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[DinofarmGames]

I've thought this for a long time.  Health bars are almost always a thoughtlessly tacked-on and otherwise un-related mechanism in most games that they're in.  It's like the lazy game designer's best friend, the health bar.

Think of Street Fighter.  What does the amount of health I currently have have to do with the game?  Whether it's 100%, 60% or 20% changes *nothing* about the gamestate.  It may influence how the player plays to know he has only a small amount of health left, but it doesn't have any tie into the gamestate itself.

Compare it now, to Super Smash Brothers.  In this game, you instead have "damage" that climbs instead of health.  What does your damage % mean in terms of the game state?  Tons.  In a game that's all about positioning, it will change how far you are knocked back when you are hit.  Eventually, it will mean you'll be killed, but this too depends on position (even at 200% damage, you can survive if you're bounced off a wall or hit to the right at the far left of a stage).

One solution that I don't usually like is having "one-shot kills".  The problem with this is that it turns many decisions in the game that would otherwise be ambiguous into "absolutely do not do this move ever".  Many moves turn into the equivalent of "placing yourself in Check" in Chess.  I think the basic IDEA of "health" is actually a good thing because it allows players to make some small mistakes, or sacrifices:  moves that may hurt me now for great gain later.

My point is, the traditional health bar is basically NEVER implemented into the system in a smart, meaningful way.  The only situation I could think of where it would be would be in a game that's purely just about resource management (perhaps something like The Sims, or something).

Anyway, I wrote an article about my own dungeon-crawling game and how I'm struggling with this myself.  My solution was to have attacks not deal damage, but instead knock actors back.  If they fall off the side of the level, they're killed.  Read more about it here:

http://www.dinofarmgames.com/auro-the-design-challenges-of-attacks/

What do you guys think?  I'd love to hear about some of your games and ways of representing "health" that are more interesting than the traditional health bar.

[gigimoi]

    I think the health-bar is entirely viable, though I have been trying to get around it. About 2
months ago, I started to create this, a rogue-like where the player's measure of health is
how torn up he is, and when he's hit in the soul, it's death. (The soul is found in the brain,
heart, and balls).

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

After reading your article, I admit that 10 HP is perfect.


If anyone is interested and actually reads the complex way in which I manage HP, I'll be your friend forever and stuff.


What I do is hide the 3 status bars that I have in my game. One is Health, the Other is Stamina, and the final is a form of "Magic". They rest at the bottom corner of the screen.


Each limb has it's own HP, for instance, if you have 50 HP, your head has 5 HP, your arms have 10, your body has 20 your legs have 5 between themselves. This ratio remains constant, but items such as helms and body armor can increase the HP of a specific joint

Health bars are only shown when the character stands still for at least 10 seconds. This is done for adrenaline reasons. In a real life conflict, you don't realize your current health state until you take a breather.



Besides the health bar is a Pulsating Heartbeat meter. If the character over-exerts themselves, they can go into shock. If they refuse to stop and rest, they can die regardless of health. A high pulsating meter means high adrenaline however, which increases the rate at which HP is raised and increases stamina. This boost in power is limited by the risk that if you don't stop and rest the meter will reach it's limit and you may die from shock.

Then there's the matter of realism.
Characters in my game can die easily in one strike, depending on the classification of attack. Piercing and slicing attacks cause either instant death or a status noticifcation called "FATAL BODY WOUND" which drains HP. Bashing attacks can cause broken limbs, which slow the natural HP healing process from standing still. Falling on your head can result in BROKEN NECK, and instant kill. Not eating can result in gradual HP loss. Full stamina results in slow HP heal, stamina is only restored by having a nearly full stomach, and resting.

The game focuses heavily on parkour, so adrenaline and health must make sense. Falling from a building decreases health but more importantly, triggers status effects such as BROKEN LEG, TWISTED ANKLE, BRUISED SPINAL CORD.

HP is mainly just a meter that's not directly harmed by enemy attacks but is mainly harmed by status effects, such as GRAVE INJURY and FLESH WOUND. I want a certain amount of realism, and although the HP meter increases when you gain levels it's primarily your ability to avoid damage in certain areas and wear protective armor.

[DinofarmGames]

I think if you concern yourself with realism even a little bit, you're concerning yourself too much with realism.  Why would it matter if the game is realistic or not if it's a great game?

Also, has anyone here played Microgue?  It's like a one-shot-kill roguelike.

[rek]

Think of Street Fighter.  What does the amount of health I currently have have to do with the game?  Whether it's 100%, 60% or 20% changes *nothing* about the gamestate.  It may influence how the player plays to know he has only a small amount of health left, but it doesn't have any tie into the gamestate itself.

Compare it now, to Super Smash Brothers.  In this game, you instead have "damage" that climbs instead of health.  What does your damage % mean in terms of the game state?  Tons.  In a game that's all about positioning, it will change how far you are knocked back when you are hit.  Eventually, it will mean you'll be killed, but this too depends on position (even at 200% damage, you can survive if you're bounced off a wall or hit to the right at the far left of a stage).

These two examples aren't really all that different. In both cases it tells the players how close one of them is to losing. Both games would be infuriating without that information because it informs their game play. The wrinkle SMB added is that the attacking player may knock or throw the other player the wrong direction, essentially "missing" the finishing move.

