quote:

---

Not good forcing players to abuse the interrupt feature in a game. If you''re counting on players reloading rather than avoiding getting killed in the first place, then you lose most of the realism you gained from having an easy-death combat system...

---

yeah I know, of course the player shoulnd''t have to expect to save and load 15 times while doing a mission because it''s impossible without it.. I realize that I DO have to draw the line between realism and ... lost the word. well, fun, I guess, but that wasn''t what I was thinking. Sorry, just sat a bunch of hours programming Djikstras algorithm... so I''m seriously tired now.

quote:

---

We used Airsoft in search training, yes. I''m sure you''ve taken one in the back when you least expected it. Not pleasant, but an effective reminder to check inside the cabinets and to keep your light off when you aren''t using it.

---

yeah

quote:

---

I agree about the save/load feature being abused, but if you can get through a game without needing it, the game was too easy. You need to strike a balance between waltzing through the game and getting sacked every time you open a door.

---

Exactly. If the game is impossible, then it isn''t fun. My first priority is of course to make a fun game. I''ll just try to make it as realistic as possible. I do think pulling that off is possible...

quote:

---

If your objective is realism, lose the "dodge" skill. Nobody dodges bullets in real life. The time from the gun going off to the bullet hitting the target is negligible. If someone shoots at you and you don''t get shot, it''s for one of two reasons: Either it wasn''t aimed at you properly or else something stopped or deflected the round in flight. Replace dodging with zones of cover and enemy error, and you''ll do okay. Remember to take into account that hitting moving targets is hard, firing accurately while you yourself are moving is harder still, and shooting at a moving target while moving is nigh impossible.

You''re right, I probably don''t need it. The game will use a 3D engine (most likely it''ll be a mod for UT2003), which means that the bullets WILL hit exactly where it should.

As it is now, I''m considering to use a skill-system without and visual numbers; your skill will be something like Untrained, Expert, or Master. Each of these will make you a lot better at the skill, and since I really wanna allow for "cool action" as well as realism, I''ll make it so the best "rank" in Pistols will allow the character to hit almost anything. Well, if it isn''t too far away.

But basically, I want the character to be able to dive past a door, spot a guy in the room inside, and kill him with a shot in the head. And then fall down, on the other side of the door. Yeah, I know that isn''t all that realistic, but I''m going to make it extremely hard getting that good in any skill.. Again, the difficulties of balancing the game..

If this game is going to be based on a realistic portrayal of death, then you''ll need to make sure that the player isn''t the only one with instincts for self-preservation. Try to build the AI such that things like cover fire work properly, so you can shoot at a bunch of guys and they''ll scatter to cover rather than standing their ground and blasting at you Terminator-style. Nothing sucks more than trying to stay alive while fighting against guys who don''t care if they die.

---

Of course I''ll try to implement some really nice AI, cause like you said, it won''t be funny trying to kill a bunch of people just standing there shooting at you. I just hope I can find someone with the adequate skills to do it

quote:

---

utally Assured Destruction arises easily, especially if there are grenades around. You might actually want to capitalize on this, and include psychopathic enemies who will gladly fill their shorts with C4 and rush you, but don''t make every enemy capable of this.

---

Hmm.. maybe I can include some sort of religious cult or something with zealots that would do stuff like that. Well, it''s worth having in mind I guess.

I hope that there will be an nice way to illustrate destruction in the engine I/we choose. It''d be nice to be able to fire at a wall or door, watching it get damaged as bullets hit it, and more importantly: Holes should show, and let your character see through. Could be a vital strategic option…

quote:

---

Save/Load, that''s boring, why should I DIE when I loose a battle, I could become prisonner, or whatever, there''s no NEED to kill the player.

---

True, but it requires A LOT more story-writing and stuff for that to happen.. But yeah, at some points in the game I agree that could be very cool indeed, changing the plot quite dramatically.

quote:

---

Original post by Srekel

Save/Load, that's boring, why should I DIE when I loose a battle, I could become prisonner, or whatever, there's no NEED to kill the player.

---

True, but it requires A LOT more story-writing and stuff for that to happen.. But yeah, at some points in the game I agree that could be very cool indeed, changing the plot quite dramatically.


Why does it require more story-writing? You could just throw the player in jail, or take away some of their items, or have the wake up in the hosipital or temple or something. The player would have to escape, or travel back to the location of their current quest or lose some money or items, but the lose wouldn't be that major and it wouldn't change the story of the game (even though it could.)

