Damage with "weapon" in your hand.

[Stump]

Long time ago, I was wondering how weapon can have such things as speed, damage, accuracy? It actualy looks little strange when you are looking from the side of realism, but I keeped it in my head, because game mechanics looked that they will never change in the games.
Now here I find out about MO, and here old minds come back in my head. Well, if MO is going to be revoliutionary game, then this thing can be bringed to the next level too. The damage in most games works as items and character stats calculation and I actualy think this is becoming old. So, I was thinking about some realistic, more dynamic system.


First of all, remove all "weapon stats" from your heads, too long they stayed in there. Imagine the "weapon" as some kind material, that can be sharp, blunt, also it have weight and it should be the most important "stat" of the weapon. Weight can be balanced, giving form to that material. Now combine these parts, lets call them Axe blade, stick and handle, and here we have some kind of axe weapon. So, the begining are in the forges, where Blacksmiths make the weapons, and practicaly, every object in the game can be a potencial weapon, just like in real life. Also, I dont know how actualy the "weight balance" could be implemented, but I think the guide for this idea would be the phrase "stick with two ends". The one end is heavier, other is easier and etc.

Second step will be to make sure that we can wield that weapon, that should depend on character Strenght stat and weapon Weight stat. Lets say we can wield it.

Now we need to use this weapon, and here we see this Knight, he looks like he can survive the hit, so we aim, swing the weapon and hit that knight. Now roll back a little, we will find out how this actualy happended:

• Lets say there is the maximum speed you can reach with any weapon by swinging it, lets say 50. If your weapon speed reaches this limit, your body just cannot move faster no matter is that weapon axe or dagger. This maximum speed should be determined by your strenght, encumbance and weapon weight. MaxSwingSpddofStr - Enc - WepWegh. . You can reach this maximum speed with every weapon, but there is acceleration thing. The heavier weapon or the weaker player is, the longer it should take to reach that maximum speed. For example, to reach it with axe, you need to swing it like 2 seconds (so, in some situations it would be even not worth to "charge" the swing until max) and with sword you would need just a 1-1,5 seconds. Remember, this would be not same as Atack Speed, but like charge. For example, if you want to charge Axe swing until the end, you would need to swing your axe maybe even around your head, until you will be able to land this crush on the enemy with maximum speed.
• Now the difficult part, the impact itself. In Impact, damage GIVEN by the Weapon would be determined by the weight of Weapon, weapon speed on the moment of impact (for arows, that would be like throw) and the player strenght (if hit by mele, because when player hit someone with his weapon in hand, he still pushes weapon forward).
• And in defense the most important thing would be how much you hit with how much of your weapon. If it is the stab from the Sword, there should be all damage concentrated in one point, while if you cut with it on the target, the damage should be shared (not defense). Lets say there is 10 "places" where you can hit in one hit. You cut with your weapon and you hit the 5 places of 10, and your overall damage lets say is 20. Now you share it in 5 peaces, that would be 20 / 5 = 4 . The game takes the "place" from these 5 with strongest defense, lets say it is 10. 10 - 4 = 6 . As we can see, the damage done was not good enaugh to get through the armor and hit the body, so enemy takes no damage. Now you try to hit it again, and hit the same place, because it was left weaken (it is now 6), this time you try to stab. You concentrate all your damage to the one place 6 - 20 = -14 . As we can see, the weapon goes threw the armor and hits the body. Now, for the sake of balance, lets say every part "under" the armor have the maximum "health points", so you will not be able to kill the enemy with one powerfull blow by stabing him in the finger. Lets say this our mentioned point is on the hand and it has 30 hit points. After this stab, it is left with 30 - 14 = 16 . Lets say we stab again in the same place 16 - 20 = 0 . Damage taken to the body cannot be more than 30 in this point, so it stays 0. That 4 damage that left is just wasted. And lets say again, that there are two points (wrist) that hold other body parts (hand) together with the body, and you drop the hit points of them to the 0, then you just cut the hand away from the body.
• Accuracy, now most of it should be determined by the player, but as we know, if we try to hit someone with something, it not always hit there where we want. Same here. There should be something, that would make our hits not verry accurate. Most of it should depend on (without player aim) weight of the weapon, strenght of the player, dexterity and ofcourse how much balanced the weight is.

I was also thinking about, what if you swing the sword from over your head, so while you rising the sword, there should be some penalty in swinging, and when you landing it, some bonus to it from the pull of the earth, same would be if you swing it from under you, and if you swing it from side to side, there should be no bonuses or penalties at all.
So, for me this system would be much more dynamic, it would also include crafters into it, they could discover their own weight balance, so they could be known as the best Blacksmiths in the world. Also, for every type of fighter needs other type and balance weapon, practicaly every object in the game could be as potentian weapon. Now it looks realy dificult, but I think if someone would put more work understanding it, then it can be made not so deep-forest.
Sorry for English mistakes.

So any questions, thoughts, ideas? Please discuss

[Elfvis]

I do not know if I followed this in all but to cliffnote it down to a sentence I would say, You are interested in a system were a weapon was a weapon, and its creator had some vested idea in how that weapon would work. From there the user would then have worked up a skill set so that he could maximize the potential of the weapon.

Swing speed could be based on a modifier, simple example being strength, agility, or other names.

Weapon form was weapon function yet did not dictate result (ie damage). A weapons damage stemmed from hit location vs armor vs speed and other modifiers.

I really think I need more time to read and extrapolate with what you said here but it sparked two ideas in my head.

1. Crafting a weapon (EVEN the same weapon as you see on the guy next to you) can have a completely different base function. This could be done by balancing, so that a large halbred could be weighted and balanced so that while it looked slow and heavy could be weighted and balanced for a completely different effect.

2. Weapons are weapons and shouldn't be AMAZINGLY unquie, epic, or legendary. Player skill should be the Unquie, Legendary, or epic portion of it. Any weapon any day can fil (break) this should exist, repair while annoying is part of the game, and if not you should be able to just wear something out I suppose.

3. Skills a player can use can increase aspects of the combat so that no one fighter fights the same and no one weapon attacks the same (like stated above). THis is a HUGE generalization as possibilities should be capped, but what I imply is that 2 players that look exactly alike with the same weapon could be built to do ENTIRELY different things.

I really like the bees nest you have unleashed in my head, and I will have to go over your post and give some less random feed back, but still I wanted to let go of what your post sparked inside my head : P So sorry if I have repeated something you said or over generalized or over complicated certain aspects I will refine later.

[Balkin]

Pretty interesting idea.... I can see how a weapon can be balanced thus creating the ability for more speed but by having to low of a skill can make even a balanced weapon not as fast as it could be, at least I think thats what your getting at here.

