Autoexplore and Controller

[sonicx]

Hi

autoexplore: Is it safe? No disadvantage? Same like when i move the away team and stop when i see an enemy?

What about gamepad support? Was a Kickstarter goal.

k

[ibol]

Auto-Explore: is it safe:
Well, it's not perfect, in that it does not have any knowledge of the sector beyond what you as a player would have, but it does tend to stop when it sees something dangerous. It is a feature, not a requirement.
I would judge by how safe you feel overall: are you strong compared to your foes?

Gamepad support:
It was a stretch goal, and it was in the game for quite a while. But it was less than perfect, so it was removed. I met every other stretch goal, and every original design point, as well as very many additions not originally conceived.

[zircher]

Um, auto explore has murdered me twice so far (ran out of air by running off on a tangent before I could stop it - on perma-death, of course.) Add in that it does not avoid terrain like black holes, acid, and cave-in traps means that you can get auto-mauled badly right before you get ambushed. Over all, it does a pretty good job, but when it fails it is usually fatal.

[ibol]

Welcome Zircher!
now those are some actual problems... I suppose I could create a "danger" map, and not have the AI move into the squares directly around dangerous terrain. It wouldn't be cheating, because those things are "right in front of your face", and it still would not have any knowledge that the player would not have.

[zircher]

Heh, there's danger and then there's careless (on the auto-explorer's part.) Hitting an unknown danger like when coming out of a forest or turning a corner in a cave is one thing. Hitting a clearly discovered acid river or black hole multiple times just because it is the shortest path is... painful. I'm not sure what causes the auto-asphyxiation glitch, I think is happens only in caves where it goes off exploring instead of returning to the cave exit.

One way to code it is to build the danger map on the fly as you're exploring. So, unknown is still unknown. You don't have to save the danger map even. Every time you land, just scan the existing map, check what gear is equipped, and mark damaging locations as off limits (or causes a full stop) for auto-explore. If you want loot or to travel through damaging squares, you would have to do it manually. [Which means that you can't auto explore a 100% damaging location like a high G world. You have to do it manually.]

Also, mark plants as dangerous terrain until destroyed so you can auto-avoid them after finding them. This is needed since some plants are surrounded by terrain that blocks LOS and thus the normal danger logic of stopping does not activate in time.

The game does work as is, but trusting your life to auto-explore is pretty risky depending on the location and atmosphere of the planet/wreck.

[Waltorious]

Just to add to this, I've also noticed that with the away team, autoexplore does not stop when a creature is spotted, provided that creature is still in a friendly state. But since most creatures turn hostile when you approach, it means the autoexplore would often march my away team right up to a creature that would subsequently attack. When exploring manually, I know to give these creatures a wide berth and exercise caution when approaching them (or when they approach me). I think it might be nice to at least have the option to set autoexplore to stop any time a creature is spotted, regardless of whether it's actively hostile or not.

I tend to do all my exploration manually now for the reasons listed in this thread, even though I like autoexplore in many other roguelikes. That said, since all locations in Approaching Infinity fit on a single screen, it's not as bad to explore manually than it would be in some other games.

[ibol]

Update on the update:
[edit:]
I thought I had fixed the auto-explore, but it is behaving strangely. I am not going to allow that to hold up all the other new features. It is not a requirement.

My overall view on auto-explore:
The auto-explore is an optional feature, and not a requirement of play. The maps should be significantly dense to provide the player with interest and choices.

If I ever make a fully sentient bot (relatively speaking of course), it will do everything, and the player will have no control. Otherwise, play the game yourself! (this is meant in fun, but I have theorized full automation...)

No new problems have been found in the current beta, so the update is coming.