What About Something Like This For Health Monitoring...

[Xiorell]

So.
Some people hate health bars.
Some People hate regenerating health.
Some of us don't mind depending on the game.

But I was just thinking of other ways you could gauge health that could be good for realistic type shooters and the like (coz with space marines and that stuff you can pretty much explain thier powers of healing however the fuck you want)

In a regen-health game, we all know that the more damage you take, the more the screen gets covered in blood/jam/minced beef/other effect, till this reaches the critical limit and you kick it.
WHAT IF, you had something like this, or a meter somewhere on the screen, that isn't indicating damage saying "hey you best find something to hide behing so your leg can grow back"...
...Instead, let's say our meter gets full the more you "dice with death"... walk into a room with one enemy in it armed with a shitty gun, the bar creeps up a little.. stand there utterly still and let him shoot at you and the bar fills faster and faster till it's full, indicating he's blown your face off.
Move around though, make yourself harder to hit, fire back, the bar doesn't fill as fast, but fail to kill him quick enough and eventually he still blows your face off.
Enter said room and insta-kill him on the other hand, the bar stays empty.

So with this idea, if you run out into a clearing with a shit load of guys the bar will instantly fill quite high indicating your dick move and the level of danger you are now in... a gun ship shows up while you're in the open, bar jumps some more and only comes down as you kill off the enemys and dive to cover and what not, until all danger has been eliminated or has passed, then the bar drops completely down to empty.

I just though it might help explain why our soldier dude is still alive better than "Umm, well he's got wolverine style healing factor"... it'd be more like, "he's one lucky motha f...", but still wouldn't need to have the lands littered with health packs.

I Dunno, just one of those 2AM ideas. Feelings on this?

 

[Fr]anc[is]

I sort of understand what you're saying sort of based on threat instead of HP. But it also sounds like you just have a meter telling you when the blood falls off your face. If you stand there and let them shoot you, you'll die in any game. Charge at the chopper with a minigun and you die quickly in any game.

 

[mento 2425]

good idea, but what if it was like those racing games where there is an outline of your car where if you like, blow a tire, the tire on the outline will turn red and turning becomes impossible, or if it's damaged it becomes yellow, and it would be like that, except with a drawing of a person, and if you get shot in the leg, the leg becomes red and you start to move slow and wobbly. to me, that sounds cool.

 

[manythings]

This has been done in a WWII game (can't think of the name of it) but basically when an enemy opens fire on you the screen turns red except for areas of cover. The more dangerous the fire the redder and more opaque the "Danger" area is and the more the "Safe" zone stands out. Thing is from what I saw you're now basically blind whenever you are under fire so you mostly have to try and get close enough to see them through the red haze.

Fear Effect from way back in like 2000 had a similar idea. Your heart rate translated into health. The calmer and more in control you were the more hits you could take and the better you could fight, the more tense and scared the weaker. Eventually you would get to the point where you were a one hit kill. Also it was a great game, I really wish I could get my hands on it again.

 

[coldshadow]

I like health bars XD

but I think the way it was done is duex ex was pretty awesome because it relide on where you got hit.

 

[Odegauger]

So basically instead of it being a health bar, it's probability-of-getting-shot bar? So you could have your probab-bar at near 0 and have some lucky, crippled fuck put a bullet in your head and instantly kill you? You could have your bar at near 100 as you charge a machine gun nest and miraculously not get hit as all the bullets somehow miss?

I like it.

 

[Odegauger]

I've actually thought of this kinda system before, don't know how long ago.

 

[Xiorell]

anc[is]I sort of understand what you're saying sort of based on threat instead of HP. But it also sounds like you just have a meter telling you when the blood falls off your face. If you stand there and let them shoot you, you'll die in any game. Charge at the chopper with a minigun and you die quickly in any game.

Hmm I guess it IS kinda the same.

