Melee Weapon Archetype - War Shields

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

Summary

This would be a new melee weapon archetype.

Instead of being swung, the Shield would grant the player a (modifiable) dash, bashing into enemies in the direction of their cursor. This could be omnidirectional, horizontal, or some mix if we want to add in affixes or uniques that have that specific functionally.

The dash would work the same as vanilla's Shield of Cthulhu - instant speed in a given direction, invincibility frames until the dash ends, and a big hit on contact with an enemy. Additionally, we could add on hit effects to the dash hit, different types & powers of movement, pierce through, and many other small tweaks to make the archetype diverse.

Base Stats

The dash itself would have either no cooldown or a small cooldown, and that being the primary form of attack there'd be no base use time. Dashes would have very high knockback, sending even normal enemies far back.

Alt Use

The alt could be used to parry projectiles. With a high cooldown, this would make for a nice form of immediate reactive defense.

Projectiles could either be immediately killed, reflected, or a mix for variety. This'd require about a 30 second cooldown to make sure players aren't fully invulnerable to ranged attacks. Similarly, the hitbox of the parry could be modified per type or by affix in order to introduce further variety.

Types

Wooden Plank Damage: 7

Stone War Shield MinDropItemLevel: 5 Damage: 13

Iron War Shield MinDropItemLevel: 12 Damage: 17

Lead Battle Bulwark Shorter dash MinDropItemLevel: 12 Damage: 14

Golden Battle Bulwark Shorter dash MinDropItemLevel: 20 Damage: 26

Platinum War Shield MinDropItemLevel: 20 Damage: 22

Steel War Shield MinDropItemLevel: 25 Damage:30

Programming

[x] Create shield base gear
[x] Create shield types
[x] Create shield alt use

Spriting

[x] Create Wooden Plank
[x] Create Wooden Plank equip
[x] Create Stone War Shield
[x] Create Stone War Shield equip
[x] Create Iron War Shield
[x] Create Iron War Shield equip
[x] Create Lead Battle Bulwark
[x] Create Lead Battle Bulwark equip
[x] Create Golden Battle Bulwark
[x] Create Golden Battle Bulwark equip
[x] Create Platinum War Shield
[x] Create Platinum War Shield equip
[x] Create Steel War Shield
[x] Create Steel War Shield equip

Reasonings

This would be a cool new melee archetype that diversifies the gameplay loop and encourages much higher risk for much higher reward (if properly balanced).

pilchardheck commented 4 months ago

all the shields except steel (not sure if a sprite of anything steel exists yet)

CollinHerber commented 4 months ago

How are we going to differentiate shields as weapons vs shields as offhands? I feel this could lead to confusion on which ones are meant as attackable weapons vs offhands (stat sticks)

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

We could differentiate with different terms. I use both Shield and Bulwark, but let's say Shield would be the offhand one always - also marked with

X Shield
Offhand weapon

- and Bulwark is the main hand weapon. Names notwithstanding, we could play with a lot of different names or formats if needed.

CollinHerber commented 4 months ago

I like that idea. Think we could do something like War Shield or Assault Shield as I think those will translate better than Bulwark and that should be clear enough where the offhand is just "Shield"

I think it may be a good idea to have tooltips for "stat items" and "gear" be visually different as well. For example Weapon could look different from Head/Armor/Legs slot and maybe look different from the Ring/Amulet/Offhand slots.

That could help drive the point even further.

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

Yeah that'd work. It should be, at worst, a thing players get used to pretty quickly if we just have a few things to differentiate them.

CollinHerber commented 4 months ago

I'm assuming these will be two-handers?

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

I'm not super privy to the exact mechanic of two- vs one-handers, so I can't tell you. I'd imagine so?

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

@pilchardheck Gonna need a bunch more sprites for this - shields use an equip sprite, even when using functionality like vanilla's Brand of the Inferno's alt use. I also don't see the Stone Shield anywhere.

pilchardheck commented 4 months ago

I should be able to do some later today, and i’ll try to make the equip sprites as well

pilchardheck commented 4 months ago

for the brand of the inferno parry, it seems like only one frame of the cobalt shield sprite sheet is used - should i just make one sprite for the shields or do i have to do a whole sheet?

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

You'd still need the equipped shield on at all times. So yeah, the whole sheet.

pilchardheck commented 4 months ago

WoodenWarShieldItem WoodenWarShieldSheet all the stuff i think is required for the Wooden Plank.. i hope i've done everything correctly

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

This looks good! I'll test it out tomorrow. Don't worry about doing all of these ASAP, we can merge then do these over time instead of having to make a ton of shields all at the same time.

pilchardheck commented 4 months ago

StoneWarShieldItem StoneWarShieldSheet also made the stone ones

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

Awesome! These work great in game, thanks!

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

Gonna do some of the equip sprites myself just to get it all done with. Having a few examples helps a lot in wrapping my head around it lol

pilchardheck commented 4 months ago

seems like the only thing we need now (apart from platinum stuff) is the steel shield.. does anything steel exist already or should i make it myself?

GabeHasWon commented 4 months ago

SteelBattleaxe This is the Steel Battleaxe. I made it, just kinda did generic metal but shinier and super simple hueshifting. Don't think you can do all that much more with steel. Try whatever though, I'd be happy to update the axe if you make something more interesting.