FreeGameDev

Share your ideas here about melee combat and how your system would work
Wave discussion: http://antimatter15.com/misc/read/?goog ... +_8Fad615A

Heres mine:
Using the md5 mesh with tagged skeletal bones we can do damage on a per bone basis (with some trickiness)
Per bone armor, resistance values coped with player hit facing(front,back,sides) would allow to have specific weaknesses that can be exploited
Limb max damage that results in crippling
3 styles of melee play:
Fast tricky and stealthy style with accurate but low damage hits
Combo style with stances and counters with moderate damage and dodging
Heavy style with high damage and allot of defense(armor) but slow movement

Imo, per bone, while an interesting experiment, would be too resource intensive for anything with more than 5 people...
In a more specific review:
Sides could be ignored, back and front only.
Per limb health which results in crippling is good ( what would this affect? Would we have to make limbs have roles?)

fast + accurate is a bit of a double strength. esp, if you think of how that would play out in-game, how will the player be able to aim so quickly?
giving only one style stances and counters is also doing a lot of work that only 1/3rd of the players would see, I'd rather say make the stance and counters available for all, but different classes more or less skilled with them (and have all attacks variably counterable/blockable)
Heavy style.. I don't think armour should be of too much concern in the combat styles. You should be able to wear heavy armour, and use light weapons, or use light armour with heavy weapons, the items themselves discerning how you perform and not the style you are using

Imo, per bone, while an interesting experiment, would be too resource intensive for anything with more than 5 people...

Not really as it will calculate only when hit and it could be done on clients
I don't think theres is an issue but we could do some tests and see if it works or not

fast + accurate

fast movement not necessary weapon speed

giving only one style stances and counters is also doing a lot of work that only 1/3rd of the players would see

The fast style would not have time for combos as they have low damage and need to target weakness while the heavy style would have "heavy armor"(aka plate) and heavy weapons so its movement is slow and has no flexibility thus can't do stances something like in mount and blade with heavy armor and a big weapon
In my system style you play would be based on attributes so if you are heavy you go towards strength to maximize what weapons and armor you can use while agility goes to fast style while combo blend between the two
All weapons can be used with combos except dagger types because they would lose accuracy

However this works, I would just like to say that a massively online multiplayer beat 'em up would be *awesome*! (Especially with destructable backgrounds)

I still remember when beat em ups ruled the roost and people were amazed that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles let four (count 'em FOUR!!!) people play at once. What I wouldn't give to see 40 people all running into an all out battle grabbing each other and throwing opponents into crowds of other opponents like the burley brawl scene in Matrix 2.

Bring it!

breakable things would be very cool; why not pickups like chainsaw, chair, broken glass bottle...

I'm not sure about breakable thing as the engine like saurbaten isn't too physics friendly
If we do something like crackable stuff we probably keep it on half life 1 boxes level where the damage has to be modeled and aren't that bounce friendly the peaces and JS physics code is cpu unfriendly
Maybe when we get better physics?

Or we just make the crates NPC's haha XD

Even if there "entity" like I said things will be on half life one level even with JS physics code so don't expect to much until we get better physics if we get them

Maybe edit your top post and include this link : http://antimatter15.com/misc/read/?goog ... +_8Fad615A

Hello,

I would just make 2 remarks.

Anyone saying Age of chivalry is slow did not play it in the last few months.
For information, in AOC the parry window is now 0,65 secondes, most attacks are below the second (including wind up times)...
I usually dispatch an opponent in less than 3 secondes...

Then, keep in mind that the faster your combat is, the more debiliting will be the lag effect...
a 100ms lag spike when you have a 2 second margin to make a decision is nothing.
a 100ms lag spike when you have a 100ms margin to make a decision means that you cannot play...

Taking the lag into account, you will have to cast much more ray to have precise collision detection (very cpu intensive).
Or you have to take the other way around, like in DDO stormreach... the aiming is done base on your skill but the dammage, the parry and the exact hit location is based on your attributes + random and not on your skills...

Manakel {l Wrote}:Anyone saying Age of chivalry is slow did not play it in the last few months.
For information, in AOC the parry window is now 0,65 secondes, most attacks are below the second (including wind up times)...
I usually dispatch an opponent in less than 3 secondes...

No it IS slow can't you see they move like snails?

Also initially it is intended for combat to work in normal fps conditions
Also for combos and stuff that need precision we could go with frame from client rather then synchronized hits
Also we could optimize for calculating the rays on a per client and area aka will cast rays only when they attack enemies that are in range
In other words we can do allot of things we can do on client that aren't necessary up to date with the latest synchronized server frame
Still don't know how it will turn out but its better to try it this way than to roll the dice
As dice rolling has no real player skill(cept the real life dice cheating skill)

Move in AOC is a bit faster than in real life... Strike are a bit slower, due to lag management...
If you do client side, it means you have to do cooperative or manage cheating...

I agree about rolling dice, that sucks...

Well for my fast agility class the speed is like slow motion in AOC
Actually if I were to compare the classes and methods of play
The fast style would be comparable to gunz speed
The medium/combo chaos ut duel style(maybe a bit more slow)
While Heavy about AOC/oblivion speed