Health system / math needs redoing

Developer discussion of experimental fixes, changes, and improvements.

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Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:27 pm

  • I kept wondering about the health system in Nexuiz which seems to be a bit different then that in most other games of its type. Currently in Nexuiz, each player starts with 150 points of health and every health pack they pick up increases their health with a certain amount up to hundreds of health points (if they can pick many health packs fast enough). However, the health will eventually always increase / decrease towards the value of 100, so if your health is over 100 it will slowly decrease to it and if it's under 100 the player will regenerate once out of fight until he/she has 100 health points again.

    I think it's an interesting system hitpoint system, but wouldn't it be better still if it acted more like the health in other games? One of my suggestions was letting players spawn with the classic 100 of health points and making the ability to regenerate health a mutator only and not fixed a default, for those who still want to use it. To compensate the lack of regeneration however, we could allow players to have up to 199 (or 200) points of health without decreasing it, but if the health goes over 200 it will then drop down to 200 / 199. I'd also suggest making a hard limit of maybe 300 or such for the temporary amount of health you can hold before you decrease, over which health cannot go in any conditions.

    Something should also be done about armor which also has increasing / decreasing values when over the fixed 100 (in some games armor is normally at its max when it reaches 150 or 100). For armor I'd love to see a hard limit of 150 - 200 over which it cannot any more go up but will also not decrease with time. Armor is something you wear and it's not pretty justifiable why it decreases if no one hits you (since armor isn't something "live" like health is so you can regenerate or sicken, unless we consider it an electric armor of sorts though the pickups look like a jacket and pads). If that could risk making players too invincible that could be compensated by tweaking weapons to do a tiny bit more damage overall if proven necessary.

    So yeah post your ideas and suggestions about how the health / armor points system in Nexuiz should be remade. My own idea was once again inspired from UT though the numbers can be arranged and programmed in many different ways.
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    MirceaKitsune
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  • MirceaKitsune wrote:One of my suggestions was letting players spawn with the classic 100 of health points

    This has come up before. The problem then is that after spawning it leaves a player too weak before they find a better weapon to defend themselves. They'd be only 1 Nex shot before dying.
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Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:48 pm

  • My brain hurts atm, I got to think about this one after I put a bag of ice on my head :?
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  • Ed wrote:This has come up before. The problem then is that after spawning it leaves a player too weak before they find a better weapon to defend themselves. They'd be only 1 Nex shot before dying.


    Yes that could be one issue. As I said though tweaking this could also involve tweaking the weapon to player overall damage to avoid changing the difficulty too much, and making 100 points be a bit more like 150.

    On a separate note / topic, I also noticed that ammo limits need to be put in place too. Not too small so players can carry a reasonable amount of each ammo and not be too affected by it, but as of current I think its possible to carry 999 ammo of any type. Rockets for example could be limited to 400 or something around that, as that's usually the average max of the ammo type I remember ever picking up.
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Tue Sep 23, 2008 1:51 am

  • Perhaps I missed something but I feel like you're telling us how this game ~should be~ without really trying to understand ~why it is first~.

    I think it's great that you're passionate about your ideas but you might want to reconsider your delivery and research.

    Check out Nexuiz Pro.

    MirceaKitsune wrote:but wouldn't it be better still if it acted more like the health in other games?

    Nexuiz isn't other games.
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Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:14 am

  • I think the regeneration / fallback of health to 100 is really an integral part of Nexuiz. Not only that it significantly distinguishes Nexuiz from other FPS games, I also see a specific benefit in this system for Nexuiz.

    The regeneration is important as you lose health by moving around with laser/rocket/mortar. This advanced movement is essential to Nexuiz and actually one of the things that keep me at playing the game. Without regeneration you could do a few jumps and that's it then. Also it adds to gameplay as you don't simply go for kamikaze when on low health - health packs are not sufficiently available on maps to compensate a missing regeneration. Instead, you might try to hide out of sight and regenerate to be able to move quick (laser jump) to the next health packs or so.

