14 replies to this topic

[Nathaniel]

Hey guys,

I was wondering how you guys go about lives, health, continues etc... How many blocks do you like on a healthbar? How much damage do you subtract when hurt? How many lives do you allow the player to start with?

These questions always have me stumped when making a game because you have to find a happy medium or the game becomes too easy/hard.

Also does genre affect how much health/lives you give? Generally I find if it is a platformer game I follow the Mario series. I allow the player 3-5 lives no continues and 2 hits till death. I also give the player the option of find extra continues, health, lives etc...

Please post what you like to see in games regarding player life.

[NukeTheCat]

3 most of the time. It an average for me, and of course there must be power ups and pick ups as well.
For the health, it's mostly genre effected, it's either you have 100 HP or just 1. Either way there a challenge.

[Nathaniel]

Thanks for your reply. In old NES games healthbars had 15-20 blocks but 1 hit could take away 5 blocks. How often do you like the make pick ups appear? Prehaps once every 3 levels or something for a 1 UP?

[NukeTheCat]

Once every 10 seconds! >u<

[fenyxofshadows]

Personally, it depends on the genre. For an RPG, your life would depend on your level and no monster can deplete the life bar in one strike. For a shmup, though, your lives are all the hits you can take, so it's more about skill in dodging. I prefer a sensible amount of hits - if the character lands in lava, I don't expect them to survive. Likewise, if they are hit by a sword as opposed to fists, I expect them to stagger, and if not wearing armor take a lot of damage. Guns should not be like in CoD or stuff like that - regenerating health is fine with some things but guns punch large holes into the player.

Continues - I like the player to be rewarded power-wise (recieve an extra power boost for a few minutes), but penalized content-wise. As an example, in the shmup Imperishable Night, there are two different paths that branch near the end of the game. Beating the first path (even with continues) unlocks the second path. However, to play the second path, you have to use no continues - even if you are deep in the second path a continue will immediately end the game. Beating the second path is also the only way to unlock the Extra stage, which you also must use no continues in. Also, using a continue resets your score to 000000000x (the x being number of continues) However, using a continue will also give you a fresh set of 2 lives, 3 bombs, a max power item, and resets your extra life counter, meaning you need to collect less items to get more lives.

The use of health vs. lives always depends on genre.

[Archaeaologist]

Health and lives are very genre specific. An easy way to change the difficulty is to lower the amount of lives and health a player receives. When it comes to health, personally, I like to make it a factor of 100 whenever possible. The math's easier to me that way. Of course, it is pretty rare that I can actually do that.

As for continues and saves and such, I'd say it depends on the length and difficulty of the game. Long games where you'll lose a lot of progress if you die or have to walk away should have some sort of continue/save system. Shorter games, though, can get away with less of a continue system, possibly even no continues. Part of it is a question of the type of difficulty you're trying to instill, though. If you want the game to be challenging on an individual level level then more continues will be better. If you want the game to be challenging on a more overall level, less continues will be better.

[Nathaniel]

I think difficulty also plays a big part in it. For example ninja gaiden on nes was impossible at first but thanks to unlimited continues you are able to progress.

[fenyxofshadows]

>impossible at first but thanks to unlimited continues you are able to progress.

Part of the challenge of a lot of shorter games is beating it without using continues... Ninja Gaiden is perfectly possible to beat without continues. It's just very difficult.
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=JU-q7caaxZo

If it were literally impossible to beat without continues, it would lose much of its fanbase.

Edited by fenyxofshadows, 18 May 2012 - 12:48 PM.

[JAk HAk]

It really depends on what kind of game it is. Something like Mario or Crash Bandicoot relies less on individually difficult enemy encounters; each enemy has a predictable and easy-to-defeat pattern. Using short-to-medium segments packed with various arrangements of these enemies, it's not too much to ask for the games to have very few hit points. The Zelda games, on the other hand, would feel very disjointed and different if they had you hitting check points every couple minutes.

Is one of these methods better than the other? Absolutely not. But having more health and longer segments is harder to get right, harder to meter, since the scale of it is so much larger. It's easier to replay short segments or levels to judge what's too difficult, but the variance increases when that time dilutes.

Something I like about how Zelda handles things is that it allows you to prepare for everything properly. You can go find heart containers to help you out, you can store potions and fairies in jars, you can find more jars to hold more stuff--all in a way that's interesting and isn't merely grinding.

Not that grinding is bad, of course. Some games, like Ratchet and Clank, get grinding down perfectly. There's no need to grind in those games, but it's possible to if you're performing poorly. Weapons and hit points get upgraded the more you play, so it doesn't feel patronizing to level up or be "helped out" when you're stuck at a level because you would be earning that assistance regardless of how well you perform. It's not a "you're sucking, so take this extra hit point," and it's not a "you'll suck, so go spend some time off the path to grind up enough" either.

[Fledermann]

Since this is very genre-dependant, I will just talk about platform games. Some games did that right, and some did not. The older Mario games as well as Donkey Kong Country allowed saving only at certain points in the game, which means you have to beat 3 to 4 levels in a row.
When you lose a life, you restart the level from the beginning or the last checkpoint you reached. When you run out of lives, the game goes back to the main screen and you have to start from the last saving point. That almost never happened in some games, since it was fairly easy to rack up 50 or more lives.

I never liked this system, mainly because you are not allowed to play for just 10 minutes and turn off the console. You just have to play until you reach the save point. Donkey Kong Country Returns on Wii autosaves after every stage, same goes for New Super Mario Bros Wii. That's way better, but the lives in both those games lose every purpose - you can easily get 99 lives in DKCR even before you beat the second world. And if you somehow manage to go "game over", you just lose your in-level checkpoint anyway.

