24 replies to this topic

[Lokked]

I think rouncer is turned off by the commonplace visualization of an entity's lifeforce via a Healthbar. Healthbars are an ancient representation of this attribute.

It's entirely possible to simulate Real-Life vitality with a Health Bar:
- The Brain can handle a measurable impact
- You can lose a measurable % of blood before Brain function ceases
- A bone can sustain a measurable impact or pressure before breaking

Video Games (currently) feed the Visual and Auditory sense of the player, but fail to provide any Kinesthetic feedback, and so a player wouldn't necessarily know they now have a huge hole in their body armor, unless otherwise indicated by a Health Bar.

I agree with rouncer on some aspects, though. The Lifeforce of an entity should be better represented than by a range of 0 to 100%.

[fireside]

I think dropping abstract representations like health bars just causes a loss in strategy. You don't see them on FPS because there isn't a lot of strategy going on there, it's just kill or be killed depending who's faster and in the right place. You see them in strategy games because it's one more piece of information you can use to weigh a decision.

[gillvane]

rouncer said:

you die not because of some unrealistic health meter reaching 0, what you do die of is your internal organs bursting, or a bullet hitting a weakspot in the armour, all im saying is there is more realistic methods of killing a player than giving him a health bar that gets hacked at by weapons different amounts.

Do you really think DPS is realistic at all? I dont see how... it actually always looked like a weakness of most games.

Realism is my favorite thing of all, and health bars were never realistic to me.

Fun > realism

Realistically you need to go to the bathroom. Realistically you would die once, and never play the game again (perma death). Realistically whether you died or not would be immaterial because you would be in so much pain after being shot you would not be able to function on the battle field any more. Realistically you could catch an infection and die of gangrene. Again, it would be perma death, and you would never play the game again. Or your limb would be amputated, and realistically it would never grow back, and you would be gimped for the rest of the time you played the game.

[gillvane]

fireside said:

I think dropping abstract representations like health bars just causes a loss in strategy. You don't see them on FPS because there isn't a lot of strategy going on there, it's just kill or be killed depending who's faster and in the right place. You see them in strategy games because it's one more piece of information you can use to weigh a decision.

not only that, unless you make them entirely random, players will figure them out, and post damage tables on Alakazam.

the players that use the damage tables will be more effective than those that don't.

[Lokked]

gillvane said:

Fun > realism

Realistically you need to go to the bathroom. Realistically you would die once, and never play the game again (perma death). Realistically whether you died or not would be immaterial because you would be in so much pain after being shot you would not be able to function on the battle field any more. Realistically you could catch an infection and die of gangrene. Again, it would be perma death, and you would never play the game again. Or your limb would be amputated, and realistically it would never grow back, and you would be gimped for the rest of the time you played the game.

And each combination of Shift/Ctrl/Alt + Alphanumeric Key controls a muscle group.....Right?

I think it can be agreed that the term realism means different things to different people. I wouldn't focus too much on the vocabulary used. It is implied that game realism has limits.

"Fun" is another word that has very little meaning.

As for On Topic,

Pull out a Spreadsheet, create 2 entities with HP and defined abilities, and slap it out Cell by Cell until you think it works.
Use a Log function of Time vs Level to figure out the level curve, decide how often a player is rewarded with experience.

If you are worrying about DPS, I don't think you've made it past the first stages of planning. Varying DPS will affect the Time of an encounter, and this can be modified simply by giving an entity more HP/Mitigation.