Is LifeMeter a subtrope of HitPoints?

Is Life Meter a subtrope of Hit Points?

'Cause it seems that to have a Life Meter, you must have an incremental way of depicting damage, a.k.a Hit Points?

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

I don't think so...? One is the mechanic while the other is a specific way of displaying that mechanic. Like how Mana is a different concept from Mana Meter.

Also, Hit Points only exists where it can exist (such as video games), since otherwise that's just "health." But Life Meter can exist in any medium as a depiction of health.

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

So, a game where you only know that health is calculated as hitpoints, literally labeled "HP", because you've seen the code, would not count as Hit Points?

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

So the only time you'd see the "specific way of displaying that mechanic" is if the work uses the mechanic? That would make it a subtrope.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The question to ask is whether there can be examples of Life Meter that doesn't involve Hit Points.

However, reading examples Hit Points, just about anything that involves the health of a character is listed, so anything at all that could possibly be displayed as a Life Meter could be included there. A lot of them are just on the basis that computers only work with numbers, so that's how you have to code it. Either just 1 to 0, or from a larger number. Some games include injuries that slow you down or give you some other drawback, while most don't. The description makes a reference to Exact Time to Failure, meaning there's no issue until you reach zero, which if taken at face value means those that give drawbacks are misuse.

Check out my fanfiction!

Most Wounded Mechanics are usually separated from the actual hp bars / life meters though injuries and the like are based on hits taken and where and not your actual HP bar, the only ones that don’t really are the ones like Final Fantasy XIII-2 and have diminishing returns on the amount you can heal on HP bars.

In it I think it was 1 or 2% of damage taken could never be healed back thus your max HP bar continued to disintegrate the longer you were in battle.

Looking at the examples in Life Meter, my answer of "no" remains the same. The display can still show up without the actual mechanic. I'm not sure how to explain what I'm trying to say other than "Look at the non-video game examples and you'll see that there are examples without the actual mechanic of Hit Points." That's what I was trying to get at before, anyway.

Note the rest of my comment.

edited 16th Dec '17 8:23:20 AM by WaterBlap

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

The majority of non-videogame examples demonstrate a visual measure of how close the character is to death or incapacitation. I don't understand your warrant about "health", so the claim is only a tautology for me. "If HP don't exist, then health can't be HP."

You don't give evidence for why HP cannot exist in pinball, card games, or references to computer games. Each of the "non-video game" examples falls into one of those three categories. Each of the examples is about a visual representation of how close a character is to death or incapacitation. Is there some other aspect of the trope that is missing from my understanding?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Maybe I don't give evidence for why HP cannot exist in pinball, card games, or computer games is because I never said HP cannot exist in those types of games.

edited 17th Dec '17 5:44:44 PM by WaterBlap

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

Hit points refers to the points that indicates health, while life meter refers to the gauge that indicates health. Both serve the same purpose, just in different ways (although they overlap a lot) therefore they aren't subtropes to one or the other, just sister tropes.

My first reaction was: while you can obviously have hit points without a life meter (it's common in tabletop games), you can't have a life meter without hit points.

But then it occurred to me that you could have a life meter in a comic as a visual gag without actually having the character have HP.

Of course, that would be humorously implying that the character does have HP, so I'm not sure if it counts or not.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Weighing in here: I cannot see how the presence of a Life Meter does not imply the use of Hit Points in some capacity, even if it's purely internal.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

See, for instance, fighting games where the hit points tend not to be shown, only the life meter.

There sure as hell are hit points being used behind the scenes, though. ... I think that's what you were implying.

edited 18th Dec '17 1:26:14 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

"behind the scenes"

Yes, all that programming numbers and such. But are we really going there, in regards to troping?

- We can... There are Implied Tropes.

So, mods, adding a line going "Is a Sub-Trope of Hit Points" in Life Meter, and the converse for Hit Points. Yea? Or Nae?

Also, same for Mana and Mana Meter?

edited 18th Dec '17 6:46:51 PM by Malady

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

Even if the actual number on a life meter is not shown their is still a number hidden. In fighting games every attack still does a set amount of hit points of damage. Also when other works use life meters its still HP IE like this.

Something like Bars Without Numbers might actually be a decent trope for that, now that I think about it. Things like Makai Kingdom for example shows no xp figures for anything, just shows a bar to level but under the hood everything is still a number.

edited 18th Dec '17 7:17:02 PM by Memers

> "Even if the actual number on a life meter is not shown their is still a number hidden."

Not if it's a comic book, and the life meter is simply being used as a visual gag to show how hard a character has just been hit. (I actually saw this recently, which is why it came to mind.)

Of course, that's still implying that the character has hit points, even though they don't, so I think I'm still ok with it being a subtrope. I just want to point out that it doesn't actually mean hit points exist.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

If Hit Points don't exist, it's a Subverted / Averted Implied Trope?

Aversion, usually. Subversion only if there was some expectation that Hit Points were actually a thing?

edited 19th Dec '17 12:10:40 PM by Malady

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

Okay. So you believe the non-video game examples in Life Meter are also examples of Hit Points?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

IMO yes they would be, its a numerical based gauge on how much life you have thus hit points.

So, do we all agree that Life Meter is a Subtrope of Hit Points, and I can add that to the description of both pages?

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

I dunno, I thought Hit Points (the trope) is about the number we directly see, not those that can only be seen in programming.

The description would disagree with you:

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.