The best system I can come up with is having no lives at all, unlimited continues and autosaving after every stage. The difficulty should come from within the stage and not from re-playing the same part over and over again because you're not allowed to save.

Fledermann

[Snail_Man]

<Snip>

Exactly what I was going to say...1+

[Archaeaologist]

Since this is very genre-dependant, I will just talk about platform games. Some games did that right, and some did not. The older Mario games as well as Donkey Kong Country allowed saving only at certain points in the game, which means you have to beat 3 to 4 levels in a row.
When you lose a life, you restart the level from the beginning or the last checkpoint you reached. When you run out of lives, the game goes back to the main screen and you have to start from the last saving point. That almost never happened in some games, since it was fairly easy to rack up 50 or more lives.

I never liked this system, mainly because you are not allowed to play for just 10 minutes and turn off the console. You just have to play until you reach the save point. Donkey Kong Country Returns on Wii autosaves after every stage, same goes for New Super Mario Bros Wii. That's way better, but the lives in both those games lose every purpose - you can easily get 99 lives in DKCR even before you beat the second world. And if you somehow manage to go "game over", you just lose your in-level checkpoint anyway.

The best system I can come up with is having no lives at all, unlimited continues and autosaving after every stage. The difficulty should come from within the stage and not from re-playing the same part over and over again because you're not allowed to save.

Fledermann

I respectfully disagree. While I agree that it's usually much better to be able to play a game more casually, not all games fit into that category. Part of the fun of beating a game like Super Mario Bros. was being able to do it without using continues. Yes, it took longer than 10 minutes to beat, but at the same time, the more you played it, the more familiar you became with the levels, the quicker it went by. It isn't an overly long game, and it does have shortcuts.

As for best system, there is no best system. Your system is good for some games but not for others. For instance, it'd be perfect for the Commander Keen series, but it wouldn't work as well for, say, Donkey Kong Country Returns for Wii, since dying there doesn't necessarily mean restarting a level. Those games are meant to be played with multiple people with the lives shared. If you used your system, that wouldn't be possible. That's just one example.

In short, it really depends on the genre and the target audience. There are inherently bad systems, but no saves and no continues is not one of them (though it's a much easier system to abuse). It works perfectly in arcade games, for instance, and games where the main objective is to get a high score.

[Yal]

I agree; I prefer those old games where a Continue sent you back to the start of the WORLD (not just the LEVEL) and you'd actually have to spend time getting good at the game in overall rather than just memorize-grinding your way through one level at a time. I hate such games like Golden Sun II where you spend 70% of the dungeon time making shortcuts (that you will never use) to previous places. Basically, if you don't lose anything at a Game Over, there's no point in having it - and if you don't have anything to lose you'll stop caring about your progress!

I'm working on a game called Dracula's Island, and the setup is like this:
- You have a maximum of 16 hitpoints, start with 8, lose 5 hitpoints when damaged and also lose hitpoints over time. Each fruit you pick up refills 1 hitpoint (and the timer that drains hitpoints) and 100 fruits is an extra life.
- When you get a Game Over, you have a limited number of continues. You get to choose from using a Continue or a Super Continue (that drains 2 normal continues). A normal continue lets you start from the beginning of the world with everything reset except your item pool. A Super Continue will let you start off where you left with 3 fresh extra lives, also keeping fruit and hearts.
- If you run out of continues you gotta try again.

I was thinking about having a system when at Game Over you would get game money added to a wallet that's kept between gameplay sessions as some sort of 'hook' to encourage you to play more; this money would be used to unlock characters, and maybe continues and shortcuts so you don't have to play the entire game from the beginning each time. Care would have to be taken to balance it and not make it feel like "You're bad, comfort yourself with this!" so I guess the rewards would be generated from enemy kills, item get and progress in general.

[Nathaniel]

That super continue is an interesting idea. I'd be carefull with the gradual depletion of health over time. If it's too quick it can become frustrating. Say for example you're low on health and you can see the fruit at the top of the screen but you need to ride the slow moving elevator platform to get up there. You'd be screwed because it takes too long to get there. I feel automatic hp reduction should only be done if poisoned or holding breath or somehting sort of side effect.

at the moment im thinkning for my platformer: life bar with 15 hit points if hurt by the enemy you lose anywheere between 1-5, collision with a hazzard such as holes or spikes is instant deaths and you get to continue if you die in from the checkpoints but if you lose all your lives you will start from the begining of that world for example if you die on the boss of 1-3 you go abck to 1-1 if you have no more lives.

also for rpgs i feel zelda has it pretty dialed. the ability to increase life as the game increases in difficulty gives the player a greater sense of progression and being able to buy/find life is a good reward too. what do you guys like to see in rpg/adventure/maze game health/score/lives etc

[Archaeaologist]

I love your idea, Yal, especially the money earning thing. I think that's a brilliant way to save progress rather than the continual save after you beat a level or world or whatever. Hmm, I would say add in a quick save, though, like that seen in Super Mario Bros. Wii. That should solve the problem of being able to walk away at any time without taking away from the whole continue/super continue/game over type of ordeal. As for earning money, I agree, it shouldn't be automatically given but instead given for accomplishments. You could have small accomplishments like beating a world or a boss or something and bigger accomplishments like beating a level or boss without getting hit, etc.

As for what I like to see in RPGs, I like to be able to unlock abilities and stuff. Yeah, health and lives and stuff are great, but abilities, especially unique abilities, allow for more tactics and more situational tactics. Rewarding a player for creativity and tactical thinking are always good things to do, in my opinion. It doesn't really answer the question, though, so, for the most part, I like to be able to save my progress frequently in a large game like an RPG. You don't really need a continue system if you have a save system. It depends on the RPG, though, of course. Zelda games, for instance, have both continues and saves.