hyperme
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Currently scripted monsters can't access brain pathing. However with modern DRODscript technology there are ways to change this.

Firstly, there is the Get Natural Target command, which supports multiple options, but currently only has one. An option of "Brained Choice" could return the tile that would be picked by a brained monster with the same movement type as the character.

Secondly, 5.2 will be adding a new feature that allows certain pre-defined functions to be used where ever a variable can be used. This technology can be used to provide direct access to tile scores, for any movement type. (even the special ones used by horns)

Are there any other brain-based thoughts for scripting that people have?

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averagemoe
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I'd like to have my scripts be able to easily tell the difference between whether they can smell an invisible player themselves, or if they're only smelling it through a brain's "nose".

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Nuntar
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"Brained Choice" sounds like it would be enough for the primary use case of giving custom monsters brained movement; however, I have a couple of questions about how exactly it would work.

* What would it return if there is no brained path -- would it be smart enough to compute the monster's unbrained move (depending on its base type) in that case?

* Would it be correctly fooled by decoys etc? (Note that the second feature hyperme listed could be used to script a custom brained monster that is not fooled and paths strictly to the player only.)

averagemoe wrote:
I'd like to have my scripts be able to easily tell the difference between whether they can smell an invisible player themselves, or if they're only smelling it through a brain's "nose".

Very easy. Just subtract the monster's coordinates from the player's to check whether the player is within smelling range.

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Rabscuttle
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This would allow us to make scared monsters, right? Get the chosen square and then we can pick the tile opposite.

So we could make a roach queen without the "turn to centre" behaviour, or an always scared wraithwing, or an anti-wubba.

Actually, could we get an option to return the direction instead of the tile? That would make it simpler to do this, or to return a "no brained path" value.

averagemoe
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Now that I hear that, maybe what would make things easiest would be a command to check whether the player is invisible at all.

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There are two types of sheep in the world. Those who jump off a bridge when told to, and those who jump off a bridge when told not to. Don't be either.

hyperme
Level: Smitemaster

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Here some thoughts about thoughts:

For the genuine, and probably more useful brained pathing emulation, it would be possible for a "Brained Choice" option to be fooled by decoys, and to fall back to unbrained moves if there isn't a path. A decoy-proof option could also be provided.

An option to provide the direction of a brained step would also be a fairly simple extension. When the brain would ask a monster to wait, or when no path is available, it would put a value of 4 into _ReturnX. (possibly the orientation version could put the opposite of the prefered direction in _ReturnY?)

Querying the player state is a little outside of the scope of this request, but it should be possible. Various options are possible, such as "Wait for" command. With options for Invisible, Fast, and Powered.

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