You can not observe their state by looking at a physical thing.

They don't represent anything physical or tangible or any immediate change in the world. That's where the challenge comes from in representing them outside of an abstract HUD. They can be observed only via communication. In contrast to the two properties above:ġ. What it means is 'the next time I give a command, I intend it to apply to this guy'. (Though they may be simplified via abstraction for the sake of the computer.)īut 'I have selected that guy'. Those bits of data have two important properties:ġ. We only ever stuck them in a HUD in the first place for convenience (or out of habit from our table top war games). They are tangible things we're observing a physical property of. These are things represented by real world direct observations. 'I have 4 shots left' or 'I have 3 magazines after this one'. 'Sheesh, my armor is full of holes, it's probably less useful now.'Īmmo is the same. You know, whatever we could observe in the real world to figure out that information for ourselves. 'My armor's integrity is at 15%' is something relatively straightforward to display as a part of that armor in a variety of ways - a readout a-la Dead Space, batters and dents, status lights, rips and tears, bits hanging off.

Health, as it relates to 'how much pain am I in' or 'how damaged is this thing' is a very practical metric - simplified, sure, but still directly useful. I think it has to do with how abstract the data being represented is, and how it would relate to a real-world interaction. So if you're full you are walking around fine, but as you take damage you start to hobble and keel over.

I wouldn't mind seeing that mechanic again.īut even if you still want life bars you could transition between animations based on how much life you have left. But you'd gimp body parts as you fought and could die in one hit. One of my favorite games of all time, Bushido Blade, did that: Or maybe as you cast a spell you have a glow that deminishes as you use it.įor games that are third person you could always show that your player is hurt through their animations. Then you could use audio cues to indicate fatigue, like in Farcry 3 there was never a 'Stamina Bar' but you certainly had a limited stamina and could tell from his panting.įor Mana you could do similar screen effects. I think this is really dependent on the game's view (first person, third person, top down, etc.).īut some things that others have done are using red around the edges of the screen to show damage (like in GoW), but that seems to work best with games that have 'Halo Health'.

Dead space health bar tattoo