#1264 Make bloodsplatter have gameplay effects
I don't know exactly how bloodsplatter works at the moment, but one possibility, is to allow players to track down wounded enemies, that are running away from you. That way, you can choose not to have to deal with them at a bad time later on, when they've healed up.
It might be necessary to add a "bleeding" status to the game (like "poisoned" or "confused") to implement this. This status would cause monsters to leave a blood trail when moving around in the dungeon, giving players a clue as to where they went.
Blood could also have other effects: other monsters might be drawn to the blood, for example. This is significant especially when the "bleeding" status can be applied to the @ as well: he'll attract monsters that have smelled his blood.
I don't know whether it would be a good idea to link the "bleeding" status to HP loss. That would make it too similar to poison. Also, in that case it would have to be used sparingly, which is unfortunate. I would suggest to make monsters bleed once they're below a certain percentage of their health - and the same goes for the @.
So the basic idea is, that when the @ or the monsters get heavily wounded, they start bleeding, leaving a blood trail, that can reveal their location, and possibly attract other monsters.
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Oh yeah, and I forgot to say that the bleeding would stop once the HP of the @ or the monster is back above a certain percentage. This would make running around with low HP doubly dangerous. In addition, it would avoid the need for a way to get rid of the bleeding (e.g. applying bandages or something annoying like that). There is no need for a second layer of healing in the game (e.g. resting will allow the wounds to close slowly, potions might make you recover enough to stop the bleeding, etc).
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In favour, though it would probably have to be toned down: if you reliably spatter blood every turn while heavily wounded (and monsters will, too) soon the entire dungeon will be covered in blood, and that would cheapen the effect.
Tracking is an interesting idea, but might be tricky to implement. A hesitant suggestion of implementation:
Everytime blood spatters the floor a function comparable to noisy() gets called, only it can only alert a small set of monsters (canines, mostly) and they'll try to follow its smell to the scene of carnage. This will usually be where the player is fighting (either wounding himself, or a monster), so it would have the desired effect.
Also, what is your opinion on linking blood spatter to damage type (FR 1911470)?
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"Also, what is your opinion on linking blood spatter to damage type (FR
1911470)?"
If I incorporate this idea into my suggestion, the "bleeding" status can be caused by:
(1) HP falling below a certain percentage (e.g. 20% of your max HP).
(2) A high-damage attack (e.g. 50 % of your max HP).
Linking (2) to damage type seems like a sensible idea to me, but the problem is, that if you link the "bleeding" status to something other than your current HP, you need a new way of determining when you stop bleeding (e.g. the annoying bandages I mentioned). But regaining HP seems the most natural way of getting rid of the "bleeding" status, so there is some incompatibility here.
Of course, you could ditch the whole "bleeding status" idea, and evaluate bloodsplatter independently. Each turn, the game could check whether the @ or a monster (visible or not) has less than 20% of its max HP, and create bloodsplatter accordingly. Next to that, high-damage attacks generate bloodsplatter, too. This way, you can combine the benefits of both (1) and (2):
(1) "heavily wounded" generally means "bleeding heavily".
(2) "high-damage attack" generally means "some blood was shed".
In retrospect, maybe a bleeding status that depends only on your HP is superfluous, since you already know that a low HP means you're bleeding. Similarly, when the message window states "the hobgoblin is heavily wounded", you know it's bleeding. Also, tracking running monsters would still be possible, since the game will also perform checks for monsters out of your line of sight.
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I think only bladed weapons should cause bleeding. It shouldn't be caused by getting a specific amount of damage.
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> (1) "heavily wounded" generally means "bleeding heavily".
> (2) "high-damage attack" generally means "some blood was shed".
> In retrospect, maybe a bleeding status that depends only on your HP
> is superfluous, since you already know that a low HP means you're
> bleeding.
> Similarly, when the message window states "the hobgoblin is heavily
> wounded", you know it's bleeding. Also, tracking running monsters
> would still be possible, since the game will also perform checks
> for monsters out of your line of sight.
Yes, that's how I envision it as well. :) Note that not all monsters are capable of bleeding, e.g. no insects, undead etc.
@Nate: Well, if you club an ogre to death, I'm pretty sure it will leave some stains. Still, I'll have to consider FR
1911470, after all. As long as bleeding is *not* restricted to blades (which is not all that realistic, see above) it might actually increase flavour.
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My suggestion for how this should work:
Bleeding:
1) 'Bleeding' is an effect based off of a total intensity that fades semi-randomly with time, like with poison.
2) Any hit increments your bleeding score by 1, modified by multipliers, with leftover decimal values being a percent chance of incrementing by 1 (ex., 16.2 = +16, 20% chance of +1). It decrements 1 every round (default - some might decrement more [trolls], others less [hemophiliacs!]), perhaps with some random nature as well. Any kind of healing decrements bleeding score, but 'flavor' of increment/decrement should be tracked - for example, a Necro miscast effect causing an increment that cannot be affected with healing magic, only by waiting.
3) Damage type provides a multiplier to increase in bleeding score - some types are 0 (burns, acid, pain, etc.) and never cause bleeding. If 'slice' was a baseline you might see .2x bludgeoning, .7x stab, etc. with some specific items increasing above 1x (demon whips/blades, vampire's tooth). Damage amount is a second multiplier, based off of some exponential function using percentage of total HP. So, 10% HP loss = x2, 30% x20, 50X = x200, etc. Some spells, god abilities, or gear might add more multipliers.
