Health Menu

[Shauntirb 12]

**(The pictures give a good summary of the idea if you CBA to read because this is rather lengthy :S)**

After watching Rockets live streams and hearing his comments on the current stats system, I got thinking about ways that this could be displayed so it fitted in with the rest of the work the team has done, displayed everything you needed easily but was still not too immersion breaking. I came up with an idea very similar to the current inventory system and could use much of the code used already which would help make implementing it easier.

This is just a rough outline of the idea and expect Rocket, the rest of the dev team and you guys could come up with some better ideas.

You would access this by pressing the "H" key. Straight away you would be confronted by this screen.

http://i.imgur.com/HTwGiTm.png

This has your inventory on the right where you can select and move items as in the inventory screen, a model of your current player (posed for easier access) and an image of the currently selected item. That is all the same as in the standard inv-screen, however this has two extra sections, the top left section displays everything you can currently feel. After all, as humans we know when we are hungry, thirsty or tired without having to do a test, this means it displays all the stats that currently appear on the side of the screen and I would imagine that these would also continue to appear as well as this menu.

The bottom left section would show stats of the selected organ/limb/body part. To find this greater depth of information you would need to "inspect" that organ by left clicking on the respective part of the player model, it will then conduct a short animation as your character looks over this body part to find out its status, such as if it is bleeding. This means that inspecting yourself would make you vulnerable for a short period of time meaning you have to be careful when doing so as you could fall victim to a zombie or player.

http://i.imgur.com/IVAiAa8.png

There would be 7 parts that you could chose from; the head, both arms and legs, chest and abdomen. Each of these would have separate stats so one arm could be bleeding and not the other. I don't believe this would be too difficult to implement as there is already a system to detect where a zed hits you as it need to determine where you will bleed from and so this could be re-purposed for this use.

http://i.imgur.com/IVAiAa8.png

After you have inspected the body parts and the animation has played, you will be given the detailed stats of that part and whether or not anything is wrong with it. If there is then you need to fix it and this system works just like the inv-screen, you drag the item onto the body part you want to use it on. So you eat pills, bandage a leg or morphine and splint an arm.

http://i.imgur.com/e9j2abO.png

After this you would then see the body part get better and then the stats change to show this. This means that if you are in a fire fight and get hit, you will have to find where the bleeding is, then bandage it to stop it, making it a more meaningful choice as to when to do it compared to the current 5 seconds of downtime.

However, you could either have a friend point out where you are bleeding ad not bother inspecting as you don't need to and it isn't required to fix it (you might just select the wrong place and waste a bandage).

This would also help you to determine what illness you have as many have a large variety of symptoms that you can experience. So you would get a quick warning about feeling ill so you would open the menu to investigate.

http://i.imgur.com/mLgTY1w.png

You can see you feel ill so you inspect your abdomen to find out that nothing is wrong, except being a little peckish.

http://i.imgur.com/BTxOout.png

you then inspect your head to find you have a fever and a headache, this leads you to presume that it is just influenza and nothing too terrible.

http://i.imgur.com/1YfvJZh.png

So you take pills to fix it using the menu as before.

http://i.imgur.com/rzzfZVw.png

After you have taken them, you can see your stats change. You may not instantly get better as diseases don't instantly go away completely, however if you have used the right drug it should clear away eventually.

This system would work on other players as well, this means that you could inspect another player to help diagnose, bandage or blood bag them. This is just a quick idea I had to help display your current stats in a helpful way and wonder what people's opinions are on this.

 

EDIT
 

User Target Practice suggested that the system might be too cumbersome to be of an real use, and that if you got shot in the leg, you would know that you had been shot and not have to root around finding out where.

To help with this, maybe the body parts of your player model could be shaded red to show that they are bleeding as you would be able to feel this without looking (they could even be shaded a deeper red for how fast you are losing blood).

The inspection feature could be used to find more info about your injuries or remain as before when inspecting other players. The extra info about your injuries could be exactly how much blood you are losing, any other smaller injuries that you may not notice and could get worse (such as slight fractures that could become full blown breaks if you run too much or damaged tendons that could snap rendering you immobile).

http://i.imgur.com/oRfYq8d.png

http://i.imgur.com/zWyqWjy.png
 

Edited December 15, 2013 by Shauntirb

[Owain1122 218]

Great idea but the text system should be done away with completely!

[Hosty 647]

:thumbsup:

 

Well written, logical suggestion.

I agree with this.

[Red Pyr4mid 11]

Already upvoted your idea also on Reddit.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

Excellent post, excellent suggestion. One thing I would argue for is perhaps the doing away of 'text' feedback and replace it with either a visual system (IE similar to the existing one in the mod) or a 'moodlet' system such as the one used in Project Zomboid (which I know Dean's already admitted to being a fan of).

The main reason for this is that it's often difficult to accurately portray with words how high on the scale the problem is - for example, one I know is used in the SA pre-alpha at the moment is 'I feel faint'.

 

Now, how serious is that on a scale of 1 to 10? Is it 'I feel faint because I haven't eaten for a while and I'm a bit low on blood sugar' or is it 'I feel faint because this hideous illness I've contracted is rampaging through my system and I'm on the verge of losing consciousness'?

