Realistic Health / wounding ideas for games.

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DEFkon

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I know these have been discussed in detail before but i've been working (only on paper, i can't code) on ideas for ways to do "Damage" in realism FPS games, and i'd like some feedback.

One of the things thats always bothered me was that in the large crop of "realism shooters" (INF included) is that they never really took the time to do a damage system that was realistic. It's always bugged me that in games you can kill someone by shooting them in the foot, or that health was a measurement of 0 - 100%. So i've kinda set out on a personal mission to make a system that doesn't use a health bar.

For simplicity's sake i've limited my system at the moment to only deal with "major injurys" So i haven't got'n into aspects like "getting shot in the leg prevents you from walking". I'm only dealing with things like getting shot in the torso, or the health related aspects of being shot in a non-vital area.

Anyway what i've got so far is something like a pyramid scheme of inter-related systems and vital organs. (Consciousness, Stamina, Respitory, and Circulatory systems) + (Brain, Lungs, & heart)

At the base of the pyramid is the Circulator system which is dependant upon the heart. (duh). For the circulatory system i've decided to break my own rule and use a 0 - 100% measurment system to represent the player's Total amount of blood loss. Any loss of blood would impare the other systems. Bleeding externally as well as simplified internally would also be taken into account. At a certain point of blood loss various special symptoms would occure, most notably shock.

Next set up the pyramid would be the respitory system which serves the purpose of getting O2 into the blood stream. Obviously taking damage to lung is very serious, and would most likely be fatal within a short period of time, although not as quickly as taking a hit to the heart. O2 starvation can take up to a min before consciouness is lost (how long can you hold your breath) and is fatal about 5 mins later.

Stamina is the 3rd level and operates similar to INF's stamina bar. As you tire it lowers and puts a strain on the other systems, in extreeme cases if the stamina reaches 0% and stays there for a while, there's a good chance there will be a loss of consciousness. (exhaustion)

For gameplay purposes "death" is defined as irreperable cognitive shutdown. Either due to direct damage (aka headshot) or the lack of O2 enriched blood. Conciousness is considered seperatly so that a loss of it doesn't render somebody dead, but rather KO'ed. This applies more to NPC's more than the player himself, so that it's possible to rescue/capture people even if they've taken a rifle butt to the head,been stunned or possibly even shot.

so far that's about all i've got. Each organ would be given its own hit box (slightly larger than the actuall organ so that localized internal trama doesn't need to be addressed in a complex manner) on a character model, in addition to the general hit boxes. Calculating blood loss, both externally and internally without overly complex meathods is still a puzzle at the moment. So any suggestions there would be helpfull.
 

keihaswarrior

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Everyone wants to have a great wounding system. The proble is what we want and what the programmers can do are not always the same.

All ut games have 1 hitbox. Even ut2k3. It is just a giant cylinder placed around the player model. Shots that hit the cylinder higher than a certain level are headshots.

To do you method, the progammers need to find a way to add a bunch more hit boxes and/or some kind of perpoly hit detection.

I heard that ut2k4 will ad the ability for perpoly hitdetection, I am not sure if this is true.

Lastly, RO has a system that allocates damage based on the closest animation bone to the hit location on the cylinder. This isn't a very good solution and doesn't solve the problem that the cylinder and the player model are not the same shape.
 
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Doom 3 engine is the first engine to use either per-pixel hit detection I believe, apararently they thought all the weapons were bugged while testing as they found it a lot harder to hit people.
 

yurch

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-Snakebite- said:
Doom 3 engine is the first engine to use either per-pixel hit detection I believe, apararently they thought all the weapons were bugged while testing as they found it a lot harder to hit people.
There are quite a few games by now that at least have the option for per-pixel, I hardly think doom3 is the first.

What did half-life use?

The problem with a 'realistic' wounding system is because it's hardly nessesary, and in some cases, it's hardly realistic.

If you've got standard soldier vs soldier combat, you don't take a bullet and continue fighting to see how far you can go before passing out. There is a huge degree of support behind the 'front line' and a wounded soldier's first concern should be getting to this support rather than fighting on. Model that first. :D
 

DEFkon

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yurch said:
If you've got standard soldier vs soldier combat, you don't take a bullet and continue fighting to see how far you can go before passing out. There is a huge degree of support behind the 'front line' and a wounded soldier's first concern should be getting to this support rather than fighting on. Model that first. :D

With infiltration in mind the closest combat equivlent would be more of squad vs squad level of engagment rather than a full out war with supply lines. The closest real world examples i could imagine would essentially be Merc vs Merc. Perhaps something like the awfull civil wars, and revolutions of the souther hemisphere or perhaps rival criminal organizations.

The problem with INF is that (in 2.86 anyhow) many of the levels have no mission other than survive. The whole team vs team with no other objective or reason for being there is pretty unrealistic. Why are two opposed forces there? Is this land important? In that case who's the defender and agressor? Where do you retreat to.. perhaps a spawning point? Thankfully it seems that 2.9 seems to have more emphasis on actual missions which would allow for a more realistic aproach for everything else.

