Health, Blood, Death, and BRAAAINS

[Windexglow]

Health
While chris will clear a lot of this up and explain it (hopefully) in depth, here’s what I grabbed off him before he left for work leaving us shivering and crying in the dark.

For starters, there is no health bar for anyone. There is no health integer. There is no exact point in which people drop dead.
People just don’t drop dead - the slowly die. When they’re hit, they can lose blood. The more blood they lose, the less efficient they become. The higher willpower they have, the longer they can go on with less blood.

My thoughts
Adrenaline would be given once a battle starts, and wears off. Adrenaline would essentially be a temporary willpower - allowing someone to survive a battle after taking a lot of hits, but slowly dying after the action has stopped. An initial fast drop-off (to about halfway) than a much slower drop-off would be ideal.
Why? It makes people close to death die - yet it allows you to save those who are just a bit further from death.
Breakage of bones could be another thing, however unlike loss of blood, bones are a lot harder to fight without them.
If you’re trying to grab someone and take them alive, it’d be better to use blunt weapons rather than slicing weapons, for example. Blunt weapons won’t kill as easily, but they can knock out/break bones, making their targets easier to disable.


Types of death
Haven’t talked any of these over with him.
Death by combat
-Head Trauma : Mainly caused by blunt objects. You get hit somewhere too hard and you simply don’t recover. Anywhere but the head results in a slow death (if death at all)
-Organ Damage/Loss of blood : Caused mostly by pointy objects. This won’t kill you immediately, but can be dangerous in the long run. Organ damage is even worse, which can spell death within a few short days unless medical care is sought.
-Decapitation : Damn those portable guillotines! I’m not sure if this one is possible. But let me tell you, it’s permeate and instant death.

Death by illness
-Food poisoning : Tell me, did you check if these eggs were off? It’s rare that this will kill you, but can put you out of working for a short time.
-Poison poisoning : Someone poisoned your poison I’m afraid. These are almost always fatal.
-illness (colds, flus, and worse) : Pretty random, but gained easily when in cities you aren’t used to. Rarely kills you, but can put you in a lot of misery for ranging times.
-toxins (snake bite, for example) : Kind of like poison, but more accidental. You step on a rusty nail, or a snake bites you. These are moderately dangerous and should seek medical care.

Death by accidents
-Falling down a steep cliff : It’s not a path finding bug, it’s a feature!
-Being hit by debris during a storm : Yup, chris and I have talked about this one.
-Mistaking that flab of fat as your sword sheath (oups!) : Not that I’d know anything about this, hah hah hah…..


Zombies : BRRRRAAAAAAIIINNNNSSSS.
Yup, kenshi is expected to have zombies in it. Those lovable rascals who we all grew up and loved, yet saw go deeper and deeper into a depression with their brain addiction.

Zombies will be the result of toxins in the air, or an illness. Because of this, they’re located in 1 general location on the map.
My ideas:
The source of the infection is caused by a plant which grows only in that area. Eating it can cause you to become infected yourself.
Infected can infect others by biting them.

However, the infected do not run. Ever. They are slowly moving creatures which head towards the nearest living thing and try to eat them. They are easy enough to kill, but even with their head chopped off and filled with several dozen swords they can continue moving for several seconds, before it finally dies.

The villages are swarming with these slow zombies, and still chock full of valuable resources. Many people have tried to collect these, but fall prey to the hordes of zombies which surround the player with no way out.

If done correctly, this area could be the ultimate kick-ass (and hardest) to set a town in. = )

[Suta]

Could you control your guys if they became (as well as you) zombies? That would be intense, zombie raiding parties...

And taking the plant and killing your enemy's villages by throwing it in their well. Super murder, just don't try going in for a while.

Zombies might be difficult to kill, but cut off both their arms (which is totally possible, as well as decapitation, with a samurai sword) and they will have a hard time bighting you.

I like all the maens of death. Would be a damn shame if your character destroyed his spleed trying to put his sword away in a flashy manner. After all that hard work your character accidentally kills himself.

How quickly would the infected turn from human to zombie? Could it be prevented if its a slow transformation? Prevented as in by other means then early decapitation.

And would their be a good way of fighting zombies? Buckets of oil and fire? Would they be tricked by scarecrows? Or how do they detect humans?
EXPLAIN, would you kindly. Thank you.

