- No Health Points
Instead of using a system of health points we are using a light simulation of
organs and circulatory system. What this means is we are tracking things
like how strong certain muscle groups are, functionality of organs, and
how much blood you have, blood pressure, and bone structure.
- What this means to you
When you get cut, you bleed, untreated wounds can become infected, poisons
can shut down organs and paralyze you. Treatments vary from magic, to
technology, allowing you to invent medical treatments and procedures for
different races, which then will slowly become part of the medical
library for your server.
- A small example
Lets say you get your arm cut off. There’s of course two things that are bad
about this. If you're in a fight, you're without a weapon or shield
arm. Second, your bleeding and can pass out and die. There is a basic
medical treatment in the game called a tourniquet. Which is basically
any rope or strip of cloth a friend gets a hand on and ties above the
wound. This stops the bleeding but you still need medical attention.
Now how this is treated can be done in two ways in the beginning. One, our
basic regen potion that comes with the game. This will cauterize and
heal the wound, but not regenerate the limb. Two, surgery and medication
to seal the wound. Both of these treatments leave you without the limb.
However, as your medics (which includes NPCS, which can RnD, I’ll talk
more about NPCs in another post), research new techniques, technology
side may be able to re-attach the limb (or maybe even another limb, a
grown limb, etc.) or they may have a spell which can regenerate the
limb.
- Overdosing Medication and Potions
Like with Medicine we feel Potions should be a last resort, and not
something you just “pop” over and over. There are two reasons for this,
one covered a little later in this document. The first is your character
has a limit on how much they can eat and drink. The second is like with
any medication you can get side effects from too much of it, as well as
from mixing incompatible potions in your stomach.
Overdosing medication is always a bad thing, Overdosing potions will produce
strange effects. You could end up finding a potion that gives you one
last burst on the primary overdose level, but any more will kill the
patient. Or you may find that they do odd things to the patient. A
regeneration potion for instance, depending on how its made and with
what, could not kill you. However that spider fluid that was used in it,
could possibly make your body grow an egg in it, and you could die
months later when it hatches inside of you.
The Overdose system starts out random, however its built a bit like any
good AI. Once a reaction effect or effects are chosen the first time (by
the multiverse master server) it will lock that overdose in to all
servers. I’ll explain more about multiverse master server in another
post. However for now I think you have an idea of why you don’t
experiment too much.
- Food and Drink
Now this has been a tricky one. There are allot of food and drink systems
out there. We want to be accurate but not too accurate as well. If you
are inside of town, your expected that you are eating and drinking
normally for your character. In the only statistics sheet you get for
your character in fantasy. You see how much you eat/drink, how much it
costs per game week for a normal meal. And can adapt your diet for in
town, varying your food and drink cost, as well as letting you eat
different things. If you eat while in town, the weekly cost for that
meal is taken into account so you don’t pay twice.
Of course there is a limit to how much you can eat and drink before you
are full. And overeating can cause problems. I’d go into the fully
technical explanation, but I think I can leave this at check a few wiki
and medical sites to learn more.
Now when you are out and about outside of town. The automatic pay for food
is removed. Logged off your character is in limbo, any downtime actions
you make at this point log “hours” and your character gets appropriately
hungry. Make sure to spare actions for eating and drinking in the
location you're logged out at. While you are online, you now under your
body feel (explained in a minute), you now see if you feel hungry or
thirsty. So remember to eat food you brought with you, or get to
hunting.
- Body Feel
This took forever to figure out how to handle it. How do you give the status
of a body without a health point system? We decided on an outline of
your species body. Were going to use a color code to designate things
that your body is feeling, for example:
1) Blue - Touch
- Something has touched you, or your armor in this area, it could be
brushing up against something, someone trying to get your attention, or
if you're in a dungeon, something you may need to worry about in a
minute.
2) Green - Hold
- Somethings holding onto this body part. It could be an ally stopping you, or something about to do you harm.
3) Yellow - Small pain
- Depending on location this could be a need to eat, bug bite, or a shallow cut that is not serious.
4) Orange - Pain
- This is small gashes but not too severe, internal pain that shouldn’t be there.
5) Red - Severe Pain
- You’ve been stabbed, or otherwise feel a pain that is severe.
6) Red / Orange flash - Extreme Pain
- This is the sort of thing you can expect if your arm is getting
ripped off by a wolf or something. Severe Acid erosion, etc.
7) Grey - Lack of sensation
- You’ve lost an arm, so you get no more sensation in the affected
area. Or, you’ve been hit by something that has paralyzed your nerves
and you simply don’t feel the area.
- Mental Health
In your GUI you have an area for things you're remembering currently.
Quests, people you’ve met, basically your metal journal. Mind altering
poisons/drugs can mess with this. And being captured by an enemy, the
use of a truth serum or torture can reveal parts of this to them. So how
do you go about protecting this potentially vital information?
Well I’m going to let you read about that, needless to say like with
poisons, a little at a time builds an immunity, but you can never be
completely immune.
This Mental Health system also affects something else. Lets say you're
playing with the dark arts of understanding the minds of felines. Ok,
little lack of a material that isn’t copyrighted that I can go with
here. But you get the idea. Its possible your sanity can be altered.
When this happens its possible to see things, or a want/need can show
up. Like “you want to sacrifice someone soon” so either you can do it,
or seek medical attention, however ignored, you will loose downtime
actions, where your character will do your new wants and needs on its
own. Leading a double life so to speak as player and NPC.
Note that also with downtime actions usage, I’ll put in an explanation of exactly how this works in that feature thread.
