Its still pretty early, but here’s a quick video:

Working on the medical system at the moment. I believe its an important element of the combat for injuries to have a lasting realistic effect, because a real-life battle is about attrition of wounds and exhaustion. Most battles will end up with the participants stumbling around trying to get a last slash at each other. It also greatly blurs the line between life and death allowing for you to keep characters alive without saving and reloading all the time.

Characters can now limp and clutch hands to wounds on different body areas.  There is also localised bodypart ragdoll, so individual limbs can go limp when they are disabled.  Later on I will add crawling (with ragdoll legs), concussion and random stumbling, dropping from exhaustion, carrying wounded buddies, vomiting blood… all kinds of fun stuff.

Arm damage affecting combat:

Update from a few weeks back when I was working on stumbling and wound-reactions. This completely changes the way mass combat works now, because it means an outnumbered character chops one guy, and then while that guy flinches or stumbles back clutching his wound the character can turn and chop someone else, who then falls over squirting blood or something, and he turns to fight the next guy, and then the first guy recovers and has to be chopped again, and so on…

Every game designer worth his salt has pondered this question at some time: “Should a player be able to save and re-load a game whenever he wants?”. They ask this because they want to instill a fear of death into the game play.

They always come to the same conclusion: That its the best way compared to forcing players to replay the same bit again and again, which is just frustrating. A few games have tried to restrict saving in various ways, but none of them have really worked, they just result in frustration.

Characters cannot die in games. Sure they can die, but the player will reload and try again until they don’t die. Imagine if we could save and re-load in real life - It would be a superpower, you could achieve anything you wanted to. In games it is no different, it is also a superpower. Saving in games eliminates the fear, tension and emotion.

In real life, yobbos and trouble makers only fight when they have a distinct advantage, because for most humans a one on one fight is scary. “What if I loose?”. Yet in a game you know you just saved so you don’t have any “What if what if what if?”. Even equal odds are scary when there is so much at stake.

So why is it bad to take out the save/load ability? Because you loose your progress, all your hard work. You are robbed. Its just not fun, its frustrating, the player will give up and never play it again.

So ask yourself this question: How do we get by in real life without saves or extra-lives? hmm?
1 - Dying doesn’t happen that often, actually, it can be quite hard to die.
2 - People look after their lives. Nobody wants to die.
3 - If faced with a dangerous task, one would proceed cautiously and plan with care. They would formulate backup plans and escape routes should things go wrong.

SO.

1 - Characters in games are both too tough and too fragile. A bullet does not hurt a character, it shaves off a small percentage of hit points, and they do not feel or express pain, so they don’t fear the bullets. They run around like chickens trying to put more bullets into the enemy first. They are not encumbered by injury, then suddenly their hitpoints cross the 0 line and they drop dead. I’m talking about players as well as AI’s.
Games need a proper medical system, something more realistic that blurs the lines between life and death.

2 - Enemy AI characters don’t have enough fear of death. War is terrifying, an army or opponent that does not fear death is formidable. I know AI’s use cover and stuff nowadays, but they need to be a little less aggressive, more careful.
The enemy has to fear death as much as the player-who-cannot-save. The game will turn more into a game of chess and tactics than a click-reaction test.  The tension rises, the sweat breaks out.

3 - The player needs to re-learn game-playing. Its essential that the designer teaches the player the line between life and death, but without dying. This is difficult and again it comes back to the medical system. When a character comes close to death it must be made clear how close it was. As long as they player does not do anything stupid it should be possible to play the game through with no deaths. Its a fine line to walk, but a lot can be done. In any situation it should be possible to save 99.9% of lives, but the player must somehow pay for it in return - Time and money cost, expensive doctors, effort and travel distance, slowing yourself down carrying them, character recovery time…

4 - The game needs to be well balanced, a character must never die unless it is the players fault. If he dies because the character wouldn’t respond to his orders, or took a stupidly dangerous pathfinding route, then it is the game’s fault that he died, and this cannot be allowed if we have taken away saving.

So there you have my theories on the subject. I intend to use this method in Kenshi, but probably only as an option when you start a game. The trouble is when you offer the alternative of saving/loading, then players will stick to their old ways and you no longer have the effect of number 3, above, so much thinking on this matter is still to come.

Its only been a few days since recruitment started, and the team size is already up to 8! Preliminary concepts are already rolling in. As for myself, I’m finally going to get programming again from today

The First Level

Imagine you have an AI controlled teammate. You are attacked by a superior force. He fights to the death to protect you. Are you moved by this sacrifice? Not really, because you know he’s just AI, he did not do it out of love or loyalty or bravery. He did it because he is stupid, and his AI told him to attack all enemies until dead.

The Next Level

Now we’ve made him a bit more human. He knows you stand no chance and will die whether he helps you or not. So he runs away. Damn you unreliable side-kick!

The Next Level

Now hes even more human. He knows he will die if he tries to save you, knows that every line of reasoning tells him to run away, and that he cannot help you. But he fights anyway, to the death. Out of loyalty, out of love.

Now, this is just a random idea. You may get ideas, you might think its stupid, that I’ve gone in a circle. Implementing this is not overly complicated for an AI programmer. The real question is how do you show the player what has just happened? How do you make them realise its the next level, and not the first one?

I’ve just spent the last 2 weeks developing the website, writing docs, adverts, installing forums, and finally its all done.  The team now has 2 concept artists and we’re starting off with the first art phase.  We’re starting a 2 week wild-design phase, where everyone experiments with weird designs and scribbles, after that we will start to gather things up into a more cohesive form for the game world.  I’m hoping in this time we might get one or two more artists, we will see.