Fitness Model: Sprint uptime, jogging speed, temperature

[Toops 27]

Summary: The longer your character stays alive and exercises their body in various ways, the stronger, faster, and more effective your body becomes.

Purpose: Incentive to keep your character alive, psychological investment in your char's progression, limiting sprinting exploit (making vehicles more useful), create interesting survival trade-offs.

 

This feature has a lot of different attributes which inter-relate. I'm going to give it a start, and leave the rest to the imagination of readers and devs. I'm a programmer myself, so I threw out a little bit of pseudo-code, because honestly, that's how I conceive of things :)

 

Detailed Synopsis

There are three main fitness types:

-aerobic (jogging)

-anaerobic (sprinting)

-muscular (carrying/lifting)

 

Every character has unique base attributes which cannot change (configurable when designing your char at startup?):

-baseAerobicFitness

-baseAnaerobicFitness

-baseMuscularFitness

 

As you move around in the world, you're constantly getting better at that type of movement. Specifically, you increase that fitness type's modifier, which in turn, effects that fitness type's attributes

 

Aerobic Fitness

-improves your aerobicModifier, which:

-increases your jogStamina

-increases your jogSpeed

-increases your jogRecoveryRate

-increases your walkSpeed

-reduces the amount of calories burned by general movement of all types

-recoveryFoodType: fats

 

Anaerobic Fitness

-improves your anaerobicModifier, which:

-increases your sprintStamina (how long you can sprint)

-increases your sprintSpeed (how fast you sprint)

-increases your sprintRecoveryRate (how fast you recover sprintStamina)

-increases your crawlSpeed

-increases your crouchSpeed

-recoveryFoodType: carbohydrates

 

Muscular Fitness

-improves your muscularModifier, which:

-increases meleeAttackDamage

-increases maxCarryWeight

-increases maxWeightWithNoSpeedReduction (carry more stuff without being slowed down at all)

-reduces tooMuchWeightModifier (not slowed down as much when above maxWeightWithNoSpeedReduction)

-things that improve muscular fitness:

--carrying items

--climbing

--crouching

--crawling

-recoveryFoodType: protein (meats, eggs?, protein bar?)

 

Mechanics:

 

Sprinting

-depletes your "anaerobic stamina" bar (sprintStamina)

-the more you sprint, the more you increase sprintModifier, which makes you better at sprinting

-When you run out of sprintStamina, you are now "recovering"

-all movement speeds are penalized while recovering by a recoveryModifier. if you're jogging, it would be (jogSpeed * recoveryModifier)

-Anaerobic output burns primarily carbohydrates (replaced by beans, rice, sugary stuff, etc)

-You can also improve how quickly your sprint bar recovers (sprintRecoveryRate)

 

Jogging

-Jogging depletes your "aerobic stamina" bar (jogStamina)

-The more you jog, the more you increase aerobicModifier, which makes you better at aerobic activities

-The better your aerobic fitness, the less calories you burn while moving

-Aerobic output burns fats (replaced by fatty meats, cheese, butter, lard, etc)

 

Muscular/Carrying/Lifting

-The more stuff you carry, the more you increase muscularModifier, which makes you stronger and less encumbered by carrying items

 

Resources: There are certain global restrictors. Also, each of the three movement types have their own sub-resource system, based on nutrient type. Once you are in deficit of a nutrient type, you reduce the corresponding fitness type modifier until you eat food of that type.

-tired - all systems reduced until you stop moving or walk for a while

-needElectrolytes - all systems reduces until you eat fruit or foods rich in potassium, calcium, sodium, or take electrolyte pills, or gatorade-like sports drink.

-needProtein - muscularModifier reduced until you eat protein

-needCarbohydrates - anaerobicModifier reduced until you eat carbs

-needFat - aerobicModifier reduced

 

You can incorporate weight-based concepts (penalties for carrying a lot of items):

-baseWeight: how much your character weighs with no clothes or gear on

-baseCarryWeight: the combined weight of all your items, etc.

-effectiveCarryWeight: (baseCarryWeight * muscularModifier)

-the higher your effectiveCarryWeight, the faster your maximum movement speeds are

 

There is also the concept of bodyFat, and metabolicRate:

-high fitness means low bodyFat and high metabolism

-the more fit you are, the faster you get hungry (high metabolicRate)

-the more fit you are, the faster you get cold (not as much fat to keep you warm)

Edited January 26, 2015 by BoopyFriend

[Toops 27]

Use-Case: The quick-looter

 

Goal: Maximize your ability to sprint quickly into a house, loot it, and sprint back to safety or to the next house

 

Starting Attributes: Create a character with low base aerobic and muscular fitness, but very high anaerobic fitness. 

Fitness Strategy: sprint everywhere you go. This will build your anaerobicModifier.

Benefits: No one can catch you! You will be able to sprint extremely fast (faster than zombies), and for a much longer amount of time before you need to stop.