 

As for the suggested system - it feels a bit cumbersome to me, particularly the 'exploring your body to find the bit that's causing the problem'. If I get shot in the leg, I'm pretty sure I'm going to know damn well that I've been shot in the leg - I'm not going to spend much time checking my arms to see where all that blood's coming from. Same with illness - let's say I've got the galloping squits from eating something - whilst I might well have a fever, the main issue I'm going to be reporting is the fact my stomach is doing somersaults and I've had to tuck my trousers into my socks. I don't have to spend any time working that out - I know that because it's the message my body's sending to my brain: 'Heads up buddy, best you find some toilet roll toot sweet.'

[Shauntirb 12]

As for the suggested system - it feels a bit cumbersome to me, particularly the 'exploring your body to find the bit that's causing the problem'. If I get shot in the leg, I'm pretty sure I'm going to know damn well that I've been shot in the leg - I'm not going to spend much time checking my arms to see where all that blood's coming from. Same with illness - let's say I've got the galloping squits from eating something - whilst I might well have a fever, the main issue I'm going to be reporting is the fact my stomach is doing somersaults and I've had to tuck my trousers into my socks. I don't have to spend any time working that out - I know that because it's the message my body's sending to my brain: 'Heads up buddy, best you find some toilet roll toot sweet.'

 

I would hope if I got shot I would be able to feel where the bullet was :P

Maybe instead of having to inspect each part, your player model's limb could be shaded red to quickly show you the areas that need attention. Inspecting arms and legs could just be used to figure out how bad each bleed/break was if you dont have enough bandages for all of them and have to choose. For inspecting other players, I think the inspection could be a good mechanic to add more tension to healing your buddies whilst adding more depth to the whole mechanic.

 

However, I feel that the ability to list all you symptoms would be quite useful to help distingish between them whilst also adding some fun and intrigue to the game.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Shauntirb

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

I would hope if I got shot I would be able to feel where the bullet was :P

Maybe instead of having to inspect each part, your player model's limb could be shaded red to quickly show you the areas that need attention. Inspecting arms and legs could just be used to figure out how bad each bleed/break was if you dont have enough bandages for all of them and have to choose. For inspecting other players, I think the inspection could be a good mechanic to add more tension to healing your buddies whilst adding more depth to the whole mechanic.

 

However, I feel that the ability to list all you symptoms would be quite useful to help distingish between them whilst also adding some fun and intrigue to the game.

 

Yeah, I think for 'trauma' injuries, shading the body part a la Fallout is a much better idea - you'll be able to see at-a-glance where the damage is rather than having to spend 30 seconds inspecting your body for the hole and all that red stuff. :D

 

Yeah, I do like the idea of the symptoms and having to actually work out what the problem is - it'll certainly add a new dimension to getting ill, but much of that could be worked without having to go through the 'inspection' process - let's say you're running a fever - your 'temperature' icon will go through the roof. Upset stomach? Without wishing to go into excessive detail, I'm sure there's sounds and animations that could convey that pretty clearly. :p Cold/sneezing? Temperature again, plus a sneezing sound/animation.

 

I feel like I'm picking apart your good idea here, which isn't the case - the actual idea itself is a really solid one - I love the idea of having a 'health' screen and being able to see at-a-glance how your character is feeling, as it's one thing that's immensely difficult to convey accurately to someone without using words and/or text (and even then it's difficult, as highlighted in my previous post).

[Statik (DayZ) 2695]

If this could be implemented, but have it set up so it's not clunky and easily accessible, I'm 100% for it.

 

One of the best suggestions this forum has seen in a while.

 

:beans: :beans:

[Karmaterror 982]

Nice idea and in depth. I Think it should be harder/ slower to inspect yourself. Much quicker to have a buddy check, maybe via the scrolling action menu. However your buddy carnt detect everything. For example he can say you have a fever but you would have to inspect yourself to know about the headache. Could lead to some miss diagnosed illness and people on the wrong meds lol.

[Steak and Potatoes 13480]

Great suggestion, well written aswell. :beans:

[AP_Norris 1017]

Hmmm, I had a similar idea some time ago.

I'm not sure I suggested it but, I thought a sort of secondary inventory screen which showed the status of your body's arteries and bones colour coded.

I think your inspection idea works much better with the current inventory though.

And is much more realistic in the sense that you would have to really look for some injuries.

Im not sure you would instantly know whether your leg is fractured or something.

Things like joint injuries, it could be a fracture/ sprain/ hyper extension or something and its all very hard to know without modern medical equipment to look inside.

maybe later you might observe that leg injury it would say that it is haemorrhaging and you would know that it isn't a sprain/ dislocation.

fully broken should be pretty obvious though if theres a new point of movement in your arm :)

Medium sort of injuries can be very grey as most of what you have to go on is that its painful/ swelling.

[Crit 46]

Sir, have my beans.

[Mallow88 110]

+1 

 

Especially for the purposes of Alpha testing, it would make our jobs as testers a hell of a lot easier with a debug menu, displaying our current health/thirst/blood/etc. 

 

All the beans to the OP