I’ve been playing a lot of survival games and quite frankly, I’m tired of the old Wolfenstein with Bleeding and bandages health system. So I have designed a new “realistic” damage and injury model. I have never seen a damage model like this before, so I am curious as to how this might be perceived.
The principle is simple: You no longer die from damage caused by a bullet or attack. You die from status/injury stacks caused by the hit. ie Bullets cause open wounds and external bleeding, Blunt objects cause broken bones and internal bleeding.
At the base level it functions as follows:
//we start with a base class from which all injuries will inherit
class StatusEffect {
List<StatusEffect> chain; //link to n number of other injuries
}
class Injury : StatusEffect{
Enum Grade {minor, major, moderate, severe, mortal}; //different things happen based on grade
}
An example of how a GunShot might be processed…
Player is hit by a gunshot in the Torso and Lung hitbox
An “OpenWound” is added to the Injury List
A Bleed is added the OpenWound injury.
Did bullet break a rib? Yes: Add BrokenRib Injury to list
Add PuncturedLung injury to List
Did the bullet pass through? Yes: Add Another OpenWound and Bleed to injury list
No? Add Injury for Bullet Inside
In this case, your Character would die from the effects of a Punctured Lung (drowning) or Blood Loss.
We would use a “crafting” system with a recipe generated based on what items are required to resolve the injuries.
With this system, you are not dead because you were hit 3x in the torso, you die as a result of not repairing your injuries, and time to death can vary based on how many injuries are created, giving you a chance to fight back.
Dwarf Fortress uses a similar damage model. My experiences with FPSes is generally limited to Borderlands, Fallout, and a couple miscellaneous games, but I feel like the mechanics would work fine for a slower paced game. One where the focus is not rushing through the content as quickly or efficiently as possible.
I think its cool, but promotes a very different style of play than you typically see in a lot of FPS games today.
Currently players expect to output 100 damage over 3 hits and the target will fall over dead. If there are medics or any kind of healing it is expected to restore your HP and you can go back to getting shot in the face. This is a lot different. There are longer term implications. A lot of times people will just kill themselves and respawn if they’re down on HP and would rather respawn at full HP.
It would probably institute a new scoring system like more points per kill based on how jacked up you are. Who gets the kill if 5 different people shot you up and you bleed out? Definitely some stuff to figure out.
I liked when AC did Multiplayer how you couldn’t just rampage around and get mad points, you had to play different to get the score. It was a cool idea, and I think if you had a game that could revolve more around this sort of damage system then it would work but it wouldn’t just fit in any game or FPS as a standard model.
There have been alternative health system feedback systems over the years in FPS games. In Trespasser, you played on a woman who had a heart shaped health indicator on her left breast. You had to look down at your own boobs to see how much health you had left. Trespasser also tried an alternative method for letting you know how much ammo a gun had. The character (vocals by Minnie Driver) would say “feels full” if the gun had a full clip and “about half” when the clip was half full. This was instead of the typical HUD with health and ammo at the bottom of the screen. If you have never played Trespasser, just watch a YouTube video of it. The game was too buggy to enjoy playing.
Another game that tried something unique was the mod called “Action Quake 2” for Quake 2. Members of the Action Quake team went on to create Counter Strike. In Action Quake, you could get hit, start bleeding, and then bandage the wound. If you were hit in the legs, it impacted movement until you bandaged yourself. If you got shot and did not bandage yourself, you would eventually bleed out and die. And if you were really quick, you could even bandage a head shot before you completely bled out. The risk of bleeding out forced players to run for cover during fights so they could bandage up.
The trick to any new health system in a game is whether or not it makes sense in terms of the overall goals of the game. A brief bandage system, like Action Quake 2, still allowed for fast gameplay. A full blown damage/repair system based on crafting might not work, because it might distract from the FPS action.
Sounds like you should check out some of the existing games that have these damage models in, could provide a good indication of what does/doesn’t work.
Arma 2 has a ton of mods for it’s wounding system that has the features you mention.
Check out the Combat Medical System for Arma 2: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=19493
Or ACE is another.
I’d probably focus on a better interface than Arma has though
I used to play arma with realistic wounding, but honestly as a gameplay mechanic it doesn’t work very well, it just gets frustrating.
I think Soldier of Fortune had something similar, but they’ve nixed it because it was deemed “too brutal”. Heheh… Game of graphuics between PSX and PS2 title deemed brutal. And there weren’t even that much blood in it.
While I would not go full blown medical sim with the system, my goal would be to slow down combat and introduce more risk to direct confrontation.
I don’t think this would work in an Action oriented FPS game, but I am thinking more along the lines of a Survival game. An injury you acquire through combat, even if healed, may put you at more risk outside of combat through infection or reduced stats while recovering.
I also would not do micro management of recovery. Recovery would likely heal from child level upwards all at once using up the necessary supplies. If you need 4 bandages to heal and 1 surgical kit, all would be used at once.
