Following up on the topics of some of their other recent Kickstarter updates, OtherSide Entertainment posted some information about how damage — e.g. as caused by traps and fire — will work in Underworld Ascendant:

In our damage system there are two fundamental types (or classes for you programmers out there) of objects: ones that do damage and ones that take damage. Objects that do damage send a message to the objects they interact with that says how much damage they do. Objects that take damage receive that message and change their state based on it. Each is a property of the object in question, so these features are represented as Components in Unity. Many objects will have components for both doing and taking damage.

We realized early on that not all damage is the same. If I crush something, it has one kind of effect on an object, but if I burn it that can have a very different effect. To allow for this, a damage message has two parts. One is a number indicating the amount of damage, and the other is a damage type. Currently we have Fire, Electrical, and Kinetic (physical) damage types in the system but that list is designed to grow as we build out the game.

The swinging axe in the video has a component called DoesCollisionDamage. This component figures out damage based on the weight of the axe, its relative speed at the time of collision, and a hand tweaked multiplier that models the effect of a blade versus a blunt surface. It sends a kinetic damage message to the crate it is hitting every time it collides.

The crate actually has child game objects each with their own component to receive damage messages. This component can have a list of “resistances” that reduce the damage taken. Each resistance applies to one of the damage types and has a number to be subtracted from the damage and/or a percentage to reduce it by. Resistances might represent an object’s innate toughness, armor or magical resistance. Every child object also has its own pool of hit points to which to apply the damage.

You’ll want to click on through to view the aforementioned video. If you do go ahead and watch it — it’s rather impressive, not so much for its graphics as for the functional systems it depicts — you’ll want to keep this in mind:

The truly important thing to realize throughout the demo is that none of the inter-object interactions were hard coded. Each object only knows its part of how to react to the situation. The results come from their proximities and interactions. All we need to do, for instance, to make objects burn in the final game is give them the combustible component. You can expect that a great many things will be burnable in the Underworld, not always where and when you want. You will be able to pile up burnable things and make bonfires, burning defensive lines or ad hoc torches. You will be able to jam things in traps, but they had better be strong enough to survive the trap damage or they won’t last long. You will be able to drop heavy movable things on creatures or other objects and damage them.

There’s also a new hire at OtherSide:

OtherSide Entertainment is elated to announce that Dave Flamburis has joined our team as Art Lead! Dave is an industry vet having worked with studios such as Harmonix, Papyrus and Demiurge. He has worked on over 30 shipped game titles, including Bioshock Infinite, Rockband, Borderlands, Medal of Honor, and most recently contributed to the upcoming Adrift game. Dave is especially expert in 3D modeling and environments.

And strangely, the Underworld fandom don’t seem sold on the idea of playing the game as fighters:

With over 375 votes cast in the “What type of character do you anticipate playing?” poll in the forums, we think it’s safe to say that thief-style characters are the clear favorite. Sneaking through the Underworld and picking some pockets along the way is clearly a play style people enjoy. Throw in some backstabbery and trap disarming and, for 32% of you anyways, we’ll have made the perfect game!

Wizards were also high on the list, with 26% of you wanting to master the arcane arts. Judging from the comments, a lot of folks actually want to combine the two archetypes into a magical-thief type character. We can’t wait to see the Underworld’s equivalent of the Gray Mouser!

Fighters came in the lowest, with 17% of our fans wanting to smash their foes with huge battleaxes and yell fearsome battle cries. Most people, it seems, want to blend their fighter-y characters with some thievery or magical means, making them a bit more well-rounded.

And that’s all for now.