Musings on inflicting damage..

[Lacerta]

I'm sure we've all noticed the spankingly wonderful ragdoll physics and the way when you grab a body's arm or leg, that's what moves. Or when you shoot an arrow into someone's eye (strangely satisfying), that's where it sticks out from, rather than magically appearing in the body somewhere (or just vanishing).

This makes me think that each body part must be treated seperately...which got me musing on whether you could take this into account when inflicting damage. This would involve several things:

1. taking into account different levels of armour on different parts of the body. Already done to some extent by what armour piece is damaged when you're hit. Would give an incentive to shoot or hit people where they're not protected.

2. giving consideration to "damage multipliers" of a sort. Hitting someone in the arm or leg is less detrimental than hitting them in the head or heart. Perhaps have "sweet spots" like the face or heart that give a damage multiplier?

3. possibility of bringing in additional effects, like damaging strength with wounds to the arms, endurance with hits to the torso, speed with the legs, intelligence with the head, etc. These could be linked to health and the negative effect removed when health restored, rather than needing restore "x" potions.

Just musings - probably impossible/impractical. I like the game the way it is now, just mulling over ideas.

Any thoughts?

[WingedKagouti]

1. taking into account different levels of armour on different parts of the body. Already done to some extent by what armour piece is damaged when you're hit. Would give an incentive to shoot or hit people where they're not protected.

Armor Rating is global regardless of source and armor hit location is decided randomly, with various chances for each location. I've had rats and mudcrabs break my helmet, even though they quite clearly never hit above my stomach.

To do something like this would likely require a bit of .exe/dll modding. Unless Beth have made a hidden option that just needs to be toggled on somewhere.

Any thoughts?

You likely won't be able to do any of this without .exe/dll modding. Besides, some enemies would become way too annoying. Rats & mudcrabs = crippled and no way of getting anywhere. And where would spell damage be applied to?

[RarRar]

Or when you shoot an arrow into someone's eye (strangely satisfying), that's where it sticks out from

Hmm, never quite managed to do that but once a bandit shot my horse in the butthole. And the damn thing wouldn't go away. I felt so self-conscious riding around like that.

[PeeperStorm]

If there were a way that you could use scripting to detect what part of the body has been hit, you might be able to increase or reduce the raw weapon damage accordingly. Maybe 2x damage for the head, 1/2x damage for arms and legs. It wouldn't take the specific armor on that body part into account, but at least it would make headshots useful.

[Komag]

What do you mean "use scripting"? Do you mean "re-write the game fighting code"? Because that's about what it would take. I think.

[Phatose]

He's right, no way in hell you're gonna get locational damage through scripting, unless there is some undocumented miracle I missed. FFS, the CS doesn't even have a way to get the players currently set spell.

[Shevers]

Can you definitely hit people in the face? I've never managed it, but maybe it's because I'm always making sure I hit them. But I distinctly remember trying to hit a guard in the face so when he came over with his "YOU HAVE BROKEN THE LAW" he'd have an arrow in his face. It didn't seem possible...?