[Suggestion] In-Depth Injury System

[Lorenzo666]

Just thought I'd make a thread for this so other people can easily give input on it.

So what I propose is an in-depth injury system, somewhat inspired/similar to Dwarf Fortress.

E.g. A prisoner smashes up his toilet and breaks his ankle which will lead to him having it be put in a plaster cast in the medical ward for a few days.

E.g. A prisoner slings his food tray or shoe at a Guard during a fight in the canteen and injures the guard. This will lead to the guard holding a grudge against the prisoner but also have a bandage around his head and impeded ability to search and fight.

E.g. A prisoner who gets shanked with a kitchen knife in the shower will be horribly injured and will bleed out within perhaps 30 minutes to an hour if he is not treated by a doctor. If he is saved, he'll be more grateful to the Prison Staff and perhaps become a snitch.

E.g. A guard is violently beat when trying to stop a large fight of prisoners and is stamped on the head and kicked in the ribs repeatedly. Because of his sincere injuries of slight brain damage and three cracked ribs., he'll have to be relieved of his job and given severance pay.

Opinions?

[ghostFace34]

I think the little details are what makes these kinds of games so much fun. Having said that, I think Introversion need to be careful just how deep they dive into some of this stuff, because in the end I don't think it adds as much to the game as it might appear. I think you have to ask yourself this question - is this something that I want the game to put in my face and inform me of when it happens, giving me all the details, or is it something that will go completely unnoticed and have no real bearing on my experience while playing the game unless I were to dig down deep and dredge up the details myself?

If you can show me visually that a prisoner has a broken leg, which helps me notice he has a harder time getting to and from the showers because his room is too far away, then I can take appropriate action. But lets say your 3rd example below happens, and the stab victim is saved, and then becomes a snitch - if it wasn't brought to my attention and I didn't change the way I dealt with him in order to take advantage of the situation, then all the interesting details of how he became a snitch are lost. Do you get what I mean?

I've dabbled in coding some Roguelikes, and this is the best example I can think of to describe my line of thinking: If I walk into an unexplored room and find 3 dead bodies and a sole Orc in the room, I don't know or care if the NPCs were actually fighting among themselves or if the game randomly generated the room with the dead bodies in it. It happened offscreen - I didn't witness any of it. But what if what really happened was a group of Goblins were all sitting around eating dinner when some Orcs barged in and started a fight - a few of them died, some of the Goblins ran off in fear and survived, the Orcs looted the dead bodies, then 1 stayed behind to wait for the others to return. All of that logic and attention to detail is wasted effort from the developer, because me the user didn't see it.

I'll restate what I said before - it's all about the details, and I'm excited about what amazing details this game will hold when it's all finished, I just don't think detailed injuries would be worth the effort unless they were done in a very visual way.

[Lorenzo666]

I guess I have to agree with you there Ghostface, but perhaps, if a Prisoner does become a snitch, it'll show you which Prisoner has told you information that is useful.

So if you check that Prisoner's file, you'll find he was stabbed in such and such a fight and was saved by the medical team, and perhaps hasn't been put in lockdown or solitary for poor behaviour since?

[sleeper1138]

...I just don't think detailed injuries would be worth the effort unless they were done in a very visual way.

This.

I'm uncertain if injury tracking would bring me more enjoyment, but I can imagine a flag that can be set randomly during injury generation that indicates a body area (maybe only for serious injuries?). While the prisoner is still injured, his sprite could show that injury, e.g. cast and crutches if a seriously injured leg, head bandage if head, arm in sling if arm.

I know nothing about how PA's graphics engine works and how the sprites are built and used, so I don't know if this is possible or easy/hard.

In general, it would be cute to see a little inmate sprite hobbling around on crutches with his leg in a cast, but it is by no means something I need to have to enjoy the game.

As for game play, I don't know if I need each entity to have variable performance characteristics based on specific injuries (e.g. slow to get to canteen because of cast on leg). I don't think that level of detail is what I look for in an RTS/simulator.

[RMJ1984]

The game could have its only mini Theme hospital game if you will, in the sense that the injuries prisoners can get and you need bigger medical wards and equipment to treat them and stuff.

[Masochist]

I would welcome such a thing...its depth like this that adds to the immersion, personality, and involvement of NPCs and the game environment.

Then again I am the kinda person that sees when a person is "seriously injured" and all I have to say is "How? What is this serious injury?"

[MadJax]

Big wall of text that is still valid. Read up if you wanna see it, I'm not quoting the whole damn thing.

While I agree that players such as yourself are like that, on the flip side of the coin, there are players such as myself that revel in these kinds of details, so I propose a compromise. Whilst it doesn't have to be PURELY visual, maybe witness statements from snitches etc? I mean, have the prisoner in a small cast (Maybe even a trigger such as CAST==0 or 1) at the bottom of his sprite/graphic, for everyone. But then when you go into his medical record, just a randomly generate text file such as "WITNESS STATEMENT: "STARTED //AGGRESSIVE VERB// //TYPE OF ATTACK// //ITEM or PERSON// ON //DATE// RESULTING IN //INJURY FROM LIST//"

Using your above example, some of us actually enjoy finding out through the game that the Orcs attacked a goblin outpost whilst we weren't looking. Obviously THAT example doesn't have to be spelled out to the player, but hints such as the goblin running away shouting "The Orcs followed me!"

EDIT: Just realised that I fundamentally agreed with you, damn this whisky whilst playing PA

[ghostFace34]

Yes, I'm in full agreement of having lots of neat details, as long as it's done right and truly adds to the game in a tangible way. In my Goblin example the details behind what really happened would actually be very interesting to me as a player, as long as I can find it out in a reasonably easy way.