uncopy2002
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If a monster is pushed towards a sword, then if the movement order is right, i.e the sword wielder moves later than the pusher, it'll properly trigger a kill.

However, if a monster is pushed towards a spear or pickaxe, then no matter which side you push them from the monster will not be killed. Intuitively we'd think that killing a monster is the same whether you do it directly (moving weapon towards monster) or reversely (moving monster towards weapon), so perhaps this guarantees a change

Incidentally, pushing a monster towards a caber with a non-caber isn't considered a kill, and pushing a monster towards a dagger has no effects whatsoever.

(By the way, pushing a dagger around only triggers the thrust part. It doesn't not give the wielder bodykill status, even if it's the Player being pushed.)

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[Last edited by uncopy2002 at 02-25-2016 04:17 PM]

Dragon Fogel
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A weapon can only kill on the wielder's turn, (or when calculating tar stabs) and staying in place with a spear or pickaxe doesn't kill. (You can kill without moving or turning with the spear, but you have to bump whatever's in front of you to do so.) So, while this is weird, it seems to be in line with the general rules.

Not sure about the caber, though. If the caber has something pushed onto it, and the caber-wielder stays still, I'd expect that to be a kill.

Xindaris
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I get the impression the Caber kills things against walls and blocks explosions because the caber is "like a moving wall" and only being crushed between two "walls" kills something. So a stick wouldn't be "wally" enough to make the kill, but another caber would.

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 02-25-2016 07:52 PM]

Dragon Fogel
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A wait move with a caber kills when something is under it, regardless of surroundings. I remember there being a bugfix related to this, might be some minor quirk with it I'm forgetting.

So if you push into a caber, and the caber-wielder doesn't move or turn (so a decoy, for instance), that should be a kill. If the caber-wielder moves so that their caber is no longer over whatever got pushed there, that shouldn't be a kill.

mrimer
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Thanks for reporting these issues, uncopy2002! We'll investigate them at some point. Since we already have a 5.1 release candidate posted, I expect changes to fix these issues you're reporting will go into a later patch.

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Dragon Fogel
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I was glancing over older bug reports in case anything big had gone overlooked and realized something relevant to this one:

You can destroy a keg or mirror by pushing it into a spear or pickaxe from the killing side, regardless of the move order of its wielder.

This is probably a consequence of the fact that it's always been possible to destroy a mirror by pushing it directly into a sword - whatever process handled that has probably been adapted and reused.

However, the current behavior with monsters is a consequence of the fact that attacks by weapons are only processed on their wielder's turn (outside of the above case). This is longstanding behavior - it goes all the way back to tar not being cut if it grows into the space where a sword is. So if any changes are made, they should be thought about very carefully.

Basically just bumping this for further discussion. My personal opinion is that it's probably best to leave things as-is to avoid breaking things, even if it's not entirely intuitive.

skell
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I think this should be fixed. In my opinion it's extremely unintuitive if pushing a monster onto a spiky thing doesn't kill it.

I don't think pushing onto cabers should kill though, I agree with Xindaris here.

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mauvebutterfly
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I would expect a caber to block movement into the tile entirely, so pushing a monster under a caber should behave like trying to push the monster into a wall.

I'm pretty sure this is how the game logic currently works anyway. I just did a test and was unable to push a decoy under a caber using a staff, but I could crush a decoy against a caber using another caber.

I guess I'm just voicing my support for "make spear/pickaxe kill but leave the caber as it is"

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skell
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Okay, how it works right now:
1. Pushing monsters into sword - monster ends up under the sword and is not hurt by the pushing. They can be damaged by the stab that happens when the entity who wields the sword has its move. This is a behavior that goes all the way back to forever.
2. Pushing monsters into a caber - they do not end up under the caber.
3. Any other weapon - monster lands under the weapon, safe.

What's most intuitive to me:
1. Pushing a monster into a sword - immediately stab the monster.
2. Pushing a monster into a caber - prevent the push.
3. Pushing a monster into a tile occupied by dagger - nothing happens.
4. Pushing a monster into the monster wielding a dagger from the front - nothing happens. I believe it makes most sense to assume daggers are a weapon that requires intent to use.
4. Pushing a monster into a sharp edge of any other weapon - immediately stab the monster.
5. Pushing a monster into a flat edge of any other weapon - monster ends up on the weapon's tile.

