Summary

I thought i would make this long form describing my thought process during the design of the next feature: the health system.

The idea is that rather than having an entities health be a number, they take damage to body parts that all have their own health points. These body parts can get injuries that decrease certain stats or cause more damage if not healed, as well as be dismembered leading to interesting long term effects on playstyle and health.

This diagram outlines the anatomy of a humanoid creature. Thanks to a Game Maker extension i recently discovered called ds_tree this tree data structure is possible and has room for easy expansion and improvement for other creatures. Using this, we can nest ds_maps within each node of the tree holding the injury booleans and health values.

Injuries

Obviously, certain body parts are going to be vital for the player to live such as the head, torso, and groin. but each body part can receive certain injuries. These include:

• Concussed - The creature suffers an intelligence and wisdom debuff
• Bleeding - The hp of the body part slowly decreases until healed. Can also be caused by dismemberment of the child body part. Depending on the amount of hp lost, it may result in scarring
• Bruised - Light dexterity and strength debuff
• Broken - Heavy dexterity and strength debuff and the body part is unusable until healed
• Burnt - Light dexterity debuff. Will scar if not tended to.
• Blinded - Perception debuff depending on how many eyes are blinded
• Castrated - Moderate Luck debuff. Cannot be healed.

Injuries can be healed by certain NPCs or by the player if their medical skill is good enough. Otherwise, scarring can occur.

Scars

Scars form depending on the severity of the injury, as well as how long it affects the creature before being healed. These scars give a small charisma debuff as the NPCs you converse with believe it to be unsightly. Certain types of scars are not surface level though. In real life, sometimes a broken limb doesn't heal properly and it's never quite the same. To reflect this, if a limb is broken and healed, depending on the healer's medicine skill, the maximum hp of that body part may be decreased permanently or may decrease the players maximum pain threshold.

Pain Threshold

Each creature has a particular pain threshold determined by their combined wisdom and charisma, as well as their race. When a creature gets hit and injured, depending on the severity, it will experience various levels of pain until the injury is healed. If the pain passes over the creatures pain threshold, the creature will suffer from a permanent decrease to all attributes as the pain at that point turns into a traumatic experience.

Conclusion

Ultimately, i hope this system gives combat more depth and makes the player think about and live through the consequences of fighting. Also there are talks of tying this system into the overarching story.

Stay tuned,

Jason

https://twitter.com/thinginger