Sword of Moonlight Forum
Game Making Theory => General Theory Discussions => Topic started by: HwitVlf on February 25, 2013, 05:48:58 pm
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I've always thought "HP" was kind of a cheap, lazy way for games to measure a player's condition. It seems like it would be neat to implement a system of "wounds" as an alternative to HP.
Taking damage would cause long lasting negative statuses like bleeding, sprains, disorientation etc which would hinder the player's abilities till they slowly heal. Armor could protect against specific types of wounds (helmet=resist disorientation etc). Severe wounds could cause unconsciousness or ultimately death (game over).
If balanced properly, it would be a way to make the player's performance have a lasting, but not devastating impact on the gameplay - beyond just having to "chug a potion" to heal at the end of battle.
Opinions?
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This sounds good, SomEx has a setup where you get knocked back by attacks, which you'l know about, but it also has a knockout effect where if your HP drops drastically from an attack you will have to wait to get back up again and move around.
It makes more sense than having simple defence values. Protecting certain parts in fear of becoming disabled by attacks would greatly increase the pressure and stop people from being lazy. Equipment plays a massive part in combat. If monster attacks wernt simply directional, but targeting ... That could prove very interesting. If you could flag a monsters attack to be 'arm' directional, for example. A random counter would be nice that affected where the monster would target, like right arm / left arm.
Then the damage would be absorbed only by that items defence. So instead of having an average defence you would be catering for individual armour defences. This would also mean that players who havent searched or 'earned' their armour would think twice about attacking elites.
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Cool Ben, the system I was going to set up in my SoM game was quite similar to your "targeted" attack system. Since SoM calculates each damage type separately (slash, smash fire etc) you can simply rename these categories to "head, R Arm, L Arm" etc. If an enemy attacks with something like an overhead swing, you could have it inflict only "head" damage on the player.
If you wanted to add some randomness, you could make an enemy with 3 identical "Direct" attacks, then use the Parameter editor to "AI odds" and set the first to do only "head" damage, the second to inflict some "head + arm" damage, third to inflict only "arm" damage and so on. I think that would feel more real and entertaining than SoM's default slash/smash/stab/elemental categories. :rainbow:
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Thats a good idea, the only question i have is, how about the players weapons? Im assuming that they wont have any head / body / arm damage affixed, and rather basic slash and smash damage?
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Thats a good idea, the only question i have is, how about the players weapons? Im assuming that they wont have any head / body / arm damage affixed, and rather basic slash and smash damage?
It's mainly just a perceptual difference so you could change player weapon damage category names to "Head" "Arms" etc. A weapon that attacked with an overhead swing could have extra head and arms damage and so on. If you designed enemies with armored and un-armored regions on their body, it would make sense that a weapon which swung at their un-armored area does more damage. :tongue:
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I vote for groin shot! But seriously speaking that is actually a neat idea i have played games like that before and it was definitely more challenging.
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Ah, I like this. I was always kind of a fan of Deus Ex's system for targeted damage, even though it had its annoying bits.
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Groin shot... yeah! That could cause the abnormal status "funny walk" and give a +10 bonus to the "voice pitch" stat. :biggrin:
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That tickled my funny bone.
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I just thinks this goes for how realistic you want things to be. If you want your game to be as realistic as possible, then using a "wounds" system would certainly be better than using HP. But that doesn't mean either is "better" than the other in general, as I see it. :)
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Actually,
I was just looking at KF2 to see what kind of affinities the end game armors have.
It's quite difficult to actually see what affinities the equipments possess. And what makes it damn near impossible is when you actually break them down they don't follow any clear rhyme or reason. Even if you had a spreadsheet it would be difficult to make sense of.
For instance. If you compare the Ur armor with the Demon set. It's not obvious that they are that different as a whole, other than the demon set forces you to deal with bad status, and the Ur set may or may not be unique in granting poison resistance.
If you look at the body pieces. They both grant protection from all of the magic affinities. But the demon piece is lowest in the earth magic affinity. And the Ur piece is highest in earth magic affinity. But I am pretty sure the other pieces in the sets are not necessarily antagonistic in this way...
And the general rule usually is one of the affinities is quite high. So that its not until you equip all of the pieces in a set that all your bases are covered so to speak (I think this pattern even holds for the three physical affinities)
So in that sense, it may as well be as if each armor covers a part of your body. And it would certainly be easier to follow if that were simply the case, since the numbers would not be so noisy if so.
At any rate, I can't speak for everything here. Obviously HP is still HP. To make this work it seems to me you would have to only use the physical affinities for weapons. Monsters would only use physical affinities for defense.
And you would replace the magic affinities with body parts, and then monsters would only attack with body part affinities.
I think that would work especially well in a game that doesn't feature magic. You could still have limited magic in the form of armor that grants a little bit of defense to all parts of the body, like a magic shield, while mainly protecting its body part (then it would not seem so strange that all affinities are mentioned for all items. Plus there are coveralls. Weapons could hit all body parts uniformly or with slight bias, so if monsters had obvious armor they could get a defense bonus. Plus weakpoints)
Also you could use the physical affinities for your shield I guess. Since it doesn't really cover a body part. And grant monsters some damage to the shield affinities.
But I think this does cement for me, a gut feeling I've had for a while. That KF could be better served if the 3 physical affinities were the how, and the 5 elemental affinities are the what. In other words you'd need affinities in both sections to do actual damage...
With this calculus I think body part attacks could be a bit more complex. Ie. the armor would cover the part and have material properties to boot (other wise giving body part bonuses to weapons aside from magic swords doesn't really add up, plus monsters don't always have arms and legs)
Either way ultimately if people are not too proud to use Ex. It will definitely be capable of working this way without any need for special affinities with time. Some of the better Armored Core games have a part breaking system that I am very fond of that works just like this. And I'd like to see the same thing in King's Field games (it's based on where attacks actually hit. There will be a do_hit extension to turn on much more sophisticated hit detection when the time comes)
EDITED: Bottom line to me this sounds like a plausible way to make the player responsible for covering their whole body, and a good way to simplify stats, since it basically reduces to 1 defense stat for armor pieces. Simple is usually better.
PS: For you bad status ideas. Ex can nullify the effects, and provide the statuses in counters so you can do your own thing for each one. You'd want Evtcat to manage the global events (I really can't understand why you are not using Ex since you are presumably using x2mdl to make your custom models. It doesn't add up :ninja:)
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Im definately in favour of having an injured character, while that sounds mean. I think if your headgear broke through neglect, and you got hit on the head by a cyclops (example) with a bone club, you should suffer from concussion. One form could be either a blurry screen or a serious MP drain, or both.
A serious cut on your unprotected arm could lead to loss of HP, and a broken arm could be a major penalty to strength or having you unable to use your right hand until it healed.
Legs, dash speed.
Back stabbed? Equipment burden down.
For a few ideas.
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^Maybe this has been mentioned, but SOM's effects already map well to the body. Legs, slow. Arms, curse. Head, blind. Body, palsy. That's 4 affinities. So you have one more for poison. Accessories can protect from poison. You can also change the severity of poison based on the map (and the accessory itself using Ex) with a pretty simple event (the stat itself would be just an indicator of its resistance)
It would be a pretty good game if you used the weight limit system combined with one defense stat per body part. That way you must factor weight into the equipment you choose so its not just as simple as picking the one with the best stat. And you must build strength to equip better armor.