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Game Mechanics Alternative to Hit Points

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Guest User

Guest
hey yall. i was wondering if anyone had any references to games that don't have a numerical HP system but something else.

in my game, ive been playing around with the idea of having "health" determined by body condition instead of a single unified number. attacks that have pierce armor/clothing have a chance to sever arteries or something, causing bleedout, blunted/forceful attacks have a chance to cause internal trauma, attacks to the head can be incredibly lethal, losing a limb will cause shock & bleedout, etc..

however, this kinda makes it complicated and i'm not sure its really worth implementing due to the extremely dumbed-down combat mechanics of my game. and i can't think of a single game that has bothered with this besides Dwarf Fortress.

the major problem with just following dorf fort's lead is that DF allows complete control over where you attack and how.
but in my game you basically just bump into enemies to attack automatically or aim and fire in a specific direction if you have a ranged weapon equipped. so all you can do is choose who you are attacking, not what specific body part you are attacking.

i intend to add perks/abilities that are used automatically, such as learning how to parry, disarm, etc. and obviously there's choice of gear and weapons. however, i'm still leery about dropping hitpoints in favor of a system that, aside from the choices above, would potentially allow the player to die without any way to influence their chances just because Bad Guy #45 rolled a nat 20 and happened to cut through your armor and hit something important. as such, im interested if anyone has some thoughts on this or if there are games out there that have something i can use to learn from.

thoughts/info? thanks.
 

Ladi_Pix3l

Member
Hmm I'm steppin on what you're puttin down...

But I don't think there's any source or way that most (if not all) codes aren't controlled by a numerical system. I think what you need is a system where HP isn't affected (wait effected?. . . .no. . .dammit idk) till the initial body part is exposed and then damaged.

So your HP would be locked (or untouched) until that piece of armor was destroyed.

EDIT: So each piece of armor would have it's own individual HP.
 
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Electros

Member
Deus Ex had this; dead arms = duff accuracy, dead legs = floorcrawling, dead head (+torso I think) = dead. On normal difficulty it didn't really matter, but on the hardest it made it more intersting as these status impacts happened more often.

From the description of your game though, it sounds like this wouldn't really add much, and could quite possibly take away in terms of muddying the mechanics. Perhaps you might want to go for weapons that have chances to inflict ailments, e.g. chance to stun, chance to bleed etc.
 
G

Guest User

Guest
Hmm I'm steppin on what you're puttin down...

But I don't think there's any source or way that most (if not all) codes aren't controlled by a numerical system. I think what you need is a system where HP isn't affected (wait effected?. . . .no. . .dammit idk) till the initial body part is exposed and then damaged.

So your HP would be locked (or untouched) until that piece of armor was destroyed.

EDIT: So each piece of armor would have it's own individual HP.
i'm sorry if i didn't make it clear in my post, but i just mean a single numerical value that is added to/subtracted to control whether the player is alive or dead (e.g. Skyrim's health system). i do not seek to remove numerical values from the system entirely.

anyway, armor and weapon durability & degradation is something i've considered, just haven't figured out a sensible repair system. but i think you're onto something there. thank you.

Deus Ex had this; dead arms = duff accuracy, dead legs = floorcrawling, dead head (+torso I think) = dead. On normal difficulty it didn't really matter, but on the hardest it made it more intersting as these status impacts happened more often.

From the description of your game though, it sounds like this wouldn't really add much, and could quite possibly take away in terms of muddying the mechanics. Perhaps you might want to go for weapons that have chances to inflict ailments, e.g. chance to stun, chance to bleed etc.
switching to ailments is certainly possible, this would already be necessary for laser rifles setting things on fire anyway so i think itd mesh well. very good thoughts & reference thank you.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
One idea could be to have several healthbars, and different weapons damage different health - melee weapons could cause blood loss, which leads to death, while electric attacks and poison gases could damage the nervous system, which leads to death too, and then having a critical state could debuff the character in different ways - blood loss would slow down movement, nervous system damage would mess up accuracy and aggro range (or a player's field of vision), and so on. Different weapons would do this on different rates, and different armors/species bonuses/etc would affect susceptibility on top of this, so you're encouraged to kill different enemies in different ways.