4) Having very high bleeding scores causes some per-round HP damage, perhaps some stat loss as per sickness ('You feel weak/woozy/faint' for Str/Dex/Int.)
5) All creatures that have blood bleed, but some are immune to negative bleeding effects (ex., ghouls bleed but it doesn't matter to them if they do - vampires can bleed, but it decreases their satiation level instead).
6) For most races, as a semi-magical effect, drinking potions of blood should decrement bleeding moreso than healing effects but also have nasty side-effects (worsened for vegetarians, lessened for saprovores/carnivores). 'Your blood starts to flow back into your body!'
Bloodstains:
1) You can form bloodstains from damage in two ways:
1A)If you have a total bleeding score beyond a certain threshold (since very light bleeding shouldn't be able to do this), checked at end of every round like with poison, you roll to see whether it triggers a bloodstain to form in the square you were in last round (so for example, if you move and then teleport, you leave bloodstains where you teleported from and not right when you arrive). This chance should start off at 0, increase to a low percent once you hit the threshold, then rapidly scale until it reaches 100% when you'd start taking HP loss from bleeding effects at the given bleeding score you have.
1B) If a single hit increments bleeding score by a great amount, it will immediately cause a bloodstain where you are standing. Since this increment value factors in damage type, damage score, god effects, etc. there is no need to account for those in this step - a hit that causes a lot of blood loss instantly will also increase how much you are bleeding.
2) Blood stains can rot, like chunks and skeletons.
3) Blood comes in three types: clean (red), slime (green), hemolymph (yellow/brown).
4) Blood comes in two ages: fresh (light) and coagulated/'rotted' (dark).
5) Undead creatures that have blood (necrophages, ghouls) create coagulated blood when bleeding, not fresh. Vampires bleed one or the other depending on satiation.
Game Balance:
1) Anything other than plant/insect intelligence monsters will follow either age of blood trail (but only the first time they see a given square of it). Bloodstains suddenly appearing out of nowhere cue intelligent monsters in that an invisible creature is around, dumber ones just head over to investigate.
2) See Invis/Scent are separated. Some monsters could have both. Scent occasionally 'pings' invisible creatures depending on their distance from the sniffer (some races may be easier or harder to track by scent), revealing their current location, but it is not infallible and they are still harder to hit for scent creatures.
3) Then, one of:
A) See invis is changed to these possible values: 'Yes', 'No', 'Scent', 'Both'.
B) Monsters that see invis based off of scent (hounds, etc.) lose see invis and gain Scent: 'Yes' (everything else has 'No').
4) Freshly spilled blood can be detected with Scent at a wide radius and will awaken sleeping monsters or attract ones outside LOS - through clouds, for example. Not through walls, though. Additionally, bleeding decreases the difficulty in tracking by scent. These are two different effects - even if you're not bleeding enough to leave bloodstains you can still be tracked by scent, and a single really painful hit or special effect may cause a bloodstain but not increase overall bleeding as much as several smaller hits that didn't would.
5) Bleeding in water should have a longer range for detection with scent by aquatic creatures, but bloodstains don't form. Instead, the water becomes bloodied. If there are any adjacent squares of non-bloodied water, the bloodied square has a 1/16-(# of adjacent deep water squares, shallow counts as 1/2) chance to go away each round (or something along those lines).
5) New spells/effects should be added that affect Scent. Maybe a Necro spell that only lets you smell bleeding, living creatures or a Div/Tmig spell that lets you gain Scent to full effect (increased Power would let you identify specific creatures by their smell). Summon Canine Familiar would let your hound track down monsters that are running away faster than you. Perhaps some mutation could give scent, too, or maybe even a specific race would have the ability to do it. Creatures with Scent should be more vulnerable to mephitic clouds and the like, and a cloud of noxious fumes, thick black smoke, or poison gas should count as a wall for determining scent LOS.
5) Many things should change the effects, rate, or type of bleeding. The multiplier system lets you do some cool things - for example you could add a above-1 multiplier to decrements for Trog (he lets you get hurt, but then lets you recover from it faster) and a below-1 multplier to increments for Zin or Ely (less actual bleeding happens). The upcoming slime god could make you bleed green slime beyond a certain piety as a cosmetic effect. Oka could give you piety if you're bleeding heavily yet continue to just melee attack ('Okawaru notes your courage!') rather than run away or heal. Yred or Kiku could buff your servants ('Your blood soaks into the dungeon floor! The undead around you seem energized.) if you're bleeding heavily. There could be a mutation that causes you to also create a miasma cloud every time you create a bloodstain thanks to prolonged bleeding, or one that makes you bleed constantly (but harmlessly). Some of the 'gain power when killing' effects or piety gain events could incorporate bloodiness into them to some degree, too. Lots of potential here.
