PlaneShift

Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Wormtail_ on April 13, 2004, 11:25:56 pm

Title: Sensory Dysfunction
Post by: Wormtail_ on April 13, 2004, 11:25:56 pm
I do not think there is another topic on this, so anyway... This shall be in a Q&A format, for what I think is easier to respond to.

1. What is sensory dysfunction?

Sensory dysfunction is where one or more of the five known senses ceases to function properly. Permanent blindness and deafness are not examples, as it is total loss of functioning, but could still be implemented. Temporary blindness and deafness are examples.

In PS, I believe, only sight and sound can be used.

2. When does one suffer from it?

One suffers from it by either choosing it in the character creation screen (if it\'s put in, of course) or has one of the senses disrupted by an outside/inside force. Outside being magic and sudden light, inside being poison.

3. Why should we have it?

This offers strategic advantages, as you could blind or deafen an opponent and surprise them from in front. Or you could have the wonderful feeling of being blinded and stumble around in the dark.

4. How does it affect characters?

It affects characters in one of several ways. Sight can be disrupted by either instant loss of sight (temporary, or permanent?)/hearing or slowly taking away sight/sound. Say, for example, that you can see for 100 feet (just an example). Then, your sight is damaged somehow and you can only see for 90 feet, and depending on what damaged you, it may stay there temporarily or sight may continue to recede to 80, 70, until a certain stop point.

5. What advantages does sensory dysfunctioning give?

As said before, tactical advantages. Also, it promotes realism somewhat, and while that is not always a good thing... Symbionts (see Parasites thread, last page) can draw upon the use of the senses as payment and give something else, or vice versa.

Comments? If there is another thread on this, please post the link, but I am sure there is not.
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Post by: Icefalcon on April 14, 2004, 03:22:30 am
Sounds good to me, but I think a sensory dysfunction should be rare and caused by only extreme conditions...
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Post by: XpYtZ on April 14, 2004, 07:54:30 am
Hey nifty. Would it be on creatures (non sentient or artificial life forms.) or only on characters?
If characters only?Uh limited point in implementing it. On creatures though it would be a good thing to add. Nerve damage is always fun ?I like watching folks convulse on the ground after hitting them with lightning  :D
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Post by: Xanaroth on April 14, 2004, 10:44:19 am
sounds good, tough i wont like permanent blindness/deafness... i like more when sight for ex. is totally gone (screen turns white) and then slowly turns back.. like you start with total screen turns white, then you can see your own weps etc again.(10 sec or so) after 20-25 sec you can see white-gray again.
25-35 sec you can see black-white (looks like old movie style:P) and after 40-50 sec you have your whole vision back. Tough blindness also gives you a block-decrease, a hit % decrease, and a chance to inflict self-injury. (if you are totally blind, and you strike, there is a chance of falling due to lack of balance, or a chance of cutting yourself by swinging your wepon against yourself)
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Post by: Wormtail_ on April 14, 2004, 05:03:56 pm
I like the idea for a white screen for temporary blindness. Characters will also have difficulty moving, as they might walk into a wall. That should produce a sound effect, so people know they ran into a wall. Should there be a skill for \"blind combat\" that trains characters to fight effectivley while blind?

Blindness/deafness will affect creatures and sentient beings, such as characters.

Sensory dysfunction, if Xanaroth\'s system is implemented, should not be so rare as it is not so extreme. Permanent sensory dysfunction is in a way permadeath - death of the senses. And using sensory dysfunction can easily be used as tactics if there are no extremely radical conditions that require dysfunctioning of the senses.
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Post by: ShadowFish on April 14, 2004, 08:31:32 pm
yah dysfunction would be really useful to thieves and assassins....also blind combat could also be done.....you just make the screen sow outlines of things kind of like sonar, only when there is sound....this way when they are blinded they can attack the people out lined...of course they wouldnt know details like who it was....just hieght...and basic shape....they would also see the walls too i suppose....then most of the effects of temporary blindness go away unless you are also  defeaned.....

how would other players be able to blind other things though....large, magic light bursts, flash bombs for thieves.... or just hit the persson really, really hard???
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Post by: XpYtZ on April 14, 2004, 09:10:41 pm
Any of those ways would work if they existed in game. There is also the looking at somebody that?s walking naked through the square option ;)
But in all seriousness this would be an awesome addition.

Also you could be deafened by the crack of a thunderbolt, an explosion, getting hit really hard, etc. just think about all the fun you could have with a guy who is deaf and blind. Leading him out of the dungeon?into a room full of snakes?Where is my mind lately?
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Post by: Wormtail_ on April 14, 2004, 10:14:42 pm
Deafness could be expressed as the chatbox vanishing, and sound (other than music) vanishing. The chatbox, I assume, is not a method of telepathy and communication through ears and mouth. And the vanishing sound is only logical. Deafness can be caused by really loud sounds, poison of some sort, magic of another sort, and so on.

