Health indicators for monsters

[Zo Kath Ra]

In Grimrock, there's no way of knowing how much health a monster has left.
(unless you know its starting health, and enjoy adding the damage numbers in your head)
It would be great if that were changed in LoG3, at least for some monsters.

The straightforward solution would be to have damage skins/models for monsters, like the crates or bushes (but with more than just one "damaged" state).
-- requires more memory
-- more work for the artists

Other ideas for health indicators:
-- Some monsters start out as 100% opaque, and become more and more transparent as they take damage (ghosts or elementals). Or the other way around.
-- Swarms: as the swarm takes damage, its members disappear one by one (as opposed to the entire swarm exploding in a shower of sparks when it reaches 0 health). Could also work for monsters made of particles, like the air elementals.
-- Monsters that start out as big, and shrink as they take damage. Or the other way around.

Simple solution that could be modded in LoG2:
Every time a monster takes damage, the game displays something like "Lightly wounded!" instead of the damage number.
(that's how Ultima 4 did it)
The text indicates the total damage done to the monster, not the severity of the injury you've just inflicted.
Maybe display the text only when the damage level changes.

[minmay]

For Grimrock 2 mods, you have a lot of options. There's easy stuff like MonsterComponent:showDamageText() and ModelComponent:setEmissiveColor() (attach a second model with a wound texture and fade it in as damage increases), but you could also make health bars for monsters with some work.