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The mutiplier is necessary to prevent any load/save cheating, where the filthy, sly, underhand players ( which make up the majority of gamers) try to make a quck save before he tries combat. If there is no multiplier then he can save and load until he beats his opponant due to natural luck, and he can keep doing this wiht every fight, since every fight is a fresh 'roll' with the same 50/50 chance.

 

If it is a 50:50 chance then it's ok. The point is, that reloading is quite painfull and if the even is unlikely it can take a lot of time. If a player wants to do this, I don't see why we should prevent it, because it's really none of our concern. We should try to give a good gameexperience, not preventing each and every single trick that may be employed to cheat, because it is simply impossible. If players go to extremes to cheat, then it's their problem not ours. I certainly wont spend extra effort and time just to prevent some rare chance of cheating which is extremely annoying to perform in the first place.

Gerhard

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While I agree that there's no point in trying to prevent players from "going to extremes to cheat", quickloading is hardly going to such an extreme as tweaking resources. Still, I don't see how oDDity's method prevents the problem of quickloading any more than a healthbar does - players can just save and quickload whenever they get hit or something might have glanced off of them.

 

Also, from the perspective of a mapper, I dislike the idea of it being theoretically possible for a player to survive an arbitrarily long fall. I should be able to make an area inaccessable by putting it so far below a player that falling to it would certainly kill them.

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Actually it would require for the mapper to put the chances in manually in many cases. So if you have a high ledge, then the damage from the top should be rather high and the chance to get a critical injury rather high. This would automatically take care of reloading, because if the damage is higher then the maximum number of hitpoints, and the chance for getting a critical injury is also high it will almost always be certain death, which is realistic. In such cases it can be done by code, by taking into account the velocity and gravity. However in other cases it's not as easy. For injuries from weapons you would need a rather detailed location coverage and it's depending on different kinf of weapons. Getting a hit with an arrow into the eye is not a guarantuee for an instant kill, and contrary to what Oddity says, I'm quite surprised how often people survive something that would intuitively be quite dangerous and certainly deadly.

Gerhard

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Oh, you know a lot of people who've been shot in the eye by an arrow and survived do you? So many that's it's surprising?

An injury doens't have to be fatal, just bad enough to stop you from continuting the misison, and surely an arrow in your eye, even on the chance it hadn't killed you, would still want to to give up trying to rob the safe and go home, also, if you were shot in the eye, then you probably wouldn't be able to escape the follow up arrows, and they would kill you.

ANyway, as long as we're having random damge in the system we're using for the toolset, and the random damage can be as high as the players full health points, then that's a start.

I think a 1 in 10 chance of being killed by one hit on full health is more than fair.

THis is the only way I can get anything changed in the toolset. I have to start bargaining very high for a full and complete system change, and then barter downwards.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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ANyway, as long as we're having random damge in the system we're using for the toolset, and the random damage can be as high as the players full health points, then that's a start.

I think a 1 in 10 chance of being killed by one hit on full health is more than fair.

 

That sort of random health is almost uncontested I imagine. In fact it should be higher than that - being struck by an arrow in the chest or head should have a greater than 50% change of killing you in one hit.

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Don't forget you also have 1 in 11 chance of being hit for 90, 80, 70, 60 etc

Maybe someone good at math can work out how many arrows would kill you on average if an arrow had a random chance of doing from 0-100 damge in leaps of 10.

I'd say 3 at a guess.

edit:

Actually, working it out I thnik it's six.

IT would be better to make the damage do either 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100, then the avergae is 4 arrows to kill you on full health, though that probably completely wrong, since you have to factor in your reduced heath every time you do take a hit.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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IT would be better to make the damage do either 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100, then the avergae is 4 arrows to kill you on full health, though that probably completely wrong, since you have to factor in your reduced heath every time you do take a hit.

 

Assume an arrow can do 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 with equal probability. Let E(x) be the expected outcome of event x.

 

E(single hit) = (0 + 20 + 40 + 60 + 80 + 100) / 6 == 300 / 6 == 50 damage points

 

So for a health of 100, the expected outcome is to die after 2 hits with this system.

 

(For those unfamiliar with probability theory, the expected outcome is the outcome that an infinite number of trials will tend towards, or what will happen "on average" to use the colloquial expression).

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It's never been done before

 

That's not a valid reason for doing anything. It's only worth doing something new if it's also *better* (or at least as good) as the current system.

 

As far as factoring in damage for objects, we'll have to decide if we're using damage locations for the player too (and I don't see why not). So an arrow to the head might do twice as much damage as a normal arrow.

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There's no point in damage locations for the player model. An arrow in the arm or leg is as misison-ending as one in the head, even if it's not as fatal.

 

Is everyone happy with a figure of two hits on average? I am. It sounds bad, but you could just as easily get away with 4 or 5.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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There's no point in damage locations for the player model. An arrow in the arm or leg is as misison-ending as one in the head, even if it's not as fatal.

 

However an arrow to the head is far more *likely* to be fatal than one in the leg. A brick in the head (and yes, we've already established some AI will throw rocks/bricks/etc at you) is more likely to be mission-ending than one in the arm.

 

The only question with damage locations is whether it's fair to penalize the character for getting hit in the head if they can't effectively judge whether that's going to happen. In real life you take extra effort to protect your head/face in dangerous situations, shielding it with your arm or ducking. In the game that's much more difficult to do.