One interesting alternative to all this is to just make the player immortal. This only works if it makes sense in your game, but there are a lot of genres where the main character is basically unkillable, vampires, super heroes, cyberpunk virtual reality, etc. In Planescape Torment your character was immortal, if you "died" you would just wake up somewhere safe and have to try again.


[edited by - impossible on December 12, 2002 3:09:15 PM]

A thought I had overnight was that you could even have character death be permanent and irreversible, but have a replacement character show up at the last checkpoint. The replacement, typically, would have different stats/equipment from the original.

In implementation, you could get the player to generate a number of characters at the start of the game to be their team, then allow them to change active character at checkpoints. Or you could say that the player is some sort of spirit that possesses the character, and when the character dies, the nearest sympathetic host gets possessed instead...

Obviously, for my first suggestion, you''d need to figure out how empty slots on the team would be handled - maybe by recruitment (more generation) between missions. Or maybe you just leave them empty.

quote:

---

Why does it require more story-writing? You could just throw the player in jail, or take away some of their items, or have the wake up in the hosipital or temple or something. The player would have to escape, or travel back to the location of their current quest or lose some money or items, but the lose wouldn''t be that major and it wouldn''t change the story of the game (even though it could.)

---

Oh, sorry I didn''t think about that. Not that bad of an idea actually.... Hmm.. Interesting

quote:

---

One interesting alternative to all this is to just make the player immortal. This only works if it makes sense in your game, but there are a lot of genres where the main character is basically unkillable, vampires, super heroes, cyberpunk virtual reality, etc. In Planescape Torment your character was immortal, if you "died" you would just wake up somewhere safe and have to try again.

---

yeah.... I don''t think that would fit the story though... hmm...

Also the problem with both of these suggestions is, where would the characters gear go?yhujjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

sorry, that was my cat

tyyyyygggg´åe¨4rrr

hmm, again..

well, I like the first idea, and it''s not impossible at all to implement.. I guess there''d have to be something like a "give up" button then, if you realized you had too much opposition, and don''t wanna take too much damage, and you''re against saving/reloading too often.

Original post was about how you make realistic damage system. These are some ideas I had on the subject:

How do people actually die? They can die from shock, which is combination of mostly pain, damage to organs and bloodloss. They can also die from bloodloss, which is actually different from shock, because they are treated separately. And last, but not least, there''s the direct damage to certain organs. Damage to brain or heart will lead to certain death in most cases. Damage to muscles would render them inoperative. Of course there is also suffocation and hunger, but I don''t these are actual combat damage. Then there could be different kinds of effects on non-deadly damage to certain organs, like concussion from brain or internal bleeding.

So every hit does shock, can cause bloodloss, can damage organs, break bones (very much same kind as organ damage). Healing could also be different for each kind of damage.

I''m not sure, but by beating persons leg with blunt club can''t lead to death, atleast not very easily. So those classical
HP-=damage
if (HP<=0)
this.Die();
aren''t very realistic. IMHO.

You should not take systems from pen&paper RPGs, b/c they usually have very simplistic system suitable for dices. Computers can simulate much more realistic system.
But if you want simple system which simulates real damage quite good, try using one described in Twilight v2.2 RPG.

quote:

---

But if you want simple system which simulates real damage quite good, try using one described in Twilight v2.2 RPG.

---

For those of us who arn't familiar with it, where would one get one's hands on Twilight? or at least a copy of the damage rules?

quote:

---

I'm not sure, but by beating persons leg with blunt club can't lead to death, atleast not very easily. So those classical
HP-=damage
if (HP<=0)
this.Die();
aren't very realistic. IMHO.

---

That sort of system was originally invoked in games where attacking was strongly automated, so hit location was out of the player's hands. Rather than introduce lots of detailed rules, none of which would reach the level of the interface, a simpler model was used which gives approximately the same results and is far easier to understand and implement. If you simulated the entire conflict in depth, with hit locations determined and separate wounds tracked independently, but did it all automatically, so the player still just "attack"ed, then most of the time, you should get approximately the same result out. In which case, most of the time, you'd have wasted a lot of time and effort.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that a damage system should have most of the control parameters for dealing damage accessible through the interface, otherwise you're better off coming up with a simpler model that produces almost exactly the same results - otherwise you're liable to get situations where the player goes into two identical fights and one of them, ends up bruised all over, and the other ends up with his legs beaten to a pulp because the random hit locator kept targetting them, without the player's actions being able to influence the choice of outcome. At which point, most players throw the controller across the room, and tell all their friends to get some other game instead. At the least, the player should be able to dish out the range of punishment he's expected to take...