Drawbacks: Once you run out of sprintStamina, you're a sitting duck. You can't travel long distances on foot very effectively. You can't carry much gear without having your sprintSpeed compromised.

Nutrition: Tons of carbs. Atkins ain't gonna cut it.

 

Strategy: Pick out high-value buildings in big cities. Sprint right past zombies. You're moving so fast it's almost impossible to shoot you. Lock the door behind you. You can then recover your sprintStamina while looting. Once you get the sweet lewts, throw open a different door, and sprint away to your exit-route. High risk, high adrenaline.

[mithrawndo 166]

I think they might already be too far down the road to scratch what they've done and go down this route, but I love this idea. Numbers would need to be very carefully balanced so that managing your aerobic and anaerobic fitness doesn't become a chore as we look toward the end game. However given that the current eating, drinking and body heat systems would be intimately tied to a metabolic system such as this and those systems are already reasonably well defined, I don't see it coming to fruition.

 

You have my beans though, I think this would be a more elegant approach to a nutrition system.

[Toops 27]

Yeah I agree this would probably be a major redesign, and is unlikely, but I'm glad you like the idea. It would be a core mechanic in my dream survival game. 

 

A part of me hopes it would tie in well with their current health/physiology model, but that's not likely at the module/class level.  Or, maybe a redesign is on the backlog but hasn't started yet, and this could influence their design choices. Still a long shot, but soo many systems feel like placeholders to me.

 

Anyway, the balancing/tuning would definitely be tricky, I agree. I think part of the challenge with DayZ is making it so you're always fighting for survival. The minute you hit Godmode, the game would lose all meaning. In that way, the design would have to prevent fitness breakpoints (like being able to infinitely sprint circles around zombies), and eliminate "min-max" builds, which would make one particular "fitness spec" THE must-have.

 

That's why making you get cold faster the more fit you are (low body fat) would help offset the game getting too easy as you get really fit. Also, people who exercise a lot get sick easier, because their body is always recovering. Stuff like that.

 

I imagine the alternative approach being a fat dude who can't run but has a truck full of food and guns. Still highly mobile, and he would be much better off in the winter. But he would constantly have to search for fuel, constantly be drawing attention to himself, stay on roads, and in the summer, he'd have a really hard time staying cool, what with all that extra fat. So he might have to drive that truck to an old deserted school track and run around it a few times to shed some weight.

 

But you're also right on the other side, the devs would have to tune and balance the interface. If micromanaging the fitness and movement of your character is too hard or cumbersome, you'd just get slowed, run down, and murdered constantly, and that wouldn't be fun at all.

Edited January 26, 2015 by BoopyFriend

[Beizs 186]

I don't think you should choose your starting stats or anything like that. Too RPG-ish and kinda defeats the idea of the anti-game (though I'm skeptical about that whole notion).

 

However, this idea, at least on a basic form, is definitely something that would add to this game.

 

Currently, there is an unrealistically low incentive to keep your character alive. Having things like this would increase your character's value, promoting more realistic play.

 

They've talked about a stamina system quite a few times, to my knowledge, and I do not believe that a basic system to increase general fitness would be too difficult. They could either go as in depth with it as you have, which I would love to see, though I'd worry that it might draw focus away from some more important things or simply add a single fitness stat that starts at a reasonable level and depreciates over time if you're not active, especially if you are constantly stuffed or constantly hungry.

 

This discourages setting up on a hill somewhere and staying there, sniping for hours on end. It rewards running over using a vehicle, which is good incentive, adds value to your character and balances the game a lot. The higher your fitness stat, the longer you can run. Weight should be factored in to your stamina, but, if they just want to implement it on a basic level, it'd be fairly simple.

 

So, stat goes up by being out of breath regularly & degrades constantly over time. This means it could be coded with minimal performance impact. There is already the implementation of being out of breath, so you could simply add a statement that says fitness += 0.5; within the code for being out of breath and fitness =+ -0.01; in the timer they use for hunger. Obviously they'd have to adjust the values to balance it, but it'd really be very little work. Then simply make the fitness value a multiple of both sprint speed and stamina (and jogging too). Bear in mind that I have no clue off of how they actually have implemented everything, but something along those lines should work.

 

So, quick example of even a basic fitness stat.

 

Player 1 - Fitness level 10/100

 

Sprint time with empty inventory - 20s

Sprint time with 50lb carry weight - 10s

Sprint speed with empty inventory - 8m/s

Sprint speed with 50lb carry weight - 7m/s

 

Player 1 - Firness level 90/100

 

Sprint time with empty inventory - 60s

Sprint time with 50lb carry weight - 30s

Sprint speed with empty inventory - 11m/s

Sprint speed with 50lb carry weight - 9m/s

 

So, speed would be less affected by fitness level, but stamina would be heavily affected. I just threw those numbers out arbitrarily, but whatever.

