DEV LOG 3: Directional Melee Combat
This week, other than working in the Unity Editor I have done some long and hard thinking regarding Project Delve. What occurred to me was that I really want to launch this game as fast as possible and if I want to create a dungeon crawler, then the extra systems might hold back the potential of the game and my velocity.
So, I think this game is going to have a strong focus on short battles, such as those in a GLADITORIAL ARENA! That way I can make combat extra polished, without needing to create extra systems and expansive levels. Basically the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion arena, but with a deeper and snappier combat system!
But, We Who Are About to Die is already in development, and as much as I love the ancient world (hell, I was an archeology major with a penchant for the classics), I am going to need a different theme to distinguish the project! Sci-fi? Fantasy? Mechs!? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So, I am going to need some type of unique vibe and I am going to need a new project name since DELVE was more about dungeon diving, but that can be sorted out later, cause there is one thing I know for certain and that is that I want a strong melee combat component to the game.
Setting up the melee framework
One thing I really dig, is weighty melee combat with strong timing elements and directional swings, making combat more of a deliberate dance than just a hurricane of mashed buttons. I also do not want blocking to be the be-all,end-all counter to incoming attacks, so I am going introduce a directional blocking system to resist directional melee attacks.
But before you go and think we have another For Honor on our hands, I want to keep the inputs pretty simple without movement directions influencing the direction of the swing.
Simply, the rules for the input system are as follows:
left mouse/left trigger swings the sword toward the left side of your target
right mouse/right trigger swings the sword toward the right side of your target
Both mouse buttons/triggers swing the sword overhead to attack the center of your target
Holding Alt puts you into a blocking stance and other mouse/trigger inputs determine if you are blocking left, center or right
Starting with Simple code
Before I dove straight into the animator and started adding animations to the character, I wanted to make sure that my input logic was sound. Creating the conditional statements with simple Debug.Log statements printed to the console kepts the code clean while I worked out the kinks.
For example, left and right inputs were EASY to implement. However, when trying to execute the overhead attacks with both button inputs, I often fired a combination of attacks. And no, that was not intended. So after discussing with my good friend and awesome game programmer at Tic Toc Games, Garth Smith, he suggested that I use cooldown timers and flags to control when buttons could be pressed.
After suggesting cooldowns and giving me a thorough briefing on the inherent dangers of Time.DeltaTime in my code due to the loose time structure, I opted for Time.time, implementing a bunch controls that guaranteed that only the correct attacks printed to the console.
Single directional attacks
With the console sorted out, I went ahead and selected some purchased animations from the Unity Asset Store so that when the player hits a fast input they execute a melee attack in a specific direction.
Good! This looks great! But it’s worth mentioning that, eventually, I would love for the animator to execute different directional animations when the player chains to a different directional input after a single attack. This stretch goal would make for a more seamless animation flow and afford for a faster flurry of blows encouraging players to alternate between different directions much like the Windfury Monk from World of Warcraft.
charged attacks and feints
Beyond just simple single attacks, something I definitely wanted to incorporate charged attacks that encourage players to create openings in enemy defenses and then exploit them with charged attacks for big damage! Lacking proper animations that hold a charged attack at a certain position, I chopped up some existing animations and held their position to create a stand-in for the transitional period between charging an attack and releasing the big swing.
But, as you can properly tell, the animations look pretty stunted/absent movement when held. However, this is functional at the moment if not pretty, so I decided to move on until a better alternative presented itself for better animations (spoiler alert: I found a better way to create these transitional animation states later on in the dev log).
On top of charged attacks, I also want the game to have a feint system where players can bait their enemies into blocking one direction but attacking from the other side— should they be skilled enough. While the player holds down a charged attack, they can transition swing’s intended direction before releasing a devastating attack at a target’s exposed side.
directional blocks
If you are going to have directional melee swings, then you sure as hell need directional blocks for those attacks. I went ahead and coded the blocking state, but alas I only had one block animation. At first I thought I might be able to use Two Bone IK Constraints to change the position of the blocking sword, but instead I purchased Flmpossible Creations Animation Designer from the Unity’s Dev Days of Summer sale.
With this plugin, I was able to create new directional blocks using the existing block animation! Altogether this bit of software was great and I can’t wait to use it to edit the charged attack animations I Macgyvered earlier in this devl log, but that is for another day!
the state of the combat animator
With everything said and done, this is what my Animator currently looks like! It may look like a spiderweb of insanity, but I assure you, there is method to the madness! Its a beautiful thing seeing the animation states trigger at the right time.
Next week! I am going to reestablish my Animation Layers so that both the walking and melee animations flow seamlessly with the stretch foal of possibly fixing the rotation animations that are acting a little wonky as I play around with additive animation layering.