The Mana World Forums

Hi Bcs86,

Adding aspect to monsters would also be a nice improvement in the long run.

Idea 1) The little bouncy bits of how much health you just took off could change colour. That is to say, when a monster is on full health, the little bouncy bits of health could be green, and as it is hurt they gradually change through yellow to red.

Problem 1) What colour would the little bouncy bits of player's health be?

Problem 2) Little green bouncy bits of health would make you think the monster was easy.

Idea 2) A vertical HP percentage bar à la Wesnoth. This is probably the best idea. There should be no text stating either amount HP nor HP percentage.

Problem 1) I can't think of any problems for this.

Idea 3) A horizontal HP bar à la Age of Empires. This would have text showing either percentage or actual amount of HP.

Problem 1) It's dumb.

Idea 4) You can select monsters. This opens a Monster Description box with its name and so on. It wouldn't have exact hitpoints and attack stated but would give some indication such as: 'The Jack O is a ferocious, PG16 monster with an appetite for 32-bit sprites.'

Problem 1) How would the Monster Description window be displayed?

~what do y'all think of these?
The Scarlet Rhus

If we want to seriously overload our pixel artists, we could have different GFX for different health states of monsters.

Theoretically the best idea yes, but realistically achievable?

For states, when a monster is injured or sick it would be slower, limp or stagger, and its attack might be weaker. That would require some new sprite work. I would be willing to work on that later, but I am 100% busy with something else ATM.
I think the states would be fun to make and to use.

...have your boring HP bar for now if you insist.

bcs86 wrote:For states, when a monster is injured or sick it would be slower, limp or stagger, and its attack might be weaker. That would require some new sprite work. I would be willing to work on that later,[...]

For every single monster we have?
And for every single monster which will be released in the future?

OK, I'll admit, On second thought the states idea wouldn't really be able to supplement an HP bar. It wouldn't work much for small things like plants and maggots either. It would, however, be able to make the occasional boss monster more interesting to fight (we have none (except santa slimes) hooray!).
Something I'd have to try in a sand box at least.

SpamMaster wrote:lol

IT'S NOT FUNNY!!!!!!111

More pixel art does mean more work and more overhead, that's just the cost of making a more rich and artistic game. Pardon my arrogance and zealotry.

Right now you can have a rough estimation of monster's HP value with quite good accuracy since random changes are small enough. And for example, 4144's patch already shows damage taken by monster(at least as seen by client), making it's quite trivial to have rough estimation in most cases. You can also have some (rough and inaccurate) estimation for player based on his level. At least you can guess worst-case and best-case scenarios and expect real things to be somewhere in the middle. Hence, overall error of estimation is not very large - once more. I can roughly assume that now you can always know your enemy's HPs with some 20-30% error at very most and have some estimation based on inflicted damage. So

So as for me, I'm voting to have such feature but it should not disclose health but rather only provide rough estimation (i.e. monster haves approx. 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, 0%). I.e. visualise facts you can already learn anyway in most cases (I guess it's even possible to implement this based on 4144's patch. etc). Nothing more, nothing less. And well, as for me, to have more excitement, 30% error in HPs estimation just not enough, regardless of visualisation of this estimation. As for me, to have more excitement from battle, you need more random factors and random should have more significance. Without it things are getting quite predictable regardless of their visualization.

A spinning crystal that turns from green to yellow to orange to red then shatters?

I'm back from teh pixel mines baybeh.

I would say, that is a good idea!

A HP- Bar would be nice. I suggest to bring an additional HP- Value there. It could be look like that (you need to imagine a few graphics there =D)

________
| 59 / 100 |
(====.......)

+ Scale- effect if the value is to big for the bar i would say =)

yes, HP value and HP Bar is good. It would let you know your target.

Once again, this will require a lot of server modification to work. And I refuse to add the full value, but only low, mid, high.

For larger boss like monsters an HP bar would be helpful

What about just a "bloodied" (under 1/2 hp) condition (such as in D&D 4th edition ) that adds some red effect to the monster (be it changing their name color, the ring, etc)?

Basically, it lets you know you at least got somewhere (the monster is at least half dead), but it doesn't give much away. It's just vague enough to let you roughly gauge an enemy's difficulty without really giving much away.

why not just include a ingame pokedex?