability.

[tdef]

Here, I would suggest that you can only hear the sound of entities that are currently within the character's vision (or intuition) range.

that would make no sense, you can hear a noise without seeing the source if within a reasonable distance, which is how it is now

cornershooting is a bug for the reason enemies can't retaliate, but what prevents a marine to expose just the weapon and fire blindly with obvious accuracy penalties (like it is now for out of vision targets)?

the only OPish thing about cornershooting is shotguns having 100% hit chance

[Klear]

I wouldn't change the way monster noises work. The fact that you can hear enemies on the level contributes a great deal to the doomy atmosphere.

[Rajhin]

[18|7|3|0|0|0]

You haven't really played on UV/N!, right? Go ahead and try to take out those hellknights on dlvl3 or hellbarons on dlvl6 without cornershooting. Bonus for hell arena on N!.
This is the main tactic for most builds on earlier levels and these levels are already hard enough (actually it's the hardest part of most games).
We already have Cybbie that ignores corners and that is more than enough.

As for sounds - this isn't really int2 because you cannot define monster's position on y-axle. And if there is a lot of monsters (they are often come in packs, you know) then you cannot really define anything.

[Evilpotatoe]

For cornershooting, I like the idea, really, but basic tactics to play, for example, damageless, must remain. Radarshoting wouldn't be enough on N!, I guess... so, what else do you propose ?


About sounds, they are not as good as INT2. Sure, you can get a very good idea of the monster's position, and marking an area -not a tile- could be an idea, but monsters don't groan on every move, so it's way less powerful.

The only thing I'd like to change about sounds is... adding sounds to N! enemies.
They are no fun at all currently... shooting a monster which seems to completely ignore it, even when dying, is so frustrating and ridiculous :(
(their stats could be made a little more serious to compensate, btw)

[ParaSait]

Maybe angle indicator? Bigger for Techs, smaller for Scouts and randomly placed over the actual monster position so you can be sure the monster is somewhere in the marked area but can't be sure where exactly this pest is.

This indicator isn't tile-based, so this would be a problem on ole' console mode. It'd probably feel quite annoying and intrusive as well.

I wouldn't change the way monster noises work. The fact that you can hear enemies on the level contributes a great deal to the doomy atmosphere.

This is probably the best argument against it.
The main thing that bugs me about sound is that it provides extra information not shown on the screen; oftentimes pretty dang important information. Personally I see the screen as being the proper medium of all sensory information, while sound should be a strictly cosmetic thing. In other words, a player who plays without sound should be equally informed as the one who plays with.

You haven't really played on UV/N!, right? Go ahead and try to take out those hellknights on dlvl3 or hellbarons on dlvl6 without cornershooting. Bonus for hell arena on N!.
This is the main tactic for most builds on earlier levels and these levels are already hard enough (actually it's the hardest part of most games).
We already have Cybbie that ignores corners and that is more than enough.

It seems to me like you didn't really bother reading my post. Sorry if I'm wrong about that.
I used to play UV quite often and I know all too well how important a role cornershooting plays in it. As I said in my post, so much of the game is now based on the existence of cornershooting (and especially as the difficulty level goes up).
It's certainly not my intent, as you seem to imply here, to ditch cornershooting; on the contrary in fact, I want the game to embrace it as a full-fledged and controllable feature. I said that there is a chance that an enemy can hit you if you're standing behind a corner. This is not necessarily 50%. In fact I was really thinking of a rather low chance. If the chance proves to be not low enough still, fine, we further decrease the chance. It's all about balance control.

As for sounds - this isn't really int2 because you cannot define monster's position on y-axle. And if there is a lot of monsters (they are often come in packs, you know) then you cannot really define anything.

Again, you are now merely describing the shoddy way things are right now; it doesn't make sense that you can determine what's to your west and east, but not what's to your north and south.
At the least I'd argue there should be some sort of "deaf mode" option which makes the source of sounds appear on the screen for one turn.

[Klear]

The only thing I'd like to change about sounds is... adding sounds to N! enemies.
They are no fun at all currently... shooting a monster which seems to completely ignore it, even when dying, is so frustrating and ridiculous :(
(their stats could be made a little more serious to compensate, btw)

Agreed. I get it that the lack of sounds add to the difficulty, but it's just so damn unsatisfying to shoot the bastards. Yesterday evening I was blasting dozens of n! demons with a focused double shotty and.... now that I think of it, it would have probably killed my ears if they had sounds, but still...

