Grimrock

theIMP wrote:i understand there are more important things to deal with during development, but i wonder why this hasn't happned since release...

why aren't there different pictures for each character when you reach 75%, 50% and 25% hp, kind of like the original doom.

this might not be the biggest pressing issue with the game atm, but i can't help but think because you can import your own avatars, this could be so so much fun and really personalise the game with minimal amount of programming.

appreciate everyones thoughts.

Hit points originated as an abstract representation of the ability to absorb attacks by a military unit of organization. When pulled from the wargame world to Dave Arneson's Blackmoore campaign (the origin of Dungeons & Dragons), this arbitrary measure was retained. The value made little sense - while a certain number of damage points might work to measure a ship's seaworthiness or a platoon's ability to take casualties and continue fighting, it was a poor measurement of an individual's health. After all, people don't just keep functioning unhindered while absorbing loads of damage, and then suddenly conk out once an empirical threshold is reached.

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, co-creator Gary Gygax tried to explain that hit points were only an abstraction. While an eight-point blow from a sword might be a lethal blow to a normal villager, for a skilled fighter (with dozens of hitpoints) this might only be a scratch - or even a lack of contact altogether, but more a representation of his stamina being "worn down" as he dodges what would have been a lethal blow. In other words, the abstraction of hit points included all kinds of other factors that would have been too tedious to model in the game.