6) Some monsters should have bleeding-related effects. For example, you could give Tormenters scent, a greatly increased bleeding multiplier (to go with their description) and let them rage when fresh blood is spilled in LOS. Rotting devils could cause blood to rapidly rot in LOS - potions of blood on the ground become potions of decay, bleeding creatures become sick as the blood rots before it even finishes leaving their bodies, and bloodstains would turn rotten before they even finished hitting the ground. Some kinds of undead or demon could draw blood into them when they hit, increasing your bleeding as normal but gaining strength any time they normally would've created a bloodstain from a single hit. Sharks (as a new Shoals creature, I hope!) could rage for as long as they smell blood in the water.
Lengthy, but that's my thoughts on the matter :)
-Ero
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"My suggestion for how this should work [...]"
You, sir, are a genius!
"Lengthy, but that's my thoughts on the matter :)"
It was worth it ;)
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Random other blood-related ideas:
Walls could become bloodstained if a bloodstain is formed by an impact (but not by bleeding... unless you're passwalling through the wall!), like so:
X@X
.DX
XxX
So essentially, a particularly powerful attack can not only create a bloodstain in the square underneath the monster, but begin to hit squares behind it with bloodstains (distance depends on total bleeding increment of the attack). If a wall would be intersected by the path of the spray, it would stain it as per the floor.
Butchering corpses should create bloodstains, obviously.
Some fire creatures could instead bleed flaming clouds, some cold ones freezing clouds. Acidic creatures that bleed slime could do damage to anything hit by their spray. Creatures with poisonous chunks could have the chance to poison anything hit.
New Necro/Ice spell: 'Cascading Flows'. A wave of blood pours out from you and damages a creature, which causes your bleeding score to increment vastly (but causes no immediate damage) - alternately, it could only work if you are bleeding already, gaining power the more you're bleeding. If it deals enough damage to create a bloodstain (not just increment bleeding), it continues to move along its path at reduced effectiveness - but the amount of blood it spilled causes an increase in effectiveness, so that the attack would be weaker than it had been if you didn't cause much bleeding but potentially much stronger if you'd killed it (therefore it's best to use against things that you know it will do a bunch of damage to). Any creature along the way that doesn't bleed stops the effect once it is damaged.
New Necro/Tloc spell: 'Murderous Apportation'. Low-ish single-target non-LOS based untyped damage vs. most creatures (AC reduces damage). So, it works against demons and such (but not against, say, vapors). It's assumed that any creature with a body can be affected but that some disintegrate or rot instantly or what have you. If the creature has valid chunks (whether or not it leaves a corpse), though, the effects are more dramatic - it violently rips a chunk from the creature and launches it in your direction, as if it were a projectile thrown non-awkwardly from the monster's square (and actually capable of dealing minor damage due to its speed), and fires a trail of bloodstains along the same path. Essentially, against these targets it would do more damage and also have a much higher bleeding multiplier, with effects on bleeding calculated normally. If it kills the creature the skeleton is launched, instead, which has the potential to deal more damage (perhaps even treating it as a cast of Bone Shards). This is a prime candidate for a spell usable by Necromancers/Liches! A lot more fun than Iron Bolt.
Sublimation of Blood could be read literally. Perhaps in LOS range, blood around you sublimates away into either nothingness or clouds of miasma (though this would require increasing its level and might overlap with corpse rot a bit). The more that sublimates, on a logarithmic scale, the faster you regain your mana.
Vampiric weapons could heal/feed you based on amount of blood drawn rather than directly corresponding to damage dealt. This would make bladed or high-damage vampiric weapons noticeably more effective than blunt or low-damage ones (since % of HP done as one hit's damage => bleeding increase is some variety of exponential), make them better in the hands of a god that makes your enemies bleed more, etc. and could be cool though a bit difficult to balance.
Fulsome Distillation could have a chance to create a potion of blood when cast at high power level.
Evaporating a potion of blood should cause massive amounts of blood spray in addition to a cloud.
Ignite Poison could cause any poisonous blood splatter to turn into clouds of flame and any creatures coated in it to be hit with sticky flame. This would make spell combos more viable - for example, use the revised version of Bone Shards I suggested in another FR (several dart-like attacks) to cause a large amount of blood spray in a row of poisonous creatures, then Ignite Poison on them to not only hit them but hit the blood splattered all over and around them.
Blood has a lot of potential, let's make the most of it :)
-Ero
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That sounds awesome... i always thought the annihilations book needed a necromancy spell in it, and that murderous apportation would fit nicely as a high level spell. Would also be interesting to use as a card effect on you once in a while,
You have drawn Self-sacrifice!
A chunk of flesh is ripped from your body!
You are bleeding heavily!
that is, so long as it is both rare, and almost never an insta-death. would be actually amusing to see.
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Sorry, Ero, I still haven't managed to read your huge posts. :p
Rest assured that we *will* make something of bleeding. Of course, there's no reason to get all of it ready for 0.4. It's difficult enough getting the vampires balanced (play testing welcome!), and naturally all blood changes affect them heavily.
Now, for some of your suggestions I saw while skimming your posts:
> 1) 'Bleeding' is an effect based off of a total intensity that
> fades semi-randomly with time, like with poison.
I'm rather against that, since it would create the need of getting rid of it, like the suggested bandaging. For now, linking bleeding to a certain hp percentage is fine, I think.
Whether blood stains can rot, grow mouldy or whatever is for later, maybe in connection to a more interesting dungeon flora.