 

However, I do not believe that it's too much of an overhaul to implement the entire system. They're going to be overhauling it any way and this wouldn't be a lot more work than simply adding a static stamina system.

Edited January 26, 2015 by Beizs

[Toops 27]

I don't think you should choose your starting stats or anything like that. Too RPG-ish and kinda defeats the idea of the anti-game (though I'm skeptical about that whole notion).

 

However, this idea, at least on a basic form, is definitely something that would add to this game.

 

Currently, there is an unrealistically low incentive to keep your character alive. Having things like this would increase your character's value, promoting more realistic play.

 

They've talked about a stamina system quite a few times, to my knowledge, and I do not believe that a basic system to increase general fitness would be too difficult. They could either go as in depth with it as you have, which I would love to see, though I'd worry that it might draw focus away from some more important things or simply add a single fitness stat that starts at a reasonable level and depreciates over time if you're not active, especially if you are constantly stuffed or constantly hungry.

 

...

 

Beans, sir. I really like your simplified take on it. It seems well within what's possible with the existing design/framework, and would avoid a lot of the balance/micromanagement problems that could arise.

 

One single fitness stat that adds palpable (but not game-breaking) value to your character over time is exactly what I expect from Bohemia if they want to make a game that will actually live up to the hype.

[Beizs 186]

Beans, sir. I really like your simplified take on it. It seems well within what's possible with the existing design/framework, and would avoid a lot of the balance/micromanagement problems that could arise.

 

One single fitness stat that adds palpable (but not game-breaking) value to your character over time is exactly what I expect from Bohemia if they want to make a game that will actually live up to the hype.

 

I'm hopeful that they'll go more in depth with it, but I'm sure that they'll go to the level I described at least. We'll just have to wait and see. :)

[Thumper1999 48]

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

Thanks OP.  Now when the end of the world is happening I'll be sure to pack my treadmill and home gym to take with me.  Gotta stay in shape during a disaster  :D

[Beizs 186]

-snip-

And why is that? They're adding a stamina system and are talking about adding 'soft skills'. This is precisely that kind of thing.

[Toops 27]

And why is that? They're adding a stamina system and are talking about adding 'soft skills'. This is precisely that kind of thing.

 

I totally agree. I've been a software engineer for a long time, and one of the biggest traps for a development shop is to assume they know what their customers want without ever asking. Bohemia clearly wants our expectations to help guide their requirements. It's our responsibility to communicate our expectations early and often. If we all communicate clearly and effectively, we can, and will have an impact on the design decisions for DayZ. That's why I love being a part of alpha.

 

It's important to remember: We are testers! I started my career writing test automation, and the hardest part isn't the testing.. it's communicating the test results in a way that brings users closer to developers.

 

In  my opinion, what we now call "Early Adoption/Alpha" is based on a concept called User Acceptance Testing. The idea is simple: distribute your incomplete software out to customers as soon as possible to make sure your internal requirements are matching their product expectations. It's our role as early adopters to close the feedback loop, and give constructive, actionable feedback so that Bohemia can be confident they're building the DayZ that we actually want.

[gibonez 3633]

Think they already have something like this in the road map sounds alot like RPG elements so im not too fond of that.

[Toops 27]

Think they already have something like this in the road map sounds alot like RPG elements so im not too fond of that.

 

There seems to be a pretty strong "sandbox" and/or "anti-game" culture around DayZ. Would you care to elaborate on what you're not fond of? (Trying my best to avoid a semantic debate) I don't want an RPG either. I do, however, want to see my character progress over time. I want the choices I make to have some effect on me outside of just gathering items that suit my play style.

[gibonez 3633]

There seems to be a pretty strong "sandbox" and/or "anti-game" culture around DayZ. Would you care to elaborate on what you're not fond of? (Trying my best to avoid a semantic debate) I don't want an RPG either. I do, however, want to see my character progress over time. I want the choices I make to have some effect on me outside of just gathering items that suit my play style.

 

Not fond of Morrowind/skyrim elements aka repeat something enough and you magically improve in game elements in unrealistic amount of times.

 

It is just not a realistic game mechanic in a game that at least from a topical level looks to strive for realism.

[Toops 27]

Not fond of Morrowind/skyrim elements aka repeat something enough and you magically improve in game elements in unrealistic amount of times.

 

It is just not a realistic game mechanic in a game that at least from a topical level looks to strive for realism.

 

I'm not a fan of hardcore RPG breakpoint min/max elements, that's not what I'm talking about. But what you just described is the most realistic fact in life: Whatever you practice, you get better at.

 

That's all I want. If I do something in the game, I want to get better at that thing.  There are plenty of ways to prevent people from "powerleveling" something. Knees get injured if you jog too much. That's hella realistic. I used to be an endurance athlete, I know all about overuse injuries. Dislocate your shoulder if you do too much target practice. etc.

Edited January 26, 2015 by BoopyFriend