ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

First off, apologies--I posted about this a couple days in the autoexplore improvement thread, but I'm not sure how much visibility that gets (it's an old thread with multiple pages and I often skip over that sort of thing) and this is something that's been driving me crazy lately and I'd really like to see a fix.

Basically, I've noticed (and I'm embarrassed it took as long as it did) that when I run across an enemy while autoexploring, the game apparently takes an additional turn for my guy to come to a halt, giving the other critter the first shot. If I'm walking around without autoexplore and round a corner to find an elven mage, I get first shot and take it out no problem (or I could shield, teleport away, etc...). If autoexplore rounds the corner, the mage gets first shot. Being that I typically play nightmare, that sort of thing probably accounts for most of my deaths--in Rhaloran Camp, elven mages can one shot you with earthen missiles, and I've had that happen in places like Daikara where I round a corner to get pummeled by multiple lightning strikes and boulder throws from the group of snow giants lurking there.

I don't know if that's intentional behavior, sort of a "perils of autoexplore" kind of thing. But I really don't think it should be. Obviously this could be mitigated by not using autoexplore, especially when playing on nightmare. But I don't have a desktop computer, always play on my laptop--autoexplore takes away a lot of the tedium when I don't have hardware peripherals like a mouse or number pad handy (also I play on OSX, which has wonky targetting problems with mouse/touchpad, making those methods even more annoying/distracting). I just don't think you should be penalized for this, especially with something that can easily be (and often is) fatal to a character.

Anyone else have a problem with this?

It's the same thing that would happen if you moved into their sight radius, though. At least, as far as I've been able to tell.

That is, you move, then it's their turn and they get to fire. I don't think there's an extra turn in there. I think that, if the player moved as simply as the auto-explore, it'd get hit too.

If this is true, this is basically how auto-explore should function, to me-automatically and as fast as possible, but not tactically. If it really is eating an extra turn, that's another story, but I have not noticed that...

What I am sure does happen is that it fails to notice projectiles, to a degree, though. If there's a projectile coming, but no enemy in sight, it won't stop. Perhaps this is the effect you've noticed?

I've felt like it happens to me as well, but I'm thinks it's not real, just a psychological effect of the speed of autoexplore.

I have had situations where I can see a creature for a moment that autoexplore wouldn't recognize, for example if you pass a corridor and something moves into your vision as you move away, you get a glimpse of it, but autoexplore ignores it. Same with catching a glimpse of a stealthed creature that disappears on mouseover. I consider those a bug turned feature so I understand why autoexplore ignores them. On the other hand it has alerted me to stealthed creatures that have no visual but do appear on mouseover. I do wish those had some kind of visual since you are supposed to be aware of them.

I too have felt at times that strage things happen with auto-explore timing. If you have pets, sometimes auto-explore will be stopped because you see an enemy, but your pets kill it in their turn so when you can actually give an order there is no enemy anymore.

Also I have seen autoexplore stop after moving away from the spotted enemy. An enemy is spotted, flashes into view but the character takes another step and the enemy is now outside light radius. It's easy to miss and then you have to go looking for the enemy you stopped for.

I've seen it fail to stop altogether, particularly for snakes (all fast movers?).

The failing to stop for movement is a weird issue with what the player sees not entirely being what the engine perceives.

It's complicated, but IIRC the simple fact of how it works is, if an enemy never is within your sight range at the start of your turn, even if it was in your sight range on its turn, auto-explore never really gets a chance to stop for it.

I think the problem would be fixed if it didn't take a huge amount of engine overhaul to correct.