Why it makes sense to me:
1. For the most part it's a simple translation of real-world phenomena into the world of DROD. It doesn't matter if I am pushed with a sword into someone else or someone else is pushed onto my sword, the effect is the same.
2. It has the symmetry of how most people expect swords to work - there have been probably a dozen threads in this board about why something can survive under a sword/not trigger. Tar growing a vulnerable edge onto a sword being a prime example.
3. I think it has better puzzle potential

What are the dangers:
1. A lot of broken demos and rooms? Someone more familiar with post-TSS architecture can most likely better

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Nuntar
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skell wrote: What's most intuitive to me:
1. Pushing a monster into a sword - immediately stab the monster.

Why it makes sense to me:
1. For the most part it's a simple translation of real-world phenomena into the world of DROD. It doesn't matter if I am pushed with a sword into someone else or someone else is pushed onto my sword, the effect is the same.

I completely agree -- but the big problem with making any change is that this isn't how swords work in DROD, and that seems to be too well-established to change. As Fogel said, the underlying behaviour (swords only stab on their wielder's turn) goes back to DROD 1, and it's had an entire level devoted to it in Advanced Concepts. I don't like it but I think it's too late to change.

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[Last edited by Nuntar at 10-07-2020 02:49 PM]

skell
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Nuntar wrote:
I completely agree -- but the big problem with making any change is that this isn't how swords work in DROD, and that seems to be too well-established to change. As Fogel said, the underlying behaviour (swords only stab on their wielder's turn) goes back to DROD 1, and it's had an entire level devoted to it in Advanced Concepts. I don't like it but I think it's too late to change.

Oh I am aware of that - I mention it in the same post you quoted. But you're missing my point - I am not saying change how sword or weapon stabs work. Change how pushed monsters react to weapons. There is already a way to multi-stab with the same character by pushing them (though it's still limited to one stab per tile), and you can achieve the effect I am talking about without touching AE-era mechanics.

That still doesn't change the fact it would most likely break demos and rooms, though.

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Dragon Fogel
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The behavior is present in every room that involves pushing weapons and things with swords, which is probably not a small number of rooms.

It would definitely break demos. I remember at least one room where I pushed a guard into another guard's sword and the second guard turned his sword to avoid the kill.

Succor, in the Arky's Revenge compilation, depends on the current behavior. Spoilers for that room's solution.



I'm not sure off the top of my head what other rooms depend on the current behavior for monsters. Another Arky contest entry, Bumfuzzling, depends on the current behavior for mirrors.

Nuntar
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skell wrote: Oh I am aware of that - I mention it in the same post you quoted. But you're missing my point - I am not saying change how sword or weapon stabs work. Change how pushed monsters react to weapons.

I don't think I'm missing your point. I'm saying it's conceptually inconsistent if we have "sword-bearers only stab on their turn" but also "sword = instant death for pushing".

You make a good point, though, that we already have the situation where A pushing B, if B is sworded, so that B's sword strikes C counts as a kill on A's turn, so we have an inconsistency no matter how we handle this.

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skell
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Nuntar wrote:
I don't think I'm missing your point. I'm saying it's conceptually inconsistent if we have "sword-bearers only stab on their turn" but also "sword = instant death for pushing".

Ah, gotcha. I thought I was just not expressing myself clearly, which I tend to do (and I was writing that reply during a short break).

You're right, there is no ultimate consistency we can have. I wonder though if we only changed it for Spear and Pickaxe, as the title of the thread suggests. There'd be way fewer chances of this breaking loads of demos.

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mrimer
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I'm okay with us changing it for spear and pickaxe.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 10-07-2020 10:04 PM]

skell
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Two things. This reply I made applies to this. I won't be implementing or attempting to implement this change after all.

Second thing, see what I've found in the code for pushing monsters:

void CCurrentGame::WeaponPushback(
...
//FIXME: Need to discuss whether interactions with tokens/fuses/etc. are useful

I guess the discussion never happened.

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[Last edited by skell at 10-15-2020 08:39 AM]

mrimer
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That is true.

Okay.

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Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.