Wound tracking has been discussed here and elsewhere. It was my plan to use wounds when I started writing the game, but now I am wholly opposed to them. As Dalgren says, the HP system is already complicated for a roguelike, using a different HP for each body part. I think that any wound system would just be an obnoxious complication to the system, and detract from the streamlined combat of roguelikes. This is a similar situation to when people suggested that individual magazines be reloaded rather than the gun--there's a reason 99% of games do use HP and not a wound system, and it's
not because they're uninventive or they're pandering to the Halo-playing crowd.
But as always, nothing changes my mind like a good demo, so if anyone wants to try coding, I'll give it a chance. Just remember that over-complexifying a game is a great way to make it seriously unfun in the eyes of most players, including myself.
I am planning, of course, to at some point give a significance to low HP in legs, for instance, where it's currently meaningless. This would be a good place to start for any wound-like system, as it's much more likely that I'll be interested.
Minor bug report, every half hour I get the debug message "health: ########". Unless your health is supposed to be a 7 digit number, I suspect buffer overflow.
Also-Clothes get ripped up way too easily. I mean, what is this, a bad porno?
Very odd, health is a regular (signed) int, shouldn't overflow like that.
Clothes only get ripped up if you're attacked by a monster with cutting damage--like the large claws of fast zombies, or the vicious sting of triffids, both of which would destroy a shirt pretty fast.
Blunt force trauma can cause open wounds and infections, it just isn't integral to the effectiveness of it.
One thing I'd like to see is some more variation in the way cities are structured.
For example:
Insignifatown: has a single grocery store, a gas station, 10 houses and a bar. The forests grow right up to the edges of town, and the highway is the only way in or out.
Superopolis: Covers 50 or so general town spaces, with a zombie population in the millions. Everything is abundant, but it is ridiculously dangerous to even leave your house.
These are just two examples, but it would be nice to see both much bigger and much smaller population centres.
Both these towns can be generated; in fact, towns with just 6-8 houses have cropped up before, and towns that span 400-500 town spaces are generated as well.
Tracking each individual zombie hit as a wound would be mind numbing. That said I like the idea that you need to take care of your injuries. So for less severe ones, that's probably some anti-biotics or first aid and then some bandages. When you're dealing with serious (that deep red color) I imagine injuries that impede with more than just pain. Think a about a broken leg. It doesn't matter how any pain killers you pop...you arn't running anywhere. Especially not with 100 lbs of gear. Right now you can go from near death (1 torso hp, 1 head hp and a couple of zeros on limbs) to full health with a couple of days of rest and some painkillers. No first aid required. That seems very action hero-ish to me, not very survival-ish.
Dunno if you've noticed, but there's a lot about this game that's cinematic, and very intentionally so. Survival action is fun and all, but hitting ^ for 2 in-game weeks so that your broken leg can heal isn't. I might consider a "hardcore mode" in the future which doesn't permit healing without the appropriate supplies, but for now I think that healing rates are appropriate.