Thoughts on damage scaling/wounding/kill dynamics

[BeaverDreams]

I like the concept of crippling/hobbling as suggested by others in this forum. I REALLY like the fact that you can't see enemy health bars/abilities, but it's also a mystery when they're damaged enough to die. Perhaps something as simple as adding blood/blood trails when moving?

BLEEDING/INJURIES
Others have suggested bleeding/healing effects. I don't think bleeding having a REAL effect on the character would be useful as it's already hard/realistic enough without bleeding to death with 1/4 health. Also, I don't think that using bandages mid-fight is realistic or fits the gameplay style of a realistic battle simulator. Since health regens over time and permanent damage is just that, clicking a bandage to stop bleeding mid-fight is immersion breaking and only pushes an already unique experience towards homogenization with previously (and overly implemented) game styles out there.

This game deserves to be treated as a unique experience, and any muddling of that is a step in the WRONG direction in my opinion.

IDENTIFYING EFFECTIVENESS OF COMBAT
Again, using visual styles/blood/hitched movements of characters would be a great way to gauge your effectiveness and turn the tides in battle by simply rewarding your efforts with reasonable cause-effect. Perhaps a hitched step and slower speed after an ACCURATE AND POWERFUL swing between armor vulnerabilities would aid realism to make it easier to sidestep/create distance from enemies. I feel it would be useful as long as it was implemented with relatively minimal effects - can't make it TOO easy to cripple an enemy or level a dude once he's crippled.
I would consider adding crippling/movement alterations in all players once health reaches a low enough level as well. I don't think disabling an enemy in it's first 10%hp is reasonable, but I can imagine being worn down from repeated or particularly perfect strikes. I feel this effect should be relatively difficult to cause.

I also feel that an enemy who shows slowed swings/hindered movement would fit very well with the battle dynamics of this game. Since weapons require different fighting techniques, I can picture the most effective technique changing slightly when an enemy is wounded. Heavier flurries, more shoving to cause a stumble or collapse etc to take advantage of a wounded enemy would make the battle from start to finish feel like an evolution rather than the same style from start to abrupt finish. It would give the player more to think about/capitalize on and really draw you even further into the realism that this incredible game already captures efficiently.



SEVERING
As far as limb-severing goes, it would be AWESOME if that was used as a final-hit circumstance, but only with accurate and strong enough strikes to find weaknesses in armor. This should also be rare, like the already implemented physics allowing hooking an enemy with your hammer/axe and yanking them to the ground. So satisfying, but wouldn't be if it was commonplace.

SEVERING/KILLING BLOWS AND ARMOR
This game already expertly takes into account weapon weight and attributes. Changing weapons to fit the application is very, very fun and requires you to familiarize yourself with the different fighting styles of each weapon. I love that there are no cheap moves that you can spam over and over like in highly touted games such as The Witcher 3, for example.

Keeping in mind the realism of weapon dynamics/choices it stands to reason that killing strokes/perfectly executed final blows might react to the armor that they've just bested. I would love to see a mace or warhammer pierce/crumple into plate armors, requiring the character to hold attack to pull it out, or double-tap backwards to pull it out quickly. Imagine a sword chewing through chainmail, stopping 1/4 way through the torso, then being yanked out and accompanied by a spurt of blood! If anybody needs a visual, I'm thinking something like this kill-stroke:

Skip to 1:53 if you haven't seen it already.

Also, adding weapon-embedding I feel should require a powerful enough swing and still remain difficult to do. If a swing arbitrarily does, say 35% of an enemies total damage BEYOND depleting their health to 0 that it would trigger weapon embedding. That is to say that a hard kill-stroke won't always cause such a violent death, but a heavily damaged opponent combined with a well executed killing stroke with the right kind of weapon may lead to some gory fireworks that we'd all love to see!


I am not a programmer/designer. I don't understand what goes into implementing changes like this as it pertains to Sui Generis' unique engine or if it's even possible without reworking physics from the ground up. These are just thoughts to start a discussion!

Thoughts? Comments? Recommendations?

 

[tiniuclx]

If I recall correctly, the devs said that they plan on introducing dismemberment, but only after a killing blow. It would make sense that the blow would have to be both powerful and accurate! Also, I really like the crippling suggestion, would really help with the immersion as long as it's not debilitating. But having your weapon get stuck in your opponent might cause issues! Unlike in more mainstream games, opponents in Exanima don't attack one at a time, so you would be particularly vulnerable if your longsword impaled your opponent!

 

[-Tim-]

I think many would agree that there is room for improvement in the department of emergent gameplay as the fight progresses.

Dismemberment as a killing blow is basically confirmed as a (low-priority) feature. According to Madoc's latest Steam comment:

We do want to add dismemberment at some point but as parco said this is mostly a cosmetic concern that will likely only affect killing blows and not a priority.

Visible wounds and other effects from blows is however something we plan on introducing before long. We've already done preliminary work on this and all characters already use unique procedural texturing.

I am in favour of a crippling mechanic. However, there is a hurdle to overcome, which you already touched upon. The player character follows the same physical rules that all other AI characters follow. If they can get crippled, then so can you. You don't want to go through the entire dungeon with a limp, that would be unacceptably annoying. Your idea of only allowing for crippled movement below a certain health threshold, say 30%, may go a long way in solving this. If healing up above 30% would cure the limp, then it wouldn't be as much of a problem.

