I haven't asked anything in this category for a while, and I tend to be an insular sort when designing games, but I like discussing game philosophy so here is something to ponder.
If I had a game where you could get body parts chopped off, and they'd be lying there on the ground... what about the gear that was on those body parts? A helm on a decapitated head, or a boot on a severed leg.
I think most games that allow severed body parts (parts that become distinct items on the ground) either ignore the gear factor, or at the most will take into account that if your left arm's been severed, you no longer get your shield's defensive bonus. For all intents and purposes, especially with non-bonused clothing, it's like the body part falls off but the item stays stuck to you. You do an inventory and it's still there.
I've been trying to avoid egregious illogic in Cerulea, so I do want to deal with limb gear. It's important for RP. If Gollum's fateful bite hadn't removed Frodo's gear as well, that story would be very different.
So I can code it so that when your hand gets chopped off, there's a hand on the ground, and you can look and see there's a ring on it. I can even make it so boots, gloves, etc. can be combined and uncombined, treated as either one item or two as the situation demands, so one can follow your severed leg and one can stay on your whole leg. But what about the boot when it's on your severed leg on the ground?
I think a small text RPG community should be able to handle a situation in which people can so easily take others' uber gear, and you'd see a lot more kindly returns than you would "thefts" or deliberate PvP to get items. But any alternatives to allowing people to pick up items off severed limbs willy-nilly, as well as any ways the item could stay on the body and not be too silly, should be considered, so suggest them if you have them.
Z
ID:153552
 Oct 14 2003, 3:29 pm
|
|
I'd like to see the shield, clothes, weapon, ect, risk getting destroyed/lost. I mean how often does a guy lose his arm in an accident and get his wrist watch back?
| |
I had an amputation system in my ROM derivative. I think I just had the items fall onto the ground. If the victim wasn't too busy fighting or too lazy to try, it could just use the "get all" command to pick it all up. (I really wasn't too picky what body part they used to pick it up. It's the same function anyway.) Theft of gear was considered a useful feature.
If an item covered multiple body parts, I kept it on until all of the body parts were lost. It worked well for things like pants. I got (or I think I would have if I got around to hosting the darn MUD) away with things like gloves and boots because ROM players would be used to those items being a single object. By the time I got around to rewriting the entire wear system to avoid paired objects, I had already decided I'd be better off making my own code base. (Of course, I then proceeded to BYOND to make action games with farting spiders and people to coax into a starfish position instead.) That needless list of qualifications and dead game details aside, losing the use of a body part does not have to mean it was fully amputated. If a finger is cut off, the ring could be stuck on the short stump. Gloves, though probably damaged, stay on partial hands. Boots, though probably damaged, stay on partial feet. If an arm is cut off, the arm equipment could stay on the upper arm while the forearm falls to the ground. The same goes for legs, etc. This sort of thing could at least lower the amount of equipment gained from another person's amputation. | |
One thing I suggested for Hedgerow Hall, but which would seem pretty useful here, is the factor of Riteful Ownership. Basically, the owner performs a mystical rite, at some sort of extensive cost to his/her character, and then that ownership becomes Ritefully His/Hers. No one else can ever equip that item, use that item, or cause it to be consumed, though anyone can freely pick it up.
I say do what ACWraith does, and treat "multi-part" objects like boots and gloves as just one item, and keep them on your person until both limbs get removed. At that point, you can just have those multi-part items fall to the ground instead of remaining attached to the severed limbs. *pulls out a pom pom* Yaaaaay, Cerulea! *puts it away* Okay, I've done my obligatory cheerleading for this month. | |
Here's one thing to consider... the fine distinction between limb crippled/limb destroyed vs. limb removed. I've seen lots of text games where limbs can be severed... my problem isn't that they inexplicably leave rings and gauntlets and shields in the possession of the amputee, but the sheer frequency of limb removal.