    The fallback is great because you cannot simply pump yourself up to 1000 health easily, making you virtually invincible. No fallback would mean that people will wait a their base and grab every healthpack they see until they feel they can safely go into battle and return the flag.

    No limit of health is great as well as you can for instance grap any health you find at the enemy base and have a very high health for a short time. Pumping yourself up at your own base doesn't make much sense though, as your mega health status will usually be gone once you arrive at the enemy base.

    Other FPS games treat the health system in another way - that's right and I feel it is one of the things that really set Nexuiz apart from the rest. Turning this system, which is imho very well balanced, into a system that is more like other FPS would from my point of view not be an improvement. I wouldn't say the health system mustn't be changed, but any change should move Nexuiz even more apart from other FPS games instead of turning it into more of a mainstream kind of game.
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Tue Sep 23, 2008 11:14 am

Tue Sep 23, 2008 1:38 pm

  • The problem I seen is there isn't any fixed health value other then 100 and there isn't such a thing as staying damaged or staying buffed up at all, not even a little. Maybe regeneration can just be dropped down to 50 if your under it and health decreasing up to 200 if your over it so people can still have a static amount of health with the regeneration? Cuz yeah that would be the thing, a static range of health is what's missing from the game and even if regeneration could be a good thing I think there should also be a tiny amount of damage or over-health that should stick up.

    So maybe we can just do something smaller, like allowing static values between 50 (or even 75) and 200 and only decrease / increase when out of them. Or at least allow the over-health to stick until 200 and not decrease it if regeneration till the full 100 should still stick around.

    And [-z-], sorry about that if I'm really doing it. I play the game for a while but didn't get to talk to the devs a lot so I may not know why each thing is there and what it symbolizes for who made it, so I may just take things as I see them and just say my direct opinion. And indeed I am a bit passionate about it cuz I think the game is really awesome so I may often say many ideas about what I think... probably too many? :D Just hope I'm not making a habit of talking more then I should or anything with this. It's also that I'm seeing some things are not yet complete so I'm not always sure what is considered a more temporary setup or something that's definite. And yeah that's probably correct too... it shouldn't be like in all other games and I guess this does make Nexuiz more unique.
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Tue Sep 23, 2008 2:10 pm

  • MirceaKitsune wrote:And [-z-], sorry about that if I'm really doing it. I play the game for a while but didn't get to talk to the devs a lot so I may not know why each thing is there and what it symbolizes for who made it, so I may just take things as I see them and just say my direct opinion.

    Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but saying the game NEEDS something without understanding WHY it's the way it is first, comes off as arrogant. What makes your opinion so educated that you can disregard the building blocks of Nexuiz?


    MirceaKitsune wrote:The problem I seen is there isn't any fixed health value other then 100 and there isn't such a thing as staying damaged or staying buffed up at all

    This illustrates your lack of research. When over 100, the health begins to decrease after a few seconds, this is referred to as health or armor rot. To prevent the rot, you need to grab more health or armor, respectively. This forces you to move faster if you want to keep your health from decreasing. This is referred to as item strings.

    The regeneration allows you to flee your combatant and hide for a moment to regain enough health to maybe laser yourself to a helpful item.
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Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:11 pm

  • I won't say it "must" if everyone else disagrees so. For one thing I wasn't sure if the current system was meant to be temporary or if it had a bigger reason for being the way it is (as I said I also seen stuff like all count limits being 999 so I thought this system was still unfinished and open for any direct idea of change). Usually I post opinions more quickly and directly but please do take what I said as a simple idea / thought I found good and would have just liked to see in. Some probably have this habit from certain bug trackers where people just say what they think and if the ticket is good it stays or if not it gets closed, but yeah no offense or arrogance intended to those who know better then me and have been making the game for years.
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    MirceaKitsune
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Tue Sep 23, 2008 4:23 pm

  • What [-z-] wanted to say, that this health and armor system is what makes Nexuiz unique. This is the part of the game since 1.0, and imho one of the parts of the game that is really balanced, and should be never changed.
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Tue Sep 23, 2008 5:44 pm

