Some More Point Less Questions

[New Horizon]

As an assurance. The toolset will use a traditional health system, the ideas being discussed here may be explored in the campaign we release 'after' the toolset. The toolset will lean towards the classic style.

[Ratty]

City hub crap:

I rather like the idea of a city hub as the center for a set of missions. I didn't like the way it was implemented in TDS, mostly because the hubs were so small and uninteresting, and, yes, the running around part did get a bit old. A city hub is the direction I've been going in my own DoomEd adventures.

 

But I'm going to hijack this thread and ask a related question. I'm trying to think about Doom 3 and Quake 4, and I can't remember whether you could freely move between maps like you could in System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Thief 3, etc. Does the engine support that? I know in Quake 4 you could return to maps later but I can't tell whether it's the *same* map, with the state maintained, i.e., ammo you have collected gone, teleporters destroyed, etc.

 

Now an almost completely unrelated question about loading times. I know you can do huge, huge maps in Doom 3 and I wonder how this affects loading times. Does anybody know yet? Is it a straightforward relationship between map size, polygons, entities, etc., and loading times? Or does something more subtle go on, i.e., immediate loading for the visible part of the map and background or deferred loading for the rest? The later Unreal Tournaments do this I believe. Parts of the map aren't even rendered until you enter them.

[oDDity]

Those two statements are completely contradictory.

THey aren't

As I said with the boxing analogy, a knockout blow can come in the first round, the guy doesn't have to be knocked around for 12 round first.

THe hit was a knockout becasue it was a hard hit that landed in the right place, not becasue the guy was tired or had been hit too often.

Of course, in the game there has to be a multiplier, otherwse the player could potentially never be killed even if he got into a lot of fighting. You can see this multiplaer any way you want, as his luck running out , or as tiredness, but the point is, the final blow isn't lethal becasue the player is tired, but becasue it's a really hard blow that lands in the right place, and would have been fatal anyway even if it had been the first blow, there' s just more chance of it happening when the multiplier rises..

[Springheel]

a knockout blow can come in the first round,

 

Sure it can, but it almost never does unless there is a huge disparity of skill levels. Why? Because the opponent is able to dodge and block effectively. After taking a large number of 'minor blows', their stamina (etc) is lowered, so they will be KOed by a hit that earlier they would easily have dodged. That's *exactly* what the current health system simulates.

 

Of course, in the game there has to be a multiplier, otherwse the player could potentially never be killed even if he got into a lot of fighting.

 

Exactly. And in terms of the end result for the player, this multiplier acts pretty much the same way a bank of HP acts. There's no difference between:

 

Current System: Player has 100 HP. Arrow does 50-100 points of damage on impact, and

 

Your System: Arrow has 50% chance of killing you on impact.

 

Or,

 

Current System: Player has 100 HP, and takes 20 damage from a fall, and

 

Your System: Player has a non-fatal fall. Multiplier for future damage is now at x4 (or whatever).

 

 

And you still haven't addressed the most difficult problem with this idea--how do you determine what is a 'minor' hit that increases your multiplier and what is a 'game-ending' hit without resorting to some kind of numerical damage rating?

[oDDity]

THere aren't really more or less damaging areas. We're not talking about the player being killed outright here, but being incapacitated in such a way that he can't continue the mission.

As such, serious damge to the arm or the foot, even though not fatal, is as mission-ending as a head shot with a crossbow bolt. Any hit that isn't a random 'maximum' will increase the multipler for that type of damage, and increase the likelyhood of recieving a maximum for that damage type.

This could of course be extended to area specific damage, so getting hit on the left arm will only increase the multiplier for the left arm, and the higher it gets, the more chance of a hit breaking the arm and ending the misison.

[Mark]

Bushido Blade is an old samurai fighting game for Playstation that had no health indicator. Not knowing when you might die made the game much more intense. If you got hit in the leg then you were gimped and your movement suffered; if you got hit in your weapon-wielding arm then you were basically screwed (though I think you could manage a weak attacking motion). A strong hit to the body could cause bleeding which would eventually kill you if you didn't kill your opponent first. And of course a fatal blow could land at any time.

 

I'm not a programmer so I have no idea how difficult it is to implement such a schema versus a vanilla HP indicator, but I think it really enhances gameplay. Generally I don't subscribe to the hyperrealistic gameplay philosophy when it comes to stuff like AI and environmental interaction, but I think the health system in most games today could stand to be a bit more complex.