 

[BeaverDreams]

Thanks for the reply - I like that idea about standard healing to remove the hindrance of injury.

If I recall correctly, the devs said that they plan on introducing dismemberment, but only after a killing blow. It would make sense that the blow would have to be both powerful and accurate! Also, I really like the crippling suggestion, would really help with the immersion as long as it's not debilitating. But having your weapon get stuck in your opponent might cause issues! Unlike in more mainstream games, opponents in Exanima don't attack one at a time, so you would be particularly vulnerable if your longsword impaled your opponent!

That's a good point - you wouldn't want to be disadvantaged as a result of a successful blow. Keeping in mind with the realism concepts in this game, I wonder if since your weapon would be in front of you on a removing movement, that it would already be in perfect place to parry. I noticed that feinting blows to the alternate direction of their incoming attack leads to a lot of successful parries and set up combos very very well. Perhaps after the "chunk" noise lets you know that you've embedded your weapon it would rely on quick movement on your part, either by feinting again to pull back or double-stepping back to quickly remove it and already be in parry position. This way it would both reward your deliberate intent to pull the weapon back by placing you in a strong defensive position, but also punish the spamming/inattentive player.

 

[BeaverDreams]

If they can get crippled, then so can you. You don't want to go through the entire dungeon with a limp, that would be unacceptably annoying. Your idea of only allowing for crippled movement below a certain health threshold, say 30%, may go a long way in solving this. If healing up above 30% would cure the limp, then it wouldn't be as much of a problem.

That's a solid way to go about it. Would that also mean that if your permanent damage was below the threshold that you'd never fully recover from your wounds? A percentage of your remaining health wouldn't fly, then it would be quicker to recover your stability the more permanently injured you are. Perhaps the cause of the limp would be damage/health based, but recovery be on a fixed timer regardless of health. That way you could recover mid-fight or have a window to take advantage of your enemy before they recover. Good thoughts man.

 

[tiniuclx]

Madoc has also mentioned that one of the weapon skills he plans on introducing is Draw: after a successful attack, you can press the Alt-attack button to quickly draw your weapon towards you, either hooking the opponent, if you're using a polearm or similar weapon, or cutting them even deeper, in the case of swords. This skill would give a very natural and organic way of extricating your pointy stick from your opponent's caved in chest!

Now that we got to the caving-in part, cosmetic damage to armour should be relatively easy to implement. I have noticed that the game uses bump maps extensively (a way to make smooth surfaces look bumpy; for instance, the dungeon floor is most likely a perfectly flat polygon but the bump map makes it look detailed). Making a dent in a breastplate can be implemented by sticking on a 'smashed in' decal, similarly to how they make blood appear on characters. But then again, I'm no game designer, I shouldn't tell the developers how to make their own game, and they probably already thought about this very thing.

Also, I'm not sure how many people around here are familiar with Overgrowth. It's a different take on Exanima's physics-based combat system, but instead of meticulously simulating every step and every sword swing, the game uses pre-canned animations that are heavily influenced by physics. @Madoc might be interested. It does a lot of stuff right (the combat feels right and it has a similar learning curve to Exanima's, but mostly because of the high speeds involved) but it also couldn't possibly dream of matching our beloved game (particularly its immersion, level of detail and level design; Exanima has some of the best and most deliberate level design I've ever seen in any video game!). The video I linked highlights the impaling mechanics in it, though it only happens when you throw your weapon. Also take note of how blood works: weapon impacts create wounds which then bleed out, creating trails of blood that are affected by the characters' acceleration, as well as droplets of blood which then hit the ground. This is miles ahead of Exanima's, but then again, such a detailed system might be superfluous when the camera is this far away from the characters.

 

[MegaFarinato]

Maybe this is alredy said (too many pages to read and memorize), but I think it would be really interesting if when getting hit reaaaly hard you would have a "time to recover" from such a great impact forcing you to take a more cautionus aproach, like a couple of seconds of dizzyness or something like that. Many times Id just go all in to have movie-like fight but it breaks a bit the tension when you see that you give(or take) a tremendous hit in the face of your oponent and hes still as fresh as before the trainwreck in the face. This could just make the gameplay harder, but i think theres a point on "telling" people not to just charge full yolo, unless your goal is to see your character get rekt ofcourse.

 

[BeaverDreams]

Thanks for the comments guys it's always interesting to see others' take on this game! I'm having a ton of fun with it.

 

[Gsprfdude]

I'd enjoy a system for head injuries too. Say you take an extremely hard hit to the head that is stopped by your helmet. You wouldn't be bleeding from it, but any historian could tell you that getting hit while wearing armor has it's own disadvantages. Blows from blunt instruments particuarly can smack the metal and make it vibrate which can very easily result in blood vessel and bone breakage in the body, but is well known to give concussions when the blow is to the head. Maybe get smashed in the temple by a metal rod and now your vision is really messed up, or maybe your depth perception is thrown off.

 

[MrApophos]

I'm in favour of a 'wounded' state, a few seconds worth of poor balance and shock for the character after a particularly heavy blow. I am also in favour of limb breakage, rendering said limb disabled until the end of the round. I am not in favour of limb removal unless it is a killing blow.