ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The suffocation system has a few problems.

• The air meter always says "+3", even if you are underwater and should say "-2". This is presumably a bug?
• If clicking-moving into water, the game doesn't stop you until you are half-way drowning.
• The standard tile-set is bit unclear about where land ends and where water begins. So you may think you have gotten out of the water, but you will keep losing air without a proper indication.

These things combined can actually make a mis-click in Derth a potential death trap for a new player.

Several things can be done about this:

• Give the air meter a proper recovery number (-2 when loosing air, +3 when recovering)
• Add a special visual effect when under water. Tint the screen blue (similar to the red near-death fullscreen effect) or cover the user sprite in a water/suffocating-effect.
• Add a "Suffocating" detrimental status as soon as you are loosing air. This will prevent the auto-move system from getting you into deep water. It will also help tell you when you have gotten out of trouble.
• Don't make 0 air cause insta-death. Instead give (new) players an extra chance to react by causing large amounts of HP damage when you are out of air, so that you have a few turns to get away. To prevent players from surviving this by healing the damage, make the damage increase each turn you are without air. (First turn: 10% HP loss, Second turn: 20% HP loss, etc.). Without healing, this would allow the player to survive 3 turns before accumulating 100% damage (10%+20%+30%+40%=100%). With healing they could survive at most a few more turns, as they would take 50% and 60% damage in the following turns.

Dacke wrote:[*]Add a special visual effect when under water. Tint the screen blue (similar to the red near-death fullscreen effect) or cover the user sprite in a water/suffocating-effect.

Unless I'm much mistaken, this already happens when you're down to a certain amount of air. Also, there is an instant indication that you are underwater in the form of an oxygen meter appearing (and any roguelike player who doesn't register sudden big changes to their meters deserves everything they get).

Dacke wrote:[*]Don't make 0 air cause insta-death. Instead give (new) players an extra chance to react by causing large amounts of HP damage when you are out of air, so that you have a few turns to get away. To prevent players from surviving this by healing the damage, make the damage increase each turn you are without air. (First turn: 10% HP loss, Second turn: 20% HP loss, etc.). Without healing, this would allow the player to survive 3 turns before accumulating 100% damage (10%+20%+30%+40%=100%). With healing they could survive at most a few more turns, as they would take 50% and 60% damage in the following turns.[/list]

This is a great idea. I've always been bewildered that 0 air is an instakill. You can act while stunned, frozen, confused by unspeakable horrors writhing inside your mind, set on fire, poisoned and afflicted by magical disease, even if they all happen at the same time, but the second your lungs are empty it's time to go to the Great Character Vault In The Sky?

It should probably go with some sort of "drowning" debuff, so that new players realise the damage is going to keep going up, and don't try to heal their way out of it before looking for air.

Velorien wrote:

Dacke wrote:

• Add a special visual effect when under water. Tint the screen blue (similar to the red near-death fullscreen effect) or cover the user sprite in a water/suffocating-effect.

Unless I'm much mistaken, this already happens when you're down to a certain amount of air. Also, there is an instant indication that you are underwater in the form of an oxygen meter appearing (and any roguelike player who doesn't register sudden big changes to their meters deserves everything they get).

But when you get out of the water the meter stays there. So this would help you know if you are still under water or not. I had several newb-moments when I thought I had gotten out but I was still drowning.

Also, this is supposed to be the friendly, visually communicative rouge like!

Dacke wrote:But when you get out of the water the meter stays there. So this would help you know if you are still under water or not. I had several newb-moments when I thought I had gotten out but I was still drowning.

Good point. Actually, this is an issue all of its own - why does it take so long for the air meter to recharge on land? I can see where you might only get so much out of gulping down air bubbles underwater (and this makes the water dungeons more challenging/interesting), but it seems daft that once you're on the surface surrounded by endless air, it takes you many turns just to fill up your lungs.

Dacke wrote:Also, this is supposed to be the friendly, visually communicative rouge like!

Bah, humbug. You kids with your modern information-providing, hand-holding, nose-wiping, OoD-limiting roguelikes! Why, in my day... etc. etc.

Well a bit of it is how you look at the air meter. I think it's actually pretty realistic if you look at it as the point you pass out. If that happens under water, you're dead. And it's going to happen before you take health damage, assuming you don't panic and start trying to breathe water.

And if you come up for air with a highly depleted meter, it's not like coming back up after a doing a lap on the swimming pool, but after extreme coral diver style life-threatening stunts. Taking a couple of minutes to recover doesn't seem out of place to me.

That said, a couple of extra warning mechanisms wouldn't come amiss. It's always annoying when you die from not noticing someting that should be glaringly obvious to your character.

Still, on the auto-explore thread someone complained about it immediately stopping - I think both click-moving and auto-explore should wait until you have lost about 25-30% of your air before stopping, as a compromise between convenience and safety.

Velorien wrote:This is a great idea. I've always been bewildered that 0 air is an instakill.

0 life is also insta-kill

jotwebe wrote:I think both click-moving and auto-explore should wait until you have lost about 25-30% of your air before stopping, as a compromise between convenience and safety.

This is how it currently is. Running and auto-explore stops when you've lost more than 25% of air (i.e., when your at less than 75% max air capacity).

Heh. It's a pretty minor statement, but if it helps any, ASCII is very clear about what tiles are and aren't water, if there's some confusion in the fancier stuff about the difference. The symbols . and ~ are pretty distinct from each other

I'm not sure how you would drown on the edge of a lake/pool anyway.
I know drowning in shallow water is technically possible, but I'm not sure it needs to be possible in game.

tiger_eye wrote:

jotwebe wrote:I think both click-moving and auto-explore should wait until you have lost about 25-30% of your air before stopping, as a compromise between convenience and safety.

This is how it currently is. Running and auto-explore stops when you've lost more than 25% of air (i.e., when your at less than 75% max air capacity).

I found that behaviour incredibly annoying as a new player, especially in places like Derth and Lake Nur. Where the character happily runs far out into the water and then complains about suffocation on every step on the way back to land.

Dacke wrote: I found that behaviour incredibly annoying as a new player, especially in places like Derth and Lake Nur. Where the character happily runs far out into the water and then complains about suffocation on every step on the way back to land.

This isn't going to be possible without annoying behaviour on some level. Consider that otherwise you'd have to have done every step manually. I like it that auto-explore can now cross small bodies of water without going into a panic.