Miracle Medipacks!

[BioChoc]

Has anyone ever explained how medipacks actually work?

Not just in Bioshock but in pretty much all fps games, you get knifed, bashed, shot, poisend, gased, break your legs from falling, exploded, burnt, electrocuted, etc, etc...

and they all have the same core effect....loss of 'Health'.

Find a medipack and voila! back to normal....hardly realistic.

Why don't game designers incorporate specific medicines / operations needed to cure specific injuries?

[Target]

probably as people would moan that it was too realistic - its a bit like COD and COD2 - move out of the bullets and you heal quite quickly, or Half Life 2 - 'Major Fracture Detected' yet a medikit sorts you out, no problem!

I have only one thing to say:

Its a game! It doesnt matter if its not true to life!

[Maria Sunderland]

Yeah I can see that already.

Each time you get knifed or shot, the character needs to hurry to a nearby hospital to get it treated!

Doesn't matter if you're in Rapture, in Racoon City or in Silent Hill, if you find a hospital, you have some home. Now hope you find a doctor to take care of you, and hope VERY hard that he's not a monster or that he hasn't gone insane already. XD

[Olgerth Heidern]

Perhaps the medpacks are low-grade, one-shot regeneration plasmids. "Here, stab yourself in the eye with this syringe and feel better instantly as your wounds heal in seconds!"

[Target]

one doctor i wouldnt see would be...Steinman - a cut on your head you say? hmmm it sags - face lift time :)

[Newbiezilla]

In all forms of entertainment that are not reality-based, we will find certain leaps taken. That is to say, when playing games, watching TV, movies or reading books, we will find the non-existent or fictional characters withstanding more damage and injury than the person who we might meet in our everyday travels.

In short: It ain't real.

[Quanta]

What most people don't know about medipacks is that all that's inside the case is a large syringe. Inside this syringe is a liquid that contains billions and billions of nanites, which enter the bloodstream and repair the body's systems, then gradually dissolve into nothing. This is also how people survive things like explosions, or can walk around after a leg-breaking injury; residual nanites from the last medipack quickly regenerate enough of the damaged tissue so that the person doesn't die before they find another medipack or health station.

Of course, one must be careful not to overuse nanites; otherwise, this (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Borg_drone) happens.

[HamstersforFreedom]

You play a game where you shoot electricity and fire out of your hands. Why are you complaining about realism?

[stinkpackage]

Oh God, this is the same person who's previously whined about not being able to go to the toilet or tighten up nuts with the wrench in the game.:eek:

Either he has an extremely active sense of irony or he's an idiot.

I know which one I'd bet on.

[Target]

lol stink! i think i'd agree too...

[HiViH]

Saw far cry 2 videos ? watch it, it fixes the whole deal in a more reasonble way.

[audiosnag]

or try out Metal Gear 3

you have specific fixes for specific injuries..kinda cool

[unhappy1]

Why we listen to MP3 and not asking the artist to sing for us? So unrealistic.:rolleyes:

[unhappy1]

Where on earth you can find any medicine, virus, vaccine that can turns human or living things into zombies, walking dead? If not where are those splicers come from.:rolleyes:

[Quanta]

Where on earth you can find any medicine, virus, vaccine that can turns human or living things into zombies, walking dead? If not where are those splicers come from.:rolleyes:

You have to place a special order with the Umbrella Corporation if you want that kind of thing. :p

[5_day_forecast]

Remember, the secret to Adam is (as Tenenbaum recorded) its ability to generate stem cells. I imagine the health packs (and health stations) are just a shot of stem cells designed to repair any damaged tissue.

Not a far stretch of the imagination in a game where you're shooting lightning out of your hand.

[Kedjane]

In most games such as Doom or Bioshock I'd guess the medkits contain bandages, painkillers and splints so the player easily can patch himself up in a matter of minutes, reduced to a second as sitting on a chair healing 90% of the game time whould be retarded.
In Half Life you use the stations and kits to fill your HEV suit with advanced fluids that heal your body or something like that.

By the way splicers are not zombies, they're druggies.

[Target]

actually that does kind of make sense when you think about it - i'd forgotten that Tenenbaum had said that

[Kyorisu]

Lest we forget realism != fun in many cases.

[BioChoc]

Oh God, this is the same person who's previously whined about not being able to go to the toilet or tighten up nuts with the wrench in the game.:eek:

Either he has an extremely active sense of irony or he's an idiot.