I can see tying the speed of the weapon to your sword skill with speed maybe as a secondary skill to it. And then also tying that to whether you had more strength allowing for more damage or more agiility allowing for more speed.

It would be one way to do it for sure... Im sure many others have more ideas also...

[Lachrymose]

there are two problems i have with this, i mentioned them in the irc, but i'll lay them out again since necro isn't here to screw up the discussion. ;P

first off, i disagree that there needs to be a maximum speed. the acceleration will be different based on the weight and the distribution of the weight on the weapon. there is no maximum weight for the weapon, since the speed will increase so long as acceleration increases. so assuming you can actually wield the weapon (it isn't too heavy for you to pick up or swing), then depending on your strength, the weight of the weapon will be taken into account. however, even between weapons of the same weight, there will be some variation in how quickly one can accelerate them.

for example, say you have a sword and a hammer of equal weight. the sword's weight will be mostly homogeneous, so if you weighed one inch of that sword's blade, it will roughly equal one inch anywhere else on the blade (and the hilt is small and mostly covered by the fulcrum [your hand] so it is negligible). however, the hammer will have most of it's weight at the end, which means it will be much more difficult to swing than a sword. think about it.. the further away from the fulcrum the weight is, the more difficult it will be to accelerate the weapon. so a sword shouldn't accelerate as quickly as a hammer, holding weight and character stats equal.

however, although more difficult to accelerate, the hammer should end up doing more damage, because once you get that hammer swinging, it's going to have more momentum at the end of the weapon than a sword (because most of the weight is at the end). therefore, when the hammer hits it's target, although it won't be moving as fast, it will have more force due to it's momentum.

finally, i'd also say that blunt weapon damage should be more affected by strength than bladed weapons. the reason being, a sword cuts or slices into it's target, which may require sufficient momentum, but a blunt object is entirely reliant upon the force it has when it hits the target. at some point, a bladed weapon's momentum won't make as much of a difference, so long as it has enough momentum to cut into the enemy.

finally, i'm not very fond of the accuracy as you described it. in a game where you have to aim your weapon, you're right, you can't exactly assign an accuracy to it, but your accuracy with a weapon can be affected by the weight of the weapon (the lighter the weapon, the better control you have over it, and thus the more accuracy you will have). so the only way to implement accuracy is like you said... basically, you aim your attacks, but the heavier the weapon, the less likely it will hit where you wanted it to, just like you said.

now, the reason i don't really like this method is because it implies that you're assigning probability to each swing. a light sword will always hit where you plan it to, but a heavier weapon may or may not hit the intended target. as soon as random chance begins to play a role in pvp, actual player skill plays less of a role.

so.. my solution to this problem would be to scale accuracy depending on the player's skill with that weapon. so with 0 swordsmanship, your accuracy with swords will be pretty bad, meaning as you train swordsmanship, your attacks will begin to have a higher chance to hit the intended target. yes, there is randomness involved here, but once you master that skill, you will have a 100% chance to hit where you intend to. basically it takes the random accuracy out of the equation, unless you choose to stop training your skill before reaching 100, in which case you'll be sacrificing that reliability for whatever it is you intend to spend those additional points in. however, the kicker here is that in this case, it will be entirely up to you as to whether or not you will be subjected to the randomly calculated probabilities.

[Stump]

I can't wait for your ideas here Elfvis, I hope you will have something not so random as I wrote and with some deeper digging

God Bless you Lachrymose, I am glad that we have you in the the forums.

first off, i disagree that there needs to be a maximum speed.

I agree here with you... You are rounding the sharp corners. I have nothing more to say about that. Also you actually wrote what I got in mind when I was talking about balance of weapons.

finally, i'd also say that blunt weapon damage should be more affected by strength than bladed weapons. the reason being, a sword cuts or slices into it's target, which may require sufficient momentum, but a blunt object is entirely reliant upon the force it has when it hits the target. at some point, a bladed weapon's momentum won't make as much of a difference, so long as it has enough momentum to cut into the enemy.

Actualy I wont thought about that... Lets think now. What other games did with blunt weapons? As far as I can remember, they did something like "armor ignore". So, lets say we have a maul and we again hit that poor knight in the full plate. Now everything is happening as before, just lets say 80% of damage go through the armor. Other 20% goes to the armor. Also, you cannot cut arms with pure blunt weapons, you can just make them "inactive", because the hand - muscles and bones, should be crashed (also that adds some wound types to the Victors healing thread wound list). Also, blunt weapons should have bonus to the player "balance". Thats one of the ideas, that just appeared in my head:

Why in other melee games people just runing circles, they are hit and run. Now I was thinking, why in real combat people stand their ground, or at least moving slowly? Because that gives a better defensive position, because that gives you better balance, so you would not drop on the ground. So, why not to add something like that in the game? Battles would look more interesting, also people would not run around like stupid.

Back on topic.

Accuracy

Well, to hit a bean with an axe in real life is also some random thing, that is more determined on luck, so I totaly agree with your suggestion. One more problem solved

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Stump

Actualy I wont thought about that... Lets think now. What other games did with blunt weapons? As far as I can remember, they did something like "armor ignore". So, lets say we have a maul and we again hit that poor knight in the full plate. Now everything is happening as before, just lets say 80% of damage go through the armor. Other 20% goes to the armor. Also, you cannot cut arms with pure blunt weapons, you can just make them "inactive", because the hand - muscles and bones, should be crashed (also that adds some wound types to the Victors healing thread wound list). Also, blunt weapons should have bonus to the player "balance".

yeah, like you said, blunt weapons crush their targets rather than cutting them. so while a bladed weapon would cut into the enemy and possibly cause them to bleed, a blunt mace would have other uses besides just inflicting raw damage. for instance, striking your enemy in the torso could sort of knock the breath out of him, even if just a little.. in that case, you opponent's stamina should drop a little bit (because he has to catch his breath, during which he'll be losing oxygen). another idea is that you could strike your opponent in the head, and rather than simply doing a lot of raw damage like a blade would do, it may disorient the player, and if he's a mage, perhaps it could alter his ability to focus (decreasing casting time or perhaps spell effectiveness), or it might even just temporarily reduce his intelligence.

when it comes to using a bladed weapon, slicing will be useful for slicing tendons in the arms and legs, however on the torso and head, they wouldn't do quite as much, while a thrusting attack would be devastating. now, when performing a thrust attack, the player's strength, weapon, and the opponent's armor should obviously be taken into account when determining how much armor penetration the attack has.