[Infinitum]

1) Not really crazy about cornershooting the way it is either. I'm currently trying to move on to UV and cornershooting with knockback being the only viable early game tactic gets old quickly. This is especially since the game actively punishes the player for exploring non-cleared areas and generally moving around in combat. Radarshooting isn't as bad in comparison since it allows the player some mobility when leaving that precious cover, albeit being able to shoot farther than your sight range is still unintuitive from a gameplay/design standpoint.

2) I like the way ambient sound plays an active role in gameplay, however as other have noted being able to track enemies only on the x-axle is.. weird. To me it'd be perfect if players could only tell how close a mob was by listening without giving clues as to directions - we wouldn't want to spoil those brownnote moments when you realize that Baron is right beside you now would we?

So what would I like to see if I could redesign gameplay from the ground up? WYSIWYG. Functionally infinite sightrange along with a strictly symmetrical formula for determining LOS past corners. Standing beside a corner would still give the player some amount of protection from ballistic weaponry. In order to encourage the player to move tactically in combat, I would also go with non-ballistic projectiles being rendered on the screen and moving at their target at set speeds, exactly the way charging lost souls currently functions. The net result would (hopefully) be that the DoomGuy would be forced into a gamestyle more akin to the original game, constantly weaving in between fireball barrages whilst simultaneously trying to put walls between himself and opposing Zombies/Archviles.

Granted, that would also require getting rid of current core gameplay features, redoing the level generator from the ground up to prevent every single level from degenerating into an arena free for all as well as the complete rebalancing of everything but the spritesheet. Also, the end product would probably play closer to a puzzle game than a contemporary roguelike. Then again, being able to run circles around 20+ imps and their mother again? Without going from 100 to 0 in less time that it took to type that? Hell yeah.

[Sambojin]

Corner shooting? Nope, don't have any idea about how to fix that. It's a core part of the game these days, and even if it's a bit slow, it works. Maybe let people do a Shift+numberpad direction move, giving a half sight range "peek" at what's there? How to implement it, I'm not sure. A 0.1 second move with half sight range, 0.1 second move back? Or even 2x0.25x"movement speed" moves? They could still shoot you if they were lucky, but you'd still have the normal dodge chance, and at least the game would flash the monster onto the screen (as well as barrels/items/corridor layout). I don't know if it'd work, but it might. You'd have to take into account what would happen if they did shoot you during/after the first half of the peek-look, but you'd just cancel the move back to the original position if "anything" happened damage-wise during the peek-move. At least it wouldn't be a freebie.

For sounds, I sort of agree. Sound is a big part in DoomRL, it's what sets it apart from other roguelikes, but a deaf-mode could be done. How many different roar noises/hurt noises are there? About 8 of each (including boss sounds)? You could set it to deaf-mode and just have an indicator flash up that's fairly transparent on the left or right side of the screen, a different one for each roar/hurt type, scaled for closeness (say 3 different sizes?) or coloured for closeness. Exactly the same information that the sound system is meant to convey, but done graphically. In text-mode you could just have a different character for each roar/hurt type flash three times on the left or right side (at the dungeon wall, east/west), with it being a green/yellow/red for far/medium/close for each sound event generated. Maybe just flash it for a set cycle, even if it lasts longer than that action, with 8 (or however many sound types there are) using up a different east/west wall tile, with a different ascii for each. You could set colour or flash cycle for closeness if you wanted.

Give an option so you could have normal/deaf-mode/both turned on and you'd have the best of all worlds. I actually have just a sub-woofer plugged into my PC for sound a lot of the time, so while I get the sound, all left/right stereo information is lost. DoomRL is a lot easier to play with head-phones on, but it shouldn't be. Plus, some people may wish to while away their lunch-break at work without disturbing their work colleagues (you don't need hearing problems to want a silent game).
 

[lmaoboat]

DoomRL is somewhat unique among RLs in how much is left to skill instead of dicerolls, I'd rather not see cornershooting changed into a percent chance to be hit.

[Klear]

DoomRL is a lot easier to play with head-phones on, but it shouldn't be.

Why shouldn't it? Most games are easier with headphones, and it's not like it's that much of a different.

I support the deaf mode though. We do have blind mode, so it makes sense.

[Evilpotatoe]

Why shouldn't it? Most games are easier with headphones

Many games are, but many aren't.

While I like doomRL sounds, I agree that it's really sad that we need them to play.
Most of the games I play are not much different with or without sounds (puyo puyo, puzzle / racing / flash games...) DotA and Quake3 seem to be my 2 only exceptions, and I really prefer it this way.

I agree that a game like doomRL should be playable (with full features) without sound. It would be way more convinient.