I know which one I'd bet on.

Just so you know, I'd say my posts are intended partly as a joke, and partly as ideas to improve the gaming experince.
I think you will find that it's people like me (yes I do work in the gaming industry) that push the whole gaming experience forward.

If the world was full of people like you we would probably all be playing games that wouldn't even make it onto a saturday morning kids tv phone-in game!

[matches81]

"Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the earth" did a bit more about injuries.
a) You had 2 different kinds of "medpacks": Bandages and splints
b) You had to apply either to the limb hurt and matching the injury. A broken limb had to be fixed with a splint. A normal wound needed to be bandaged.

I really liked that. Walking with a broken leg was slower, too, and shooting with an broken arm, IIRC. Was quite nice and added to the immersion.

But for Bioshock to use something similar like this it would need to be less action-packed. Also Rapture has enough body-altering technology that makes medpacks and instant healing actually not too unbelievable.

[stinkpackage]

Just so you know, I'd say my posts are intended partly as a joke, and partly as ideas to improve the gaming experince.
I think you will find that it's people like me (yes I do work in the gaming industry) that push the whole gaming experience forward.

If the world was full of people like you we would probably all be playing games that wouldn't even make it onto a saturday morning kids tv phone-in game!

Oh dear.

At NO point have I intimated what kind of content I would prefer in a game so how you can cast me as somehow potentially responsible for the impending drop in game quality, I'll never know.

I'm all for a degree of realism in games but your suggestions so far have been frankly moronic.
Though I certainly look forward to your First Person epic where your main objectives are [1] to remove as many of the crumbs as possible from the bottom of a toaster (using various Vacuum cleaner attatchments earned as you progress through the game) and [2] filling out a mortgage application succesfully whilst being chased through a (realistically rendered) fish processing factory by a burning tractor. All of this with secondary objectives of stopping for a piss every 30 seconds and tightening up any loose nuts you happen to find en route.

Yeah, great fun.:rolleyes:

[BioChoc]

Oh dear.

At NO point have I intimated what kind of content I would prefer in a game so how you can cast me as somehow potentially responsible for the impending drop in game quality, I'll never know.

I'm all for a degree of realism in games but your suggestions so far have been frankly moronic.
Though I certainly look forward to your First Person epic where your main objectives are [1] to remove as many of the crumbs as possible from the bottom of a toaster (using various Vacuum cleaner attatchments earned as you progress through the game) and [2] filling out a mortgage application succesfully whilst being chased through a (realistically rendered) fish processing factory by a burning tractor. All of this with secondary objectives of stopping for a piss every 30 seconds and tightening up any loose nuts you happen to find en route.

Yeah, great fun.:rolleyes:

Crudly dismising ideas like you have done is down right ignorant. Do you think that we would have a game like bioshock if everyone creating is was as closed minded as you.

Here's a list of 'moronic' things you can find in many first person games... I'm sure all the gamers out there are glad that you weren't there to stop these ideas from leaving the drawing board.

1- Switchable Light Switches
2- Flushing Toilets
3- Operatable Machinery (cranes, conveyor belts etc)
4- TV's & Radios (with vision/sound/on off switches)
5- Moveable ragdoll bodies
6- Blood that can be cleaned up
7- Changable Clothes
8- Drawers & Cupboards that can be opened
9- Distructable Environments
10- Lights that can be shot out
11- Books that you can read
12-Piano's where the keys work
13- Glass that shatters
14- Purchasing food/drink
15- Using a camera
16- Sleeping in a bed
17- Hackable machinery
18- Footprints in snow
19- Hidden Items / Secrets
20- Seagulls

There's 20... feel free to add some of your own...

[stinkpackage]

2- Flushing Toilets
4- TV's & Radios (with vision/sound/on off switches)
6- Blood that can be cleaned up
7- Changable Clothes
11- Books that you can read
12-Piano's where the keys work
14- Purchasing food/drink
15- Using a camera
16- Sleeping in a bed
20- Seagulls

There's 20... feel free to add some of your own...

I struggle to recall ANY occasion where any of these has enhanced game play AT ALL. Why would you want to flush a toilet or sleep on a bed????:confused:

I'll settle for realistic physics, good AI, destructable environments, interaction with items which AFFECT the game (ie, hackable machines, the ability to set traps), a wide choice of ways to play the game. I'm not in the least bit interested in using the ability to buy a drink and switch a tv on and off for half an hour.

