First of all, when you 'look' in a direction, you don't get any
echo to indicate that direction, like you would if you were scanning.

Example:

<100%hp 100%m 100%mv 99999tnl> l n
Nothing special there.

<100%hp 100%m 100%mv 99999tnl> sca e
You scan east.
***** Range 1 *****
A cityguard is strolling through here, keeping the peace.
A cat is sneaking through the shadows here.

======================================================================

When you 'scan' it will at least echo "You scan east."

What's the significance? Well the main one that I will point out is that
it gives you a very important bit of text to highlight. For instance,
if you are scanning some place and you get three ranges in each
direction, with each range having three mobs/PC's, that's a LOT of
text, and it is easy to get lost.

I propose that "look" be upgraded so that the above example would
be more like this:

<100%hp 100%m 100%mv 99999tnl> l n
You look northward.
Nothing special there.

This way the line "You look northward." could be highlighted in any hue
granted by your MUD client's technicolor wonder-brush.

Now, to address "scan". I propose that each range contain the relevant
direction when you scan. For instance, the above example would look
like this:

<100%hp 100%m 100%mv 99999tnl> sca e
You scan east.
***** EAST: Range 1 *****
A cityguard is strolling through here, keeping the peace.
A cat is sneaking through the shadows here.

...or something like that. By putting different directional keywords
in there, it enables the player to highlight text and ultimately be
more effective at keeping track of what's going on.

Anyone else with me?

to set up your client to do this for you.

It took a few moments for me to realize why this seems helpful to some people and pointless to others. It's because of clients and aliases. If (like me) you never have and never intend to use aliases to scan all the rooms around you, there's never any confusion about which direction you're scanning, and minimal spam from the long range afforded high level characters.

So, any of the proposed alterations would be useless to anyone who doesn't use a client's alias function, and quite useful to those who do. As near as I can tell, the policy in the past has been to leave this sort of thing alone unless it benefits both sides of the coin. For someone like me, the added 'EAST' in a scan is pointless and annoying. I don't see how it could help both the alias users and the non-alias users, and therefore see no reason why the Imms would want to bother with it.

There is a argument 'all' to scan, which lets you scan all directions at once. It's not much harder to type 'scan all' than 'scan e'... So I don't really see why you need an alias to scan all rooms.

But on the other hand the requested feature is sort of unnecessary since it's not too hard to get the same result through substitutes. Wintin example:

#action {You scan %0.} {#var scandir $0}
#substite {*** Range %1 ***} {$scandir: (Range %1}}

Or something like that I'm not currently logged on so I don't know exactly how the scan syntax looks.

>There is a argument 'all' to scan, which lets you scan all
>directions at once. It's not much harder to type 'scan all'
>than 'scan e'... So I don't really see why you need an alias
>to scan all rooms.

Somehow I missed the existence of that command, it would've made something I did the other day a lot faster and easier. ;)

Anyhow, from being in groups with people who do scan multiple directions at once, it appears that most of them use aliases rather than 'scan all'. In light of 'scan all', I don't know why they use aliases, but that's what appears to be going on. Scan all can have a use at times, but adding extra info to the scan still doesn't seem useful to me.

It may not be "useful" to you, but I've been playing a damn long time
and it would be useful to me, and a lot of players who would see the
advantage of utilizing it.

Somehow I missed the existence of that command, it would've made something I did the other day a lot faster and easier. ;)

In the above statement from your post, you specifically state that you
would have liked something to make "something" faster and
easier. In that case, why the hell are you knocking an idea that
someone else regards in the same way?

I was referring to the one time I can think of that I'd have used scan all if I knew it existed. In that circumstance I could've done something in half the time.

What I was 'knocking' is the idea of adding the direction to another line when the direction you're scanning is already in the line right before that. I also don't see the point to scanning any less than your level allows, since if you only scan one direction at a time there isn't really spam. (unless of course you're one of those people who walks around all the time without room descriptions)

Also, even if I were to use scan all to do what I was up to less than a week ago, what spam there might have been was unimportant, I'd have kept looking for the one mob I was watching for until I found it.

If I wasn't clear enough before, I hope I am now.

