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[Captain Mayday]

Purely a simplifying thing, I wonder if we could have only the highest missing component in a limb tree show as missing.
In my opinion, there's little point in showing a dwarf is missing all his toes on his left foot if he's missing his left leg as well.

[Tamren]

You could re-organise the list of body parts into a Tree i suppose. I had this idea a long time ago but i forgot to post it, might as well do it now. It looks extremely complicated but visually at least it greatly condenses the vital information.

Instead of:
Right hand
Right first finger
Right second finger
and so on, the game would display the list like this:

code:

 
                        Head
             Upper Torso _O_  Left Arm
             Lower Torso  l   Right Arm
             Left leg    / \  Right Leg

Obviously this would take up more room overall, but they key is that it will only show the extremeties if they are relevant. Lets say for example, that you cut off the left arm, heavily bruised the left leg, broke all 5 toes on the right foot and cut off the right pinkie finger. On the screen the list would change and expand to show these injuries.

1. Since you have cut off the left arm entirely it would be blacked out but still slightly visible.
2. The left leg, both the text and the / that represents it, would change colour to indicate bruising (not displayed here)
3. Since all 5 toes are broken, the display only adds "toes" in a different colour.
4. The severed pinkey finger is displayed, but simply shorted to "finger 5", again blacked out. If you broke or severed more fingers later, "finger 5" would change to "Finger 1345" the colour indicating what happened to each finger.

code:

 
                        Head
             Upper Torso _O  
             Lower Torso  l   Right Arm Finger 5
             Left leg    / \  Right Leg Toes

At this point if you severed the right arm as well. "finger 5" would dissapear entirely and "right arm" will appear blackened out to indicate that it is gone.

This leaves more room for information such as emotional state. How tired the creature is and the inventory.

[Ryven]

It would probably be best to do without the diagram, in case of non-humanoid units.

The tree model is still a good idea for deciding which pieces are shown, though.

[ September 07, 2007: Message edited by: Ryven ]

[Captain Mayday]

The tree already exists in any case. The game is just non-selective with how much is shown.

[Tamren]

That might be overcomplicated and like you said it would not work for non humanoids. You could draw them, but each symbol would have to be a seperate body part.

Anyhow just omitting the body parts that are not currently relevant would be enough to shorten the list. But maybe for YOUR adventurer at least, the paper doll thing would be very handy.

[mickel]

Yea, there's a significant difference between having one guy to keep track of and 200. In solo mode, a paper doll might be quite useful, but perhaps a bit too much when you're keeping track of the whole fortress.

[Deto]

I think the damage table itself is good and nice. Its fun seeing just about how much that elephant destroyed of the lone fisher   But I don't see it very useful to show parts in fine condition.. I mean, why list left hand when its fine? I think everyone is more worried about the damage than dwarf showing his hand and screaming he's fine  

[mickel]

True. But then again you can see it as a list of bodyparts that still remain to mangle.  

[axus]

I think the original post is a good suggestion, don't display redundant info in the list of missing body parts.  Show toes only if the foot is attached, show foot only if the leg is attached

[Tamren]

Toes should only be displayed if something happens to them. Otherwise they are considered "fine" and if the foot dissapears the toes do too. If there is something wrong with a specific toe then it will tell you about that single toe and leave the rest unmentioned.

If this applied to all limbs then the system would work fine.

Edit: Better yet, make the system customizable based on how much info you want to see. The paper doll system thing i showed you guys works fine for humanoids. Non humanoids? not so much.

A tentacle demon for example might have 4 seperate arms with each having 3 tentacles sprouting out. letting you know that the demon still has 4 arms would not tell you how many tentacles are left and which can be lopped off.

[ September 10, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]