[oDDity]

Well said. I'm glad to see that not everyone around here wears blinkers.

Another problem I have with the current health bar setup is the fact that you know you can fight a gurd and take a certain number of hits without being killed, becasue you csn see your generic health pool falling in a predictable way.

WHat this means is that these well trained professional swordsmen literally cannot give you an incapacitating blow with their first several strokes, they have to wait 'ontil your hit points are low'.

In my system, you could potentially be incapacitated with the first damage you recieve in the level, which is a totally realistic way of doing it.

There is no fluffy cushion, no safety net, fighting is a dirty and dangerous business, and if you choose to do it, you'll have to be prepared to die suddenely and wihtout indication.

[Mark]

Well said. I'm glad to see that not everyone around here wears blinkers.

Another problem I have with the current health bar setup is the fact that you know you can fight a gurd and take a certain number of hits without being killed, becasue you csn see your generic health pool falling in a predictable way.

WHat this means is that these well trained professional swordsmen literally cannot give you an incapacitating blow with their first several strokes, they have to wait 'ontil your hit points are low'.

In my system, you could potentially be incapacitated with the first damage you recieve in the level, which is a totally realistic way of doing it.

There is no fluffy cushion, no safety net, fighting is a dirty and dangerous business, and if you choose to do it, you'll have to be prepared to die suddenely and wihtout indication.

Yeah, I agree. Since you're a thief I think your default mentality toward head-to-head fighting (stealth killing is different) should not be "haha, I have 20 health shields so your first five hits are useless" but rather "oh shit, I've been caught by a superior fighter and now I might die." I think it would make a big difference even if you didn't change the health system at all but just removed the indicator from the HUD, in that after maybe one fight you'd lose track of how many blows you've taken and so you have no idea whether the next hit will be the fatal one.

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, I agree. Since you're a thief I think your default mentality toward head-to-head fighting (stealth killing is different) should not be "haha, I have 20 health shields so your first five hits are useless" but rather "oh shit, I've been caught by a superior fighter and now I might die."

I have to agree with Springheel that if we make sword blows do random amounts of damage, including fatal amounts (on Expert difficulty at least), you get the same effect without having to completely overhaul the health system. Supposing the player turns off the HUD, what difference does it make if sword blows do 50% or 100% damage vs. sword blows have a 50% chance of killing you?

 

I think it would make a big difference even if you didn't change the health system at all but just removed the indicator from the HUD

Removing the health bar from the HUD, or playing with no HUD at all for that matter, has been a planned option from the start.

 

@Oddity: What about continuous damage like burning? How would your system differentiate waving your hand through a flame and holding it there for a minute? You can talk about increasing the probability of being incapacitated the longer you hold your hand in a fire, but in the end you're still incrementing something the more damage you take, until it is very likely that you'll fail the mission, which sounds an awful lot like the existing system.

[Springheel]

WHat this means is that these well trained professional swordsmen literally cannot give you an incapacitating blow with their first several strokes, they have to wait 'ontil your hit points are low'.

 

That's only true if we don't give them the ability to do lethal damage--it has nothing to do with the type of damage system, as I've said before.

 

It's not that I don't think your idea has merit, but it's not much different from the current system--and the differences might be more complicated to implement than you're making it sound.

 

Any hit that isn't a random 'maximum' will increase the multipler for that type of damage, and increase the likelyhood of recieving a maximum for that damage type.

 

I don't totally understand this. By way of example, explain in numerical terms what effect you think a 15 foot fall should have on the player, or getting hit with a thrown brick.

 

The second issue is that even this system would require some way to give the player feedback on how 'hurt' they are (what their multiplier is, to use your terms)--you can fairly easily assess that in real life.

[Slash]

Drop the health thing it is a game. and here is how you make everyone happy listin closely.

 

you set it up as this. skill levels. uuh how genius.

 

easy - you see health bar and there are lots of health pick up through out the map and full health 100

 

medium- you still see it all the time but there are a little less health potions and you have less health say 75

 

hard - your health bar is only shown when you take dmg or heal, it disapers completly other wise. and like 50 health. vary few healing potions also.

 

expert - you never see your health bar. there are 0 - like 2 healing potions in the map, and you have 50 health.

 

 

bang bitchs. there is the best thief set up ever. thats like 4 times through the game. and it realy gets harder every time.