Players could blind other things by the things you described, Shadowfish, and damaging their eyes. Which would hurt.

And if you meet a person who was deaf and blind, guide them like a friend, not a grief causer. It\'s not exactly nice to lead the poor person to a room full of snakes, especially once they get over their blindness.
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Post by: Fast_Bear on April 15, 2004, 12:06:03 am
i know a good way 2 implement blindness & sutch, make it so when u attack some1nes head(melee ofcource) that they have a chance of nicking their eyes & ears & crap, after all thats only logical
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Post by: RussianVodka on April 15, 2004, 02:11:24 am
Well, as you people know, people who are bilind, rely on their ears, and touch, to do things. Well, if PS were to have a suround sound thing, that would realy help. Plus, because a PC game can not implement touch and feeling, my proposition is this:

When a player is blinded, he is not 100% blind, so that the screen goes black, or white, or something. But they can still see things that are within reach, anything beyond that is darkness. So, if they wanted to say enter a building, they would have to come close to it, and rub against the walls untill they find the door.

I think this will be a good choice becuase it is easy to implement. All it technicaly does is shorten the draw distance of the objects. (in fact, blindness may actualy be good for people with crapy comps).
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Post by: Entamis on April 15, 2004, 04:28:33 pm
I think that blindness should cause a very short sight and some sort of blur effect. It should also lower many skills.
Chatbox shouldn\'t vanish, just stop displaying new text.
It would be cool if the sensory disfunction could be healed using healing skills, otherwise stayed a long time.
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Post by: ShadowFish on April 15, 2004, 08:44:42 pm
maybe the short vision thing but when you are blinded you wouldnt be able to see details just what you think it looks like....
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Post by: Halvord on April 15, 2004, 11:53:30 pm
Perhaps when blind you can only see (feel, get it)  \"colorless\" orange basic shapes when you get close enough to something.
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Post by: Wormtail_ on April 17, 2004, 06:51:08 pm
As for \'feeling\' shapes... I suppose getting close enough means actually physically touching the other object. Unless you mean that a character should somehow feel the heat emitted by the other object...

Perhaps races with an advanced sense of smell could, when bllnd, see outlines of creatures and items. That way, the sense of smell could be actually used. Smell could be fooled by using fake scents, however, but is a way to somewhat bypass restrictions imposed by blindness.
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Post by: SaintNuclear on April 17, 2004, 09:14:07 pm
Nice idea.
I think that feeling-dysfunction could actually be implemented too...
Let\'s say you fight someone, and he casted a no-feeling spell on you. It\'s alot harder to fight him, because you lose coordination.
Also, if someone slashes you while you can\'t feel anything, you don\'t know you got slashed.

The way it should be when you lose the feeling sense is that you won\'t see your hp draining, you\'ll have more chance of missing attacks, and you won\'t be able to perform complicated combos.


There is a problem though, if someone suffers from more than one sensory dysfunction, he won\'t be able to operate. If you lose both sight and feeling, how will you be able to move around? You\'ll just bump into buildings without knowing it, and walk off of cliffs until you die.

So maybe there should be only one type of sensory dysfunction, or that a char can\'t suffer from more than one at a time, and it\'s also rare for a char to have a dysfunction.
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Post by: Icefalcon on April 17, 2004, 10:10:16 pm
I dunno about that...feeling isnt a very big part of fighting, I mean all you feel is your sword hilt :rolleyes:

Again, I think these are good ideas, but they should be rare. I dont want my playing time interupted by \"blindness\"
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Post by: Entamis on April 18, 2004, 01:40:22 am
Of course, it should only happen under certain circumstances, like getting critical hit in battle. Normal person doing peaceful job propably would never get it, but adventurers who fight dangerous monsters should know the risk and be prepared to take it.
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Post by: Wormtail_ on April 18, 2004, 04:39:24 pm
Explorers could always suffer the risk as well, from monsters, falling rocks, injured eyes/ears/nose from frigid water, etc. And accidents always happen while doing a peaceful job, such as alchemy. Explosions or accidentally made toxic fumes might knock out some senses, but... For most other jobs, it probably won\'t happen on a regular basis. Assuming alchemy/explosions happen on a regular basis.

Perhaps a character should be able to suffer from only one \'complete\' sensory dysfunction. If another tries to cause an additional sense to malfunction, then that sense will only be dulled somewhat. For example, say a character is temporarily blind. Then another tries to take away his sense of feeling. That will only make it dull, not taken away completely. The character will still be able to feel some pain, but is unable to perform the more complicated maneuvers.