Apart from blood and nerves, you could also have skeleton integrity, circuitry, temperature, body integrity in general (with limb loss at critical levels, removing equipment slots), and mental health
 
G

Guest User

Guest
@Yal I'm on mobile so I hope this isn't a unreadable mess, but thank you for your thoughts.

My original thoughts on the composition of entity bodies was similar to this, but your ideas on how it affects the player and diverse weapon damage are much needed improvements to my original draft. I feel this is a good premise for something sensible, strengthening the justification to have diverse equipment (e.g. stab vest v. Ballistic vest v. Hard-case ceramic armor, etc) instead of a fairly linear progression of 1 -> 2 -> 3.

-

A little mixture of the ideas in everyones answers, tailored to my own personal tastes is crating a much nice system than i would have come up witH on my own. Thanks. Its Certainly a lot more fun to code than what i had.. :cool:
 
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MishMash

Guest
The only thing I would say here is to be careful not to over-engineer the mechanic. Sometimes, adding depth to mechanics can make them seem more interesting on the surface, but in practise, they can sometimes be annoying in the long run. For example, a player may find it interesting for a bit, but when they are 4 hours into the game, they might not necessarily want to be worrying about doing maths in their head to try and guesstimate how strong/weak their character might be.

Games generally converge back to using similar style HP systems because is it fundamentally easy to understand and meets with player expectation. Depending on what areas of the game you want to be the main focus, it can either be a good or bad decision to mess with this. Personally, I fall into the group of people who think that an overly complex health system adds unnecessary difficulty to a game, but not in a fun way. The other thing that can come from too much complexity is that if you have lots of different equip slots for example, each individual item can be less meaningful and as a result, tiny modifications can go unnoticed.

If you do want to go with making items be interesting and change-up interactions the player can have with enemies, then I would suggest having a very small number of item equip slots, and have each of those items be significant in nature. This means that earning an item can feel like an accomplishment, it also allows the player to have to decide between the trade-offs of different items that do different things. It also gives you room to make a particular item have a crazy/fun effect whilst keeping it easy to balance with the other items. (If you have a lot of items on the other hand, balancing those items becomes a nightmare, and you can often end up in a scenario where all items get dulled down just to prevent super stackable combo's that break other areas of gameplay.)

The final thing I'll say here is that if you do have modifiers as a result of damage to the player (such as loss of limb), keep it simple and just have a binary yes/no as to whether the modifier has been applied. I've seen games in the past that again, try to overcomplicate this by throwing in percentages and numbers, and using those numbers to scale subsequent effect. And whilst it sounds good in practise, imo, it never makes for a great experience as its so varied and specific to each scenario that it never really requires skill to overcome, its just cheese.

As an example, if loss of limb is significant, then rather than it completely impeding your ability to do things, it just gives you a timeout. So you go from having as much time as you want to win a fight to only having a minute before you bleed out. You could also disable one ability, though I wouldn't handicap the player entirely to the point you can barely move, just because at that point, you might as well have died. I feel the motivation behind having a system like that should fall into a risk-reward style of gameplay. Lets say ideally, the skill comes in avoid attacks that you know can cause limb loss (e.g. avoiding a close range melee character). However, you could make an elective decision that the fastest way to complete a level is to rush in, lose a limb and then end up in a better position.
 

JackTurbo

Member
I'd suggest taking a look at how pen and paper rpgs handle damage and effects, they can be a great source of inspiration for these sort of systems.

Although be aware that complicated rules and systems are as likely to put players off as they are to interest them
 
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DeathandGrim

Guest
Be sure that the player will be fully aware of their state of health by just a glance.
Maybe having some text bar that sort of details the status of the character with phrases that clearly communicate what the character's health is like "internal wounds fatal in three turns" or "shoulder torn reducing attack strength" or "Severe head trauma. Protect." or something like that.
 
