Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

I think if you want to make a more realistic health system like in Dwarf Fortress you should start by making multiple hp pools. Tissue > Muscle > Tendon > Bone. 


And maybe add pain to the game, something like a pain threshold based on endurance and intelligence (Willpower). Someone with a pierced muscle will do less damage since his muscle can't properly work. But like in Dwarf Fortress when you attack someone each weapon should have different abilities. Maybe you could have daggers that do little damage but most of the damage is done internally. 

Lets say you  have 100 tissue hp, 50 muscle hp, 150 bone hp. and 10 tendon hp Then depending on the weapon they get a % to bypass the first tiers of natural armor. Swords and axes doing slashing damage does mostly tissue and muscle damage, while a hammer would harm the bone pretty much every time, but it still hurts the tissue and muscles slightly. And instead of a critical strke that simply does more damage you could make critical strikes hit tendons or maybe bypass more tissue and hit directly depending on where are they aiming. 

Some examples for injuries.

Damage is reduced by the % of missing hp on the bone of a limb. If your arm is shattered you shouldn't be able to attack with full force, now when its broken you can even do anything without screaming in pain.

Speed attack reduced by the % of missing hp on the muscle. The only thing that lets you move your arms are your muscles, and if they're cut in half you can't expect to move your arm like nothing happends. 

Now tendons are more of a lucky strike, if you cut that you're making someone unable to move his arm at all, Pretty hard to hit unless you're either skilled and now where to aim, or just lucky when you swing your axe. 

As for armor threshold it could work based on the % of the missing hp. The more tissue you lose the more chances to hit the muscles and the bone. 

Not sure how hard this would be to implement, but it's mostly math and numbers. 

But then you could also have something like this. 

Head - Tissue - Muscle -  eye - eye - skull - brain

Upper Chest - Tissue - Muscle - Ribs - Lung - Lung - Hearth 

Lower Chest - Tissue - Muscle -  Stomach - Kidneys - Guts

Groin - Tissue - Muscle (Pain x3)

Legs/arms - Tissue - Muscle - Bone - Tendon

Cut eye = -30%-ish accuracy loss. 

Pierced lug = -50% stamina regen

Pierced stomach = Lots of bleeding

Pierced Kidney = Pain + blood

Pierced guts = Pain + pain + blood.

Also having internal organs hurt should automactly cause internal bleeding (Which i seen in the game very rarely). 

Another way to see it could be the way Rimworld uses bodyparts. For example you have two eyes that gives +50% accuracy each. If you lose one, you lose the bonus from the eye. (Which was also easier to implement having extra eyes and they already had bonuses). So instead of implementing a system where you have to give a malus to someone based on every part that is hit, you give them a bonus based on which parts they have. And from there the more parts, the merrier. 

Oh wow, bloody Itch.io did not bother to notice me about your answer. With the corner of my eye I noticed "hey, there shouldn't be 5 posts under that topic!". How unreliable, I assumed it just gives me notice of everything... So there goes a month-delayed response:

With respect to how complex the health system is/will be I definitely want to hit that sweet balance spot between super-simple "one hp bar" approach and DF's "your thumb's fingernail was broken" approach.  It has to be simple enough to allow good UI readability without going into menus (at the moment you can see your entire health state on the bottom panel, and that needs to remain possible). Yet it has to be complex enough to allow multiple approaches to combat and different handling of various enemies.

Oh and many weapons already have their own specific attacks like stabs, flatside attacks, arced swings etc.

Now, I like the mechanics of the first solution and I think some of it could make it into the game even without additional health types. The game already features two, which is Tissue (which could be understood as tissue+muscle, pretty much all the "meaty" stuff) and Structure (which can be understood as bones, but for future enemies like stone golems, it's... wel it's structure :D). So I like the idea of influencing combat performance through missing HP - at the moment you need to cut tissue to 0% or damage structure dramatically to break the bone, but otherwise, an enemy with 5% tissue health on his arm still hits the same as he did with 100%, which is rather silly. That could definitely get some upgrades. Also, instead of having a dedicated hp pool for tendons, having them damaged could be a Condition which arises in certain situations (eg. critical strikes with slashing weapons) and it would block the body part from use altogether (much like having your bone broken works at the moment).