[Demitasse]

I struggle to recall ANY occasion where any of these has enhanced game play AT ALL. Why would you want to flush a toilet or sleep on a bed????:confused:

I'll settle for realistic physics, good AI, destructable environments, interaction with items which AFFECT the game (ie, hackable machines, the ability to set traps), a wide choice of ways to play the game. I'm not in the least bit interested in using the ability to buy a drink and switch a tv on and off for half an hour.

It's for immersion. Some people actually like the fact that you can flush a toilet or turn on a t.v. It gives them a sense of reality.

[BioChoc]

I struggle to recall ANY occasion where any of these has enhanced game play AT ALL. Why would you want to flush a toilet or sleep on a bed????:confused:

I'll settle for realistic physics, good AI, destructable environments, interaction with items which AFFECT the game (ie, hackable machines, the ability to set traps), a wide choice of ways to play the game. I'm not in the least bit interested in using the ability to buy a drink and switch a tv on and off for half an hour.

So you dont think switching on a tv to view a news footage relevant to the story of the game is important?

Buying able to buy a drink from a bartender in order for him to give you some valuable information is not an important ability?

Being on a beach where all there is is sand and sea is a good environment? you don't think adding things like seagulls, crabs, sandcastles, beach umberelas, etc etc would improve the environment?

Enough said...no more ridiculous comments please!

[Newbiezilla]

1- Switchable Light Switches
10- Lights that can be shot out
Splinter Cell wouldn't be as cool without this.
2- Flushing Toilets
There for ****s and giggles.*
3- Operatable Machinery (cranes, conveyor belts etc)
Can't think of any game with that (least not offhand)
4- TV's & Radios (with vision/sound/on off switches)
Put to great use in Prey.
6- Blood that can be cleaned up
7- Changable Clothes
8- Drawers & Cupboards that can be opened
Fahrenheit (Or Indigo Prophecy to some.) Great game.

Eh, i'll not bother giving any more examples of games. You've made your point quite well.
I struggle to recall ANY occasion where any of these has enhanced game play AT ALL. Why would you want to flush a toilet or sleep on a bed????:confused:
Flushing toilets, using taps, they are all things that add to immersion. Thats all in the progress to making better games.

As for sleeping in a bed? Play Morrowind or Oblivion.
I'll settle for
Lucky for us, game developers don't ask what you'd settle for. They aspire to create their own masterpieces.

There will always be doubters, I could never stomach doubters. Great quote from Sander Cohen, and oh, so true.
* See what I did there?

(Oh, when it comes to the PS3, there is something i'm envious of in terms of games they'll be getting, i'll make a thread on it in off topic though... I'll title it Quantic Dream)

[gxs]

And about instant health.... I don't know the name of the game but i do remember one that used some sort of a motion based healing. You had to equip a medikit and then you used some motions for different injuries. It was a boring task. Yes you do like it the first 5 times you get shot/stabed/squished but it gets boring really fast.

[Destop]

Has anyone ever explained how medipacks actually work?

Not just in Bioshock but in pretty much all fps games, you get knifed, bashed, shot, poisend, gased, break your legs from falling, exploded, burnt, electrocuted, etc, etc...

and they all have the same core effect....loss of 'Health'.

Find a medipack and voila! back to normal....hardly realistic.

Why don't game designers incorporate specific medicines / operations needed to cure specific injuries?

Reason: detracts from the actual game. Contemporary medicine consists of a string of actions you need to take to treat wounds. Implementing this is a game in itself, and would soon break up the pace of the game it's embedded in. As such, games which are fast-paced in nature do not work well with embedded medical simulators.

Metal Gear Solid 3 has a "medical simulation element", but it works in this type of game because you are mostly sneaking around, trying not to be detected, so you have the time to apply bandages, etc. That, and capturing/eating wildlife increases the who survival feeling of the game.

Hey, there are even actual medical simulation games out there, which take it all to the next level. Just have a poke at Trauma Center and ask yourself: what would happen to Bioshock if the team had embedded this type of minigame into it? Would it have been a blessing or a curse?

[digitaLbraVo]

Crudly dismising ideas like you have done is down right ignorant. Do you think that we would have a game like bioshock if everyone creating is was as closed minded as you.

Here's a list of 'moronic' things you can find in many first person games... I'm sure all the gamers out there are glad that you weren't there to stop these ideas from leaving the drawing board.

