Improvements to the combat system

[brigazvi]

Fighting is the main part of the game, and it affects all gameplay. I thought of some things that could improve it.

1. More reliable animation. I know it's a lot of work. But it is possible to start a little rush in the current animation of the attack. It seems slow and not flowing. I suppose it's a relatively simple change.
2. Combos. As with many fighting games, we can create a series of attacks when the latter does a lot of damage. This also requires a lot of work on the animation but we can initially use the current strong attack. Only instead of the current situation that it is random, it will happen after 3 attacks. It adds rhythm to the game.
3. Evasion. Have a button that will allow quick rollout to the side or something in style. This also requires creating new animations. But perhaps it is possible to find a solution for this as well.

[brigazvi]

@dorkster I want to know what you think about it. Is the intial solution that i proposed really easy and feasible in the near future?

[dorkster]

More reliable animation. I know it's a lot of work. But it is possible to start a little rush in the current animation of the attack. It seems slow and not flowing. I suppose it's a relatively simple change.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. Are you asking for the hero to move forward a little when attacking? I supposed that would only make sense for melee characters.

Combos. As with many fighting games, we can create a series of attacks when the latter does a lot of damage. This also requires a lot of work on the animation but we can initially use the current strong attack. Only instead of the current situation that it is random, it will happen after 3 attacks. It adds rhythm to the game.

Definitely something that's been discussed. Some sort of 3-hit, light-light-heavy combo for the standard attacks would help vary things up. I think this can be accomplished by giving the player an invisible status effect after normal attacks, then executing the strong attack when two stacks of the status effect are active. Here's how I imagine the animations breaking down per weapon type:

• Swords: Quick horizontal slash to replace normal attacks. The existing overhand slash would be the strong attack
• Bows: Existing animation for normal attacks. Stretch the last few frames of the normal animation to give the strong attack. No new art, so maybe add a visual effect to the arrow to distinguish it further.
• Staves: Existing animation for both attacks. String attack would have different art for the projectile.

Evasion. Have a button that will allow quick rollout to the side or something in style. This also requires creating new animations. But perhaps it is possible to find a solution for this as well.

Functionally, this would be the same as Shield Bash, but with protection buffs instead of dealing damage. A "roll" animation in particular might be tricky, since having the character rotate might mess up the draw order of their worn equipment. Maybe a "dash" would be more appropriate (Clint did something like this in Wandercall), but that might be too similar to Shield Bash.

Personally, I don't think a dodge animation would be useful for flare-game in particular. The enemy animations are too fast for the player to effectively react.

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I'd like to close off by saying that changing hero animations right now is non-trivial. Each piece of equipment has a separate blend file. I'm not sure of the process, but hopefully you could rig the animation in one file and copy it to all the other files. Also keep in mind that we have a different character model for each gender, so this workload is effectively doubled.

[brigazvi]

@dorkster

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this.

I just meant that in the melee attack the frames will change more quickly. They're a bit too slow.

I'd like to close off by saying that changing hero animations right now is non-trivial.

I know. So I suggested simpler solutions.

Regarding the combos, I think that the current art can be used, and only cause the fourth blow to be stronger, as it was until today was a random blow.

[dorkster]

I just meant that in the melee attack the frames will change more quickly. They're a bit too slow.

Thanks for clarifying. Honestly, I wouldn't want to make the animations faster. They're already quite quick at 400ms.

If we implement combos, we do want some way of indicating to the player that they are activating them. So if the character animation doesn't change, maybe we could add some sort of simple visual effect. Something like a glowing aura, visible wind, etc.