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[Stargoat]

Been thinking about this for a while, discussed it in IRC, decided to write down the idea. Here it is:


Basically, the system revolves around 3 key points- pain, blood level and locational damage.

:::Pain

Taking damage (and other factors) can cause the player pain. Pain has a threshold that if exceeded, the character will pass out (can be resisted with willpower stat in an RPG setting?). If pain passes the critical point (100%), player risks death (heart attack?). This effect could be resisted with, say, a toughness score.

Points to consider:
-open wounds, broken limbs etc. cause dull pain- the "base" of your pain levels.

-spiking pain: the instant you get hit causes a spike in your pain levels. this lasts only a few seconds, but can be enough to cause the character to pass out. Walking or firing a gun, similar actions while wounded can cause small spikes in pain levels.

-dull pain levels get lower naturally- due to healing wounds, getting "used" to it. pain lowers faster while character is resting.

-Pain is the most immediate factor the player must consider. This essentially replaces the "HP" bar or equivelent.

-Drugs can help relieve pain in the short term.



:::Blood, or the loss of.

Open wounds cause blood loss. Blood loss leads to blacking out and if not dealt with, death. Depending on how many open wounds the character has, determines the rate of blood loss.

Points to consider:
-Blood loss is constant, relative to open wounds.

-Stop lost blood by blocking(bandages, etc.), and healing wounds.

-Recover lost blood by eating and resting while blood loss is blocked.

-character will pass out with less than 20% blood unless hardy.

-character will die with less than 5% unless very hardy.

-Bloodloss is the secondary factor the player must consider.

-character may perform blood transfusion in dire cases.



:::locational damage.

Being shot or otherwise hit will directly damage body parts. Damage will have varying effects, such as limping, high blood loss, damaged aim.

Points to consider:

-performing actions with damaged limbs will cause pain spikes.

-damaged limbs do not add directly to blood loss; only open wounds.

-damaged limbs add to dull pain level.

-damaged limbs heal very slowly unless taken care of by a specialist.

-locational damage has a low short-term, but high long-term importance for the character.

-Sever locational damage to sensetive parts (brain, heart etc.) can result in instant death or sever long-term impairment



Any thoughts??

Edit: sorry for the sloppy spelling >.>

[dmoonfire]

I know there was a couple of attempts to do this on a pen and paper game, but obviously the details were just too much to make it fun. Even in code, while it makes sense for realism, might be rather hard.

A good example is a broken leg. Say a simple fracture instead of a nice and messy compound fracture. You have your base level pain as you described, but broken bones really only stop hurting when you stop using them. As soon as you try to manipulate it, there is the point it starts hurting all over again. Not that I speak from experience. *cough*

If you try to simulate that, you would need to separate your dull and sharp pains (as you described them). That would be in addition to your blood loss and maybe even fatigue (or slowly building dull pain, your choice). You could put them on the same bar (pain = dull + sharp) but they would definitely have different recovery levels. And it would be separate from the actual damage (broken bone) as opposed to the pain produced by a broken bone. In other words, you can stop feeling a broken bone if you stop messing with it, but it takes a lot of time of rest for the bone to stop hurting through rest.

Now, using pain would help with the common trait of trying to recover health. I remember reading a book that explain that we don't really see health as a recoverable, which is why games use healing potions to heal people. Don't remember the book, sadly, but focusing on the pain might get around that and allow a form of limited regeneration.

I assume the 20% and 5% bloodloss are relative to the critical point? Because, humans don't deal with well only 5% of their normal blood pressure. We call those zombies. Or just corpse.

Overall, unless very well done, this might not appeal to people who like abstracted systems (not your left pinky is at 55%) but for realistic situations, it might be fun, though frustrating while playing as a character (at least for me). I aim like a spastic with ADD and doped up on speed now. If I had to compensate for pinky (exaggerated for effect) damage, I wouldn't get through the first stage.

Just ideas and comments.

[Stargoat]

Thanks for the feedback.

On the point of the 20% and 5% blood, they were just arbitrary values I came up with, they'd ofcourse be subject to higher realism/game balance as the situation requires. As for dull/sharp pain on the same bar, that's what I had in mind while writing this.

