Preview Dungeon Lords gawkings at GameSpy

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Dungeon Lords; DW Bradley

There's a <A href="http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/dungeon-lords/516304p1.html">preview</A> of <A href="http://www.dungeonlordsgame.com/">Dungeon Lords</A> over at <A href="Http://www.gamespy.com">GameSpy</A>, which proves that the more I hear about D.W. Bradley's latest attempt at making a good CRPG, the more I think he should have retired. For example, his idea on interface and immersion:
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<blockquote>But a minimal interface has it pitfalls. For instance, as he smacks away at the gathering hordes, there's no indication how close a particular opponent is to dying. Is he hurt a little? A lot? Not at all? Bradley is reluctant at this point to use the conventional health bar hovering over a monster's head. "For every element we put on the screen, it draws focus. The last thing I want to do is take away from the player's experience that he's actually in the world."</blockquote>
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Others have done this. Having jack squat for feedback doesn't immerse me in a situation at all. It just pisses me off, which reminds me it's just a flawed game.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</A>

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

I always put everything on maximum feedback, I understand how some might not like that. Its easy enough to have scalable feedback , like planescape. I don't know why he doesn't just implement that.

 

[Psilon]

I'd like to call Bradley's attention to Morrowind, which originally lacked enemy health displays as well. More specifically, the incessant bitching which caused that yellow bar to go into the codebase.

 

[Anonymous]

It really sucks for those big monsters that show up, you never know what you should do to make them die quicker, or what is over-kill, etc. etc.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yup, Morrowind was what I thought of first when I read that. Not having any type of feedback on the progress of a combat session is idiotic. Players tend to want feedback in situations like this. It determines what I would like to do in combat. Do I need to block more, since DL has this feature, or can I dish it out fast enough to just simply win and move on? Feedback doesn't break immersion, it just aids the player's ability to make intelligent choices.

 

[suibhne]

There has to be *some* visual feedback about enemy health. Health bars are simply an abstraction representing the baddie's visible health - all sorts of factors which would be immediately obvious to any halfway-trained warrior in melee combat - and it's pretty silly for Bradley to think that gamers will be turned off by that little abstraction while being sucked into the much larger abstraction (guiding a bunch of violent pixels around a computer screen chopping up other pixels).

The alternative would be for Bradley to design a system which makes an enemy's status immediately obvious in battle - altering gait and posture, opening bleeding wounds, crippling limbs, etc.

 

[taks]

The alternative would be for Bradley to design a system which makes an enemy's status immediately obvious in battle - altering gait and posture, opening bleeding wounds, crippling limbs, etc.

exactly. unfortunately, that probably requires quite a bit of effort to implement... animations, different polys for each type of baddy, etc. THAT would increase immersion immeasurably while not detracting from gameplay.

taks

 

[Psilon]

It still doesn't provide much feedback for boss monsters, however. Dismemberment is pretty obvious, but you don't want to do it too early. Bloodstained armor, however, is just there. No one's going to be able to see more than five or six distinct wounds.

 

[ecliptic]

Damage skins really aren't that hard to implement.

 

[Psilon]

No, but providing enough of them is. If Kodos the Executioner has 777 HP and the average attack takes off 20HP, you'll need a lot of damage skins to show that the player is making progress.

 

[Anonymous]

Maybe have the body divided into sections, and each section has an HP amount, and all section's amounts add up to the monster's intended HP.

As you attack it more, it'll distribute the damage taken among it's parts and once the parts reach a number of HP, it'll show damage (and have it scale to the limb's HP set, I.E. at 10 HP, i'd show wound around 8 or so, but at 50 (a big guy) it'd show up around 30 or so, that way the player knows he's about 20% damaged in that area) and add in dismemberment for feet, arms and hands (no torso obviously and head/legs if only critical) when a section runs out of HP (if the torso or head is out of HP, it dies).

 

[Spazmo]

Erm... wouldn't it be a lot easier and far more intuitive to just have a health bar? If that's too "uninvolving", just make it like Fallout or Baldur's Gate where you examine the creature and are told "Unhurt", "Wounded", "Heavily Wounded", "Almost Dead" or "Dead'.

 

[Anonymous]

Or that, yeah. I dunno why he's scared of bars and whatnot.

 

[ArcturusXIV]

Positional damage would definitely be cool on boss monsters. I'd definitely be for more dismemberment though. I WANT to chop off arms and legs.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Personally, I'd like to see monsters limp, attack slower, or walk with their backs hunched/twisted when injured, as opposed to a game where the monsters are always in a healthy state right until their health bar drops down to zero. The visual indicator of seeing a monster limp around when damaged, and his attacks and reflexes impaired (thus making him easier to kill at latter stages) would certainly outweigh the visual indicator of a red bar somewhere on the GUI. I'd much prefer to see a red bar on the top of the screen with the monster's name in it, as opposed to having it hover above his head - now that ruins immersion.