averagemoe
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 492
Registered: 03-22-2012
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In the post-mastery area of TSS, there's mention of a scrapped monster from TCB, a giant ant that leaves a scented trail. This is my rundown of how I imagine it would work.

Ants would spawn from an anthill every 10 turns, similar to waterskippers. Any square that an ant steps on will immediately have a scented trail placed on it.

If an ant can kill it's target on it's move it will do so. If it can't reach the target, it will check all surrounding tiles for a scented trail and move to the newest. If the ant can't find a scented trail newer than the one it's currently standing on, it will move like a roach.

When brained, the ant will find the square of scented trail closest to the player by brain pathmap, preferring newer bits of trail over older. If there is no connected scented trail that the player can be pathmapped to from, it will choose the one that is closest ignoring all obstacles. It will then make it's own pathmap to that square, considering all tiles without scented trails to be obstacles. If it is already standing on the target square, it will move like a brained roach.

Scented trails can be broken by closing doors on them, but they will remain on top of the door, and reconnect if the door reopens. They can be permanently destroyed by dropping them in pits or water, whether by trapdoor, platform, or bridge.

Now of course, the main reason I haven't actually scripted these is because I don't think it's possible to do so with NPCs. The closest I can think of involves setting variables for every single square in the room, and that's just for unbrained movement. So here's hoping that DROD might go into a second story arc and this will be a proper game element in a new release.

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averagemoe
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 492
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Oh, if making a roach move causes the ant to step on an existing tile of scented trail, it will overwrite the age of that tile such that it becomes the newest one in the room.

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mauvebutterfly
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 776
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The main problem with this kind of a mechanic is clutter on the screen. How would you mark the scented tiles so that the player can see them? Would the player need to right-click to get "scent turn order"?

Also, I don't know that this would even add anything new or interesting to the game, since this is kind of like the behaviour of slayers and wisps already, only with a new slayer spawning at the origin every 10 turns.

The developers may have their own additional reasons for rejecting this concept, but this concept was ultimately rejected for a reason. I would say that there is an almost zero probability of this enemy ever being implemented.

You're always free to try scripting something like this in the editor though.

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averagemoe
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 492
Registered: 03-22-2012
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I rethought the system. And I think I have something that might be feasible to script with some new features that have been confirmed for the build after the upcoming one.

Instead of having an order to them, a tile of scented trail will instead just point in one of the eight directions. If an ant is standing on one, it will move in the indicated direction. If it isn't standing on scented trail, it will move like a roach (brained if applicable) and leave a trail on the tile it just left pointing to the move it just made. And if a trail tells it to make a move that's blocked, it will make a roach move, and overwrite that trail to the move it just made.

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