Edited March 19, 2006 by Slash

[oDDity]

@Oddity: What about continuous damage like burning? How would your system differentiate waving your hand through a flame and holding it there for a minute? You can talk about increasing the probability of being incapacitated the longer you hold your hand in a fire, but in the end you're still incrementing something the more damage you take, until it is very likely that you'll fail the mission, which sounds an awful lot like the existing system.

That's becasue it's the most realistic way of doing things like burning. The longer you stick your hand the the fire, the more damage it does, and fire damge is not linear, but exponential. THat's how it works. There is no better system that that one. The only difference is that it isn't predictable like the THief system. In Thief, your hitpoints went down by a predictable series of chunks if you stood in a fire, until they were gone.

 

 

It's not that I don't think your idea has merit, but it's not much different from the current system--and the differences might be more complicated to implement than you're making it sound.

Yes, you'd still get more or less the same effect by adding possible 100% damage on any hit and switching off the health bar, but it's being half-assed. Still allowing people to play the old way if they want and having health pickups etc. If you make a change to a major game mechanic like this, then you do it proplerly, not half heartedly.

It's the principle involved, We'll all know it's still just the old underlying sysetm that's been nibbled around the edges, instead of our own new system, because some people don't have the balls to do it properly.

I can't see how it would be a major amount of work to implement, it's really just basic math.

 

I don't totally understand this. By way of example, explain in numerical terms what effect you think a 15 foot fall should have on the player, or getting hit with a thrown brick.

 

Since we'd give the player, say, 10 feet as a cushion, each foot after that is calculated to give a greater chance of incapacitating damage. I'm no mathematician, so I'm not sure what the best numbers or system woud be for this, but the higher the player jumps from, the greater chance there is of a maximum number being 'rolled'.

I'm seeing this as a luck modifier, because when you jump from a great height, you are trusting to luck. Every jump the player sucessfully makes takes some of his luck, and the higher the jump he achieves the more luck he's used up, so he has a greater chance of thowing a maximum the next time he jumps.

I'm sure someone like Ishtvan could easliy work this out in math form.

The beauty of this sytem, is that it can't be cheated, as I've explained before. Saving and loading before jumping won't help you at all, becasue you'll eventually end up having to save and load a million times trying to make a jump, since you've only 0.0001% luck left.

With this system you at least have a chance of surviving if you happen to fall a great heght, whereas in Thief, you were definitely dead if you fell a certain height.

 

The second issue is that even this system would require some way to give the player feedback on how 'hurt' they are (what their multiplier is, to use your terms)--you can fairly easily assess that in real life.

 

No you don't. You're still thinking about this multipler in terms of 'health' and how much you have left. This is why I want to get completely rid of the old system, becasue that mindset is stuck in people's heads.

 

I'm seeing this multiplier as luck more than anything else. And you have no way of tellig how lucky you've been or how much you have left.

If you continually get into situations with people shooting arrows at you, or you're continually jumping from high places, then your luck WILL run out and you'll be killed. Also you're not a swordsman, and if you're continually fighting against people who are far better then you, then it's also down to luck if you get a way with it. The other part is your own skill at dodging and blocking, but the player is still in control of this part.

[bob_arctor]

Well I have to admit I like the sound of being able to make the odd long jump.

 

It sounds quite RPG-like, having this "luck" system.

 

However in the long run I don't think players will notice, because we are used to game systems and accept them.

 

In fact players will go "were R my heatlth bars gone to?" like in Red Orchestra they go "how do i get crosshairs?!".

[oDDity]

No, it's not like an RPG stsyem at all. An RPG system has a definite health bar and hit point pool and the rolls are calulated using your 'stats' and the stats of your opponant.

Yes, I suppose a kind of dice is being thown to calculate the realistic random luck aspect, but that doesn't make it like an RPG.

[Springheel]

If you make a change to a major game mechanic like this, then you do it proplerly, not half heartedly.

 

We're not making a change for the sake of making a change. The only reason to change the current system is if it doesn't do something that we want to see in the game. I'm still not convinced your system would result in the kind of gameplay people want. There's no value in doing something differently unless it's *better*.

 

I can't see how it would be a major amount of work to implement, it's really just basic math.

 

One thing I learned as a freelancer, creating game systems for pen and paper RPGs--it's often true that an idea sounds great until you actually try to work out the actual numbers involved.

