hit point

See also: hitpoint

English

WOTD – 9 December 2016

Alternative forms

• hitpoint

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

hit point (plural hit points)

1. (chiefly roleplaying games) A unit of damage, used to specify the amount of damage a character or object can withstand before it is defeated or destroyed.

   Synonyms: (initialism) HP, health point, life point

   • 1984, InCider: The Apple II Magazine, volume 2, Peterborough, N.H.: IDG Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 60:

     You can bestow keys, gems, torches and powders, and restore gold, food and hit points. Hit points and experience points can be increased to a maximum of 9999, although you'd better be careful.

   • 1986, MicroTimes: California's Computer Magazine, volume 3, Oakland, Calif.: BAM Publications, →OCLC, page 86:

     All characters have "hit points" that increase as they traverse the dungeon performing their brave deeds (unless they're smitten by some monster).

   • 2005, Bill Slavicsek, Richard Baker, “Playing the Game”, in Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies, Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Publishing, →ISBN, page 78:

     Damage reduces the monster's hit points; if the monster's hit points drop to 0, it's defeated.

2. (computer graphics) In ray tracing, the point in a scene at which a ray strikes an object.
   • 1991, Michael John Muuss, Lee A. Butler, “Combinatorial Solid Geometry, Boundary Representations, and n-Manifold Geometry”, in David F. Rogers, Rae A. Earnshaw, editors, State of the Art in Computer Graphics: Visualization and Modeling, New York, N.Y.: Springer-Verlag, →ISBN, page 213:

     The in/out status for the hit point is determined by examining the loop which has the subelement (edge or vertex) closest to the hit point.

Translations

A unit of damage

• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 生命值 (sang¹ ming⁶ jik⁶)

  Mandarin: 生命值 (zh) (shēngmìngzhí), 血量 (zh) (xuèliàng)

• Dutch: levenspunt n
• Finnish: elämäpiste
• French: point de vie (fr) m
• German: Lebenspunkt m, Trefferpunkt m
• Greek: επίπεδο ζωής n (epípedo zoḯs)
• Icelandic: líf (is) n (mass noun)
• Italian: punto danno m
• Japanese: ヒットポイント (hitto pointo)
• Russian: очки здоровья n pl (očki zdorovʹja) (mass noun)
• Spanish: punto de resistencia m, punto de vida m, punto de golpeo m, punto de salud m
• Turkish: can (tr)

raytracing

• German: Auftreffpunkt m

Further reading

• Health (game mechanic) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia