Development Info Doublebear Design Update: Accessories

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: DoubleBear Productions

Another week, another question:
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<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;">This week continues the defense theme in the form of Accessories. Accessories can further tweak a character’s defense or resistances or provide one of several other benefits as long as they are worn. Each character has two accessory slots – one for the head and one for the body.
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Head accessories include items like helmets or masks which are generally used in offering up further protection to the wearer’s head. A bike helmet, for example, offers a little extra defense, but it’s not going to deflect a bullet. The gas mask prevents chemical damage and blindness, but offers no additional protection from physical damage. We also have a few “weird” types of head accessories which sacrifice protection for more imaginative use of tactics – for example, camo paint which makes characters harder to hit when being shot at from a distance.
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Since Armor covers the body, body accessories tend to be worn on the arms, legs, or feet. Gloves can either add to defensive/resistance ratings or allow for a better grip on a gun. Sneakers can boost a character’s dodge chance, while boots tend to give additional bonuses to defense. Arm/leg guards can protect characters against statuses that affect the limbs. There are also a few unusual body accessories, some of which could be of great use to characters that possess certain melee or ranged abilities.
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When used in combination with armor, accessories can allow further customization of a character’s offense/defense. For example, when wearing the gas mask, a potential strategy for a player surrounded by human enemies would be to drop a gas canister at your feet and casually walk away from the now dizzy and blind enemies. With a little bit of ingenuity, accessories can open up strategies that standard arms and armor cannot.
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Bonus: If anyone wants to mention accessories you liked or thought were cheap in other games, feel free to list them here. I'm interested in effects/strategic use of items we may have neglected in our design, not necessarily ideas for accessories that would be cool in our game.
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List your suggestions.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,1495.0.html">ITS</A>

 

[Phelot]

OMG is this going to be like Jagged Alliance were you can mod weapons and armor? If so then they've just sold a copy!

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I'd want a slot for the arms, too.

 

[Mister Arkham]

I like the idea of semi-realistic bonuses coming from the equipment that you're wearing, especially if said equipment will be relegated to mostly everyday items. I do wonder about the decision of only having one body accessory slot though. I have to choose between wearing a pair of work gloves or a pair of sneakers? How are the things that I put on my hands and the things that I put on my feet mutually exclusive? Are the bonuses that these items offer so great that having more than two at a time will break the game in some significant way?

 

[Azrael the cat]

I like the idea of semi-realistic bonuses coming from the equipment that you're wearing, especially if said equipment will be relegated to mostly everyday items. I do wonder about the decision of only having one body accessory slot though. I have to choose between wearing a pair of work gloves or a pair of sneakers? How are the things that I put on my hands and the things that I put on my feet mutually exclusive? Are the bonuses that these items offer so great that having more than two at a time will break the game in some significant way?

I agree with the gloves v sneakers comment. If they're having a single body slot, I think they'd be better off having holistic 'outfits' rather than individual items. It might make sense that there's little point wearing HALF of a camoflauge outfit - a guy in a camo jacket and flourescent yellow pants isn't going to be stealthing past anybody. You might reason that the benefit provided by a pair of sneakers isn't enough to take into account unless it is combined with a full outfit devoted to easy movement, which in turn gives you a dodge bonus.

 

[deuxhero]

Accessories I thought were cheap?

The black panties in Shadow Hearts=1/2 all magic damage...


I can't really think of any accessories that would fit in a mundane game.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Accessories I thought were cheap?

The black panties in Shadow Hearts=1/2 all magic damage...


I can't really think of any accessories that would fit in a mundane game.

Oh I can think of some. If I hate to take on a few zombies at melee range, I'd either wear my one of my fencing masks or one of my boxing headgear. Even a simple pair of cricket gloves / lacrosse gloves make a massive difference when stick-fighting using canes/batons due to the exceptional vulnerability of the hands (no hand-guard, hands are the closest body-part and hard to protect). If fighting hand to hand, I'd definitely put on a pair of boxing gloves, or mma gloves if I wanted to be able to still open/close doors and use equipment at the same time. I'm far from the only martial arts freak around, and I suspect there's plenty of other folk who have that kind of gear lying around in their cupboards.

In fact, if you were being ultra-realistic there should be massive penalties to sustained hand-to-hand or even melee fighting without appropriate gear. Gloves were introduced to boxing to protect the (really easily broken - especially if hitting harder bones like someone's skull or chin) hands, not the head.

Gas masks and complementary protective equipment are pretty much necessary for dealing with noxious environments. Lab work is going to require gloves and protective glasses. Most manual workers need some sort of protective gloves/gear/helmets/lights and so on. Actually, the more I think about it, the more accessories are vital equipment for a lot of everyday manual jobs. I suspect the only way you'd be struggling to think of everyday accessories with practical benefits would be if you, like me, have never worked a truly manual job in your life.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

i hope this comes out before i die. like, either from old age or a horrible accident.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I'm not sure putting on boxing gloves would be the best idea in a fight you're not sure to win and that you might need to escape from. Fumbling with your gloves to open a door, handle a radio, drive a car... just seems like it might add some difficulty. They might be useful if you went punching into zombies but they might actually be bad for your aim when swinging an axe, for example. They might protect your hands but you're basically losing your ability to use them.