 

On the other hand, if I poke my head above a crate and get hit with an arrow, it should be pretty serious.

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I agree that there's nothing wrong with having a possibility of arrows/swords killing players in one shot, if they're playing on expert.

 

Just to throw in another idea: So far everybody has been talking about uniform probability distributions for different levels of damage. However, you can achieve more interesting effects if you use a non-linear damage curve. For example, consider damage = 200*(random 0..1)^2: Assuming a player has 100 HP, there's a 29% chance of dying, but if you survive you'll take 12 damage on average. (I'm assuming you only query random 0..1 once and not twice) That would behave much more similarly to oDDity's proposed health system, since you tend to either die or get minor scrapes.

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I get the feeling you guys should be testing this out in the field more and then be citing field reports rather than speculating (maybe you are).

 

The T2 FM that immediately comes to my mind when thinking about 1-shot seriously wound/kill arrows is Midday Escape. And if you read the players reports on it, there was a lot of frustration on the fact that 1 arrow could stop a run in its tracks, forcing you to repeat running past them play after play so it turns into more like a reflex game (at least for that area) than plotting how to sneak by an obstacle like how I normally think the classic gameplay should be. Also, reports were that it was hard to be sure one was completely clear of an archer's line of sight until you were basically maimed/killed by the first (otherwise "warning") arrow ... although granted the draconian design contributed to the frustration; but, then again, 1-shot kill arrows might encourage that kind of draconian design. And in response, authors might just start using less archerers and so the gameworld is simply diminished.

 

Anyway, I haven't thought enough about it to have a strong opinion, but thinking in terms of how the flow of gameplay is affected by these sorts of mechanics using the actual experience of real gameplay is what I wish there was more going on here.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Don't forget you also have 1 in 11 chance of being hit for 90, 80, 70, 60 etc

Maybe someone good at math can work out how many arrows would kill you on average if an arrow had a random chance of doing from 0-100 damge in leaps of 10.

Why are you insisting on rounding damage values to even multiples of ten? Talk about unrealistic...

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Putting damage on any numerical scale is unrealistic, but ultil we can code the inner workings of the human body down to a cellular level, it'll have to do.

Demagogue, FM authors should not make maps where you have no choice but to run across the line of sight of an archer and have to dodge arrows.

If they do, then don't play it, since it's obviously shit.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Heheh yeah - "It was frustrating to run past the archers because I kept dying." Well, YEAH, you should have thought of that before you ran past them. If you're forced to then yes, it's shit.

 

That's not a valid reason for doing anything. It's only worth doing something new if it's also *better* (or at least as good) as the current system.

Man, what are you on about? I said like, twice already, that statement was a reason NOT to do something. :/

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Oh, you know a lot of people who've been shot in the eye by an arrow and survived do you? So many that's it's surprising?

 

Maybe not an arrow, but a pole that is much thicker then a arrow would also suffice. That pole was stuck not through the eye, but through the chin, went through the head and came out on the top of the head, so it was most likely going straight through the brain. This happened to a kid about two or three years ago (it was big in the news), maybe a bit longer. And I would consider this quite surprising, yes. Even though it is not happening that often, I still find it surprising that this can happen at all.

 

An injury doens't have to be fatal, just bad enough to stop you from continuting the misison, and surely an arrow in your eye, even on the chance it hadn't killed you, would still want to to give up trying to rob the safe and go home, also, if you were shot in the eye, then you probably wouldn't be able to escape the follow up arrows, and they would kill you.

 

Unfortunately our game mechanics doesn't keep track of this.

 

I think a 1 in 10 chance of being killed by one hit on full health is more than fair.

 

So if I'm hit on the fingers of my left hand, then there should be a 1:10 chance of getting killed by it? :D

 

THis is the only way I can get anything changed in the toolset. I have to start bargaining very high for a full and complete system change, and then barter downwards.

 

No. You could just as well look for poeple who want to have the same as you and team up with them, creating your own branch once it is finished.

Gerhard

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Man, what are you on about? I said like, twice already, that statement was a reason NOT to do something. :/

 

Did I interpret this incorrectly?

 

IMO the reason why something like oDDity's idea would be good is the very same reason we probably shouldn't use it yet:

It's never been done before.

 

You seemed to be saying it's a good idea *because* it hasn't been done before. I was disagreeing with that statement.

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So if I'm hit on the fingers of my left hand, then there should be a 1:10 chance of getting killed by it? :D

THe 1:10 chance means a 1:10 chance of being hit in a vital spot. THEre's also a 1:10 chance f taking no damage or taking 10 damage.

No. You could just as well look for poeple who want to have the same as you and team up with them, creating your own branch once it is finished.

No point, my skills are in graphics, not coding, and the ideas I've had for completely replacing the health system, the loot system and the lock picking system require no new graphics, only new code, so all I can do is beg and hope that other people will do it.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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No point, my skills are in graphics, not coding, and the ideas I've had for completely replacing the health system, the loot system and the lock picking system require no new graphics, only new code, so all I can do is beg and hope that other people will do it.

 

AFAIK there were several people who liked your ideas, and I don't think that all of them are non-coders. Also I don't think that anybody would really deny you such a request, considering the good reputation you have in the community. After all, most of these things may be implemented with only little changes. But it would need some more detailed description of what you need to make sure.

Gerhard

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