| rdfs:comment
| - Rather than just give an enemy - or occasionally your character - a generic Life Meter, or show the exact number of hit points, some games will show the enemy taking damage on screen. Sometimes this makes sense and looks good, other times, not so much. The bad guy's armor having bullet holes in it is all well and good, but weren't you using a sword? Sometimes, this can even affect gameplay. Damage the enemy's laser cannon enough, and you'll disable his most powerful attack. Or perhaps discover that he's not left handed, or make him angry, and proceed to get your ass handed back to you.
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| abstract
| - Rather than just give an enemy - or occasionally your character - a generic Life Meter, or show the exact number of hit points, some games will show the enemy taking damage on screen. Sometimes this makes sense and looks good, other times, not so much. The bad guy's armor having bullet holes in it is all well and good, but weren't you using a sword? Sometimes, this can even affect gameplay. Damage the enemy's laser cannon enough, and you'll disable his most powerful attack. Or perhaps discover that he's not left handed, or make him angry, and proceed to get your ass handed back to you. There are three main variations of showing damage:
* Color change: The simplest form of showing damage is changing color palette. Flashing when being on low health also counts in this category. Usually many older and simpler games or games needing to keep age ratings low belong to this category.
* Particle emit: Characters and objects emit or spawn things when they're damaged. For an example, damaged character may start sparking, smoking or being on fire. This is usually more of mechanical objects and characters. Damage Is Fire also fits here.
* Real signs of damage: The character or object shows physical signs of damage. When the game uses 3D models, they go into 2 subcategories:
* Retexture: Texture Swap: this frequently occurs in polygonal 3D games, with characters getting more and more bloody as they take more damage through the use of so-called "painskins", one or more replacement surface textures (skins) that get swapped in when a creature or individual body part/article of clothing/armor reaches a certain amount of damage. Newer games instead have partially transparent "decals" that are composited over the exact areas that damage occurs.
* Model change: Full model swap: it's when besides seeing different textures, a model or sprite will be changed even more. Can be a source of Nightmare Fuel in some cases. While the boss may Turn Red, and get a power boost, it doesn't necessarily have to do so. Note that Shows Damage is not mutually exclusive with Critical Existence Failure, which makes it all the more hilarious when the two overlap. In RTS games, this is typically shown via Damage Is Fire, at least for buildings and vehicles. See also Flash of Pain. Examples of Shows Damage include:
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)