[l0kkinen]

kewl, just like real physics, just remember that the correct formula for the damage from the impact is 1/2 of the object's mass multiplied with the object's speed in it's second potency. (my science english sucks and i couldn't find a symbol for that small number 2 on top right side of the value you want to count with) basically, it means that your strength, aka your top swinging speed (according to lachrymose) will be accountable for most of the damage from the impact. you skillfreaks shouldn't have any problem with that, right?

[catmorbid]

This could be something revolutionary, true. However, to be perfectly honest, the full extent of such a system probably isn't quite realistically doable in this generation of mmos. I would however very much like to see something like this on a single player game at least... By small simplifications it could become doable in mmos however, and that'd be just fine

Anyway. It's good that you came up with the blunt weapons -issue, because proper damage handling is something that is mostly lacking in games. No matter how you calculate damage using realistic physics, how about armor? I have no idea how to realistically apply physics to calculate armor protection. I guess it would simply come down to having few material properties which would then determine how each damage type is handled.

For example, how hard the material is would determine if it's easily penetrated by blades - but a high hardness value would mean good DR (damage resistance) vs. penetration but poor DR vs. impact. Material durability would be obviously needed to determine how long it needs for the equipment to wear down.

Also, if you use hybrid (or composite?) armors which use different materials together, such as a combination of metal and leather - or maybe leather and bone etc. you'd need layered armor to be taken into account.

In my mind the perfect solution would be to use abstractions in creating armor, but create a set of specific rules so that the abstractions would function in place of real physics. Basically, each armor type (platemail, chainmail, brigandine etc.) would have few set of properties, and the type itself would be one abstraction that needs to be combined with a material abstraction to create the actual armor. This way you could design individiual armor and have them be as dynamic as possible by giving the option to dynamically craft the armor from any material possible.

I'll humor you with a fully detailed example, with term explanations first:
DR (Damage resistance): % of damage absorbed by armor.
Hardness: determines initial damage reduction vs. penetration; low is good vs. blunt weapons and high is good vs. blade weapons.
Weight: Self-explanatory (the unit is of little difference, but I was thinking in pounds, i might be far off here though), but it can also be used to calculate the overall durability of the armor.
Bulkiness: A percentage penalty to certain skills like acrobatics, dodging, climbing, swimming (weight also matters here) etc.
Coverage: An abstraction of how well protected the armor is, which simply is used to multiply DR vs. very small and pointy projectiles and weapons such as long slim sharp daggers. I.e. DR 50% and Coverage 95% = 50%*95%=47,5%

Platemail has DR 50%, Hardness 80, Weight 50, Bulkiness 50% (halved if tailored for you), Coverage 95%

Iron (the base metal) has DR 0, Hardness +0, Weight +0
Steel has DR +10%, Hardness +20, Weight +0%
Legendary Meteoric Steel has DR +30%, Hardness -10, Weight -25%

A platemail crafted of the beforementioned materials would then be like this:

Iron Platemail DR 50%, Hardness 80, Wt. 50 Bulk 50%
Steel Platemail DR 60% Hardness 100, Wt 50, Bulk 50%
Legendary Meteoric Steel Platemail DR 80%, Hardness 70, Weight 38, Bulk (reduced by half weight reduction) 44%

Basically the meteoric plate would be superior to both iron or steel but it's initial damage reduction would be a bit more even. But anyway, I hope you get the point. You could easily apply this for every individual armor part as well - and actually have each weapon have their attributes derived from the material and template in the very similar way.

[Stump]

I am not sure that I understand everything right, but I have few notes:

Hardness: determines initial damage reduction vs. penetration; low is good vs. blunt weapons and high is good vs. blade weapons.

In fact, the more hardness, the better should be against blunt weapons (or my dictionary translated wrong), but it should depend on the size of that plate of armor. As you know, when you are shooting with a gun, the actual force of the bullet impact hit you, and there is such thing as butt-stock, that share that damage in bigger area, so shooter actualy wont get dammaged. It also depends on how "much are" of that plate of armor is on the body part. The area is just what I meaned in my OP by talking about "places". If you seen a new video, where SV office where shown on TV, you seen that minotaur and for some time his "skin" become all squared, then lets say that one square is one ""piece" of area.

Actualy now I am a little bit lost. We are now talking about materials characteristics, and what I know now is actualy Weight and Thickness. For me this whole idea is too big to be discussed whole with all specifics in one time. Lets take specific points of physics, and how we can transform it in the game mechanics. Ok? Because it is actualy difficult to take all this stuff in the head.

I am not remember much about this physics of materials from the School, but I will try to find as mutch information as possible.

Edit: I will try to dig deep into the physics, and will try to use it here.

[Elfvis]

completely not the response I wanted to make but I just go another idea along this post.

Combat sounds. Anyone who has played a recent FPS know that sounds and sight play more and more into combat. Most recently I stepped back into Counter Strike Source. Forgeting almost entirely the effect of getting hit close range by a grenade, the numb sounds that resonate after being to close to a dentonation or the blinding result of being in LOS of a flash back as its bright light sends shock waves through your optical.

I got this idea from the blunt weapon discussion above. HOW would you hear the world after you got the "wind knocked out of you" how would you see the world after 5% of your life is left and you have nearly bleed inside out all over the battle grounds. I know sounds have probably been discussed, but if someone gets the jump on me from a club behind I would LOVE to just go deaf to my surroundings and have a dizzying effect. Image the result in a duel. Its no longer "luck" but a well landed blow that turns the tide of war. MASTERing your balance and cognition of the world after taking a strike could make you stand out from the rest.

Still working on more ideas to the OP but this I just thought of on the fly while reading : P

[Stump]

Elfvis: Great ideas, the sound that is bonded with all that calculations would be awesome, also some of the effects after hit in the leg, head or stomach were discussed in other threads, but here cool new ideas you have .

Now, actualy if you could imagine in How deep this shit (system) is... I spend all my day by reading books about physics, and what I have now is General Idea is more bigger, also I have Swing speed formulas. I think I will work all night by trying to make all things in one and detailed.
Also, Catmobird, my previous post was actualy a translation mistake. Your idea is great, and I will try to use it in my "general" idea.
Btw, the "balancing" system looked before so cool, now looks much more smaller than I thought. The one thing that I can imagine right now with that "weapon weight balance" is just because of that Archimed discovered thing, so it would only change the Accuracy and Damage.

And the hard part will be to translate all that stuff in english.