1- Switchable Light Switches
2- Flushing Toilets
3- Operatable Machinery (cranes, conveyor belts etc)
4- TV's & Radios (with vision/sound/on off switches)
5- Moveable ragdoll bodies
6- Blood that can be cleaned up
7- Changable Clothes
8- Drawers & Cupboards that can be opened
9- Distructable Environments
10- Lights that can be shot out
11- Books that you can read
12-Piano's where the keys work
13- Glass that shatters
14- Purchasing food/drink
15- Using a camera
16- Sleeping in a bed
17- Hackable machinery
18- Footprints in snow
19- Hidden Items / Secrets
20- Seagulls

There's 20... feel free to add some of your own...

Don't forget all of these things are completely necessary for immersion. What, my character can't reach out and push a friggin' button a TV? S/he can't shove through a glass wall, birds are dead. How much of that do you honestly thing doesn't happen in real life? How much of that is NECESSARY to player action? -NONE-.

The point he's making is, if you made medical procedures long, tedious and precise operations, how much game time would be wasted when all I *need* to do is grab the health pack and move on. There's a difference between foot prints in snow as a tracking/tricking technique, in comparison to how well I can watch an animation of me giving myself a splint.

[matches81]

I think there are some steps in between using a medpack and actually stitching a flesh wound using your mouse as control you could do in a game. I would like the idea of having a "health system" that's a bit more involved than picking up medpacks. I've given an example of a slight extension to that simple "one item cures all" system which worked quite well IMHO. And Destop mentioned MGS3, which I didn't play.
However, I also agree on some people saying that it has to fit into the rest of the game. Sadly, Bioshock ended up being rather fast-paced, so a more intricate healing procedure would be deadly on many occasions and therefore would take some of the fun out. A healing system that needs the player to think about it for a short amount of time requires a game that gives the player time to do so.

@stinkpackage
Why is it bad to question some game mechanics that are common these days? It's the only way something new can come up.
The things you rejected as not affecting the game play at all:
Most of those things could easily be used to create small puzzles. Flushing a toilet combined with the ability to drop some stuff in the toilet could be used to flood a bath room, causing a small distraction, for example. TVs, radios and books can be used to diversify the picture of the world and thus increase immersion or to tell some part of a story. Changable clothes were put to great use in Hitman for example. Older RPGs often had the need of your characters to eat / drink in them. I liked that because you could actually run out of food and had something to do about that. Using cameras is a common thing in games nowadays, as far as security cameras are concerned. If you just allow yourself to think a bit further or just recall some of the games you played you'd probably find a use for the other things, too. Simply denying them because they're either not standard in today's games or not completely obvious is pretty narrow-minded.

[Criscokilika]

You simply take the enitre medpack and scarf it down whole just like you do with pep-bars with the wrapper still on and glass bottles of vodka.

[Skalui]

That one guy, the ghost in Arcadia who is gonna get some "spliced up in wayz I never dreamed of" ass mentions it as a med hypo. Maybe its an injection.

[BioChoc]

OK. Some of you out there are missing my point.
Firstly I was asking for an explanation as to why a medipack heals all types of wound instantly...which some of you have managed to answer in one way of another.

Secondly, Don't automaticaly asume that having diferent types of medicines/operations for differnt injuries will harm the games flow or fast paced action... I'm mean come on...surely if you want a truly fast paced game why not abolish health altogether...why would you want to waist time looking for health a health pack of scavanging for food when you could be blasting stuff?

[yogibbear]

3. Operable Machinery

Can't think of any game with that (least not offhand)


Half-life 2... remember the electro-magnet crane bit.

[Big_Daddy]

Metal Gear Solid 3.

[mrobviousjosh]

Sorry I haven't read through all the posts if this has already been covered but:
Deus Ex (locational damage)
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth (locational damage- no hp's, %'s, etc.) Damage also caused the following: black and white vision, decreased accuracy, decreased speed, shaky screen, and slowed speed (including enemy speech).

Honestly, the present system works fine- too much focus on medkit "pieces" and locational wound damage can slow down gameplay which may or may not be desireable (especially for a FPS).

[Badger1977]

Cant be assed for a long explination but....

Damage is caused to make the game more difficult so we wouldnt want to remove that. HPs are used to heal all injuries quickly to get your ass back into the fight rather than assing around with collecting a spec. MP for a spec. injury.

init :)

[Goldsun1715]

In MGS3 there was a thing where you had to get specific medicine's such as pills, bandaid's and other stuff like that, it was really annoying, I like the single healthpack better.