Have you ever tried to remove the arm from a moving, resisting target? I haven't, but I'm guessing it's not very easy. Rendering the limb useless in a single messy blow, yes... granting a divorce from the body with a single clean blow, not so much. I think if you have a realistic risk of limb removal, then the attendant danger of item loss will add to the game rather than detract from it, and you thus will not have to worry about silly or contrived ways of preventing rampant looping from griefcapitations, or silly and contrived ways to encourage kindly returns. | |
I think if you have a realistic risk of limb removal, then the attendant danger of item loss will add to the game rather than detract from it, and you thus will not have to worry about silly or contrived ways of preventing rampant looping from griefcapitations, or silly and contrived ways to encourage kindly returns. Good points. You can try to estimate the chance of cleaving through a limb or body part scientifically, by estimating first how much damage would be required to separate a limb, and secondly how hard it would be to apply that damage to a target actively seeking not to have that limb separated. Look at it this way; a guillotine uses a slanted blade to slice through the neck rather than chop through it. Even the 100-pound square blades they used on the original guillotines couldn't reliably chop through the vertebrae in a single push. (This was considered inhumane, which is why they improved the machine. Quite ironic.) We can try to estimate just how difficult it would be to chop through the upper part of my arm. The thickness of my upper arm is 6" with my muscles flexed (a little skinny, I know); of those six inches, one and a half inches make a part of my solid humerus, and the remainder are blood vessels, nerves, tendons, and muscle. To chop through my arm, you would have to cleave through three inches of bicep, one and a half inches of bone, and a remaining one and a half inches of tricep. This is not to mention the difficulty of cutting through tendon, which acts much like a springboard. The muscle would be relatively easy to cut through, but would still seriously impede the movement of the blade. By the time the blade reached my bone, it could logically have dissipated about 25% of its energy to penetrate my muscle, assuming my muscle was flexed. Then it would have to cleave through the bone, which is harder than wood, meaning that you couldn't expect a blade to be able to go through it. (Ever chopped down a one-and-a-half-inch sapling with an axe in a single whack?) Assuming that the blade was driven by phenomenal effort and managed to sever the bone, it would still have to penetrate another one and a half inches of flexed muscle to completely separate my limb. This largely depends on the weapon, however. A scythe does not chop -- it slices. If a scythe was driven against my arm, it would stand a very good chance of at least cleaving into the bone. | |
To chop through my arm, you would have to cleave through three inches of bicep, one and a half inches of bone, and a remaining one and a half inches of tricep. This is not to mention the difficulty of cutting through tendon, which acts much like a springboard. The muscle would be relatively easy to cut through, but would still seriously impede the movement of the blade. By the time the blade reached my bone, it could logically have dissipated about 25% of its energy to penetrate my muscle, assuming my muscle was flexed. Then it would have to cleave through the bone, which is harder than wood, meaning that you couldn't expect a blade to be able to go through it. (Ever chopped down a one-and-a-half-inch sapling with an axe in a single whack?) Assuming that the blade was driven by phenomenal effort and managed to sever the bone, it would still have to penetrate another one and a half inches of flexed muscle to completely separate my limb. Then you'd have to consider the angle of the cut since most people don't hold out their arm for their opponnent to let them get the best cut. The bigger the angle, the more you have to cut through making it even harder. I don't think anyone is going to do any limb removal unless the size difference of the players is huge and the player attacking is using an extra sharp heavy weapon. That or the weapons being used are like light sabers and cut by burning straight through the material they come in contact with. | |
Let's not be silly. Anyone who's seen Monty Python's quest for the holy grail knows limbs can easily be chopped clean off.
Anyway, real weapons could certainly sever limbs and heads, and particularly in Japanese schools of teaching warriors were trained specifically to use them so, though I'm not certain of the frequency with which this actually occurred on the battlefield. Z | |
The only equipable items are swords and sheilds, but limbs are also detachable. If you have a short sword in your left hand(you can choose left or right hand as your primary)and a buckler in your right, and your left are gets chopped off, you do lose the sheild(and the arm). In the same situation, if your left arm gets chopped off(I choose left arm, being that I am left handed)you will lose the sword, and run around with a sheild till you can find some food(being a melee game, you have to get the arm back without dieing). For two handed weapons, if one arm gets hacked off the weapon will switch to a one handed mode, and does a much lower damage(because a one handed swing is less powerful). I like this system very much, and I think it would be very applicable for a good game.