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Enjay
 
 
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Post by Enjay »

I think it makes sense. You want to make a WAD where the marine can be killed more realistically. So, you set his starting health to 10% knowing that a couple of poor shots, or one good one will kill him. However, for the entire game, the status bar picture makes it look as if you are walking around as a bloody pulp - even at your max health of 10%. If the game could be made to behave as if 10% was your max - display 100 for full health, drop to 50 after a single Zombie pistol hit etc... It would just be neater. That would only be confusing for people who expect the Doomguy to have 100 Doomguy health points - which are by no means a universal unit. I think you'd quickly learn that he doesn't in the particular mod you were playing. I'm sure there must be other games where there are weaker and stronger characters, and each character has his health shown as a percentage. If a spellcaster has 60 hitpoints and a fighter 100, if percentages are being used, surely the spellcaster would not start with 60% health? He has 100% of his 60 hitpoints.

Even going way back to Dungeon Master on the Atari ST, the different character classes had a health bar. The health bar was full when the character was on full health and disappeared when he was dead. Both bars were the same size but a full bar for a mage dropped a lot quicker than a bar for a fighter because the mage's bar represented a lower maximum number. No-one had a problem with that. Mind you, when Eye of the Beholder came out and had the option to show present hit points against total hitpoints, I always switched off the bars and used the numbers instead.

Is that not what's being asked for?

As for feasibility, I dunno. :shrug:

Perhaps another solution is to change the % graphic to a HP (hitpoints) graphic in your mod and think of the 100% as 100HP instead. Then a mage would just have 50HP and we'd all know what it meant. A compromise of some sort could be reached with the status bar face. Not that you can see it half the time these days anyway :P
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anonone
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Post by anonone »

From what I can tell the changes he's asking for are relatively simple to implement, but then there comes the question of getting them to be modified via ACS and other external means. I know I could make it work through the Player Setup menu; however, I'm not sure this is what he wants. It sounds like it needs to be a wad-specific deal.

Besides, doesn't Hexen already do this to some extent?

And if you don't want to break the HP-based measuring, damage multipliers could be used instead. Say, for instance, a Scout feels twice as much pain as a Heavy Assault guy or something. Find the damage taken, multiply by two. Voila. It'd require one minor edit in one function to be actually used, leaving the big part of the effort in actually getting that modifiable via ACS or other external means. But all of that sounds like something to be done in a custom branch more than the 96x or official build.
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Graf Zahl
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Post by Graf Zahl »

anonone wrote:
Besides, doesn't Hexen already do this to some extent?

Yes, it did. By adding a class specific protection to its armor handling.
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Graf Zahl
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Post by Graf Zahl »

anonone wrote: And if you don't want to break the HP-based measuring, damage multipliers could be used instead. Say, for instance, a Scout feels twice as much pain as a Heavy Assault guy or something. Find the damage taken, multiply by two. Voila. It'd require one minor edit in one function to be actually used, leaving the big part of the effort in actually getting that modifiable via ACS or other external means. But all of that sounds like something to be done in a custom branch more than the 96x or official build.

As you said, there is only one single place where this had to be done. So it could be handled simlilarly to APROP_Speed without much work.
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Post by Woolie Wool »

IF you want a new health maximum, just remove the percent.
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Post by ant1991331 »

Graf Zahl wrote:No, it doesn't make sense and no, it should not be implemented.
ok then, how about a health bar like from strife, exept there are no numbers???
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Post by DoomRater »

That's been done a million times. Ask an ACS scripter who has built one before to customize it for your WAD or whatever. There's a lot of good ones out there! I've built one that scrolls horizontally... or it can even be a centered bar as well.
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Talonos
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Post by Talonos »

Yes, it did. By adding a class specific protection to its armor handling.
You see, I thought it would be easier to ask for the heath percent to be scaled than to ask that class specific protection to armor be customizible. But if you would want to go through that approach instead, I'd be just as happy.
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Nash
 
 
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Post by Nash »

Sorry, a little late on this - I had read Talonos' suggestion the day he posted it, but I could NEVER write a reply because the forum software logs me off all the time.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I agree with Talonos' idea, and I fully make sense out of it.

If anyone remembers LilWhiteMouse's "HQUEST" (too bad she left and didn't finish this, it made me feel like playing a real-time Dungeon Hack-like game!) - the game has an EXP system with level ups and stuff. You started with 15 health, but the "chain" healthbar showed a really low value. Being at full health (which is 15 at start), it would make perfect sense for that chain to be all the way to the right, indicating full health.

This feature would also be useful if the player's health can constantly increase to over 100 or something...

Anyway just my two cents. From the looks of things, this isn't going to be implemented heh.
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Post by zdoom »

In the MAPINFO lump in the wad it could be defined with "HPercent or "HValue" in the "clusterdef" area (if i'm making sence"
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Nash
 
 
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Post by Nash »

Come to think of it, the only use for this feature is that different classes start at different maps.

EDIT: Bah, you can already emulate that with clever use of episodes.
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Post by DoomRater »

Or by clever use of ACS... you can have everyone start on one map and warp the proper classes to the level.
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Post by Talonos »

Kind of kills multi-player though. That's why I wanted it adjustible via ACS.
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Post by MartinHowe »

Enjay wrote:You want to make a WAD where the marine can be killed more realistically.
See marines.wad; it's a very old DOOM mod, but illustrates what Enjay is talking about.
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Post by DoomRater »

Marines.... CLASSIC.
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