Reflective eyes for increased suspense.

[kevingranade]

Thought about this when driving at night, when the player is carrying a light source at night and a monster with night vision looks at the player, the monsters eyes can reflect the light back at the player. This will reveal that a monster is present, but not the kind of monster. We can also add other reflective objects with a similar effect.

Implementation wise, this would be a check somewhere in either the creature::sees() method or the drawing code that if the creature isn't visible normally, it checks for the reflective eyes tag and a suitable light source, and if both are found the game draws a pair of eyes instead of darkness.

Potential features:
A chance of eye visibility each turn rather than determinism.
This could be random or based on creature attitude.

Keyword for easier finding: Eyeshine

[kettleswordfang]

this is awesome.

should be a chance of appearing though, i agree. that way you get a flick of them in your vision, then if it's hostile you'll get another slightly closer, and closer...

[DracoGriffin]

Height would potentially need to be considered, as glowing red eyes from a canine-like creature compared to say chickens walkers and hulk-type enemies. Potentially extend to combat system similarly to how size affects combat like in D&D 5E.

[Solusphere]

This idea sounds awesome! How would it work with Shade zombies?

In the case of Chicken Walkers, they glow in the dark anyway, so a glowy eyes mechanic would never trigger for them.

[kevingranade]

Height would potentially need to be considered,

I don't see how it would, since you can't see the environment around the creature, it becomes nearly impossible to determine anything about size, elevation, distance etc.

How would it work with Shade zombies?

Shade zombies, being magically scientifically stealthy, would not be subject to this feature.

[DracoGriffin]

I don't see how it would, since you can't see the environment around the creature, it becomes nearly impossible to determine anything about size, elevation, distance etc.

Not sure as to how to clarify this further, but here goes:
Consider a wolf or zombified equivalent and a humanoid or zombified equivalent in the darkness, while it is true as you've stated the player wouldn't see the environment or the specifics of a creature, the player should be able to discern whether it's something crawling along the ground (whether actually crawling or lower to the ground due to size) or walking, even higher based on some creatures/enemies (like hulks, chicken walkers, shoggoths), especially flying ones.

Although, doing my own homework, creatures do have sizes:
TINY Squirrel SMALL Dog MEDIUM Human LARGE Cow HUGE Tank

So these'd just have to be expanded upon if the player is inspecting (Look Around hotkey 'x') the reflective eyes, exampled as such:
"There are glowing eyes here, skittering along the ground" -- size: TINY
"You notice a glint of eyes darting around in the sky" -- size: TINY, flags: FLIES
"You see a pair of eyes staring back at you" -- size: MEDIUM
"Giant eyes are piercing through the darkness, gazing at you" -- size: HUGE

Otherwise, is it just going to be "reskinned" feature from "You heard a sound from here" to "You see reflective eyes here"?

I'd suggest that the above would offer further ambience and suspense as the player would be given further choice as to continue on or turn back.

[kevingranade]

I see, it's not about size, but gait, i.e. how the eyes move.
Your examples make the case (except the HUGE one, it's not clear how they eyes of a hulk are going to move differently from those of a regular zombie).

I don't anticipate adding that in the initial version though, particularly since the different types then need different symbols, and a lot of thought needs to go into what the different groups are.

[stale]

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[LyleSY]

Now that we have bodytypes defined, that may give us the gait info you were talking about here, for example

bird: Two small points of light dart about.
dog: Two glowing eyes stare at you unblinkingly/occasionally blinking, bouncing up and down as they move
human: Two glowing eyes stare at you from about your height without blinking, swaying back and forth as they move

[kevingranade]

Revisiting this, I don't find the gait thing convincing. Maybe they're moving, maybe they aren't, maybe they're moving smoothly, darting about, etc. At the end of the day you'd have a bunch of situational descriptors that don't tell you anything because most of them apply to many different monsters.