Anyhow my main objective wasn't to address the types of wounding where first aid would be life saving, but rather to eliminate the arcade notion that just because your fataly shot that your death occurs immediatly. (oh look you shot me in the stomache i'm dead!) In all but the most extreeme cases the wounded victim has anywhere from a few seconds (lung shot), to few hours (gut shot) before becoming "useless". In terms of gameplay (espically in the CQB that occurs often in INF) is that it would force more tactical gameplay. Simply because you've shot the target and that he's down doesn't necessarily mean that he's not a threat anymore. This is why fighting is heavily dependent on utilizing cover, moving forward when the area is clear, and the often overlooked tactic of striping the downed hostile of his weapon.

This is where it becomes advantagous to have a system ironed out that determins when and what happens when a player or NPC is shot. If being shot in the gut doesn't kill you (at least within the short time frame of a round) how do you keep someone from running around like machine for the duration of the round? How should he be penilzied? That's the idea anyhow.
 

kanegs

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Three primary ways to eliminate someones combat effectiveness

1. Destroy central nervous system. Massive brain / spinal damage

2. Lack of oxygen to central nervous system through blood loss (or asphyxiation)

3. Shock. Person decides that they've just been shot and gives up, faints, etc. (or doesn't care or realize it).

Of course you can fatally wound someone or limit their ability/mobility. But if you're eye to eye with someone, only the above three will realy stop them from pulling the trigger.
 
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NotBillMurray

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Yep, when I was working on a system, it worked out like that. You'd model the path of the bullet through the body. If it intersected the brain or the spine, condition 1 would occur. If not, any significant external or internal bleeding would contribute towards the second condition. And the total amount of bleeding would be used as a threshold for shock to set in, although relatively low levels of wounding would only drop them out of the battle until they could be attended to, with appropriate screaming about "being shot" and calls for "medic".
 

2_SeeK_U

uni.... meh...
I just got rainbow six 3 on my xbox and that has a horrible damage system, when your shot the screen goes blurry like your tv is out of tune :p. They have the flash bang's effects down pat though.

But yeah, l think the body should be divided up into a few different models. Such as heart, brain, liver, kidneys(adrenal gland is it not?), bladder and lungs. Being shot in any of these would have adverse effects. Would it be possible to have the player model broken down into different parts? This way if one body part is hit, it could have diffent outcomes on the ability of the player.

Possible outcomes:
Kidneys - low vission, no running (no adrenaline being produced), slow movement
Heart - Death??
Brain - Death???
Groin - DEATH!!!!!
Lungs - Death in a certain ammount of time, slow movement, washed out vission
Bladder - hmmm.... l don't know but l would hate to be hit there...
 

Philophobos

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What sort of hit detection did SOF 2 use?

I seem to remember the blood/damage decals that were pasted on the character models to be extremely accurately placed. Would such accuracy be achievable with a hitbox, or is it indicative of per-pixel hit detection?

As far as realistic damage systems go, I would think it would come down to a question of wether or not it was worth it. Say in real life you get shot but not killed. You lose lots of blood and can't breath well, so you sit there, a quivering mass of useless flesh, for a few minutes, then die. Most game developers probably assume that most people will not appreciate sitting around as a quivering mass of useless flesh before dying, so they just make the player die instead. Saves coding time, and most of the players won't really care.

Also, the differences between getting shot in X vital organ, staggering around awhile and dying, and getting shot in Y vital organ, staggering around awhile and dying would probably end up being so slight that no one would notice.

I agree that dying from a foot shot is stupid, but I don't think a super-accurate in-game representation of the body's various vital organs and functions is necessary to take care of that.
 
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DEFkon

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yeah a "super accurate" damage system (for 99% of the games out there) really wouldn't be necssarry. That's why i've only dealt with the big three vitals that would cause death realtivily quickly.

Brain
Heart
Lungs.

Which are all pretty much nicely packed tightly together. And if your shot in one of them (with the exception of the head) you might have as much as 60 seconds worth of playing time.

Combine that with calculated blood loss, and a stamina system similar to INF's with the added feature that having 0 stamina = Knocked Out / Passed Out ect. And you get a health system that's accurate, yet fairly simple.

The big gameplay difference between having the majority of wounds (upper torso) be "fatal but slightly delayed" is that it would all but destroy unrealistic tactics, espically in cqb. Imagine the all too common bad situation where two lone enemies rush around corner's to find themselves facing down each other's barrels. What happens? Either someone has a network advantage and gets a draw on the other, or they get into a square dance. Is either one very realistic? Not really.

Now had that same situation occure with a "semi-realistic" health system there's a good chance both of them would've ended up "fatally wounded". Even if one person got the drop on the other by a split second, the other person wouldn't have died immediatly and probably have time to return the favor... unless the first guy's aim produced either a head shot or had produced enough damage (mulitple hits) as to drop the victim's stamina to 0. (0 stamina in my system = KO)

By having hits take a major toll on stamina (at least temporarily) you can simulate to some degree the effectiveness of the "douple tap".