[Stump]

Gradually changing swing speed.
Swing speed have to becalculated and sent to the server just when Weapon makes impact with a target. To get the real impact speed, the speed and way of target have to be known. Full speed would be calculated like that:
V = (V0 + at) + (V1)
V - m/s
a - m/(s*s) Acceleration.
t - s Time between begining of swing and the impact.
V0 - swing speed at the begining of swing.
V1 - Target move speed. Can be positive if he moves towards the weapon, negative if he moves away from the weapon and 0 if he stands still.

The biggest problem I see here is V1. I dont know how it would be actualy calculated, and this is the difficult part, because weapon and target speeds have to be calculated in one axis inside three-dimensional space. For the sake of lower lag, it also should be calculated just only on the moment of impact, not to be refreshed everytime. Maybe calculations done in the GPU itself? Just thinking.

Acceleration.
Formula have to be balanced for the game. Acceleration should depend on the whole weapon weight, weapon weight balance, encumbrance, character's strenght. Acceleration would be calculated when one of these stats would chance, or the guy would equip/unequip the weapon. When acceleration is calculated, it is saved to the Data base, so basicaly it is calculated before the combat.
a = Str*x - Enc*y - WepW*z - WepB*v
What numbers will be here depends just on how developers would want to balance the game. Some of you can think that his is just one more calculation of Attack Speed, but it's not. Here I have to disagree with your first post Lachrymose. Maximum Swing speed have to be in here, because basicaly without it in this system players would be able to swing items to the unlimited speeds. Imagine the swing not like Attack Speed, but like charge. The charging thing is your swing speed, you need to charge it from 0 to your chosen until max. You can to swing the weapon just a part of time and realease the atack, when you will do the damage, the speed will be calculated just when your weapon will hit the target. With heavy weapons like axe, to swing until the max would take some time, so in the animations you maybe have to swing the weapon over your head, or araond you. Something like that athlets do http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19aV6A3Pmcg . Maximum Speed should be determined by the Character Strenght, encumbrance and weapon speed.
Also, if your hit misses the target, it should take the time to slow your weapon down (lets say, half of the swing time), also it would give you the penalty to the balance.
MaxSwSpd = Str*x - Enc*t - WepW*z


Damage

Hit-boxes andSquares
I dont know how actualy hit-boxes work, but I just tried to think using my head. The way with "hit-boxes" I describet above is not the right description on HOW this would work, but the general idea is still the same.

To tell you how it works, I had to paint a few paintings. What you see here is the Hit-Box. Inside of it is the Maul. It can also be spiked to do the Stab damage, and also with sharp upgrades to do cut damage, it depends how the weapon maker will decide to do it. Now divide every hit-box wall in to the Squares, in this example it is 4x4. This is the squares that is for calculating the damage in the moment of impact. This is the same "places" I speaked before. Every Square have its stats: inflicted damage type. Lets say on the maul there is the spikes, they ofcourse give Stab damage. Now looking from the one side of hit-box wall, in one of this squares spikes takes 50% of view in pixels. Tat mean that in the moment of impact, because of the spikes 50% of the damage in this square will be dealed as the Stab damage, and other 50% because of the maul would be done as the Crush damage. All these calculations woul have to be done just in the making of the weapon moment and saved to the data base.
Something similar would be with armors too, just ther would be calculated how much area of the body armors cover, and for every square there would be given some part of the armor stats, depends on how much percents of body armor cover. For example, that hit-box armor part have 100hp. In one of the Squares armors cover 60% of the body, so that square gets only just a 60% of armor stats, that mean 60HP.

Here you see in wich quarters the dmg would be calculated in hit box impact like this. In every quarter hits in each other wuld be calculated sparated. Such system would keep hit-boxes could keep at the minimum, but places where you can hit would be much more. Also, it could be done that if combinatin of the squares is destroyed, they drop away from the body, and maybe takes some of the other body parts too, so the hit-box is become smaller and also give us some nice picture in the game. Every square calculations on the server would weight it, so let the player clients calculate it. When they calculate every sqare dmg, they send it to the server and server compare the results. If they are the same, he continue to work.
I was also thinking about items bouncing from each other, if they fail to go through each other. It would depend on the elasticity of material. I was read about it in the one physics book, but honestly I understand not much, so I keep this for you to discuss. Because of this the battles should look even beter.

Weapon Weight Balance:

P.S. I dont know is it possible to have so much hit boxes just for weapon?
Weapon weight balance should be one more thing that would give you some advantage in the fight. Weight balance I imagine something like that Archimed idea (I dont know how it is in English called). Picture:
1, 2, 3 and 4 - weapon hitboxes.
Side 1 - Everything to the left from the hand.
Side 2 - Everything to the right from the hand
Sides are here to calculate the Weight balance. I gues you understand it already. In hit-boxe's parts already have the weight, so we need just to sum them.
Side1W = PtW1 + PtW2 + PtW3 + PtW4 * 0,5
PtW1(2,3) - Parts weight.
Ptw4 is actualy the stick that have to be dividual in two parts. 0,5 is the proportion.

Damage Types: What type of damage weapon will do depends on what dmg dealing parts you will place on the weapon and with which parts you will hit. With the same weapon you can do even few types of dmg. For example, Haldberg you can use as the spear, but you can olso do much Cut damage or Crash with the side or handle. Every hit-box saide would do different damage. Because in the weapon making, when there is some part is added, new hit box is added (maybe from them it makes one single hit box), this is the box that walls can be devided in to the squares in calculate in percents how much every square will do dmg (for example 20% stab, 80% cut). Dmg types:
Cut - damage dealing in one line (depends on weapon). Verry good against light armored oponents. Dmg first deals to the armor, then to the clother and some kind of "leather" upgrades, then to the skin, organs (muscle for example) and finaly to the bones.
Stab - All damage concentrate in one square. Good against all, but have -50% penalty to the bones.
Crush - This damage type goes throught armors, unless they have some elasticity (light armors for example. Metal almost have no elasticity), it get absorbed in the clothes and "leather" armor, gives 5% damage to the skin, organs should absorb some of the damag, depends on what material stats they have, but they get 15% of crush damage then, the al damage that is left goes to the bones. Bonebraker attack.

Materials (based on Catmobird's Idea):
Materials have such stats:
Density - It has to be switched by developers for every material in the game, unless they have some crazy ideas for alchemists, for example the finding of new materials. Here is the formula:
p = m / V
p - kg/(m*m*m)
m - mass
V - bulk

Elasticity, weight and DMG ressistance formulas I dont know, but these stats should depend on each other. Inthe game they should do:
Elasticity - absorbs (not in percents) crusg DMG. It is armor against crush damage, For material to be more Elasticm it has to be with low density. Because it will be with low density, it would weight lower and will have smaller DMG ressistance.
DMG ressistance - In percents lowers the damage (except to the Crush damage). The bigger the Density - more DMG ressistance. Because it is more Density, that means more weight and lower Elasticity.
Weight - increases encumbrance. That mean that you will move slower, your max swing speed and Swing Acceleration will be lower.