See I was thinking if the bar is almost full the game AI alters the chance of a bullet being fired at you actually connecting to like, a 90% chance, then if you take down a guy or two the AI reduces the "crit chance" to 50%... then if they get a few mates show up it puts it back to 90%... then YOU get an ally turn up and the crit chance drops to 45% etc etc
Obviously you'd not be aware of the math going on, the game would assign values to things in the background based on I dunno... How many there are, WHAT they are, are you in cover, are they in cover able to take time with aiming.
You would just have some indication as to how much shit you're currently in.

I thought you might be able to couple it with a light verson of Deus Ex/Fallout3 localised damage. so that it doesn't seem like "you either dodge every shot as if by magic, or the first time you're hit you die". Maybe if you got shot in the leg it slows you down increasing the threat/crit-chance thing until you find a medic or whatever.


As I say, late night thinking lol

 

[Xiorell]

So basically instead of it being a health bar, it's probability-of-getting-shot bar? So you could have your probab-bar at near 0 and have some lucky, crippled fuck put a bullet in your head and instantly kill you? You could have your bar at near 100 as you charge a machine gun nest and miraculously not get hit as all the bullets somehow miss?

I like it.

Yeah kinda like this... there's never be a 0% chance of getting shot to death (unless ya know, there's NO enemy), and there's never a 100% chance of getting shot to death either.
Just increased or decreased probability that changes depending on the situation and how you deal with it, explained a bit better in my last post.

 

[Xiorell]

This has been done in a WWII game (can't think of the name of it) but basically when an enemy opens fire on you the screen turns red except for areas of cover. The more dangerous the fire the redder and more opaque the "Danger" area is and the more the "Safe" zone stands out. Thing is from what I saw you're now basically blind whenever you are under fire so you mostly have to try and get close enough to see them through the red haze.

Fear Effect from way back in like 2000 had a similar idea. Your heart rate translated into health. The calmer and more in control you were the more hits you could take and the better you could fight, the more tense and scared the weaker. Eventually you would get to the point where you were a one hit kill. Also it was a great game, I really wish I could get my hands on it again.

I remember hearing alot about fear effect but never got round to playing it.

As for this WW2 game you speak of, I think that sounds like an interesting mechanic that could be honed to something fun, and it is a bit like my idea I guess but sounds as if in a different form.

 

[random457376]

I like the thought put into alternative health-systems, but there's a couple of problems that I see with this one.
Do note this is written with FPS'ers in mind.

"...Instead, let's say our meter gets full the more you "dice with death"... walk into a room with one enemy in it armed with a shitty gun, the bar creeps up a little.. stand there utterly still and let him shoot at you and the bar fills faster and faster till it's full, indicating he's blown your face off.
Move around though, make yourself harder to hit, fire back, the bar doesn't fill as fast, but fail to kill him quick enough and eventually he still blows your face off."

First off, this isn't all that different from the health-regen mechanic. All that has changed is the thematic idea behind it (regrowing limbs to bullet dodging) and also that the bar now moves in reverse. You'll still 'regen' that bullet dodging awesome, and you'll still be able to tank a bunch with no ill-effects afterward provided you survive. Running out in front of a group of enemies in the health-regen system will be no different to this one given the mechanics described, it'll merely differ based on the difficulty scaled to each.

The issue I see with this and the health-regen mechanic is that it does not account for sustained injuries that might otherwise impair or eventually kill off your protagonist. Perhaps a more serious concern is the percentile based 'death chance' aforementioned by the OP. With FPS'ers in particular, whom I am to understand as a whole favor the idea of skill, luck is not something they want to be contending with. Just imagine something like that in a PvP environment.

Whatever way you try to spin it, introducing luck into the variables throws a whole lot out of the window. Realistic? Perhaps, in some cases, but then we would also have sustained injuries in that case too. A lot of such things are just too damn inconvenient to have in your average shooter.

Cuts? Need bandages. Gushing wounds? Sutures. Broken bones? Splints and time. Sci-fi and fantasy have easy get-outs for most of these, thankfully. Others like Call of Cthulhu implement the whole deal but it feels awfully contrived when any of these articles immediately remedies the injury.

Additionally - whilst one might argue that there is a certain amount of luck involved in most FPS'ers already, variable damage output from weapons not withstanding, one has to bear in mind this is normally luck on the player's part from something like an awesome grenade toss or foreseen ambush, rather than the invisible system that decides everyone's mortality rate.