  • Well if everyone says so then maybe I was wrong. I just thought there would be a bit more enjoyment and more complexity in being able to have a permanent buff up to a certain value and "configuring" your health with health packs every life. It could have only been a tiny change to the current system but yeah, in the end it's just some numbers that I thought they could make a better impression like that. I think it's more important not to ruin the game if this indeed symbolizes its uniqueness that way :)
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Tue Sep 23, 2008 8:06 pm

  • MirceaKitsune wrote:Well if everyone says so then maybe I was wrong. I just thought there would be a bit more enjoyment and more complexity in being able to have a permanent buff up to a certain value and "configuring" your health with health packs every life. It could have only been a tiny change to the current system but yeah, in the end it's just some numbers that I thought they could make a better impression like that. I think it's more important not to ruin the game if this indeed symbolizes its uniqueness that way :)

    Its not that you were wrong.. requesting change is OK.. its just the WAY you did was not really as Z mentioned. Basicly you demanded without showing why it should be changed, aka what would be better after a change.

    And as response to 'to have a permanent buff up to a certain value' There IS: 100health/100 armor. Its just not 200/200 like in other games (for example in quake3 you can get more then 200/200 with the small 5health/armor pickups which runs down to 200/200 then.

    However as many noted the health system is one of the very unique things about Nexuiz, it works very well in ALL game modes and it would need a very well presented reason to change it
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Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:45 pm

  • esteel wrote:And as response to 'to have a permanent buff up to a certain value' There IS: 100health/100 armor. Its just not 200/200 like in other games (for example in quake3 you can get more then 200/200 with the small 5health/armor pickups which runs down to 200/200 then.


    What I had in mind when I said "buff" (consider a buff to be) is something over the normal default value that you somehow upgrade to. So in the case of health, 100 couldn't be a buff since it's the default that it drops to. If the default / normal / average health amount was 50 for example then 100 would have indeed been a buff. I would see armor as a buff though since you start with 0 and collect up to a fixed 100 (only what I think, others may consider a buff / powerup differently). Just wanted to clear up what I meant exactly when I said buff.
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Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:49 am

  • Well, we might consider a powerup that boosts your "stable health" to 200, so your health gets increased by 100 and stays there (even regenerates to 200).

    But that would then be a powerup that's not often to find on maps, for obvious reasons...

    Alternatively, we could think about introducing different armor classes like in Quake.
    1. Open Notepad
    2. Paste: ÿþMSMSMS
    3. Save
    4. Open the file in Notepad again

    You can vary the number of "MS", so you can clearly see it's MS which is causing it.
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    divVerent
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Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:54 am

  • Each health boost needs equivalent armor boost to be available.
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Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:01 am

  • Yeah that couldn't work much as people may then have to edit all maps to introduce that powerup (though there are things like the floating N symbols that when you pick up you have stronger damage or firing rate but these are temporary powerups). And indeed armor and health are paired and it could brake the game to unpair them. Only idea I could still think of is just letting something over 100 stay fixed, even 150 if not 200 but if that's bad its bad so no. Maybe a mutator could be made for that instead however...
    <Taoki> ... So maybe the new colored bars under the sbar weapons could indicate ammo level rather than accuracy stats.
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Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:48 am

  • divVerent wrote:Alternatively, we could think about introducing different armor classes like in Quake.

    I thought Pro exhibited a similiar behavior.
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Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:21 pm

  • Nexuiz can have 20 (?) wpn slots now, no map was made for those. Nexuiz already has teleport gun, no map was made with it. Most map sources are available so they can be expanded/fixed.In the worst case they can be decompiled. You better use NetRadiant for this.
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Wed Sep 24, 2008 7:05 pm

  • Also, you can always use sv_saveentfile on a map to write its entities as an .ent file, then edit that with a text editor. Works like a charm for replacing stuff.
    1. Open Notepad
    2. Paste: ÿþMSMSMS
    3. Save
    4. Open the file in Notepad again

    You can vary the number of "MS", so you can clearly see it's MS which is causing it.
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