Smart tracking, unfortunately, is also for later. For now, I'd be happy if monsters were reliably able to follow the player instead of wait at the other side of a glass wall.
> Walls could become bloodstained if a bloodstain is formed by an impact
Already happens. For high damage there's a chance blood may spray onto adjacent squares.
> Butchering corpses should create bloodstains, obviously.
Already happens, depending on mass.
> Sublimation of Blood could be read literally. Perhaps in LOS range,
> blood around you sublimates away into either nothingness or clouds of
> miasma (though this would require increasing its level and might overlap
> with corpse rot a bit). The more that sublimates, on a logarithmic
> scale, the faster you regain your mana.
Too powerful, especially with the amount of blood in the dungeon. I'm already shying away from removing the wielding stuff restriction as commentors (rightly, I think) pointed out it would change the balance too much.
> Fulsome Distillation could have a chance to create a potion of blood
> when cast at high power level.
It used to have a 1/30 chance of producing !blood, but I removed that since the usefulness of blood is extremely limited (except for vampires who've got a better use for most corpses) and I haven't found a good Evaporate effect yet. Any ideas on that one? (Covering the area in blood is a given, but I'm looking for strategic uses.)
Currently there's no such thing as poisoned, contaminated or rotting blood. A potion of blood will always contain clean blood, though it will coagulate and disappear with time. Monsters of the contaminated chunk type will simply yield lesser nutrition, and if a vampire drains a corpse of a poisonous/mutagenic chunk type, he'll suffer the effects, but they won't draw blood from such creatures by biting in combat.
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"I'm rather against that, since it would create the need of getting rid of
it, like the suggested bandaging. For now, linking bleeding to a certain hp
percentage is fine, I think."
I don't like the idea of linking 'currently bleeding: Y/N' to an HP percent. This leads to some silly behavior - if you set that threshold to, say, 30% a hit that takes of 69% of your HP won't make you bleed but add another one that takes off 2% and you're gushing out blood. Having to 'get rid of' bleeding is not the intent - if you're taking HP damage, you're bleeding, and if you're recovering HP, you're bleeding less. Some things can cause HP loss without bleeding and some things can cause bleeding without HP loss but they are a minority of effects, not the norm. I think that this is the way it should be - let's uncouple the two in a way that provides an interesting game mechanic. By allowing for different attacks to cause different rates of bleeding it better accounts for the fact that a hundred papercuts don't cause as much blood loss as a lost arm. In other words, how much you're bleeding is correlated with the amount of damage you've taken, but it avoids the simplicity of having them be the exact same thing. Some factors might exist that let you increase HP or decrease bleeding without affecting the other but they won't be a necessity any more than restore ability potions are for restoring abilities (since you can wait it out, wear sustain abilities in the first place, or eat royal jelly).
This means that high-HP races bleed less when hit with the same weapon
"Whether blood stains can rot, grow mouldy or whatever is for later, maybe
in connection to a more interesting dungeon flora."
I think it should go in at least as a cosmetic effect (light color => dark color). If bloodstains aren't going to be permanent - and they shouldn't be, since it'd clutter up the dungeon - they should rot away like other corpse parts left lying around.
"Smart tracking, unfortunately, is also for later. For now, I'd be happy if
monsters were reliably able to follow the player instead of wait at the
other side of a glass wall."
Yes, that would be nice :) I wager that some effects of it could probably be done with a minimum of effort, though. Spilled blood could definitely be made to wake monsters up and monsters will already walk through smoke if they saw a PC in it - some manner of counting blood spilled as having seen them there should do it. Tracking will be more complex but those two seem like they would not be difficult implementations.
"Too powerful, especially with the amount of blood in the dungeon. I'm
already shying away from removing the wielding stuff restriction as
commentors (rightly, I think) pointed out it would change the balance too
much."
A change like that to Sublimation would only be too powerful if the current effect (which really should be reduced anyways) is retained. Even a single chunk gives a ton of MP back instantly. If it only gave, say, 1-3 MP per blood splatter or chunk on the ground in sight it may well end up weaker - especially since many popular methods for a spellcaster to kill things (fire/ice conj, pain, agony, draining) wouldn't cause bloodstains.
"It used to have a 1/30 chance of producing !blood, but I removed that
since the usefulness of blood is extremely limited (except for vampires
who've got a better use for most corpses) and I haven't found a good
Evaporate effect yet. Any ideas on that one? (Covering the area in blood is
a given, but I'm looking for strategic uses.)"
I was under the impression that evaporating blood created miasma. If that's just a placeholder, some ideas: a) "crimson steam" - steam+negative energy the way that decay is poison+negative energy, doing damage similar to steam and increases bleeding for every round non-neg-resistant creatures are in it b) creates a "blood-red mist" that causes a short-duration Confusing+Enraging to things not immune to negative energy - "The foo inhales the carmine vapors and howls with rage!" c) creates a "vampiric cloud" that damages creatures not immune to vampiric weapons that stand in it and increases its duration every time it does so.
"Currently there's no such thing as poisoned, contaminated or rotting
blood. A potion of blood will always contain clean blood, though it will
coagulate and disappear with time."