This proposed mechanic, as the one described in Fear Effect, and already used in several other games, is really only different in that it has a different name and thematic bearing (though also a luck variable in this mechanic's case). It might be a better discussion to say that modern shooters should include more of these 'realistic' health-systems to aid immersion. I do, however, think that some bright spark somewhere will come up with a winning idea eventually and we'll all move to that.

 

[manythings]

This has been done in a WWII game (can't think of the name of it) but basically when an enemy opens fire on you the screen turns red except for areas of cover. The more dangerous the fire the redder and more opaque the "Danger" area is and the more the "Safe" zone stands out. Thing is from what I saw you're now basically blind whenever you are under fire so you mostly have to try and get close enough to see them through the red haze.

Fear Effect from way back in like 2000 had a similar idea. Your heart rate translated into health. The calmer and more in control you were the more hits you could take and the better you could fight, the more tense and scared the weaker. Eventually you would get to the point where you were a one hit kill. Also it was a great game, I really wish I could get my hands on it again.

I remember hearing alot about fear effect but never got round to playing it.

As for this WW2 game you speak of, I think that sounds like an interesting mechanic that could be honed to something fun, and it is a bit like my idea I guess but sounds as if in a different form.

If you ever see a copy of fear effect seriously pick it up. It's insanely unlikely and very dated controls and graphics wise but it was a developer who really tried to make something different.

The WWII game used it badly. Like I said once you came under fire your vision was just obscured by this red haze that destroyed your chances of killing the people shooting at you. It was basically like trying to walk around with a blanket over your head.

Also I like the sound of this potential crit thing. The math would be a fucker to work out and programme I'd say but it could work well.

 

[SimuLord]

I liked the idea (if not the execution) behind Fallout 3's crippled limbs---you didn't become a One Hit Point Wonder as you took damage.

Word is New Vegas will improve on that, especially in Hardcore Mode where a crippled limb isn't just "fuck, gotta use a stimpak, OK, all better!"

 

[open trap]

Sounds almost like brothers in Arms to me.

 

[Talon_Skywarp]

Health Meters are needed.

Or else The game becomes 1/3 hiding in a bin.

They add so much to games...Last bosses defeated with little to no health remaining... running in pure fear in hope of final no more rogue health pack. Hack and Slash won by hit and run.

And last thing I heard...we didn't want to be Grouch from Sesame Street.

 

[Talon_Skywarp]

I'm just tired of regenerating health. Every regenerating health game plays in the exact same way. Run in, shoot a few people, hide behind a box while the bullets fall out of your face, repeat. Suggesting encouraging that type of play really just makes me want to slap you.

People were getting creative with health restoration before halo slammed all mainstream gaming into a fetid bog of stagnation. But the important thing we lost was creativity, not healthbars/medkits/whatever.

This man deserves a medal.

BTW, question of regenerating health? How can I do it if I'm just a human? I wasn't aware members of the army could revive their wounds with hope and dreams...I thought these games were meant to be 'realistic'...War must be wierd...just people running around hiding in boxes waiting to cure themselves.

Maybe we don't a health care system if that's how it works.

 

[migo]

It'd be interesting to see how that would work, I wouldn't knock it until I've tried it.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

This has been done in a WWII game (can't think of the name of it) but basically when an enemy opens fire on you the screen turns red except for areas of cover. The more dangerous the fire the redder and more opaque the "Danger" area is and the more the "Safe" zone stands out. Thing is from what I saw you're now basically blind whenever you are under fire so you mostly have to try and get close enough to see them through the red haze.

Fear Effect from way back in like 2000 had a similar idea. Your heart rate translated into health. The calmer and more in control you were the more hits you could take and the better you could fight, the more tense and scared the weaker. Eventually you would get to the point where you were a one hit kill. Also it was a great game, I really wish I could get my hands on it again.

Was it a Brothers in Arms Game?

 

[Mr.Squishy]

I like the way halo/resistance:fall of man/far cry 2 did it, IE. a mix of regenerating and health bar.