Improvements to helmets

Made some minor additions to the code:

Tin helmets block ESP:
https://github.com/Attnam/ivan/pull/265
SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

Full helmets protect head from sound damage:
https://github.com/Attnam/ivan/pull/266
SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

Cool!

I wonder if it will be worth it to carry a tin helmet around for mages...

Also I still think full helmets should dlightly (cca -5%) decrease your Per. Otherwise they are too easily better than normal helmets.

I commented on GitHub, but I think the full helmet 100% protection is too strong. Even if (as I presume) the rest of your body can still take sound damage. I think a special helmet or earmuffs or something offering full protection would be better; full helmets are just too common

The rest of the updates sound awesome though

Sound damage reduction from full helmets makes sense if it's not 100%, but I'm not too happy with the ESP protection from tin headgear. It's a bit cliché for IVAN, giving that ability only to tin is rather nethackish, and looking at the PR I can't see any way for players to discover the feature in-game.

I do concur it might be lowered a bit, even though protecting just head is rather OK as you will still take heavy damage to other body parts.


I love it! I would love if more materials had special properties, so sometimes even a mundane or low-tier material could be preferable for its unique properties.


Yeah, no way in the PR, but there are already mechanics in the game that are quite obscure and impossible to tell from in-game. People will eventually discover it and be amazed. That's the most awsome thing on all roguelikes - how many hidden coll mechanics you can find, because you are not guided around and instructed about every mechanic like in most other games. Just look at this thread how awsome and obscure things people found in IVAN, eventually.

I suggest we add a line of dialogue somewhere that would enlighten the player about tin hats a bit, to make it easier for them. Which reminds me I have to take a look at the hint guy NPC I was writing dialogue for.

For this feature, it was the only way I knew to do this without creating newfangled bug-prone code. In the game, when sound damage is done by , the damage gets divided up into different body parts according to body part volume. Head is least volume, so it typically receives less damage, in the order of 1-2 damage points. The full helmet SoundResistance = 2; For the damage output of , it only seems like it is 100% protection because you only have to put in a few points of resistance.
I could lower the SoundResistance to 1 for full helmets and special helmets (perp, attractivity etc)? That way there would be some resistance from a few tiles back, but you would still be vulnerable at point blank range, as one would expect with . Downside is, I don't think players would notice the difference from before. I made the changes here.



The change really is just a bit of a quirk. Is it really worth donning a crappy tin helmet just to evade ESP when you could be using ESP and wearing a more powerful helmet to help you find your enemies and kill them instead? I haven't tested whether it improves one's chances against battle mages etc, but it doesn't prevent you being infraseen, so I think a hapless, tin-helmet-wearing player would still get bombed by the corporation in the end.

In this case, I would vote for 100% reduction. Players will notice, plus you still take damage to torso and groin, so enner will not really become harmless.

Is it really worth adding a whole material property/game rule just to let creatures evade ESP when you could add an item that does the same thing in a way that's more consistent with the existing game rules?
Does the BlockESP flag prevent creatures from using ESP, or just being detected? Why?
About 1 in every 41 plain helmets are tin (no other headgear is generated as tin), and by the time the player has high enough INT to use ESP reliably almost every humanoid NPC will reject tin helmets because there are better options strewn around the dungeon floor. Will players ever fail to detect a threatening NPC because they found a tin helmet?
Does this change add more depth or more complexity?

You probably would not like NetHack. I love it and I love this change to tin helmets.

There is already a specific and quite useless code in IVAN to make banana peels resurrectable. And it is awsome. Why? Because of the incredible thought, work and love that went even into such a small detail. Also, this change is already mentioned in Doc/Old as one of planned features by the original dev team, so it's quite awsome to be finally implemented!

For the record, I think it's a bit amusing for tin to work against ESP. Dunno if I like it being totally impenetrable but it's funny nonetheless.

I like emergence, so I think adding properties to materials is preferable over creating a new item that does what it says on the box. Admittedly, the effect is restricted to helmets, and further limited to tin helmets. I guess it's borderline easter egg, but there is (very marginal) scope for players to discover the effect outside of this thread. Heck between us we've created stollen knives and christmas trees haven't we?

The code was ported from vasiliy's k8.i.v.a.n. which does the former part. I added some more code to prevent a character being ESP-seen while wearing a tin helmet, which does the latter part (which I felt was missing). The BlockESP flag actually deactivates the state... hmm. I wonder if this affects the danger level? A player would have to weigh the pros and cons for themself, but I think having ESP and using it is great, and a player would have to have an INT level of less than 5 to wear one anyway. Think of those people who wear them IRL?
To answer your question, it does both. Why? Because tin conceivably blocks ESP in both directions.

How do you do these sums so quickly? A player could equip its pet with one.

It adds minimal depth, but I'd say it adds minimal complexity at the same time. Would it be fair to say that the two probably cancel?

I merged in sound protection from full helmets, but I've left ESP blocking from tin helmets out.

What about a tin amulet of mental protection that blocks ESP?

I still think it would be a neat effect, especially for sneaking under the noses of mages or mystic frogs, and giving this effect to an item rather than a material would not necessitate special casing like the change to tin as a material would. Plus having it as an effect would allow eg. magic mushroom flesh to rarely cause it.

If there was an amulet made of a material as weak as tin, surely it would be possible to break it? I'm unsure if it's even possible to break amulets in the current game - I think it isn't.

Amulets are unbreakable, as are the rings.