Player damage contract (player_take_damage)¶

This page documents the damage intake behavior for a player in the classic game (crimsonland.exe v1.9.93), centered on player_take_damage (0x00425e50).

Source of truth: decompiles (Ghidra/IDA/Binary Ninja). Code under src/ is our reimplementation and can drift.

See also:

• docs/structs/player.md (player struct offsets used below)
• docs/creatures/update.md (where contact damage is applied from creature_update_all)
• docs/crimsonland-exe/frame-loop.md (game-over transition logic)

Inputs and side effects¶

Inputs:

• player_index (0/1)
• damage (float)

Global side effects:

• Sets survival_reward_damage_seen = 1 (used by survival_update handout gating).

Core gates (must-have)¶

1) Death Clock immunity¶

If the Death Clock perk is active, player_take_damage returns immediately and ignores damage.

2) Tough Reloader mitigation¶

If the Tough Reloader perk is active and the player is currently reloading (player_reload_active at offset 0x2a4), incoming damage is halved:

• damage *= 0.5

3) Shield immunity¶

If player_shield_timer (offset 0x2f4) is positive, player_take_damage returns immediately and the hit is ignored.

Applying damage¶

When not gated above, the function computes an effective damage scale and subtracts from player_health (offset 0x00):

• Base scale is 1.0.
• Thick Skinned (perk) scales damage by ~0.666.
• Ninja / Dodger (perks) can “dodge” the hit (random chance); a dodged hit skips all post-hit effects.

Death timer behavior¶

When a hit reduces player_health below 0, player_take_damage updates the player’s death timer stored at player_health - 0x14 (player_death_timer in docs/structs/player.md):

• player_death_timer -= frame_dt * 28.0

Other gameplay code continues to use this timer to drive the game-over transition once all players are dead; see docs/crimsonland-exe/frame-loop.md.

Low-health warnings¶

When the post-hit player_health is <= 20, player_take_damage occasionally resets player_low_health_timer (offset 0x2ec) to 0 when (rand() & 7) == 3 (⅛ chance per hit).

The exact meaning of the timer is covered in docs/structs/player.md (it gates warning effects/SFX).

Contact damage frequency gate (from creatures)¶

Contact damage is not applied every frame: creature_update_all uses a per-creature contact timer to throttle calls into player_take_damage.

Contract (per creature; see docs/creatures/struct.md):

• creature_collision_flag (byte, offset 0x09) enables the contact-damage timer.
• While the flag is set, creature_collision_timer (float, offset 0x0c) decrements by dt.
• When the timer drops below zero, native logic:
• adds 0.5 seconds to the timer (no loop), and
• calls player_take_damage(creature_target_player, creature_contact_damage).

This yields an effective upper bound of ~2 contact-damage ticks per second per colliding creature.