 

Every jump the player sucessfully makes takes some of his luck, and the higher the jump he achieves the more luck he's used up, so he has a greater chance of thowing a maximum the next time he jumps.

 

Replace the word 'luck' with 'health' and you have just described the current system.

 

The beauty of this sytem, is that it can't be cheated, as I've explained before. Saving and loading before jumping won't help you at all, becasue you'll eventually end up having to save and load a million times trying to make a jump, since you've only 0.0001% luck left.

 

This is also true with the old system. I don't understand what you think the difference is.

 

Let me see if I understand what you're describing. You would give each 'event' that might damage the player a percentage chance of killing them. A 20 foot fall might have a 20% chance. A thrown brick might have a 5% chance. But what happens if that chance fails? The character is hit with a brick and it doesn't kill them. What happens? You used the term multiplier. So everything now has a greater chance of killing him? A second brick has a 10% chance? A 20 foot fall now has a 40% chance?

 

What about a very minor damage, like getting hit with a stone. That has a 1% chance of killing you. But if you survive a 40 foot fall, your multiplier goes up so that the stone now has a 50% chance of killing you. And presto, later in the mission you're killed by a kid hurling a stone at you. Isn't one of the things you hated about the current system that you might be killed by a minor wound? And how pissed off is a player going to be when the odds work against them and they're killed by a stone even though they haven't been injured before in the mission?

 

If that's not what you had in mind, then you're going to have to explain in more details.

[oDDity]

This is also true with the old system. I don't understand what you think the difference is.

THe old system had hard coded rules about jumpiog, a certain height did a certain amount of damage every time, which is totally unrealisitc. I hate knowing in advance how much generic damge I will recive from a certain action. It's ridiculous.

 

Let me see if I understand what you're describing. You would give each 'event' that might damage the player a percentage chance of killing them. A 20 foot fall might have a 20% chance. A thrown brick might have a 5% chance. But what happens if that chance fails? The character is hit with a brick and it doesn't kill them. What happens? You used the term multiplier. So everything now has a greater chance of killing him? A second brick has a 10% chance? A 20 foot fall now has a 40% chance?

 

A hit that doens't roll a maximum may give the player some superficial injuries or brusies, yes, but so what, you don't need to know about that, they don't affect the gameplay in any way.

The multiplier only affects the damage type you recieved. You have a separate multiplier for different damage categories, missles, falling, heat. and melee etc. Every time you recive that damage type your chance of getting a critical hit the next time you recive that damage type are increased by a multiplier.

All of the categories can have different chances of getting a crtical hit all have their own tailored multipliers.

For example, the chances of being pierced by an arrow would be veryhigh, and virtually every time it would be incpacitating, so the % chance is very high and the multipler is high as well, because the chances of an arrow glancing off a buckle or something is very low. You have virtually no chance against arrows, except what the player himself can do to dodge them.

It's very simple, nowhere near as complex as an RPG system.

I don't know why you're going on about bricks and stones, there aren't any in the game, and the AI don't throw them. EVen if they did then there would be a separate category for thrown blunt missiles which would have a very small chance of doing any damage you'd need to know about., and a multiplier would not be needed for them.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

I have to say I like the idea of coming up with something new for a health system, but the one flaw of your system, Odd, is that the player has no feedback on wether or not they've even been injured, and therefore cannot make any determination on their next course of action.

[ZylonBane]

THe old system had hard coded rules about jumpiog, a certain height did a certain amount of damage every time, which is totally unrealisitc. I hate knowing in advance how much generic damge I will recive from a certain action. It's ridiculous.

No, it's PHYSICS. On average, object X, dropped from height Y, onto surface Z, will take N% structural damage. Conventional HP systems have a solid -- if highly abstracted -- grounding in reality. Your luck/multiplier system does not. In fact, the fundamental basis of your system is that past events affect the probability of future events-- which is one of the things that probability theory teaches us is absolutely false. Got woo?

 

But what the heck, let's stick your multiplier onscreen as a bar. When it's full, you're chock-full-o'-luck and can survive almost anything. The more dangerous things you do, the lower it gets, and when it gets really low and you try something dangerous, you die. Well congrats Odd, you just invented the health bar.

 

If the thing you hate so much is the deterministic aspect of the damage model, why not simply propose that a bell-shaped randomization curve be applied to all damage? In pen-and-paper RPGs, this is exactly what any multiple die roll simulates.