It'd be cool to keep track of this and have different sources of 'blood' do different things when evaporated (and provide somewhat different effects when drunk). Perhaps label it as "potion of <fresh or coagulated> <chunktype, if not clean> <bloodtype>", so "coagulated undead blood" or "fresh mutagenic hemolymph". For example, evaporating "coagulated undead blood" would splatter blood and have the effects of a (shorter-duration) potion of decay whereas "fresh mutagenic blood" would splatter but work like an evaporated potion of mutation. Or perhaps each chunk type causes a different kind of evaporation effect as per above - clean blood (analogue: water) creates 'crimson steam', contaminated blood (analogue: confusion) creates 'blood-red mist', undead blood (analogue: decay) creates a 'vampiric cloud'. Poisonous blood could create miasma, which is already poison+negative energy, and mutagenic blood (analogue: potion of mutation) could create a 'cloud of mutagenic death' that warps and shifts the flesh and blood of creatures in it with unpredictable and dangerous effects. There is a lot of possibility here - having all 'blood' just be 'blood' is a bit boring, I think. The fact that you can't stockpile them up to save them for when it would be most useful helps, too.
-Ero
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A few comments on linking bleeding to a max HP percentage:
1) Since Crawl has no constitution score, your max HP effectively represents your constitution, and all gameplay mechanics should reflect that. In games that do have a constitution score, it might be used to calculate the amount of damage poison does, for example. In Crawl, however, a high max HP means that poison affects you less, relatively speaking - not because the max HP is taken into account in the damage calculations, but because poison damage is basically absolute. That way, you don't need a constitution score.
2) In the same way, your max HP, representing your constitution, should determine when you start bleeding (i.e. a certain percentage of your max HP). This means that @'s with a low max HP will start bleeding much sooner than @'s with a high max HP, because monster damage is absolute. So again, everything works out naturally without having to implement additional calculations.
3) Concerning Ero's objections:
We already established that a single high-damage hit should cause bloodsplatter. Ero's intuition is, I think, that such bloodsplatter would mean you start bleeding, too - even if you're not below a certain percentage of your max HP. This is a valid concern, but I think it is compatible with linking bleeding to a max HP percentage. If a hit takes e.g. 69% of your HP, there should be a chance that you immediately lose the additional 2% that would put you under the treshold. The closer you are to the bleeding treshold, the bigger the chance would be for this to happen.
Also, we can link this chance to the damage type (FR 1911470): a high-damage attack with an axe would yield a bigger chance to immediately drop beneath the treshold, than a similar attack with a mace. For low damage attacks, the damage type shouldn't matter, because we're talking about heavy bleeding, here - i.e. the kind of bleeding that will stain the floor.
Anyhow, this sudden jump beneath the treshold, due to a high-damage attack, should be the only damage bleeding can do: it might be more realistic that you lose HP while bleeding, but it'll make surviving after reaching the bleeding treshold almost impossible. Of course, that might be intended - yet it would have quite an impact upon the game's balance.
As for passing beyond the bleeding treshold through low-damage attacks, i.e. the papercuts Ero mentioned: it seems realistic to me that a lot of low-damage attacks, which cause only minor bleeding, add up to some major bleeding in the end. If in this case, a fixed treshold sounds a little unrealistic, we can let the treshold vary at random (e.g. you start bleeding between 20-30% of your max HP). That way, you don't know exactly when you'll start bleeding due to a low-damage attack, because the treshold varies per bleeding check. This will affect the high-damage attacks, too of course.
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Gods, this sure is getting complicated. There are several issues here:
1.) Allow tracking of blood stains.
This is easy enough to add for the player once the continued bleeding goes in (obviously!), but rather more difficult for monsters. Monsters currently don't even keep account of which traps (or anything else) they've seen or not. Rather, taking into account their intelligence etc., we just assume them to know about all of them, though they'll sometimes step on them anyway.) Storing for each monster whether a square it's seeing was already covered in blood the last time would be nasty.
Instead, I'll eventually have to add a timer to blood stains (no idea how to do that without too much overhead right now, as there's a very good reason items/traps/shops have an upper limit per level) and then we'd just have to check whether a blood stain is "recent" and then always try to make the monster move towards the most recent bloodstain it can see. That's the basic idea, really, though I'm afraid it'd be very calculation heavy, and with little gain.
2.) Continued bleeding if heavily wounded.
I wrote a tiny, and extremely simple patch to test the basic idea, and of course it's completely useless as long as blood stains are permanent. There's just too much blood around! :(
I really don't want to make this too complicated (like with added hp loss if bleeding etc.), so I still think linking it to hp/max hp is the way to go. Btw, thanks for cuboidz for explaining the constitution thing better than I could have done. That's exactly what I mean! :)
Even better, we don't even need a fixed threshold to make this work, as long as the probabilities are adjusted in a sensible way. In my testing patch, I made it so that once you (or a monster) was below half of their hp, they'd bleed onto the floor with a probability of (max hp/hp / 20), so you'd get e.g.
hp/max hp bleeding chance
0.5 or above never
0.499999... 1/10
0.4 1/8
0.25 1/5
0.2 1/4
0.1 1/2
0.05 or below always
... which might still be too often. I think it's more interesting if a monster or the player moves around and from time to time spatters the floor with blood than if they do it reliably below a certain threshold.
3.) Necromantic blood effects.