G

Guest User

Guest
Be sure that the player will be fully aware of their state of health by just a glance.
ye that's the plan, jack. complex, intricate systems delivered in a streamlined, simplified experience.
as much as i like detail and heavy-handed simulation, i also hate micromanagement and convolutedness as much as anyone.

i'm trying to make the HUD pretty simple tbh. i would like to get it to the point where everything can be built into the game like Dead Space, but im still working that out. and not everyone is too keen on that. guess we'll see.

The final thing I'll say here is that if you do have modifiers as a result of damage to the player (such as loss of limb), keep it simple and just have a binary yes/no as to whether the modifier has been applied. I've seen games in the past that again, try to overcomplicate this by throwing in percentages and numbers, and using those numbers to scale subsequent effect.
i got you. i feel the system should simply provide a motivation to progress in equipment/stats/perks rather than dish out punishment by making the game agonizing to play. nobody likes crawling at a snails pace back to the nearest safe zone because their legs are crippled, or missing 90% of the time because of poor equipment, broken arms, damaged head, etc.. :(

I'd suggest taking a look at how pen and paper rpgs handle damage and effects, they can be a great source of inspiration for these sort of systems.
good idea, i'll try and look around for something. i find the current edition of D&D i play relies a lot on the DM and player's ability to retain the current state of their character's body in memory rather than anything complex. hopefully another game has something closer to what i'm looking for.
 
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Thunder Lion

Guest
Hmm I'm steppin on what you're puttin down...

But I don't think there's any source or way that most (if not all) codes aren't controlled by a numerical system. I think what you need is a system where HP isn't affected (wait effected?. . . .no. . .dammit idk) till the initial body part is exposed and then damaged.

So your HP would be locked (or untouched) until that piece of armor was destroyed.

EDIT: So each piece of armor would have it's own individual HP.
Affect is a verb, effect is basically a noun you give to something that had done something.
Be mean to affect their feelings.
Because he was mean he effected their feelings.
Kinda a post tense and past tense ideal.

"So, if A affects B, B experiences the effect of Aā€™s action.", https://www.grammarly.com/blog/affect-vs-effect/

So again affect is an action that results into an effect. Effect is the noun to what was done when an action affected them.
 
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Thunder Lion

Guest
My idea is this, you can't avoid a health system of any kind. Something will eventually result in failure by that I mean the player will run out of something and not be allowed to continue.

But on that note, what if the plaher can't die? But instead, they get nerfed every so often via health points *gasp* but wait it just won't cause them to die they will just become weaker or lose somethings. The thing is you have to make the game in a way that won't trap the player completely, give them a wat to escape a boss, give them upgrades which they can reduce their losses or have more before they start losing something. This sounds like a cool idea to me! I'll use it for another mini project! (Ill never finish a game )
 
The Souls games (and lots of other rpgs, probably) already have piercing, smashing, burning, etc damage and defense. To me, it seems overly complex to the point I end up just ignoring it. If I were going to make a game with these sorts of effects, I'd probably simplify it a lot, and hide all the numbers from the player, making the effects obvious through animations and sound effects and stuff.

Even the old Secret of Mana had something like this. I remember certain enemies "dodging" the attacks of certain weapons constantly, like the sword always doing no damage to the slimes and making an unsatisfying "shing!" noise instead of the normal meaty "whack!" sound effect. The spear hit them much easier. Even as a little kid, I instinctively thought "the sword's attacks are sliding off of them, but the spear can pierce through them!" I have no idea what the actual system was that decided that was to this day, but you didn't *have* to to play the game. I'd recommend keeping it simple like SoM did. Or even simpler, like Link to the Past did.

The Souls way of exposing everything is fine, too, but I think the information overload might paralyze some players.

For damage, do whatever you want. Plenty of games have had bleeding and damaged limbs and what-not. Make sure to make something that's actually fun though, rather than something that just sounds cool on paper. It's easy to let our imaginations run wild. I think "it sounded cool on paper!" is probably why a huge portion of games end up playing badly, haha! ;)

Excuse the horrible rambly format of this post. Writing from my phone, lol
 
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