For weapons I didnt been able to think what stats to give, so the basic should be Density and Weight. DMG ressistance would increase the Durability of weapon, and the lower elasticity, the lower penalty to the damage. It also should take a part in weapon bouncing. Imagine the fight with weapons from gum

Also body parts should have their stats. Skin, organs and bones. That would make sense together with Victor's healing idea.

Damage:
Dmg calculation formula. Especialy thanks to L0kkinen for providing formula. But I am not sure that I understand it right, so if you see the mistake warn us.
Original Formula:
Dmg = (0,5 * Weight) * V
In game, with calculations for every square there should be few formulas. Also, weight is used is just of the first side of weapon. In this calculation weight is shared to the Squares which makes impact with the tarhet (picture with red colors).
SqrW = Side1W * 0,5 / SqrQuant
SqrW - Weight for one square.
Side1W - Side 1 Weight
SqrQuant - The amount of squares that makes impact.
Main Calculation:
Dmg1 = (SqrW * V) (modifications)

Defense:
Now every hit-box square have steps of defense. Imagine the hand that is weared with Full Plate armor which is upgraded from the inside with some Leather. So, here we hit it.
1 step - When doing Cut and Stab damage, it goes here. Dmg is reduced here with percents because of the DMG ressistance of material that is the armor made of, what is left goes to the armor HP. Crush attack ignores the armor (unless it have some elasticity, that would reduce Crush attack percentaly, but do no damage to the armor.
2 step - Clothes and other light upgrades like leather. They have little of DMG ressistance and HP, but they have percent absorbtion of Crush attack. Also, Crush does no harm to this armor.
3 step - Skin. Depends on what materials stats devs would create for it.
4 step - organs like muscless. Depends on Devs Stats. That should also absorb some of the Crush damage. It also should depend on Endurance Stat.
5 step - Bones. All Crush damage that goes throught all these steps, damages bones directly. Also, stab attacks should have -50% damage on the bones. Also it depends on stats.

When all these steps reach the 0HP, then this part of the body dismember. Also, it should take a few body places combination to dismembar a whole arm for example. By doing direct damage to bones with Crush damage, if bone rach 0HP then he brokes, and player canot move that body part.

Accuracy:
Now I dont thinked much about this part, but I have something. Accuracy should depend on the All weapon weight, Character skill and Weapon Weight Balance. Now how to explain that "weapon weight balance"? Simple. From Side 1 weight take Side 2 weight. The closer result to the 0, the more balanced weapon is.


Some attacks in diferent body parts should have aditional advantages, this is the tactics for players to discover. Also elfvis idea of sound loud that would depend on the damages and such things is also great.

Have any questions, ask. Ideas? Post.


Edit: Oh, btw, around this idea other game features could be implemented like Alchemy, Healing, building and etc.

[Elfvis]

Gonna have to take some time to digest all that you wrote above but at a glance I really like your idea to add hit boxes to weapons and involve them in the game play.

[Lachrymose]

wow stump, you really outdid yourself this time.. i don't think i can comment on all of it, but i'll pick out a couple things i liked or didn't like.

first off, i don't think V1 would really need to be calculated.. players will either be able to walk or sprint, and if you're on a mount, there are several different gaits as well. basically, each gait would have a velocity associated with it, and when the player is using that gait (mounted or not), then we will already know V1, we'll just have to snag the velocity associated with the current gait. for example: stand=0, walk=3, run=6, sprint=10, mount_trot=8, mount_canter=15, mount_gallop=30

also, i do think max swing speed is necessary like you say when you incorporate the player's stats in as well, along with the acceleration of the weapon. my problem before was that there should be no max swing speed assigned to an item, however now i see that you could calculate a weapons max swing speed whenever it is equipped, by taking into account the strength and encumbrance of the player who equips it.

ok... so i equip a weapon, and it's assigned a max swing speed, where:

max_speed = strength*x - encumbrance*y - weapon_weight*z

the one problem with this is that if i drop/pick up something, my encumbrance will change, so the weapon's max speed will have to be recalculated. therefore, rather than incorporate the encumbrance into the formula for max_speed, i think it should wait until later to be calculated.

so instead:

max_speed = strength*x - weapon_weight*z

also, the hitboxes on weapons probably wouldn't be possible given today's technology. in addition, i don't think it's exactly necessary. each weapon can either be swung from the left, right, overhead, or thrusting (for swords, polearms, etc). so, if i do an attack from left, right, or overhead with a sword, the game will know that is a cutting attack. if i do a thrusting attack, it will be designated as a piercing attack (which as you said, would have more armor penetration than a cutting attack). there's not really any reason to be so detailed as to determine which part of the weapon made contact. if i'm doing a thrusting maneuver, the tip of my blade will be the part making the contact if it hits. therefore, when i initiate the thrusting attack, the associated "attack type" will be a "stab".

ok.. i gotta go right now, but i'll look at it some more later and see what else i can add.

[Resin]

Nice post. This is one of the directions I would like to see the next generation of MMOs take. I haven't finished the whole thing, I just got some it for now. I would love to see crafting where adjusting a counterweight on your hammer pommel actually affects the way it is used, and that players could actually develop affinities for weapons not based on artificial hitpoints but on the way their character swings it, its pace and range and accuracy.

Something to add to what Catmorbid was saying about armor.
When you throw in armored hitboxes it can get very exciting noticing where your opponents shabbiest pieces of armor or unarmored hitboxes are is an important part of strategy (God no invisible helmets or display one set wear another please).
I have often seen assassins described as 'finding chinks in armors and unprotected spots. I think it would be cool if there were 'pressure points/vulnerable spots' on top of hitboxes. These could include eyes, neck, fingers,wrist, inside elbow, armpit, kidneys, crotch, back of knee, and ankles. There could be more, I'm sure there are. The point is that these could be places, some of which are very hard or impossible to armor that could make mini-targets within hitboxes. If you can thread an arrow right through someones visor, land your sword in the centimeter of unprotected flesh between their helm and gorget, or find an unprotected pressure spot, that would make accuracy come alive.

http://www.naturalmotion.com/ Euphoria works by combining ragdoll physics with behaviors-I think this would be very much possible to implement the trick would to be able to get it less process intensive or to get the internet to be superbroadband mega-uber-ping.

