Medical System (Testing & Feedback)

[Black Mamba]

Hello.
Hm, there was quite a lot of confusion when we tested this, (I intended to get a smaller test session and to write a post here before it got into a main session) but still, I'd like to collect any kind of feedback here.

So, for those who didn't read the briefing or found it way too badly written, and for those who read it anyway, here's a bit of clarification first:

Basically the whole system is pretty simple and turns around a "blood gauge". You start the mission with 100. If you get wounded, you start loosing blood (max rate being 1 per second). Whenever that gauge gets down to around 40, you are going to start falling unconscious. If you're unconscious, you will wake up, by yourself (assuming that you don't die beforehand), after a certain amount of time (can currently go up to a maximum of about 2 minutes, if you're bleeding a lot/heavily wounded). Also note that when unconscious, the bloodloss is artificially reduced.
When your blood gauge reaches 0, you die.

Applying a FAK on your lovely body (or the one of your even lovelier comrade) will NOT reanimate him, and it will NOT heal him more than very little.
On the other hand, it will stop the bleeding and give a small boost to his blood gauge. Note that it means that a person with very little blood remainng will keep passing in and out of consciousness. (That point needs tweaking. You don't want to keep passing out for hours as it is no fun. Maybe make passing out a very rare event in those cases?). The only use of a FAK is to prevent people from bleeding out, the actual medicing being handled by, wait for it, the medic.

The medic (when equipped with a Medikit), will have a few perks when healing. He will reanimate unconscious people immediately. He will heal people up to 90% of health. He will give a substantial boost to the blood gauge so that the patient doesn't keep passing out. He will also stop the beeding if any.

Other features:
- getting shot in the legs can cause you to not be able to stand up.
- You can drag/carry people that either are unconscious or have broken legs.

IIRC that's about it.

Now, a few notes about the concept itself and some important points to consider:
I myself like the A2 buiuilt-in system, even though the wounded animation is quite horrible, and I like the gameplay opportunities it provides. The goal here is in fine to provide a gameplay that's somewhat comparable, while dealing with the specificities of Arma 3 and why not improving some aspects.
One thing that I think is immediately noticeable is that system relies more heavily on medics than the A2 system. While I see this generally as an improvement, I'm worried about the gameplay degradation when all medics are dead/unavailable. This is one of the main reasons I think testing this with the community can bring ideas and improvements.

I also strive to maintain a reasonably small script, both in actual size and performance impact, yet we have to deal with a new issue: the Arma 3 medical system, or what's left of what it was supposed to be, is completely hardcoded into the engine, unlike A2's that was completely scripted. This let us less room for maneuver, as our features cannot really go "against" the built-in system, or to a very limited extent. For example, the key combination to switch to carrying from dragging, or the Heal/Treat in the action Menu, cannot be removed from a script. This means the system must be built around those things.

Known Issues:

- Bug: Medics do not heal, they hurt you fixed
- Bug: Getting shot in the legs while on stairs is problematic. (fixed : scripted a similar system to A2's)
- Bug: Game crash when Unconscious (Couldn't repro yet)
- Bug: The Treat yourself Action keeps reappearing even after using a FAK to stop the bleeding (Seems fixed, needs further testing)
- Feature: The Knock Out Button shouldn't even exist (fair enough, it's a left-over from debugging. I'll keep it in for now, for testing purposes)
- Feature: The Join Group is somewhat out of place (I find it way more annoying when in the action menu, but that is up to debate)
- Bug: I'm bleeding but never falling unconscious (couldn't repro yet)
- Feature: Black Screens suck (Place Holder. I was considering something along the lines of what A2 ACE shows? Like Black on the side, or very blurry?)
- Feature: Relax the dependancy on medics by making passing out a rare event after use of a FAK.
- Bug: the Join Group button is not available on unconscious units.

In any case, please feel free to share your feelings about the thing, your ideas, wishes, anything. I can work on the script-side of things, but I'm just one person in the community, and if we were someday to use that script, it'd probably be better with your contribution!

Thanks

[Black Mamba]

Quick Update:

A few bugs have been fixed.