The idea behind this is to create a slightly more realistic damage/health model. Damage would be more of a long term issue, with short term considerations. Broken leg? Perhaps the player could make a splint, thereby releaving the pain of moving, slightly reducing the healing time, but reducing the player speed (compared to uninjured).

The main problem I find would be striking a balance between fun and realism. But then consider, the kind of players who are in to Roguelikes... Those games are extremely hard and sometimes downright unfair, but they're also extremely addictive. It could be an interesting role playing experience to have a game where dealing with an extreme injury model enhances the experience.

I think this could work especially well in a Deus Ex-ish cyberpunk setting. Perhaps if things go too badly, damaged limbs could be replaced with robotic ones? Players could have a different experience by either retaining their physical humanity or becomming increasingly machine.

"This guy? He's even less of a human than my dog. Lets not bother." -possible NPC quote.

[Xion]

I've thought about such a realistic system before. This would be cool.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think this sounds good to me, but yeah, I recommend consulting doctors or something for accuracy. Of course you may not be aiming at complete accuracy, but at least you want to avoid absurdly inaccurate stuff.

It'd be interesting if there were different characters and those different characters had different levels of resistance to pain. Like a stoic guy who pain didn't bother at all, or a little kid who pain bothers a lot.

[basara]

I think this is brilliant, I would love to see an action game that applies this and also uses a similar level of realism in every part of the gameplay.

A super-realistic game would become quite unforgiving, but I think thats the part that charms me about your idea.

[Aaron G.]

It seems overly-complicated to me, personally, but I've never been a fan of more realistic game systems.  I do, however, really like the idea of serious and/or untreated injuries resulting in becoming a cyborg.  Perhaps the player can opt to "turn off" the pain in a robotic-body-part at the cost of lessened dexterity from that part (due to lack of any nervous stimulation) i.e. no pain comes from your right arm but it's harder to aim.

At any rate, it sounds like you've certainly thought the system out, now the question is if you're going to do the hard part.

[Stargoat]

Haha, I wish. I have no real programming knowledge except for a little C. For want of a slave development team...

Still, if I ever gain the patience to teach myself properly, and somehow acquire the resources to create games, this is one I've been planning for quite a while, so it'd definitely be on the list.

Incidently, if anyone wants to borrow ideas/do a collaborative project, that's totally cool!

[skrew]

If any of you have played call of duty 4. they used a primitive but similar system to this where they don't have a number based health bar and rather you get visual feedback of your health. when you are injured the edges of your vision become red and you hear your hear rate rising and when your are near death the red intensifies showing veins of sorts and flashing and your heart starts to race. this fades over time, regenerating you. There are also no health packs in the game.  I think I prefer this system much more than the same old unrealistic percentile health systems and I'd really enjoy a system that took this further. 

[Xion]

Of course, for some reason, I automatically imagined this in a FPS, but I think it could work better in an RPG to replace the clumsy numerical system.

[Stargoat]

I guess it could be implimented in any game where the player takes damage. It could work quite well in an RPG/turn based game, and (the turn based nature) would make things a bit easier to handle (compared to something played in "real time"), I think.

[William Broom]

Sound like a huge waste of time that could be done much better with a simple system. Just like physics games like Force Unleashed that focus on the exact splintering of wood rather than blowing up a pile of crates.

It was sounding good at first with the pain thing. Then you got into wounds and blood loss and stuff and that would just be pointless. The end result would be just like a normal RPG except you have several different healing potions (i.e. splint, bandage, needle, scalpel) for different wounds.

[Stargoat]

Sound like a huge waste of time that could be done much better with a simple system. Just like physics games like Force Unleashed that focus on the exact splintering of wood rather than blowing up a pile of crates.

It was sounding good at first with the pain thing. Then you got into wounds and blood loss and stuff and that would just be pointless. The end result would be just like a normal RPG except you have several different healing potions (i.e. splint, bandage, needle, scalpel) for different wounds.

While you raise a valid point; perhaps the system is a little excessive, I think you're missing something. The idea is not about simply healing, but changing the way damage is handled such that the player would experience the game in a totally different way... simpler systems always strike me as damage being more of an inconvenience than something to -really- avoid.

But then again, higher "realism" could come at the price of fun... I think that's the real issue, not whether the system could end up with the player having to use a bunch of different potions.