[Stump]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

wow stump, you really outdid yourself this time.. i don't think i can comment on all of it, but i'll pick out a couple things i liked or didn't like.

first off, i don't think V1 would really need to be calculated.. players will either be able to walk or sprint, and if you're on a mount, there are several different gaits as well. basically, each gait would have a velocity associated with it, and when the player is using that gait (mounted or not), then we will already know V1, we'll just have to snag the velocity associated with the current gait. for example: stand=0, walk=3, run=6, sprint=10, mount_trot=8, mount_canter=15, mount_gallop=30

also, i do think max swing speed is necessary like you say when you incorporate the player's stats in as well, along with the acceleration of the weapon. my problem before was that there should be no max swing speed assigned to an item, however now i see that you could calculate a weapons max swing speed whenever it is equipped, by taking into account the strength and encumbrance of the player who equips it.

ok... so i equip a weapon, and it's assigned a max swing speed, where:

max_speed = strength*x - encumbrance*y - weapon_weight*z

the one problem with this is that if i drop/pick up something, my encumbrance will change, so the weapon's max speed will have to be recalculated. therefore, rather than incorporate the encumbrance into the formula for max_speed, i think it should wait until later to be calculated.

so instead:

max_speed = strength*x - weapon_weight*z

also, the hitboxes on weapons probably wouldn't be possible given today's technology. in addition, i don't think it's exactly necessary. each weapon can either be swung from the left, right, overhead, or thrusting (for swords, polearms, etc). so, if i do an attack from left, right, or overhead with a sword, the game will know that is a cutting attack. if i do a thrusting attack, it will be designated as a piercing attack (which as you said, would have more armor penetration than a cutting attack). there's not really any reason to be so detailed as to determine which part of the weapon made contact. if i'm doing a thrusting maneuver, the tip of my blade will be the part making the contact if it hits. therefore, when i initiate the thrusting attack, the associated "attack type" will be a "stab".

ok.. i gotta go right now, but i'll look at it some more later and see what else i can add.

I actualy not verry understand what these ...*x, ...*y mean? But I understand the whole point. The question is when is that "later"?

Hitboxes. Well, I Necromantic enlightened me a little, so I also think that multiple hitboxes on the weapons would be not necessary.
Now imagine you have a pure stick in your hand. If you try to stab with it, you would not do the "stab" damage, but you do Crush damage. If you try to swing it over your head and hit the target you wont do the cut damage, but it also would bee crush damage, so your argument is not right, there should be need to be calculated in the weapon crafting process which side and square of weapon would do how much of what type of damage. Also I talked about all these cubes with necromancer, and what I know it is possible to do such thing, but the way I wrote is inaccurate.

And V1 thing is a little inaccurate in my post. It should be not the target, but more accurately the hitbox weapon hits. So if the hitbox (for example leg) is on the move, there is have to be speed calculated.

[Stump]

Originally Posted by Resin

Nice post. This is one of the directions I would like to see the next generation of MMOs take. I haven't finished the whole thing, I just got some it for now. I would love to see crafting where adjusting a counterweight on your hammer pommel actually affects the way it is used, and that players could actually develop affinities for weapons not based on artificial hitpoints but on the way their character swings it, its pace and range and accuracy.

Something to add to what Catmorbid was saying about armor.
When you throw in armored hitboxes it can get very exciting noticing where your opponents shabbiest pieces of armor or unarmored hitboxes are is an important part of strategy (God no invisible helmets or display one set wear another please).
I have often seen assassins described as 'finding chinks in armors and unprotected spots. I think it would be cool if there were 'pressure points/vulnerable spots' on top of hitboxes. These could include eyes, neck, fingers,wrist, inside elbow, armpit, kidneys, crotch, back of knee, and ankles. There could be more, I'm sure there are. The point is that these could be places, some of which are very hard or impossible to armor that could make mini-targets within hitboxes. If you can thread an arrow right through someones visor, land your sword in the centimeter of unprotected flesh between their helm and gorget, or find an unprotected pressure spot, that would make accuracy come alive.

Those "spots" is actualy the same thing as the Squares in my idea is. They would actualy have that realistic damage dealing process as it is described in the "Defense" section . Add special feature for it, for example the ear, to get some sound problems if someone hits you in that Square.

[Necromantic]

Heh, meh, now writing my stuff from the irc here. ;P

Like I said, everything you mentioned is possible.
For the Weapon Weight I'd suggest using one object and giving it the weight attributes for each side instead of dividing it in different objects, as long as you don't use it for visuals it will all be good.
You don't really give hitboxes attributes because you only use them to check for collisions so just adding more hitboxes wouldn't help except for when you want to check whether the actual blade or only the shaft of a weapon hits.

The problem is complex formulas means more work for the processing unit and that multiplied by all the players can have some heavy impact on the performance since it has all to be done on the server.
Though in the end it all depends on their server and code structure and the hardware involved.

I think similar solutions to the defensive and damage type mechanics will be in anyways and the material solution is one of the least performance expensive.

[oophus]

Whow! Advanced stuff!

Nice thought out and all, but I thing we would want to first see this happen in the singleplayer games before we could start dreaming about it happening in any MMO.

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Stump

I actualy not verry understand what these ...*x, ...*y mean?

those were just meant to be the coefficients like you had in your equation.

Originally Posted by Stump

Now imagine you have a pure stick in your hand. If you try to stab with it, you would not do the "stab" damage, but you do Crush damage. If you try to swing it over your head and hit the target you wont do the cut damage, but it also would bee crush damage, so your argument is not right, there should be need to be calculated in the weapon crafting process which side and square of weapon would do how much of what type of damage. Also I talked about all these cubes with necromancer, and what I know it is possible to do such thing, but the way I wrote is inaccurate.

well, it of course would vary depending on what weapon your using. i used a sword for example, but like you said, if it was a staff, any damage dealt with it would be crushing damage. my point in saying that though is that you don't have to have those hitboxes do determine which side of the weapon hit its target. you already know what part of the weapon your character will hit with, depending on whether you're swinging the weapon or thrusting the weapon, and it might also depend on which direction you swing from.