These are a distinct enough issue that a new FR might be a good idea, though of course all of that is for later, when blood stains can disappear with time. I like your (Ero's) suggestions for scent/bleeding related effects for monsters, gods, and necromantic spells (Game balance, 4-6 in your first lengthy post). And I agree that sharks should be added for the Shoals, if only for the blood raging. :p
Some more comments:
> I think it should go in at least as a cosmetic effect (light color => dark
> color).
That'd only leave brown, not as interesting as red but they're not supposed to stay a long time anyway, so that should be okay. Still, this is only possible once blood stains get a timer.
> If bloodstains aren't going to be permanent - and they shouldn't be,
> since it'd clutter up the dungeon - they should rot away like other
> corpse parts left lying around.
I agree.
Another thing I'd like to do is keep track of the *amount* of blood flowing, so you could get different descriptions ranging from "spattered" via "sprayed" and "covered" to "coated" or "encrusted" with blood.
Depending on the amount, blood would behave differently when aging: Anything below a certain threshold would rot away (coagulated blood -> disappear), while the rest would leave permanent brown stains and described as "encrusted with dried blood". Not sure what would happen if a large amount of fresh blood dribbles onto such a solid stain of dried blood.
> Spilled blood could definitely be made to wake monsters up
Yes. That, at least, I should be able to implement before 0.4 comes out. :)
> and monsters will already walk through smoke if they saw a PC in it -
> some manner of counting blood spilled as having seen them there should
> do it.
Sorry, I don't understand. Do you mean as in keep track of whether the blood was already there the last time they saw it?
> I was under the impression that evaporating blood created miasma.
Oh, right. I'd forgotten about that. *sheepish grin*
Yes, it's just a place holder. Especially early on, miasma is just too powerful.
> a) "crimson steam" - steam+negative energy the way that decay is
> poison+negative energy, doing damage similar to steam and increases
> bleeding for every round non-neg-resistant creatures are in it
That's only an option if bleeding is implemented to have interesting effects (which will take too much time, right now) and probably also too powerful.
> b) creates a "blood-red mist" that causes a short-duration
> Confusing+Enraging to things not immune to negative energy -
> "The foo inhales the carmine vapors and howls with rage!"
That's what I came up with as well. It could be useful on friendlies (except for necromancers), and otherwise have an interesting flavourful effect. What I am worrying about, is that berserk might be too strong, though - now that I think about it - I could use the new battle frenzy instead, which is sort of a weaker version of berserk.
> c) creates a "vampiric cloud" that damages creatures not
> immune to vampiric weapons that stand in it and increases
> its duration every time it does so.
Not sure of this one. So b) it will be, at least for the time being.
> It'd be cool to keep track of this and have different
> sources of 'blood' do different things when evaporated
> (and provide somewhat different effects when drunk).
> Perhaps label it as "potion of <fresh or coagulated>
> <chunktype, if not clean> <bloodtype>", so "coagulated
> undead blood" or "fresh mutagenic hemolymph". For
> example, evaporating "coagulated undead blood" would
> splatter blood and have the effects of a (shorter-duration)
> potion of decay whereas "fresh mutagenic blood" would
> splatter but work like an evaporated potion of mutation.
Interesting. I'd originally wanted to do a simplified version of this, i.e. allow vampires to create potions of poisonous/mutagenic blood, as well, but it was quickly pointed out to me that that might make inventory handling difficult, and also give spoilers the chunks wouldn't. Then again, you won't carry around those unpalatable potions around unless as ammo for Evaporate, so it still is an option (though the spoiler problem remains).
Thanks again for all the great suggestions!
JPEG
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>[...] I think it's more interesting if a
>monster or the player moves around and from time to time spatters the floor
>with blood than if they do it reliably below a certain threshold. (jpeg)
You're right, and your solution is simple, yet elegant.
>Even better, we don't even need a fixed threshold to make this work, as
>long as the probabilities are adjusted in a sensible way. In my testing
>patch, I made it so that once you (or a monster) was below half of their
>hp, they'd bleed onto the floor with a probability of (max hp/hp / 20), so
>you'd get e.g. (jpeg)
Technically, there still is a treshold in your solution, since once you pass under 50% of your health, there is a chance of spilling blood on the floor. So, Ero's objection can still be formulated: if a high-damage attack takes away 49% of your HP, and causes massive bloodsplatter, isn't it strange that there's not chance of you bleeding afterwards?
My suggestion would be, that if a high-damage attack doesn't bump you into the lower 50% part of your HP, but comes very close, there should be a chance for additional damage that would put you at least in the 0.499999... section of your table (1/10 chance of bleeding each turn).
e.g. for each attack that damages you for at least 25% of your HP
hp/max hp chance to drop below 50%
0.70 or above never
0.65 - 0.69999... 1/256
0.60 - 0.64999... 1/64
0.55 - 0.59999... 1/16
0.50 - 0.54999... 1/4
Alternatively, you could extend your table:
hp/max hp bleeding chance
0.7 or above never
0.65 1/512
0.60 1/256
0.55 1/128
0.5 1/64
0.4 1/32
0.25 1/16
0.2 1/8
0.1 1/4
0.05 or below always
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"Not sure what would happen if a large
amount of fresh blood dribbles onto such a solid stain of dried blood."
