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[Knigel]

Currently, brains are treated as a single piece of flesh that you're instantly killed if it's damaged. It might surprise you, but this isn't exactly accurate: you don't die immediately from any part of your brain being damaged, though there's a considerably larger amount of places that getting damaged kills you eventually (if from nothing but blood-loss).

If any game is going to get this right, it may as well be Dwarf Fortress. So I'm proposing a (highly) simplified modeling of a few of the important parts of the brain and what damage to them would do:

• Cerebrum: Effects senses, movement, memory, and ability to speak.
• Cerebellum: Severely hamper co-ordination of most physical activies.
• Medula: Lose of ability or breath and of heart to beat.

Work in progress, obviously. Some way to factor in concussions would also be nice; it's just bizarre how in the current version you can have your entire skull shattered without it affecting your brain at all.

[magmaholic]

me like.
then we could have guys with mental disorders without them being sad :3.

[blizzerd]

in a technology scope of dwarven fortress almost any damage to the brain would kill you

there are freak examples, but i dont think we should program it in just because there are

we dont know enough about the brain anyway to make an accurate model around it for the dwarves other then spinal nerves and brain

brain damaged kills you, spinal nerves paralyse you

[Omegastick]

there are freak examples, but i dont think we should program it in just because there are

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you haven't been playing DF for very long.

[Knigel]

in a technology scope of dwarven fortress almost any damage to the brain would kill you

No, it wouldn't. Concussions are damage to the brain, but they don't kill you. People surviving more direct brain injuries is not some modern medical miracle, it's always happened. Most of what technology would save those people from is infection, which the game already models.

And like I said in the first post, just because a brain injury will kill you eventually, doesn't mean it will kill you instantly. Having your heart torn apart or neck slashed is guaranteed death, but the game doesn't have either of those kill you instantly.

The system doesn't need to be super-accurate, and would probably work on a lot of the same vaguely guided randomness the game uses for the effects of spinal chord injury, but "any brain damage = instadeath" is ridiculously simplified, if not inaccurate, as compared to the rest of the game.

[kaenneth]

If a Dwarf was brain damaged... How would you know?

Half of Zero is Zero.

but yeah, impacts to the skull with blunt weapons, or sharp weapons while wearing a hard helmet, might have some effect...

Concussed status might make the dwarf randomly forget what he was doing (flashing ? like when repathing) or somthing

[Knigel]

Concussed status might make the dwarf randomly forget what he was doing (flashing ? like when repathing) or somthing

Sounds about right. Though the "falls asleep and you might die" part should probably be held back until there's actually a way to keep them awake.

[harborpirate]

Toady has mentioned in DF talk that he is going to fix fistfights, so this suggestion would make some sense. There need to be ways for combatants to be knocked down and knocked out without always having life threatening injuries.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I like this idea. It would allow skull-shattering to be neither instantly-lethal nor harmless.

[Hyndis]

I do think head injuries are far too lethal in game. Skulls are very durable IRL. Add on a helmet and the brain is a very durable organ. While squishy itself its very well protected.

Currently instant death due to brain trauma seems to be the leading cause of death in game. Just seems odd for it to be so common compared to other injuries to the body.

[Demicus]

I do think head injuries are far too lethal in game. Skulls are very durable IRL. Add on a helmet and the brain is a very durable organ. While squishy itself its very well protected.

Currently instant death due to brain trauma seems to be the leading cause of death in game. Just seems odd for it to be so common compared to other injuries to the body.

True the skull is durable, but it has holes in it that can be used to attack the brain, such as the eye sockets, the nasal passages, the ears, and even the mouth. A helmet can cover most of that, though the eye sockets are always going to be an avenue to the brain if the attacker is fast and accurate. Though yeah, most attacks on the skull shouldn't plow through it.

As for brain damage being the leading cause of death, maybe the dwarves are taking a note from the book of FPS gamers and aiming for the head for extra damage?

[Jimlad11]

deleted

[Orakio]

But then again, I have never taken a sword to someone's skull. I imagine that a sword or axe would be better put to use on limbs and torso, while a hammer could deliver fatal skull shots or concussion with relative ease.   

Bone is... not very sturdy in front of a well sharpened blade. The main defense is the shape, rather than the strength. A well crafted sword blade or a heavy axe is going to do its job if the swordsman can bring it in on target. What should be, however, is that a lot of aimed shots at heads should wind up striking the shoulders / upper arms. That said, four or five layers of brain, with the caveat that it bleeds you out awful fast, could be a good thing for simulation purposes.

[darkflagrance]

This is an interesting case of a man surviving brain damage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

[G-Flex]

in a technology scope of dwarven fortress almost any damage to the brain would kill you

One of the big problems in DF right now is that it does assume this, but that this isn't remotely true.

People get concussions all the time in real life. Short-term, mostly-recoverable brain trauma is something DF has no notion of, but which is fairly necessary if you want to simulate fights well. It's certainly more important than simulating fingernails or individual teeth (although I enjoy that too).


Also, the effects of things like heat and cold on the brain (and other organs) leave a lot to be desired. Currently, superheating the brain doesn't do much at all, even though it should cause fever-like symptoms (I guess) and death.