Anyway, I wrote an article about my own dungeon-crawling game and how I'm struggling with this myself.  My solution was to have attacks not deal damage, but instead knock actors back.  If they fall off the side of the level, they're killed.  Read more about it here:

It sounds like you replaced the health bar with the player itself: the player's position on the screen represents its health/damage. The less health – the less distance to the edge – the more peril. This may work for fighting games, but how would it be implemented in a racing game (the "health bar" may just be a shield strength %) or exploration/adventure game?

I'm not convinced health/damage needs to influence the gamestate. Knowing you're two hits away from losing is bad enough, but having that damage factor rob you of an ability, slow you down, make something inaccessible, or exponentially increase the strength of the monster attacking you, seems like punishment for playing the wrong way.

[alastair]

I think if you concern yourself with realism even a little bit, you're concerning yourself too much with realism.  Why would it matter if the game is realistic or not if it's a great game?

You do care about realism you just don't realise it (although obviously not to a great degree).

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

I think if you concern yourself with realism even a little bit, you're concerning yourself too much with realism.  Why would it matter if the game is realistic or not if it's a great game?

Also, has anyone here played Microgue?  It's like a one-shot-kill roguelike.

Uh derp i don't know, I guess Mojang didn't worry about implementing realism in the Minecraft Hunger update when they were already selling boatloads of copies

[Alec S.]

At the very basic level, the health bar is an updated version of the lives system, where you can make a few mistakes without loosing progress.

Health also allows for an added short-term objective in games to recover lost health.  Health allows games to be balanced such that the player is expected to get hit occasionally, and if they get hit too much, they can make up for it by going out of their way for a health pack.

Then there are games like jRPGs where the idea of taking no damage is nearly impossible, and the goal is to maximize damage dealt to the opponent while minimizing damage done to yourself.

In a fighting game, the goal of the game is to deal 100 damage to the other player before they can deal 100 damage to you.  The health doesn't have to change the gamestate because it  is itself the game-state being changed by other events in the game. 

You can add positive or negative feedback to a health system (for example, make the character get a burst of strength at low hp, or make the player weaker as they lose health) but it doesn't fundamentally add depth to the experience, it just changes it.   

Smash Bros. puts a positive feedback loop on low hp, making the character get knocked back more by hits and thus susceptible to more damage.  However, it balances it out by giving the player multiple lives (in a standard stock match).  This adds a bit of a balancing negative feedback, as the respawned character has zero damage on him, while his opponent probably has taken some damage.  The lives mechanic itself in this case acts as a meta-health mechanic, and the amount of lives you have doesn't effect the game state.

[JoGribbs]

Think of Street Fighter.  What does the amount of health I currently have have to do with the game?  Whether it's 100%, 60% or 20% changes *nothing* about the gamestate.  It may influence how the player plays to know he has only a small amount of health left, but

But nothing yo.

The players health not only has a psychological impact but also forces them to think about how to be economical. Health bars turn your characters life into a resource.

Just because an effect doesn't show up within the system itself doesn't mean it has no impact. If you wanted to be particular you might even say that things that influence the player's psychological state are fed back into the system in the interactivity loop, so health bars do have an impact on the system in a roundabout way. I've seen this sort of thinking in your earlier work where you sever game and story unceremoniously with a cleaver ('emergent' and 'scripted' narrative I think you called it). You have to consider that people are going to play your game and that they're not, like a game designer, going to be looking for the great underlying system all the time.

[C.A. Sinner]

If you wanted to be particular you might even say that things that influence the player's psychological state are fed back into the system in the interactivity loop, so health bars do have an impact on the system in a roundabout way.

not just in a roundabout way. knowing an enemy can kill you in 1 hit due to your low health forces you to adapt your strategy to that. if you have enough
health you might be able to take on multiple enemies at a time. it's resource management.

[st33d]

Also, has anyone here played Microgue?  It's like a one-shot-kill roguelike.

I think Microgue is possibly the bravest attempt a reducing a roguelike to simple elements.

But bear in mind that it's been massively redesigned about 50 times to try and nail down what the simple elements are that work. And he's still not finished redesigning it. It's not quite ready to hold up as an example of a successful game design. No matter how brilliant the goal of the project is.

-

At my work place there's a distinct lack of health these days. It's all checkpoints or thumb-sucking mechanics now.

I think everyone is of the mind that you should have a lot of health, or no health at all.

[Eigen]

Health is like cash. If you have plenty, you are careless with it but if you have very little, you think trough all of your purchaces. So, it is a very neccesary mechanic to adjusting pacing and decisionmaking. As long as it doesn't auto-regenerate ...

[C.A. Sinner]

So, it is a very neccesary mechanic to adjusting pacing and decisionmaking. As long as it doesn't auto-regenerate ...

regen health can work if there's a mechanic to balance it out. one of the purposes of the "food clock" in roguelikes is so you can't just stand around in a safe place and heal all the time.

[shig]

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

[Danmark]

Health ain't broke, and its apologists ITT did a good job. Alternatives are interesting though.

One possibility for a single-player game is one-hit kills from every threat, but where death rewinds a certain amount of time. Progression itself takes over the role of health. The resource-management aspect of health would be eliminated: dying before you've reached the point you last died at will send you even further back, so there's no point changing your disposition, unless you've identified a better strategy from your ill-fated peek at the future.

Required is some method of determining the rewind time so that the player can't hide & wait for his progress to buffer.