It could be given red color, reset its rot timer, and then labeled as 'coated in a motley patchwork of bloodstains'. When the timer expired it would rot back down to simply 'encrusted'.
"Interesting. I'd originally wanted to do a simplified version of this,
i.e. allow vampires to create potions of poisonous/mutagenic blood, as
well, but it was quickly pointed out to me that that might make inventory
handling difficult, and also give spoilers the chunks wouldn't. Then again,
you won't carry around those unpalatable potions around unless as ammo for
Evaporate, so it still is an option (though the spoiler problem remains)."
You could perhaps only let vampires that also have Fulsome Distillation memorized drain non-clean blood types reliably - "You skillfully draw forth the sanguine power within the foo's corpse!". Vampires without the spell, or normal transmuters, would only have a chance to get the appropriate blood potion - "You manage to stomach the noxious job of extracting the foo's impure blood!" / "You manage to capture some of the foo's vital essence in the potion!". As for spoilers - not that I think it's a concern, honestly, it's silly that a vampire channeling blood into a potion wouldn't be able to tell what kind of blood he was channeling (after all, they know not to drain poisonous creatures in combat) - but if insisted upon, what about handling it like potions of decay, where there can be multiple stacks of different unIDed potions?
"Sorry, I don't understand. Do you mean as in keep track of whether the
blood was already there the last time they saw it?"
I mean that if blood is spilled on the ground and they can smell it, it 'pings' them - they know that something was standing in that spot and got hit, kind of like how if you cast Sticky Flame at a monster and block LOS it will advance through the smoke to your last known position rather than moving randomly.
Both of your implementations are simpler alternatives, but I feel that they have (different) problems. The aforementioned threshold problem in the first proposed alternate bothers me, but the second I like less - I don't like the idea of having a few points of damage, getting hit for 25% of my HP, then immediately dropping to 49% (that's over 1.5x damage!). I also don't like the idea of being able to take a 25% HP loss from a single hit but not start bleeding other than the immediate spatter, as is the case in the second proposed way to handle. I feel that using an increment/decrement system is the only way that can handle it in a way that 'makes sense'. The effects of blood loss can be tweaked and such, of course, but I feel that my proposal (according to this rough, example formula with all values subject to tweaking) models the idea of blood loss best:
% of Max (-Rotting) Lost from Impact:
1% = x1
5% = x25
10% = x100
25% = x625
50% = x2500
75% = x5625
99% = x9801
Weapon Modifier:
Blunt: x.2
Piercing: x.5
Slashing: x1
Demon Whip: x1.2
Demon Blade: x1.5
Vampiric brand x3
Vampire Tooth: x5
Blood Increment = HP Loss Modifier * Wpn Modifier * Misc Modifier 1 * ... Misc Modifier N.
Example ranges:
1% HP loss from a mace = .2 Blood Increment
10% HP loss from a mace = 20 Blood Increment
10% HP loss from a sword = 100 Blood Increment
25% HP loss from a mace = 125 Blood Increment
10% HP loss from Vampire's Tooth = 500 Blood Increment
25% HP loss from a sword = 625 Blood Increment
50% HP loss from a stab by Vampire's Tooth = 12500 Blood Increment
99% HP loss from a stab by Vampire's Tooth = 49005 Blood Increment
Check Blood Increment vs. instant bloodstain generation:
Squares of Blood Generated = log(10) [sqrt(BI)] - .5, any value 1+ creates a bloodsquare, multiple squares = bloodspray, decimals = percent of increasing range by 1.
1% HP loss from a mace = .2 Blood Increment = no chance of causing instant bloodstain
10% HP loss from a mace = 20 Blood Increment = 15% chance of making 1 square
10% HP loss from a sword = 100 Blood Increment = 50% chance of making 1 square
25% HP loss from a mace = 125 Blood Increment = 55% chance of making 1 square
10% HP loss from Vampire's Tooth = 500 Blood Increment = 85% chance of making 1 square
25% HP loss from a sword = 625 Blood Increment = 90% chance of making 1 square
50% HP loss from a stab by Vampire's Tooth = 12500 Blood Increment = 1 square made, 55% chance of making 1 more square
99% HP loss from a stab by Vampire's Tooth = 49005 Blood Increment = 1 square made, 85% chance of making 1 more square
Alternately it could include a bleeding-specific random factor instead of solely being a damage % product:
Squares of Blood Generated = log(10) [sqrt(BI)] - (random from 0 to 1 [possibly along a curve?]), any value 1+ creates a bloodsquare, multiple squares = bloodspray, decimals = percent of increasing range by 1.
1% HP loss from a mace = .2 Blood Increment = no chance of causing instant bloodstain
10% HP loss from a mace = 20 Blood Increment = 0 to 65% chance of making 1 square
10% HP loss from a sword = 100 Blood Increment = 0 to 100% chance of making 1 square
25% HP loss from a mace = 125 Blood Increment = (0 or 1) + 5% chance of making 1 square
10% HP loss from Vampire's Tooth = 500 Blood Increment = (0 or 1) + 35% chance of making 1 square
25% HP loss from a sword = 625 Blood Increment = (0 or 1) + 40% chance of making 1 square
50% HP loss from a stab by Vampire's Tooth = 12500 Blood Increment = (1 or 2) + 5% chance of making 1 more square
99% HP loss from a stab by Vampire's Tooth = 49005 Blood Increment = (1 or 2) + 35% chance of making 1 more square
Then, regardless of effect, add Bleeding Increment to Bleeding Score. At the start of each round calculate Bleeding Score (so the player can see how much they are bleeding). At the end of each round, after their actions, recalculate and apply the effects.