Originally Posted by Stump

And V1 thing is a little inaccurate in my post. It should be not the target, but more accurately the hitbox weapon hits. So if the hitbox (for example leg) is on the move, there is have to be speed calculated.

well, i think that's a little too difficult to keep track of. the target's movement speed would be far more simple and it would still be roughly accurate. calculating the movement of the actual limb your striking would be a little unnecessary.

ok.. i thought about it some more and i actually have to change what i said. i don't think there needs to be a maximum speed calculated for your weapon. for now, let's ignore V1 (the target's velocity). here's the formulas i think we need:

Power = Force * impact_velocity

Force = mass * acceleration

mass = Weight / gravity

impact_velocity = initial_velocity + acceleration * time

power is what we ultimately want to find, and the other formulas we'll use in order to find power. if we combine these forumlas:

Power = ([Weight / gravity] * acceleration) * (initial_velocity + acceleration * time)

where Weight is the weight of the weapon (if you want to be specific, you would ignore the weight of the hilt, grip, etc. and only use the weight of the part of the weapon that will hit the target). earth's gravity is -9.8 m/s^2, but since this is a different world, it could obviously be different, although since players won't be floating around i would imagine it would be roughly the same. initial_velocity is whatever the attacking player's speed is, so we can use those numbers i gave above. for example, i said sprint=10, so that could be 10 m/s, which is pretty fast, but we'll just use that as an example. and of course, time will need to be calculated.. as soon as the weapon is swung, a timer will count how long it takes before it hits a target (if it does hit a target).

finally, we need the acceleration. now, acceleration is where we'll have to factor in all those things we left out, since it really depends on the person as to how fast they can make the weapon accelerate. strength will definitely factor into that, as well as encumbrance. acceleration can be thought of as an explosive force, the more explosive, the larger it will be.. it's difficult to accelerate quickly if you're over-encumbered and strength will give you a more "explosive force." finally, this is where we can add in the "charger" where you can charge up your attacks. here's the formula i came up with:

acceleration = ([strength * STR_COEFF] / [encumbrance * ENC_COEFF - Weight * WEIGHT_COEFF]) * (charge + 1)

where charge is a number between 0 and 1. you can think of it as a percentage.. if you charge your swing up until the charge bar is 50% full, then charge==0.5, but if you simply hit the attack button without charging, charge==0. so basically, charging your weapon fully will give you a 100% acceleration increase (this would probably need to be scaled differently for balance). so rather than your charge being your "speed" of which a full charge is maximum swing speed, it would relate to your acceleration, and the charge basically just adds a bonus percentage onto the acceleration. also, like you had in your equation, the COEFFs are just coefficients that would need to be balanced. i used division instead of subtraction because it seemed more appropriate, although i'm sure that part of the equation would need a lot of work.

anyway, that's what i've come up with. it's been a while since i took physics, so if there are any physicists that see a problem with my equations, let me know.

now, the thing we would want to add in is the target's speed. i don't think it's quite as easy as just adding their velocity into the calculation for the impact_velocity (final velocity when it hits the target). rather, i think we would have to do inelastic collision calculations. also, you could incorporate the softness or rigidness of the material the weapon is made from in order to decide how much of the blow would be absorbed.. anyway, i'm tired and that's all my brain wants to handle right now. i hope you can sort all this out.. ;P

[hotsaucexdo]

Originally Posted by Stump

Long time ago, I was wondering how weapon can have such things as speed, damage, accuracy? It actualy looks little strange when you are looking from the side of realism, but I keeped it in my head, because game mechanics looked that they will never change in the games.
Now here I find out about MO, and here old minds come back in my head. Well, if MO is going to be revoliutionary game, then this thing can be bringed to the next level too. The damage in most games works as items and character stats calculation and I actualy think this is becoming old. So, I was thinking about some realistic, more dynamic system.


First of all, remove all "weapon stats" from your heads, too long they stayed in there. Imagine the "weapon" as some kind material, that can be sharp, blunt, also it have weight and it should be the most important "stat" of the weapon. Weight can be balanced, giving form to that material. Now combine these parts, lets call them Axe blade, stick and handle, and here we have some kind of axe weapon. So, the begining are in the forges, where Blacksmiths make the weapons, and practicaly, every object in the game can be a potencial weapon, just like in real life. Also, I dont know how actualy the "weight balance" could be implemented, but I think the guide for this idea would be the phrase "stick with two ends". The one end is heavier, other is easier and etc.

Second step will be to make sure that we can wield that weapon, that should depend on character Strenght stat and weapon Weight stat. Lets say we can wield it.

Now we need to use this weapon, and here we see this Knight, he looks like he can survive the hit, so we aim, swing the weapon and hit that knight. Now roll back a little, we will find out how this actualy happended:

• Lets say there is the maximum speed you can reach with any weapon by swinging it, lets say 50. If your weapon speed reaches this limit, your body just cannot move faster no matter is that weapon axe or dagger. This maximum speed should be determined by your strenght, encumbance and weapon weight. MaxSwingSpddofStr - Enc - WepWegh. . You can reach this maximum speed with every weapon, but there is acceleration thing. The heavier weapon or the weaker player is, the longer it should take to reach that maximum speed. For example, to reach it with axe, you need to swing it like 2 seconds (so, in some situations it would be even not worth to "charge" the swing until max) and with sword you would need just a 1-1,5 seconds. Remember, this would be not same as Atack Speed, but like charge. For example, if you want to charge Axe swing until the end, you would need to swing your axe maybe even around your head, until you will be able to land this crush on the enemy with maximum speed.
• Now the difficult part, the impact itself. In Impact, damage GIVEN by the Weapon would be determined by the weight of Weapon, weapon speed on the moment of impact (for arows, that would be like throw) and the player strenght (if hit by mele, because when player hit someone with his weapon in hand, he still pushes weapon forward).
• And in defense the most important thing would be how much you hit with how much of your weapon. If it is the stab from the Sword, there should be all damage concentrated in one point, while if you cut with it on the target, the damage should be shared (not defense). Lets say there is 10 "places" where you can hit in one hit. You cut with your weapon and you hit the 5 places of 10, and your overall damage lets say is 20. Now you share it in 5 peaces, that would be 20 / 5 = 4 . The game takes the "place" from these 5 with strongest defense, lets say it is 10. 10 - 4 = 6 . As we can see, the damage done was not good enaugh to get through the armor and hit the body, so enemy takes no damage. Now you try to hit it again, and hit the same place, because it was left weaken (it is now 6), this time you try to stab. You concentrate all your damage to the one place 6 - 20 = -14 . As we can see, the weapon goes threw the armor and hits the body. Now, for the sake of balance, lets say every part "under" the armor have the maximum "health points", so you will not be able to kill the enemy with one powerfull blow by stabing him in the finger. Lets say this our mentioned point is on the hand and it has 30 hit points. After this stab, it is left with 30 - 14 = 16 . Lets say we stab again in the same place 16 - 20 = 0 . Damage taken to the body cannot be more than 30 in this point, so it stays 0. That 4 damage that left is just wasted. And lets say again, that there are two points (wrist) that hold other body parts (hand) together with the body, and you drop the hit points of them to the 0, then you just cut the hand away from the body.
• Accuracy, now most of it should be determined by the player, but as we know, if we try to hit someone with something, it not always hit there where we want. Same here. There should be something, that would make our hits not verry accurate. Most of it should depend on (without player aim) weight of the weapon, strenght of the player, dexterity and ofcourse how much balanced the weight is.

