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morganiq

Switch to bipolar health meters

7 posts in this topic

All health meters (health, hunger, and thirst) are currently unipolar meters: a full bar is interpreted as 100%, and an empty bar as 0%. So, taking hunger as an example, a full bar is "completely full"—but at anything less than that, the bar's meaning becomes ambiguous: does a 50% hunger bar represent "50% hungry," or "50% full," or even "completely in-between," or some other descriptor?

 

This is because real-world huger feelings are bipolar adjectives—that is, fullness and hunger are mutually exclusive: you only feel one at a time, and each is felt in varying degrees. Put together on a positive-negative axis, they indicate very well whether you're satiated or hungry: one can easily and unambiguously see that to the right side of zero, you're some degree of satiated, and to the left, you're some degree of hungry. Notice that under this system, the three possible descriptions I used above for the unipolar 50% each translate to separate locations on the bipolar bar: "50% hungry" is −50%, "50% full" is +50%, and "completely in-between" is zero. Also note that the same bipolarness applies to thirst ("fully quenched" to "completely parched") and health ("extremely strong" to "extremely weak").

 

Additionally, it could be nice if each bar varied in hue, similarly to the durability meter on items. So, for example, hunger could vary from 100% green on the right to 100% yellow on the left; thirst from 100% blue to 100% orange; and strength from 100% red to 100% baby-poo-brown. This way, the rich, rightward red-green-blue colors indicate health, and the sickly, leftward yellow-red-brown colors indicate weakness.

 

To switch the health bars to bipolar would probably be a purely cosmetic change—I doubt if there would actually need to be any change to the underlying game mechanics at all—but I think it would be nice if meters used this more natural, unambiguous presentation.

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Other than the gradients, I don't really see how this changes the interpretation. As the system currently is I see a full health bar as "I have lots of health, and take lots of damage before dying." a half health bar as "I've taken a fair amount of damage recently, I should be more careful"  and an empty bar as "I'm dead." Full Hunger is "Man I'm stuffed, I couldn't eat one more bite." Half Hunger is "I'm not starving, but I could eat a fairly decent meal before being stuffed" and Empty Hunger is "OMG I'm SO hungry! I need food NOW!" Full Thirst is "I'm fully hydrated, and not at all thirsty" Half Thirst is "I could sure go for a glass of water" and Empty Thirst is:

 

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It's a subtle difference, and of course it's easy to just interpret each bar as a quantity: when it's full, you're flush, and anything short of that is some degree less than perfect.

 

I guess the clincher for me is the fact that the player gets the Slowness effect when "thirst bar" reaches a certain positive level. To me, that doesn't make any sense: blue bar = water, and I've still got some, right? So why am I slow? Wrong: less than 50% blue bar actually means lacking water, not having less—i.e., I'm solidly in the negative, not mildly in the positive, which is why I'm getting affected by the lack of it.

 

I see the unipolar bars as an oversimplification, and for most games that's totally fine—but TFC being about survival and realism believability seems perfectly suited to describing health in more real-world terms. I don't just want to see a green bar: I want to know that I've crossed the mental set-point into "hungry" zone, and to what degree I'm feeling that hunger, because I can imagine how that feels in my stomach. Psychologically, it affects you differently.

 

 

Edit: Another interesting data point is the fact that the player spawns with 50% health and 50% hunger. That doesn't seem to make much sense unless you interpret it as "neither" rather than 50%. Everyone is perfectly healthy when neither hungry nor full, neither strong nor weak—in fact, arguably, that's the ideal state. But the current presentation makes it look lacking.

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I see. That would be interesting, but in later phase in developing. It needs overfeeding and others.

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I don't particularly feel there's a need for such change and in fact, I believe the way bars work right now is more intuitive and informative than if we'd have several different states indicated by bipolar meters.

In regards to believability, cliches and so on - I also think that current bars offer no less here than what is suggested would. The thing with the body is that usually it starts to fail not when there's completely no water/nutrients/whatever stored, but when there's insufficient amount. So, in example above, having just some water and getting slow is quite fitting - you still have some water, you're not at the level where your body starts drying up, but it's not enough water to sustain normal biological processes of your body without additional stress you start to have issues with compensating for. Thus, lack of strength and sluggish movements.

Unipolar bars I don't find overly simplified, just easily readable and so far, even outside of TFC, I never had or met a person who had issues with describing their state based on such indicators.

There is simply a matter of interpretation - instead of say, assuming hunger bar indicates 'fullness' if that creates a problem for you, consider thinking of it as optimal level of nutrition. Thus, starting character at 50% is simply somewhat lacking food but not to the level that would impair his actions,, while full character isn't as much gorged with food as simply absorbing eough food to be as far from the risk of starvation as his body is able to handle. Same with health, you may as well start as somewhat weakened person, able to maintain active lifestyle but not at their best condition, brisk with vitality.

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I don't like bars or meters in the first place. I would be even more immersive if there were simple icons of : starving, hungry, normal, full. Which would indicate the state. Same for thrist: dehydrated, thirsty, normal, full. And if you want to go deeper, do same thing with health: seriously wounded, wounded, minor wound, scratches, healthy. And even better for nutrients in total: lack of nutrients, healthy, well fed, which would also indicate how is your max healthy.

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I see. That would be interesting, but in later phase in developing. It needs overfeeding and others.

 

I agree—overfeeding would be great. Or more specifically, there's probably an optimal range of performance between maybe 25% hungry and 50% full, at which one should be able to, for example, run at full speed and attack with maximum strength. Outside that range, if you're super stuffed or really hungry you should be slower and your maximum strength should be less. In the case of starving (maybe between 75% and 100% hungry), overall health should be very weak—maybe 75% weak. The idea would be to stay in the center of the range, not to the right—which requires vigilance.

 

(IRL you never run, swim, or do any other intense workout out on a full stomach. It's really uncomfortable and digestion saps energy for a while, then once you've finished digesting you're at maximum performance levels. Personally I prefer close to an empty stomach—i.e., perfectly in-between, which would be zero on this meter—when I begin a long-distance run.)

 

 

Edit: the above may be a little too true-to-life though. :-p

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