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Suggestion: Plant a cross where a player dies

Posted: 20 May 2005, 17:51
by Pajarico
Hi,
The idea is to make appear a cross* where a player dies, so if you are talking or with fighting with someone you can see that he has been killed instead of just disappear.

* I'm talking about a cross just because it's the very common and recognizable. Of course it has to be thinked and changed since the characters are not christian.

Posted: 20 May 2005, 18:23
by ElvenProgrammer
I agree it could be a nice idea 8)

Posted: 20 May 2005, 22:22
by Bjørn
Heh if we do this instead of a cross I'd suggest a tombstone/gravestone, which should be a bit more universal. I'm not sure about the idea though. It's not realistic that the player gets actually burried where he dies, and also the gravestone will need to disappear too or we'd have too many of them shortly. Maybe we can simply leave a blood stain? We could also enforce a minimum wait before being able to respawn of like 5 seconds.

Posted: 20 May 2005, 22:45
by Matt
Siedler2 has a nice system: dead body -> skulls -> *poof

Posted: 21 May 2005, 00:26
by Rarara
Instead of a tangible object like a tombstone, why not make it a a symbol on the ground? Like a red magic pentagram. Then you could simply walk over it so that it doesn't block people, and it won't seems wierd if you can slip through it.

Concerning death, an idea I had was to make people fall on the ground when their hp falls to zero, but only unconscious at first. Death would come a couple of seconds later. So if someone in a group fall, the healer have several seconds to save him from death with a simple healing spell.
You'd have a last chance to easely save someone before he dies. And when exploring, you could stumble on dying people and save them with an healing item.

Death would still come with defeat, but in a group it'll be way easier to survive so it will promote alliances. Plus, it's wierd to constantly die and come back to life like in most rpgs :?

We could combine both idea, the slow death and the magic symbol. You could put a growing pool of blood under a critically wounded body so that you have an idea of how close to death somebody is. After the time is expired, the body disapears and the blood stain dries up and leave a red pentagram/magic symbol on the ground.

Another idea is to have the player then becomes a ghost/flying ball of soul. If the ghost stand on his pentagram he can be revived with a spell, and the ghost can't fight or leave the area but have the ability to be reborn in a city temple.

Posted: 21 May 2005, 02:23
by Pajarico
Bjørn wrote:Heh if we do this instead of a cross I'd suggest a tombstone/gravestone, which should be a bit more universal. I'm not sure about the idea though. It's not realistic that the player gets actually burried where he dies, and also the gravestone will need to disappear too or we'd have too many of them shortly. Maybe we can simply leave a blood stain? We could also enforce a minimum wait before being able to respawn of like 5 seconds.
I thought you were present when i said it on IRC, the cross has to disappear after some time, if not it will overload the server unnecessarily.

Posted: 21 May 2005, 16:30
by Kyokai
Bjørn wrote:Heh if we do this instead of a cross I'd suggest a tombstone/gravestone, which should be a bit more universal. I'm not sure about the idea though. It's not realistic that the player gets actually burried where he dies, and also the gravestone will need to disappear too or we'd have too many of them shortly. Maybe we can simply leave a blood stain? We could also enforce a minimum wait before being able to respawn of like 5 seconds.
A tombstone implies that they are European. We should have a shrine pop up if they are Asian, and maybe funeral pyres for African (is that what they do in Africa?)

No, I actually think this whole idea is sort of pointless (^_^). Just have the body lie there until they respawn or someone raises them. This is the obvious thing to do.

Posted: 21 May 2005, 16:39
by Pajarico
Just have the body lie there until they respawn or someone raises them
Then, ?how do you distinguise a dead body -killed- from a body that could be healed?

Also, the point is not only playability, but cosmetic.

Posted: 23 May 2005, 11:30
by Rotonen
If we want to do nitpicking, we could do different death sprites for different deaths.. (It would really bring variety and hence would be a good idea, on the long run.) For example burned, a deep wound, smashed skull, mutilated, etc..

Posted: 23 May 2005, 13:20
by Modanung
...or totally splattered by evil magic.
Y'know, those Doom I and II corpses... hmmmm. :twisted:

I think it's best to have a dead body on the ground when someone dies as long as he can be healed/ressurected. When he has respawned the body could turn into a skeleton to indicate he can no longer be healed.
Also with monsters I think it would be nice to have their corpses laying around for a while, maybe they can be used for necromanic spells?

Posted: 25 May 2005, 22:15
by Magick
Hmm....i kinda see this whole thing pointless. The character should just respawn once they are dead. If the game gets really big then you will be seing crosses or tombstones and stuff everywhere. They die, get respawned and they can tell the person they were talking to they were killed lol. Thats my 2 cents :P

Posted: 26 May 2005, 12:29
by treo
I think that if someone dies but there is someone like a clerik in his party than the clerik should get a message that there is a dead guy in his party and that he can resurrect him in the next few seconds, the one who has died also should be able to decide wait for his party member to resurrect him or just to respawn

Posted: 26 May 2005, 16:02
by Modanung
I think every party member should be noticed when another partymember dies, not just clerics. Something like "[playername] died" or "[playername] was killed by [monster]".
And I think there should be a body on the ground while he can be resurrected, and a skeleton (or decaying body) after he has respawned. This skeleton could fade away after a while.
But I already said that, I think.

Posted: 27 May 2005, 18:33
by ElvenProgrammer
Let me go a bit out of topic...maybe we should consider the idea of ghosts, when a player dies his corpse/tombstone/whatever stays there and you can see the ghost going around, revive him or whatever else. He should go somewhere to recover his life, like in towns, the more he stays dead, the more the penalty grows. Just a flash idea :roll:

Posted: 27 May 2005, 20:12
by Modanung
That means he should either find a mage kinda person or walk back all the way to town? Which can be quite a hike, espacially when you die in a tough area.
I like the respawn idea better, nice idea though...

Or maybe... ghost don't walk, they float, pretty fast... right? Then it might work quite well. If you can move 2-4 times as fast as when you're alive going back to town isn't such a drag.
On the other hand, people might go to places where they wouldn't go otherwise when they are ghosts. Since they are dead anyway they might as well explore really hard dungeons.