Start Round Bleeding Score = Last Round's Bleeding Score + gained Blood Increments - Decrement
End Round Bleeding Score = Start Round Bleeding Score +/- Increment/Decrement Actions Taken
Bleeding Effects = f(End Round Bleeding Score)
Decrement = 1 + sqrt(Start Round Bleeding Score) + (Regen value, if >0 [rings, racial]). If > 20, apply bleeding effects.
Given this value, without healing it would take this long to dip below the threshold if you did nothing else that affected your score:
1% HP loss from a mace = .2 Blood Increment = 0 rounds
10% HP loss from a mace = 20 Blood Increment = 0 rounds
10% HP loss from a sword = 100 Blood Increment = 10 rounds
25% HP loss from a mace = 125 Blood Increment = 12 rounds
10% HP loss from Vampire's Tooth = 500 Blood Increment = 33 rounds
25% HP loss from a sword = 625 Blood Increment = 38 rounds
50% HP loss from a stab by Vampire's Tooth = 12500 Blood Increment = ~208 rounds
99% HP loss from a stab by Vampire's Tooth = 49005 Blood Increment = a lot!
Bleeding Effects:
I'm... actually stuck on the formula of these. It'd be based on coverting BI to HP% lost/round. So if you had 50 HP and were losing 2% of your HP per round (a high degree of bleeding) you'd lose 1 HP per round until your bleeding dropped enough to not hit a whole number. If you had 300 HP you'd lose 6 HP a round, then 5 HP for a bit, etc. until all your bleeding was gone (but it drops in effects pretty quickly).
Overall this will give a much more natural score to bleeding. Does what I'm trying to do make a bit more sense now?
-Ero
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Update:
* Ranged attacks (missiles and earth-based spells) can now
also cause blood spatter. Half probability, since I
think that DVORP_PIERCING comes closest to what they do,
and that's got a factor of 0.5 for spattering blood.
* Whenever blood is spilled, monsters with M_BLOOD_SCENT may
wake up and seek out this position (unless they already have
a foe). For a start, all hounds can smell blood as well as
vampires (who will always wake up, while other monsters may
sleep on) and the giant mosquito.
Next on my list is the timer for blood stains, though I'm making no promises.
> The aforementioned threshold problem in the first proposed
> alternate bothers me,
As I said before, I don't think it's such a big problem as long as there's still a chance you bleed at higher hp, and the chance drops rapidly the healthier you are. For what it's worth, I'm not a fan of boolean versions (fixed threshold), either.
> but the second I like less - I don't like the idea of having
> a few points of damage, getting hit for 25% of my HP, then
> immediately dropping to 49% (that's over 1.5x damage!).
Huh? I never suggested any such thing. And I don't think cuboidz meant it that way, either.
jpeg
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I thought he meant it by this part:
"My suggestion would be, that if a high-damage attack doesn't bump you into
the lower 50% part of your HP, but comes very close, there should be a
chance for additional damage that would put you at least in the 0.499999...
section of your table (1/10 chance of bleeding each turn).
e.g. for each attack that damages you for at least 25% of your HP
hp/max hp chance to drop below 50%
0.70 or above never
0.65 - 0.69999... 1/256
0.60 - 0.64999... 1/64
0.55 - 0.59999... 1/16
0.50 - 0.54999... 1/4"
Since that would imply that a major hit that brought you from 90=>65 could actually have a chance to drop you straight to 49. That seems excessive, but I could just be misunderstanding it.
-Ero
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"Since that would imply that a major hit that brought you from 90=>65 could
actually have a chance to drop you straight to 49. That seems excessive,
but I could just be misunderstanding it." (Ero)
I was picturing the @ losing so much blood due to high-damage caused bloodsplatter, that realistically, his health would drop faster than the absolute damage could signify. But I understand that this'll have a vast impact upon the game's balance (and might just be annoying). So, the alternative solution (jpeg's table, extended) seems to be the least invasive. In principle, nothing else has to change, and it affects the game's balance only indirectly, by drawing certain monsters to the blood, and allowing you to track down monsters.
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There's a great list of cool ideas in here. My two cents:
* I am not sure about encrusted blood. It would have no function and I am not sure we need it.
* Continued bleeding from being heavily wounded should be emulated by chances.
If it is about (1-hp/maxhp)/10, it will be rare enough.
* Does dissecting cause blood drops? If not, it should.
* Need special effects for altars to blood gods, especially Maklheb's.
* Against additional damage from bleeding.
* For necromantic effects and whatnot. Please open new FRs.
Thanks for all the cool stuff.
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Not a target for 0.4.
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Increasing priority again. I really want those timers and continued bleeding. The rest can wait.
We could add timers to the feature properties (that'd basically add another 80x25 grid to store) or alternatively store blood (and other stains) similarly to clouds, as a feature of their own with properties like age or taintedness. *ponders*
Anyway, it was interesting to stumble upon this thread again.