(un)Dead

konggary · Dec 12, 2015

Has anyone considered that this quote

Unconsciousness. When your stamina reaches zero you will fall unconscious rather than die

means that the undead will possibly get up after a while and seek out revenge?

I will have to pay more attention to how I kill my enemies- I hope there is some indication for when you finish off an enemy, whether they're dead or just unconscious. The planned improved gore could help. Perhaps the skreltons could shatter when they're 100% defeated.

Furthermore, with the potential replacement of loading screens with special passages, I wonder if enemies will be able to go through these passages. Clearing out a floor by KO could be setting yourself up for a gang smackdown later down the line. Having some really persistent undead stalk you through the dungeon would be quite awesome.

Does anyone know if they plan to let NPCs enter the portal? I wonder if the Lv1-3 undead are aggressive towards the Lv4 mobs- some kind of turf war. That's speculative of the lore though.

Greenbrog · Dec 12, 2015

While I love this idea. I don't think undead can really be KOed.

It's magic that keeps them moving on,
as far as we know they don't sleep,
when they take enough damage to become dormant it's probably safe to assume the magic has left them, not that they are unconscious.

Living things though. Like Sir (I'm assuming he's alive), you might want to wack away when they are down for a few swings. Love the idea of persistent enemies that might chase through map transitions, or rally behind you waiting for your return.

Tyon · Dec 12, 2015

Never thought the unconsciousness would apply to the enemies as well, that would be awesome.

About the portal thing, it might be a little game breaking, but then again, the area in which the level 4 enemies are is closed off, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Viking34 · Dec 12, 2015

Tyon said:
About the portal thing, it might be a little game breaking, but then again, the area in which the level 4 enemies are is closed off, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, and there's even a gate that can be locked from the portal's side in level 3.

NachoDawg · Dec 12, 2015

Remember to double tap!

Gsprfdude · Dec 14, 2015

I've always liked games that encourage the double-tap as a mechanic, I'd be interested to see where this ends up going.

konggary · Dec 18, 2015

I know they spoke out against this, but
A decent way to represent full death would be to have the character/npc bleed out on the ground, as opposed to just being KO

"It's magic that keeps them moving on"

It's hard to come up with ideas in this area because the lore is so sparse and obscure about specifics: if the undead are held up with magic and not normal body functions (i.e. consciousness), why do they have blood anyway?You'd think a walking corpse would dry up in addition to the decay that we see.

turtleman155 · Dec 18, 2015

because bloodsplatters are cool

NachoDawg · Dec 18, 2015

Yeah the "animated corpses" aren't explained enough to be believable just yet. At least not beyond "this dead thing came alive with non-descript inteligense".

We know it's magical. We don't know how the magic manifests other than texts describing it as the ex-living's dormant thaumaturgic powers manipulating the corpse, probably at someone's/something's elses behest. If it's magic moving the organic matter, why does it require an intact body? Does the necromatic power heal the brain and then use the nervous system to move like any other living thing, or is the magic manipulating muscles directly?

If the former: We should have to destroy the brain beyond being healable by magic.

If the latter: It shouldn't matter how beat up they are as long as there's muscles to manipulate, ie they should have to be dismembered or burned in order to be stopped.

And right now it's neither, which means my theory is incorrect or their lore is not actualized in the game yet. Either way, I am looking forward to learn more about them ^^

Orlacktherof · Dec 18, 2015

NachoDawg said:
Yeah the "animated corpses" aren't explained enough to be believable just yet. At least not beyond "this dead thing came alive with non-descript inteligense".

We know it's magical. We don't know how the magic manifests other than texts describing it as the ex-living's dormant thaumaturgic powers manipulating the corpse, probably at someone's/something's elses behest. If it's magic moving the organic matter, why does it require an intact body? Does the necromatic power heal the brain and then use the nervous system to move like any other living thing, or is the magic manipulating muscles directly?

If the former: We should have to destroy the brain beyond being healable by magic.

If the latter: It shouldn't matter how beat up they are as long as there's muscles to manipulate, ie they should have to be dismembered or burned in order to be stopped.

And right now it's neither, which means my theory is incorrect or their lore is not actualized in the game yet. Either way, I am looking forward to learn more about them ^^

Maybe the bodies have reached brain death, but not complete cardiac death. The brain death has been reverted due to the use of thaumaturgy. This really doesn't explain why the bodies are still a bit rotten, but maybe this is a start.

konggary · Dec 21, 2015

Found these quotes for blood:
"We initially went for something more like that but without the blood actually sticking to things but just dissapearing it looked silly. We plan on adding decals but doing it properly takes some work, we couldn't get that done in time for the update."

"We've only just started with particle effects and the like (blood and fire in video just added during KS campaign) and I've done water simulation in the past. You can expect more effects to appear over time. Fur simulation and actual fluid dynamics is something I don't expect to see in actual games any time soon. Fluid dynamics are definitely pretty cool but I'm not too impressed with many other physics effects anyway."

If the undead will have the option to go unconscious but not fully dead, it would just be silly to have the player simply guess as to which it is. I can't really think of any good ways to represent full death vs unconsciousness besides ones involving gore.

Source

NachoDawg · Dec 21, 2015

konggary said:
If the undead will have the option to go unconscious but not fully dead, it would just be silly to have the player simply guess as to which it is. I can't really think of any good ways to represent full death vs unconsciousness besides ones involving gore.

They could do something like what Overgrowth did, and how the ragdoll act differently in each case. A fully dead person would ragdoll with very little movement like they do currently, while getting "knocked out" could have ragdolls that either twitch in some sense, or try to couch their fall, or just move differently like they aren't completely limb

idk, it's a hard thing to solve

Orlacktherof · Dec 21, 2015

NachoDawg said:
They could do something like what Overgrowth did, and how the ragdoll act differently in each case. A fully dead person would ragdoll with very little movement like they do currently, while getting "knocked out" could have ragdolls that either twitch in some sense, or try to couch their fall, or just move differently like they aren't completely limb

idk, it's a hard thing to solve

Perhaps someone that is fully dead will have a ragdoll that is as is right now, but someone unconscious would have slightly stiffer limb movement if you tried to drag the body around.

oldnorsehero · Jan 3, 2016

Orlacktherof said:
Perhaps someone that is fully dead will have a ragdoll that is as is right now, but someone unconscious would have slightly stiffer limb movement if you tried to drag the body around.

And perhaps the unconscious ones would wiggle/attempt to get up if they were pulled? They're making the AI a lot better, so anything could be possible with this idea.