Medical Systems
In ACAMS, we want to have a balance between stark realism and gameplay, which is why we had to make a few sacrifices in the medical department. Probably a few pigs and maybe a lamb or two. There are seven total body zones: head, upper torso, lower torso, each arm, and each leg.
When you shoot someone, depending on where you shoot them, you have a chance of hitting an organ if you penetrate their armour. There are some compromises, however, since our concept of a hitbox is so limited: you can’t hit the arms and torso individually. Instead, because you’re usually holding a gun up or at the chest, you have a chance of hitting the arms instead of chest from the front.
When you hit someone, the system rolls some dice. Depending on how close to the center of mass you hit them on that bodypart, it has a higher or lower chance of doing closer to full damage for that round type. Each body part has some percentage of “health”, which is the relative usability of that part, with the exceptions of head and chest: if you lose either of those, it’s game over. If you lose all of your other limbs, you’d be a motionless, useless torso until you die of blood loss, but you’d still be alive, if probably unconscious from pain.
Yup, that’s right: there’s going to be pain. When you get shot, it hurts. A lot. You yell in pain, your vision goes blurry, and kind of dark around the corners, but you’re still alive, usually. Where you get shot affects your performance. If you get shot in the arms, you can’t aim as well, or not at all if they’re totally disabled. In the legs? Well, sorry buddy, but you’re going to have movement problems.
When you get shot in an organ, a few things happen. For your lungs, it hurts a lot and you can’t breathe as well, meaning that your stamina is basically nothing at that point. Liver? Same deal, but now you’re bleeding a ton. Heart? Dead. Brain? 50/50, you may die, or you may just not be able to see much.
Luckily, armor exists.
The thickness of the line around your body indicates the level of armor you have on it. It’s assumed by default that you have at least Level II-equivalent armor, else why are you walking into a warzone? This goes all the way up to Level IV armor. This of course affects your weight, which in turn affects your movement speed and stamina, but could make you less dead. It’s a tradeoff.
The color is your body part state: green is okay, yellow is injured, orange is severely injured, and red is critically injured. Grey (not shown) is disabled, meaning that it’s severed or otherwise rendered useless.
There is a bright side to this, though. In the upcoming update that will include these systems, we will also be including a class system to be described in a later post. For a teaser, however: there will be medics that can help you with your ailments of the body and soul.