[edited by - rmsgrey on December 13, 2002 7:37:48 AM]

quote:

---

For those of us who arn't familiar with it, where would one get one's hands on Twilight? or at least a copy of the damage rules?

---

You could find those rules in the web from some roleplaying sites, I'm not sure. I have the original book, but I don't think you should buy that book just for the combat rules, they aren't that sophisticated.

They do have simulation for hit locations, separate hit points for each locations, different levels of injury(scratch, light,severe,critical) which define different levels of inoperativines of the limbs, critical hit, instant shock effect, instant kill effect (like from close range shotgun-to-stomach). After all many rpgs have from decent to good system, which could be easily be implemented on computer rpgs.

Storytelling games (Vampire,Witchcraft,Werewolf) have also good enough system for computer rpgs. They also have some interesting dice system which simulates player skills, called dice pool.
Usually rpgs have skill in range from 1-100 and tasks have difficulty levels ranging like +10, being very easy, and -40 being extremely hard. They usually have something like automatical success on 1-3 and automatic failure on 97-100. You just take player skill, add task difficulty bonus and roll dices. This isn't very good system because players can try something ridiculously hard things like killing a dragon with just one throwing dagger (there's always the 3% automatic success). And when you are skilled professional having some skill in 80% your easiest tasks have still quite big failure rate.

In dice pool system, skills represent the amount of dices thrown, difficulty the number of successes needed. Eg. you have Skill dancing with rate of 3 and agility rate 2, and you try to win a dancing competition (GM says its difficulty of 5) you must throw 5 (3+2) dices and each dice (10-sided) which has value of 7 or bigger is one success. Player gets 3 successes and fails, but actually he doesn't fail miserably and therefore is third. This system has different levels of successes.

Same could be implemented on computer games not just being 50% probability to hit and then 10-16 points of damage + 5 damage from strenght. They could actually throw 20 dices and for each success you inflict more damage, then opponent throws 10 dices for parrying and each success soaks some of the damage. This is just simplified explanation of the system.

I have seen too many AD&D based RPGs out there where heavier armor makes you harder to hit target, not actually protecting you from any damage (sure, the new AD&D system is better).

Vikke Matikainen


[edited by - kosmo on December 13, 2002 8:48:06 AM]

Ahem...

quote:

---

Duran, what''s the status of Pentaverse? Is there a web page or something? It sounds cool, and I''d like to see a more thorough description, but I don''t want to booger up a whole thread to hear about it.

---

Neither do I. I''ll be putting up a website as soon as I complete the custom skill system. I want the website to have examples of some of the more distinctive skills and spells. I also need a more complete design document. Currently, all of my game mechanics are spread across one and one-half spiral notebooks worth of mad scrawling. I''ll put a link in my sig when the website''s up.

quote:

---

Current battles:
- Visual vs Gameplay
- Realism vs Fun

---

Hmm... examining this, I get the impression that the real conflict is as follows:
Gameplay vs. All Comers

Gameplay''s gonna win in the end. No question about it: reality in TV and games is a recent idea and, hopefully, a short-lived trend. The point of games is to provide people with fun, not to be anatomically and physically correct. Who gives a sh*t? Gameplay first, realism second.

quote:

---

I''d also like to try and implement different types of damages, for example slice and bullet wound. Why? Because it would make armor more diverse; some might be good against certain types of attacks, and bad against others. But this may be a little overkill..

---

I missed this before. I don''t think that it''s overkill at all. Even D&D implements a damage type system, and it adds strategy and a small slice of realism to the game.
-----
Not to harp on my own unrealistic little creations, but in light of the last post, I''m going to describe my solution to the "armor problem."

In Pentaverse, armor and shields provide both:

A. A percentage chance that a poorly aimed blow will strike a hard part of the armor/shield, causing the armor to absorb ALL damage. All damage done to hard objects, like armor, has a set number of points subtracted from it before it is applied to the armor''s hit point score. Dents in armor can be repaired in shops or in the field, but if your armor''s HP reaches 0, this percentage chance is reduced to 0% and you are badly encumbered until you remove the split armor.

B. A percentage chance that a poorly aimed blow will strike a softer part of the armor, causing the damage done to you by the blow to be reduced as part of that damage is absorbed by the armor. If the armor is broken, this chance is reduced by half, but not altogether eliminated.

Is this enough of a compromise? I''m not as sure about this system as I am about my "disability" system from above, so comments are welcome.

"Ph''nglui mglw''nafh Cthulhu R''lyeh wgah''nagl fhtagn!" - mad cultist, in passing