Doom
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File: Dagger Test.hold (1.2 KB)
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See title. There were already a bazillion dagger-issues in the previous thread, but it looks like we didn't find everything. This behavior is inconsistent with other things wielding a dagger. You can normally only kill things by moving or bumping, not with QW.

Small sample hold attached. Guard kills roach when you walk east. All other roaches in the room are unkillable.

Tested in 5.1.0.6501.

I've only noticed this problem with guards. All other elements seem to be acting as expected, including custom NPCs with "Faces towards like a guard" or "Move to player" commands.

Dragon Fogel
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I did some more testing on this.

I think the guard isn't actually rotating, as in doing the equivalent of QW. Rather, he's directly turning to face the player.

In short - he's making a bump move against a monster and killing it while staying in place.

You can see this in the test hold in Doom's post. Remove the bomb, place the guard facing north, and place Beethro SE of the guard. The guard will immediately turn, killing the roach but not moving.

This also suggests that he's considering the roach to be an obstacle for the purposes of his pathmap, as if you're not SE of him he won't step that way of his own volition. Instead he moves in place to face you. If he were following a brain pathmap, his logic would see a tile he can freely move into to his SE and he would try to step into it, then presumably succeed because he has a dagger.

Dragon Fogel
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Okay, some more tests.

Monsters and other brain-invisible obstacles don't interfere with the guard's pathmapping by default. However, if he's surrounded by obstacles, even ones that don't register as such on the brain pathmap, his behavior is "turn to face the player."

And his "turn to face the player" behavior seems to be set up as "bump with dagger", which registers as an attack. This means he stays in place even if he kills a monster that way.

I hope this helps to narrow down which part of the code needs an adjustment.

There's a separate question of whether being surrounded by obstacles where some are brain-invisible should make him face the player (current behavior), or face the path he wants to take but can't. This probably goes in the pile of "rules to figure out once the bugs are fixed", though.

mrimer
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I believe hyperme has fixed this issue for 5.1.1.

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NiroZ
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I can confirm that in 5.1.1.alpha.2020-09-23 on windows 10 that this is fixed.

However, for some reason the game won't show the guards or stalwarts facing the direction of the player if it means that the dagger will appear on the same square as a monster. I'm pretty sure that this is just a visual bug because if you continue moving past the monster, they will suddenly snap back to facing you.

hyperme
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NiroZ wrote:
I can confirm that in 5.1.1.alpha.2020-09-23 on windows 10 that this is fixed.

However, for some reason the game won't show the guards or stalwarts facing the direction of the player if it means that the dagger will appear on the same square as a monster. I'm pretty sure that this is just a visual bug because if you continue moving past the monster, they will suddenly snap back to facing you.

I've checked this, and it's not visual. The guard/stalwart isn't rotating in this case. This is because monsters with daggers never rotate towards their target. So if a guard is stuck, they won't turn in directions that have a dangerous move in that direction.

I don't think there's much of a point in changing this, since dagger turns are completely harmless. I guess it does look a little weird, but I don't think it actually has a gameplay effect.

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NiroZ
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I'm guessing that the slayer has a different series of steps which is why it doesn't consider turning towards other monsters a dangerous move. I get that it's not a bug, but it does look inconsistent to the untrained eye.

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[Last edited by NiroZ at 09-25-2020 05:43 AM : rethought my post]

Dragon Fogel
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hyperme wrote:
I don't think there's much of a point in changing this, since dagger turns are completely harmless. I guess it does look a little weird, but I don't think it actually has a gameplay effect.

Technically it does. If the dagger is over a pit or water, pushing a keg into it will make it explode, so the dagger position is potentially relevant. Also scripting can check for orientation and will soon be able to check for presence of a weapon, though that's minor.

Stalwart and soldier daggers also affect goblin movement, but I don't see how this would come up in a situation where they'd have a valid target. And if they don't have a valid target, they wouldn't turn anyways.

The handful of specific situations where this is relevant probably isn't a big enough deal to be worth settling for 5.1.1, but when 5.2 becomes the focus it might be good to discuss what makes the most sense and try to implement it that way.