What I was 'knocking' is the idea of adding the direction to another line when the direction you're scanning is already in the line right before that. I also don't see the point to scanning any less than your level allows, since if you only scan one direction at a time there isn't really spam. (unless of course you're one of those people who walks around all the time without room descriptions)

THE POINT of switching the normal ***Range 1*** with something
like ***NORTH: Range 1*** should be very obvious at this
point. But to clarify further, there are SEVERAL ranges that a person
can see when they scan...not just ONE. And again, it is stupid
to scan (and I'm quoting you) "one direction at a time", especially in
a PK situation where you might need to see your directions quickly.
Remember, the 'scan' command is CF's way of looking at a distance. In
real life this occurs almost instantaneously, so we can see what is
around us...in CF it often needs to be as quick as possible. Now, if
players could only see one range at a time, I'd understand
your gripe a little better...but three, four, and sometimes five ranges
per direction can really clutter things up.

Apparently my offhand comments have annoyed you, but that's just a guess from all your boldface highlighting.

I fully comprehend why people scan multiple directions at once, and I comprehend why I don't do it.

What I don't comprehend is why you want the added word. I guess I haven't been spammed enough to be unsatisfied with only having the "You scan (direction)." line. If it's really as bad as you say, in your shoes I'd just use the highlighting function most clients seem to have. Even if it doesn't work like you'd want it to, it would at least make the line for each direction stand out, and probably in a different color for each.

I may not use most client functions, and the ones I do use are rarely bothered with, but if I think the pay off is enough to bother with it, I sometimes do.

--Quislet, annoying & confusing at times, but still means well overall.

PS. If your suggestion ever gets added, I'd suggest the direction words not be in all caps. Speaking from experience with similar things elsewhere, it gets very harsh on the eyes very quickly.

It seems like I have to mention this every so often to somebody, maybe someday I won't have to:

If I ever sound bitter, angry, insulting, or as if I'm just generally flaming or putting someone down:

I didn't mean it. Not really anyway. Sometimes I'm in a bad mood and say something negative, but it's not really meant that way. I try to be impartial and say things how I see them, but there's no need for emotions to enter into saying my views on something.

Also, if I'm not making any sense, I'm either half asleep, distracted, or going off on some tangent. So if you think what I'm saying might be something worth hearing, just ask me to explain what I mean, and hopefully it will make sense the second time.

I'm really a nice guy, but sometimes I sound way too Vulcan online. ;)

>Anyhow, from being in groups with people who do scan multiple
>directions at once, it appears that most of them use aliases
>rather than 'scan all'.

It might be worth noting that the use of "scan all" spams six lines to the room, of the form:

XXX scans north.
XXX scans east.
XXX scans south.
XXX scans west.
XXX scans up.
XXX scans down.

I'm going to chip in with a bit of agreement here.

When you look some direction, there's other things that can go on (weather, gechos, etc.) which can be confusing.

Usually, you can sort it out (sometimes by looking several times, that sort of thing, and the "nothing special" message is pretty obvious), but I've been confused more than once. It doesn't help that sometimes the exit descriptions are wrong (I remember filing a typo report where one of the wall descriptions was on the ceiling).

Mostly that vauge confusion doesn't affect anything critical. But I sometimes think that I might have figured some stuff out whch I haven't, if I could have put that mental energy to more useful ends.

I have an alias in my client that does

LL =
l n
l e
l s
l w

Having used this for a bit, I know the last result is always the west one, first is always the north etc. It works pretty well for me and if do up and down manually (in order to cut down on spam the rest of the time I use it).

For scan, what you propose does have big advantages in that I don't need to scroll back to determine what direction the creature at the top of my screen are in.

However, it also has disadvantages in some senses, because it adds lines of text and therefore will force you to scroll back in some cases where you otherwise would not have.

On the whole, I think I'd be in favor of the change so suggest (but I'd also like my "ranged" scan).

My alias is : /l

that makes me look in all directions as well. I know the order and
everything, but if I had a line of text saying "You look north," etc,
then I could highlight and keep things much easier to keep track of.

For scan, what you propose does have big advantages in that I don't need to scroll back to determine what direction the creature at the top of my screen are in.

However, it also has disadvantages in some senses, because it adds lines of text and therefore will force you to scroll back in some cases where you otherwise would not have.

My 'scan' upgrade adds no new lines, it only alters one that has always
been there.

Remember, currently when you scan you'll see...

You scan east.
***Range 1***
So and so is here, mooning you.

My idea only changes the "range line"..

You scan east.
***EAST: Range 1***
So and so is here, mooning you.

See how that would help a ton? Even if you couldn't highlight stuff
in your client, you'd still have a big, glaring EAST on your
screen.