Will thermal goggles work on zombies? I don't know if life functions have ever been addressed in Romero movies, like the need for oxygen and therefore blood. If that were the case, zombies would radiate heat. Even if they didn't circulate blood, would they still generate heat by moving, or rather by moving their muscles? This creates friction and is one of the ways humans warm themselves up, so zombies could be warm even if not using their blood, heart and lungs (and therefore clinically dead).

Maybe thermal goggles won't be in the game.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I'm not sure putting on boxing gloves would be the best idea in a fight you're not sure to win and that you might need to escape from. Fumbling with your gloves to open a door, handle a radio, drive a car... just seems like it might add some difficulty. They might be useful if you went punching into zombies but they might actually be bad for your aim when swinging an axe, for example. They might protect your hands but you're basically losing your ability to use them.

Will thermal goggles work on zombies? I don't know if life functions have ever been addressed in Romero movies, like the need for oxygen and therefore blood. If that were the case, zombies would radiate heat. Even if they didn't circulate blood, would they still generate heat by moving, or rather by moving their muscles? This creates friction and is one of the ways humans warm themselves up, so zombies could be warm even if not using their blood, heart and lungs (and therefore clinically dead).

Maybe thermal goggles won't be in the game.

Re: the boxing gloves - I agree completely. As I said, you'd need something else if you wanted to open/close doors or use equipment. It's more just the point that some form of hand protection is very close to being necessary if someone's going to be making a sustained practice of going fisticuffs with zombies

Re: thermal goggles. It's kind of the downside of zombie settings. They just don't work if you encourage people to think too hard about them. If you make them naturalsitic disease victims ala 28 days later, you lose a lot of the mystery. Romero's early films benefited greatly from remaining deliberately vague about the causes and mechanisms of zombification (the only clarification Romero gives is that it is ALL recent dead, not just the bitten ones, who rise - basically making an infection one option, but far from a certain explanation). Characters and news reports go through various stories, from supernatural/religious to scientific, but never really reach any consensus except for 2 things (in the early films): that wounds only kill them when their brain is either massively damaged or disconnected from their body, and they feed on human flesh.

Within those confines, he's strictly consistent - zombies don't 'attack' humans, they simply walk up to them and start eating if the humans don't do anything about it. That's central to Romero's themes in the early films: characters die due to social breakdown, greed, gluttony and other social and moral failings centered around 'consumerism', rather than the zombies being an obvious immediate threat (its once his films moved from consumerism to more direct political critique that the whole 'zombie' metaphor kind of lost its way...as a metaphor for mindless social gluttony the scenes of zombies pushing shopping carts around shopping malls was brilliant; on the hand the LotD idea of zombies being the false enemy used by the ruling class to keep the working population in line doesn't really work given that the zombies' whole function in life is to feed on human flesh...).

Crap, I wandered again. Thermal goggles. Yeah, part of the idea of Romero-esque zombies (as opposed to the old Voodoo tales that were the prior zombie lore) is that they don't rely on ordinary circulation and bodily systems. If they're truly 'living dead', and are shambling after people while missing limbs and rotting away, then it's pretty much essential that they don't need blood circulation and so on to live, move, etc. So that would mean no body heat. But without blood circulation it would be literally impossible for the muscles to function, which means there's nothing moving to keep the bones moving and agghh....the whole concept is starting to seem pretty stupid:-(.

I think anything that encourages the player/reader/audience to actually think about the mechanics of zombie infestation, aside from where it's a 'big revelation' as part of the main plot, should be dropped. It isn't unusual or necessarily poor writing for something in the horror genre to do a 'quick, look at the SHINY object over there!' whenever people might start to think too hard about the plausibility of the basic premises.

TLDR: ignore paragraphs 2 and 3.

Still TLDR: I'm sorry, I just...can't.....do it:-(

 

[Quilty]

i hope this comes out before i die. like, either from old age or a horrible accident.

 

[Jaesun]

I'm typing with one hand.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

I'm typing with one hand.

Why? Do you have only one hand.

 

[Arcanoix]

I'm typing with one hand.

So am I but only because one hand is occupied holding your moms head down below my desk. :wink:

 

[Dionysus]

I'm not sure putting on boxing gloves would be the best idea in a fight you're not sure to win and that you might need to escape from. Fumbling with your gloves to open a door, handle a radio, drive a car... just seems like it might add some difficulty.

That's why you've got to go Art-Jimmerson style. That way, you've got one hand for zombie punching, and one for opening doors.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I'm typing with one hand.

So am I but only because one hand is occupied holding your moms head down below my desk. :wink:

Dangerous call over the internet. You never know when you might be claiming to being fellated by a 92 year old corpse that's been rotting for 3 years.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

So the insult is even stronger

 

[Azrael the cat]

So the insult is even stronger

You know, by the time you get even to my age (early 30s), it really isn't an insult to accuse my mother of getting some action. I mean at her age it's kind of mixture of shock and 'you go girl'. I'd say the insult is on the young chum that's hooked himself a granny.

 

[Black Cat]

@ Azrael

"Dangerous call over the internet. You never know when you might be claiming to being fellated by a 92 year old corpse that's been rotting for 3 years."

That's hauntingly on topic, though.

 

[spacemoose]

que pasa, gata negra

what do the spirits say are tehre any dire news from the beyond