[wazupwolf]

why cant i play df it goes to windows player how can icorrect this(sorry i knew some of u p0layed it and i didnt want to make a forum account there)

[RustKnight]

Well it's can't really, i am betting you are playing on a laptop... and that it doesn't support bigger resolutions. You could waste some time and play with the init.txt file (just use search for it).

[Captain Deathbeard]

For once Windex's wild speculation got a lot of things right.

The point of damage is that it gradually messes up a character, until he is a drunken, stumbling, crippled mess, but can still fight ever so slightly. Which is significant if the opponent is also a stumbling, crippled mess, because then its still a fair fight, just more entertaining.

Illness sounds like a good idea, although it won't be common, things like plague would be fun though. You would always be able to recover if you get proper medical attention and rest (not always easy). If this happened often it would be really annoying, so it would have to be rare.


Zombies, not necessarily literal undead, more like feral-diseased-mad-maybeMutated-cannibals. They would not be the slow shambling type, but the running screaming type. Easy to kill in small numbers, but they 'aint in small numbers. Low level characters could get some early experience by hunting and singling them out.
And building a town or fort in this area would be very fun.

My main purpose for wanting these is to fill the role of dangerous wildlife, which I won't be able to do for a long time due to the extra art and animations needed. Zombie-freaks would be easy for me to implement because I can re-use everything I already have.

[Suta]

I would love to hear how you explain how something like a plant turns these people insane. Dementia, rabies, the likes caused by a plant?

I don't think eating and drinking would be all too micro-managing. Just having food in your party inventor (carried by people until you get a pack-mule of sorts) as well as water, then you can say "lunch time!" and everyonew will stop and sit down to eat, not in the spots but would walk up to their pals, have a seat, and talk (pretend). You could speed through it you want, same with sleep, speed through sleep once you've said, "sleep time!" Both these things could restore small amounts of health, when I say health, I mean, reenergize the people, so they can fight again, even a little hurt. "That severed arm is just a flesh wound, I can still fight."
Right, losing limbs would be cool, even if you don't have it because you want full use of limbs or whatever. Have it when they get killed on the battlfield. (Decapitation as Windexglow said)

[wazupwolf]

sweet, and im not usin a laptop

[Zephyr8965]

Hm...forums seem a little deadish (not quite dead, but not terribly alive, either), so I guess it's time for me to throw some posts around. xD

I love the idea of throwing zombies into this. I know one of the first things I plan to do is get a really fast character and lure the zombies into nearby villages and just book it the hell outta dodge. (spread the zombie plague!)

I will bring about a zombie apocalypse! Mwuahahahaha!

But anyway, I love the idea of all the death types. Something that might be nice is a little stick figure-ish image in the corner that shows all of your limbs fade from a blue - green - yellow - red to show how badly damaged that part of you is. (red being broken, perhaps grey could represent that limb no longer being there, through things like unrecoverable frostbite or severing)

Another thing you could put in is little meters to represent things like hunger, adrenaline, fear, etc. Kinda categorize all the important things for a person to keep in mind about their character and put them into little meters by the little limb status thingy.

Another thought is to have these things only show up when you bring up your character status window, but have little alerts pop up in the corner when they become an issue. (your stomach is grumbling with hunger, you're scared shitless, you're delirious from blood loss, etc)

[Captain Deathbeard]

I know one of the first things I plan to do is get a really fast character and lure the zombies into nearby villages and just book it the hell outta dodge. (spread the zombie plague!)

Haha, that's just what I want, for players to be able to manipulate the dynamics of the world in ways I never expected. Many developers spend hours thinking of ways of restricting the player from doing anything they don't want them to, or blocking certain play styles. Not me, if a player discovers something unusual or an exploit, I will focus on ways of making that exploit more fun.

But anyway, I love the idea of all the death types. Something that might be nice is a little stick figure-ish image in the corner that shows all of your limbs fade from a blue - green - yellow - red to show how badly damaged that part of you is. (red being broken, perhaps grey could represent that limb no longer being there, through things like unrecoverable frostbite or severing)

Thats what I intend, there will eventually be a section in the GUI panel with a medical display.

[wazupwolf]

cool

[Zephyr8965]

Not me, if a player discovers something unusual or an exploit, I will focus on ways of making that exploit more fun.

Thats what I intend, there will eventually be a section in the GUI panel with a medical display.

Sexy.