Namely, the Medics that couldn't heal people. That was an easy fix, as it was just a stupid mistake.

There was also an issue with units getting in an infinite loop when the legs were broken, and on a surface non suitable for getting prone (e.g stairs). The script was forcing the unit to go prone while the engine was reacting everytime by forcing to crouch. I went around that issue by implementing a system that makes use of the built-in "Incapacitated" animations, likely about the same as what is in A2. Not perfect, but it may just do the job.

The treat action would reappear after stopping the bleeding, which was causing players to waste FAKs. This has been solved and doesn't seem to present any issues yet.

Following some of the feedback, I've changed the Interaction Menu slightly. The Join Group button has been moved to the side, as it has nothing to do with first aid, and the Knock Out button will probably be removed from the next test mission. Still not happy with everything here.

One of the main concerns seem to have been the black screen. I'm currently lacking any install of Photoshop or similar, so I couldn't implement a proper effect. Here is how it looks like with the A2 ACE effect (will not use that in the future, not the creator). I'm still trying to see if something can be done about the hands sticking up like that.

[Mamuto]

I applaud any attempt to better the vanilla A3 medical system, because, let's be honest here, it sucks and completely takes away depth from the gameplay.

Glad to see that you've fixed the bugs we encountered Tuesday. (what about being unable to bind the menu to a key?)

One thing I would like to add, from a balancing standpoint, is that I would like to see it harder to be killed in missions. It really adds to the gameplay when you fall down 3-4 times throughout a mission only to get revived and continue to kick ass and chew bubble gum. One of my most memorable missions with Folk was when I took down a BMP/MG nest but got shot in the process, then I was bleeding out for 5 minutes before someone managed to get to me and revive. I then proceeded to exact my revenge on the enemy by shooting down a helicopter with an HMG. Coming back from that brink is really cool.

Thanks Mamba, you da man.

[Black Mamba]

what about being unable to bind the menu to a key?

First, thanks a ton for your feedback.
I didn't hear anything about that one, except Wolfenswan that said it didn't work initially, but it actually ended up working. I'm quite afraid that would be linked to the hints at the beginning: basically I would check every ten seconds or so if the key was assigned, and if it was assigned, only then would the key binding be added in the script.
That's a retarded way of doing it, as you would assign the key in your options, and have to wait a moment til the thing would become available.

I'll obviously change that. On the other hand, if the issue was really that you couldn't bind the key at all, I'll check what I can do (I added a safety for that already, but maybe it wasn't enough).

Regarding the other suggestion: the script should currently make it so if you receive a hit that would barely kill you, you have a probability of surviving it, even though you're gonna fall unconscious. The more violent the hit, the less probability you're gonna survive. Headshots will still kill you all the same. (in numbers, you die when your damage reaches 1, either in the head, the torso or your general structural damage. The script allows you to survive up to 1.35 of damage. That might be enough, not enough, the probability calculation is currently linear. This will be reworked.

[Mamuto]

Hey Mamba, any update on this? Thinking about adding this into my co-op..

Also, is there a performance hit from adding this script?

Thanks!

[Ferrard Carson]

Also, is there a performance hit from adding this script?

Even if there is a performance hit, it's negligible compared to the one from having 30+ players on the same A3 server

~ Ferrard

[Black Mamba]

I have a new version, based on feedback from the first test. Seems to work okay, but I'm trying to tweak stuff to get it to a fun point.

It's not really mission-maker-friendly yet, but I might be able to release a test version soon for mission-makers to include in testing missions.

Regarding the performance, my SP tests show a drop of about 1 or two FPS at times, 0 most of the time.

Another thing to note, the next vanilla update will bring fixes and changes that should allow me to make this lighter performance-wise (as well as breaking another thing or two, no doubt...)

[Mamuto]

Also, is there a performance hit from adding this script?

Even if there is a performance hit, it's negligible compared to the one from having 30+ players on the same A3 server

~ Ferrard

Ain't that the truth... Hopefully one day we will be able to do 60-70 person co-ops without a hitch.

Thanks for the update, Black Mamba. I'm definitely interested in using it in my missions going forward, to make them slightly less unforgiving.