Re:The Door Problem of Combat Design
by chongli on Sunday August 11, 2019 @05:38AM
(#20667300)
Angband gets very repetitive
One of my favourite roguelikes is an Angband variant called Sil. It cleverly manages to overcome the door problem in myriad ways:
1) Corridors are dark and the player's light radius is small, so being in a corridor surrounds the player with hidden information at all times.
2) Stairs spawn groups of enemies who travel in a circuitous path before exiting the level by a different set of stairs. Since there are multiple stairs up and down in each level, this creates the sense of being in the middle of an enemy supply line.
3) Enemies communicate with one another and employ group tactics. If enemies stumble upon the player in a corridor, they'll retreat to the safety of an open room and lay siege to the doorway. Additionally, since Sil's levels are full of loops and branches, there is almost always another way in/out of the room where the enemies are; they will send some orcs around behind the player to drive him into the open.
4) Some enemies are territorial (leashed to a pole, as described in the article) while others are aggressive, ignoring group tactics and blindly charging at the player. All of the enemy behaviour types concord perfectly with the creatures that employ them. Spiders, wights, and dragons are territorial and usually guarding treasure. Trolls, giants, and balrogs are aggressive and will relentlessly pursue the player into danger. Orcs communicate with one another, have scouts all over the place, are cowardly alone but bold in large groups, are attracted to strong leaders such as captains or named uniques, and love to press in on the player as soon as they know he's under attack from behind.
5) The player's stealth score is calculated based on the number of adjacent walls around the player. This makes corridors the best source of concealment (6 adjacent walls), but the concave corners of an open room are almost as good (5 adjacent walls). Of course, with the aforementioned enemy patrols, corridors are a high traffic area whereas the corners of large rooms are low traffic. This creates an unbelievable sense of tension when the player is hiding in the shadowy corner of a room, waiting for the huge orc patrol to pass, hoping none of them will wander into the corner and bump into him.
Of course, none of that would be fair without some positive incentive to fight in the open and Sil provides for that in spades. Your character can learn a number of abilities that let him move and attack at the same time. Combat in Sil gives large penalties to the player's evasion when multiple enemies are adjacent, so the player is further encouraged to keep moving in order to avoid getting surrounded.
All in all, I think Sil is a fantastic roguelike which solves the door problem in an elegant fashion.
One of my favourite roguelikes is an Angband variant called Sil. It cleverly manages to overcome the door problem in myriad ways:
1) Corridors are dark and the player's light radius is small, so being in a corridor surrounds the player with hidden information at all times.
2) Stairs spawn groups of enemies who travel in a circuitous path before exiting the level by a different set of stairs. Since there are multiple stairs up and down in each level, this creates the sense of being in the middle of an enemy supply line.
3) Enemies communicate with one another and employ group tactics. If enemies stumble upon the player in a corridor, they'll retreat to the safety of an open room and lay siege to the doorway. Additionally, since Sil's levels are full of loops and branches, there is almost always another way in/out of the room where the enemies are; they will send some orcs around behind the player to drive him into the open.
4) Some enemies are territorial (leashed to a pole, as described in the article) while others are aggressive, ignoring group tactics and blindly charging at the player. All of the enemy behaviour types concord perfectly with the creatures that employ them. Spiders, wights, and dragons are territorial and usually guarding treasure. Trolls, giants, and balrogs are aggressive and will relentlessly pursue the player into danger. Orcs communicate with one another, have scouts all over the place, are cowardly alone but bold in large groups, are attracted to strong leaders such as captains or named uniques, and love to press in on the player as soon as they know he's under attack from behind.
5) The player's stealth score is calculated based on the number of adjacent walls around the player. This makes corridors the best source of concealment (6 adjacent walls), but the concave corners of an open room are almost as good (5 adjacent walls). Of course, with the aforementioned enemy patrols, corridors are a high traffic area whereas the corners of large rooms are low traffic. This creates an unbelievable sense of tension when the player is hiding in the shadowy corner of a room, waiting for the huge orc patrol to pass, hoping none of them will wander into the corner and bump into him.
Of course, none of that would be fair without some positive incentive to fight in the open and Sil provides for that in spades. Your character can learn a number of abilities that let him move and attack at the same time. Combat in Sil gives large penalties to the player's evasion when multiple enemies are adjacent, so the player is further encouraged to keep moving in order to avoid getting surrounded.
All in all, I think Sil is a fantastic roguelike which solves the door problem in an elegant fashion.