I was also thinking about, what if you swing the sword from over your head, so while you rising the sword, there should be some penalty in swinging, and when you landing it, some bonus to it from the pull of the earth, same would be if you swing it from under you, and if you swing it from side to side, there should be no bonuses or penalties at all.
So, for me this system would be much more dynamic, it would also include crafters into it, they could discover their own weight balance, so they could be known as the best Blacksmiths in the world. Also, for every type of fighter needs other type and balance weapon, practicaly every object in the game could be as potentian weapon. Now it looks realy dificult, but I think if someone would put more work understanding it, then it can be made not so deep-forest.
Sorry for English mistakes.

So any questions, thoughts, ideas? Please discuss

Well all of this is like a dream idea, and it is totaly awesome, the problem is getting it to work.. as it might be easy to understand by u explaining it, but the coding this needs for the game would be MASSIVE, not haveing in count that this is not a single player, this is a mmo, so its way harder to make this possible, i guess this should be awesome and realy realistic, but i wander if this could be reachable at this moments....

[Stump]

well, it of course would vary depending on what weapon your using. i used a sword for example, but like you said, if it was a staff, any damage dealt with it would be crushing damage. my point in saying that though is that you don't have to have those hitboxes do determine which side of the weapon hit its target. you already know what part of the weapon your character will hit with, depending on whether you're swinging the weapon or thrusting the weapon, and it might also depend on which direction you swing from.

Remember, that sword have two sides sharp (some people were talking about the damage dealed with sharp things also dependent on how sharp it is, so maybe it could be added to the calculations to), one side stab "sharp" (I couldn't find and right english word for this type), also sword has two sides smooth, they are dangerous too. If you hit the target with a sword smooth side it probably wont do much damage because of it's weight and area. And for example if you block someone attack with the sharp side of the sword, it should give a penalty on that weapon Square shapness.
Everything depends on how hit system will be implemented, with which side of weapon you will hit maybe can be decided when charging the attacks (by holding mous button 1) with the moves of mouse the direction of hit would be decided (lets say 4: from left, from right, over head, under). Also how flexible the weapon crafting system would be and balance (stick have to sides, remember, just like every weapon, EVERY have, where weapon balance come), because if you place on the top of weapon some metal ball, then when you stab the target, you will do crush damage. And the most difficult part would be when damage upgrades are mixed, for example "morning star".

Power = ([Weight / gravity] * acceleration) * (initial_velocity + acceleration * time)

where Weight is the weight of the weapon (if you want to be specific, you would ignore the weight of the hilt, grip, etc. and only use the weight of the part of the weapon that will hit the target).

The weight of weapon is actually the weight of weapon "side 2" (in the picture), which will be calculated ub the process of making weapon. About all other stuff I agree with you. Max Swing speed is not necessary.

now, the thing we would want to add in is the target's speed. i don't think it's quite as easy as just adding their velocity into the calculation for the impact_velocity (final velocity when it hits the target). rather, i think we would have to do inelastic collision calculations. also, you could incorporate the softness or rigidness of the material the weapon is made from in order to decide how much of the blow would be absorbed.. anyway, i'm tired and that's all my brain wants to handle right now. i hope you can sort all this out.. ;P

I dont know about all this stuff with hit-boxes and collision, so I have to read alot. I also have lots of simple physics ideas, but I see now that they all depend on the Collision thing.

Well all of this is like a dream idea, and it is totaly awesome, the problem is getting it to work.. as it might be easy to understand by u explaining it, but the coding this needs for the game would be MASSIVE, not haveing in count that this is not a single player, this is a mmo, so its way harder to make this possible, i guess this should be awesome and realy realistic, but i wander if this could be reachable at this moments....

Read my other Wall of text. There is the details and it looks even greater . It is possible, but it has to be lots of work to done on this. One way or another it wont hurt. I learn physics in such way too, and now I am reading stuff about hit-boxes and Collision.

[oophus]

When the devs have problems implementing a full system for hitboxes for the armor, and the bodyparts, then adding additional htiboxes for weapons etc would just be too much.

So as I said, a sweet idea on paper, but not something we would see with todays technology.

Just to give an example. No MMO out there (as far as I know....?) are now using more then two hitboxes for the whole body. Darkfall is just gonna use one hitbox, and only count for additional damage given for hitting a player from behind.

[Stump]

Originally Posted by oophus

When the devs have problems implementing a full system for hitboxes for the armor, and the bodyparts, then adding additional htiboxes for weapons etc would just be too much.

So as I said, a sweet idea on paper, but not something we would see with todays technology.

Just to give an example. No MMO out there (as far as I know....?) are now using more then two hitboxes for the whole body. Darkfall is just gonna use one hitbox, and only count for additional damage given for hitting a player from behind.

From dicussions of IRC, I understand that additional hitboxes to the weapon is not necessary (just for the process of making the weapon maybe), so all what I write here is not dependant on Hit-box, but on other stuff, while general idea is still left the same. But as we know there will be hit boxes for body parts, like head oh leg.
Again, it wont hurt, so continue discussing.

[catmorbid]

In order to properly calculate the velocity of an attack you have to take into account three separate entities:

Target, Player and Player's Weapon

Upon impact you would calculate the direction in 3-dimensional space and velocity of each entity, then compare it to the weapon and calculate the "true" velocity. I.e. completely opposite direction of movement would be a 100% increase in velocity while completely same direction of movement would be a 100% decrease in velocity.

So if you have Target retreating at almost opposite direction (say 75%) at V=4, weapon swinging towards target at V=6, and player standing still at V=0, the actual Velocity would be 6+ (-(0,75*4))+0 = 6-3 = 3. The opponent's movement would reduce the effective velocity down to 3 (talking about abstract numbers here).

But anyway, nice work stump, I see you've really gotten into this. However, the amount of hitboxes is likely to be at minimum, so you'd have to figure out different ways of doing different damage. So I wonder if different sides of a said hitbox could be designated a different damage type, i.e. with a sword, the blade sides would deal cut damage, the point side would deal impale etc. Without such a system you'd either have to have randomized damage type or swing-direction based damage type...

Anyway, keep up the good conversation, I have to go drink beer right now

[Stump]

Thnx catmormid. Also thnx for more detailed information how the calculations should work, and I am not sure that I understand every detail of your calculation, but I am sure that they are for good for this idea