Edited March 19, 2006 by ZylonBane

[oDDity]

I have to say I like the idea of coming up with something new for a health system, but the one flaw of your system, Odd, is that the player has no feedback on wether or not they've even been injured, and therefore cannot make any determination on their next course of action.

heh, well that's the whole point of my system. THe fatal blow doesn't come as a result of a lot of minor injuries building up, and culminating in one last minor injury meaning you're dead.

THE fatal blow happens because it's a hard hit in the right place, and would kill or incapaciate you outright whether you had any smaller injuries or not.

You can be killed instantly with the very first damage you recive in the level, there is no farting about with hit points, no comfort blanket, no safety net.

It's up to you not to recieve any damage. You're not a fighter, and if you want to fight you'll be dicing with death.

[oDDity]

No, it's PHYSICS. On average, object X, dropped from height Y, onto surface Z, will take N% structural damage. Conventional HP systems have a solid -- if highly abstracted -- grounding in reality. Your luck/multiplier system does not. In fact, the fundamental basis of your system is that past events affect the probability of future events-- which is one of the things that probability theory teaches us is absolutely false.

 

But what the heck, let's stick your multipler onscreen as a bar. When it's full, you're chock-full-o'-luck and can survive almost anything. The more dangerous things you do, the lower it gets, and when it gets really low and you try something dangerous, you die. Well congrats Odd, you just invented the health bar.

 

I know chance has no memory. IF you have spun a coin 10 times and it landed heads each time, the chances of it landing heads the next time are the same as on the first spin.

However, the chances of you spinning 11 heads in a row are small, and it multiplies with each spin.

So, while each individual spin by itself is isolated, the overall tally of spins is not. That's why the chances of spining 50 heads in a row is nearly impossible.

Likewsie, jumping off a roof continually is eventually going to result in a broken bone, because your luck will run out, and chance events are all that are operating here.

THe multiplier in my system is keeping track of the overall tally of events, and the spiralling chances, not the chances on each individual event.

[ZylonBane]

I know chance has no memory.

...

THe multiplier in my system it keeping track of the overall tally of events, and the spiralling chances

You say you understand, then prove that you do not.

 

Q. If I flip a coin 100 times and get "heads" each time, what are my chances of getting "heads" the 101st time?

A. 50%. The exact same odds as every other flip.

Edited March 19, 2006 by ZylonBane

[oDDity]

You say you understand, then prove that you do not.

 

Q. If I flip a coin 100 times and get "heads" each time, what are my chances of getting "heads" the 101st time?

A. 50%. The exact same odds as every other flip.

 

And what are the chances of you flipping a coin 100 times and getting 100 heads?

[Springheel]

THe old system had hard coded rules about jumpiog, a certain height did a certain amount of damage every time, which is totally unrealisitc. I hate knowing in advance how much generic damge I will recive from a certain action. It's ridiculous.

 

We've already established that we're going to use a somewhat random damage system, so this won't be a problem. You can't keep using it as an argument for a new system.

 

The problem of dying from a minor injury that you dislike so much in the current system is also a problem with *your* system. A greater one, in fact, since you can die from a minor injury even if it's the first time you've been hurt. So that argument is also moot.

 

Which is why I'm having a hard time figuring out how your system is better than the one we've already got. It's more complicated, but in the end it accomplishes pretty much the same thing.

 

The only remaining difference I can see is the one that I think causes the most problems--that players get no feedback and can no longer judge the consequences of their actions.

 

You can be killed instantly with the very first damage you recive in the level,

 

Yes, this seems to be what it all comes down to, and I doubt there are many who think that's a good thing for gameplay.

[bob_arctor]

Urm well it's RPG to have dice rolls and a "Luck" stat. Played Fallout before?

With Jinxed.

 

I get the point that it's unlikely that you can survive 100 jumps off tall buildings.

However that's because each time you do so there is 5% chance you will survive, and the probability that you will survive them all is just 5% to the power of 100. Which is very very small.

No need for tallies at all.

 

Of course if you think you will be shaken and bruised by the jump, affecting subsequent jumps, then we need some way of representing that....

 

 

A Health Bar!

 

And when health is low, you have a lesser chance of surviving jumping of buildings, maybe 0.5%!

Edited March 19, 2006 by bob_arctor

[ZylonBane]

And what are the chances of you flipping a coin 100 times and getting 100 heads?

Very, very low, of course. And reality manages this without a magic multiplier in the sky. So I don't see why you think one should be necessary.