Echolocation could probably be implemented as a special racial ability. The type that bats use. It could be another alternative to moving around when blind/having a disrupted feeling. Deafness would disable this, obviously, which would make deafness something worse. As if the text not appearing on the chatbox was not bad enough, although I\'m not sure if echolocation should be an unique racial trait or anyone can use it. Or both, but the latter might need magic.
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Post by: Icefalcon on April 18, 2004, 06:17:06 pm
Im starting to like this idea :D
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Post by: ShadowFish on April 19, 2004, 01:02:19 pm
echo location is a racial ability...i dont think humans can echolocate without training....so it wouold either be a special racial trait or most races can do it but others are better at it.....

blindness from spells, gases and bombs should depend on the spell for time but should be generally short...so a person would be able to go around the player or hit him once or twice and get in a combo, maybe.....this way you waste time when putting all dysfunctions and by the time you finish with everything the first few would only last a couple more seconds, but when a person gets hit hard enough to go blind it should be rare but should last a while...
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Post by: Wormtail_ on April 20, 2004, 12:40:03 am
I\'d say echolocation should be a special racial trait. If not, then characters might have a difficult time trying to figure out which shrieks are their own and which are not. Realistically. If not, then any amount of characters without limit could perhaps echolocate. Should echolocation be with the use of ultransonic sound or within the average sound range?

As for the duration of sensory dysfunction, I agree. Usually, it should be short, but special cases that are mroe effective should last much longer periods of time. Either costly spells can do this, dumping on frigid water, somehow blocking the ears, etc. could cause the senses to be disrupted for longer periods of time.
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Post by: ShadowFish on April 20, 2004, 01:25:03 pm
echo location is in ultra sound i think....
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Post by: Fast_Bear on April 20, 2004, 11:33:47 pm
hey: RELLY good idea: y not use these spesial scenses abilitys while u DONT have a dysfunction, like using smell 2 identify items or using ultrasound 2 ease-drop on ppl 3 miles away
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Post by: Typhorean on April 21, 2004, 02:38:43 am
Ah, if deafness is going to stop the chatbox from displaying new text, then a decent amount of emotes such as points, beckons, nods and shakes of the head, etc should be implemented.  Blindness even be split into 2 or 3 different subcategories.  One decreasing the far clip of the rendering environment, one blurring things, and one decreasing the alpha of everything in the game world.  They could even be measured percentilly -- that would definitely make it so that if symbiotes were implented, there could be a large variety ways for them to mess ya up.
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Post by: Icefalcon on April 21, 2004, 04:32:14 am
Hmm that sounds a little too complicated to program, but if its not, then your idea would be awesome ;)
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Post by: Fast_Bear on April 23, 2004, 10:10:26 pm
whell if the blindness part is 2 complicated 2 program-then y not my idea of getting super-human sences in2 the game?
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Post by: dfryer on April 23, 2004, 11:27:44 pm
Hey, what about hallucination? Or an inability to control movement? (Try to take a step forward, end up wobbling to the side).   Hallucination could be done by switching models around, or maybe some creative graphics-engine based trickery (distortion, coloured haze, showers of particles).  Perhaps even misperception of who says what (auditory hallucination) or what items you are holding, or your health status.. \"whee, I\'m invincib--*splat*\"

Too much time in the tavern?  Chances of spontaneously accepting duels?  I think there is a lot of room to implement perceptual malfunction without introducing overcomplication.

Fast_Bear:
Super-human senses may be possible, perhaps \"rogue\" type characters or certain races have heightened senses (e.g. better vision in the dark, etc.) ...  eavesdropping might be fun, or perhaps spells which allow for temporary psychic perception of monsters.

Hopefully there will be thought on this put into future release, or at least considered by the rules team :)
Title: hi!
Post by: TheRedMonk on April 24, 2004, 12:15:29 am
My character Tybalt is blind which forces him to use his other senses more than other persons. The key to his perception is that he has practiced all his life to be able to feel the Ki that exists in every living being, and locate it. Sometimes RP:ing is just better :D
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Post by: Wormtail_ on April 24, 2004, 05:34:47 am
Hallucination is an excellent example of sensory dysfunction. Perhaps characters could hear things that aren\'t there if they\'re too paranoid as well, or have things appear on the chatbox that weren\'t really typed. Hallucinations could be caused by great fatigue, drinking the wrong substance, or some creature somehow confusing you in an odd way. Same with hearing things.

TheRedMonk, are you speaking of a \'Sixth Sense,\' that your character has? Even if you weren\'t, that could be an interesting ability you could choose. Meaning at the Char. Creation you could exchange the use of one sense for the use of another. That might be too much of a hassle, though, but just an idea inspired by the post above this one.