I was thinking of a system for an rpg type game for determining hit/evasion that involved some skill of the actual player, not just high stats. I think I came up with an idea that would allow for this and also create a wide variety of technique strategies. Anway, my idea is basically like that game, Whack a mole. You''d have a grid of squares representing your front side (attacks from the back always hit). When an attack is thrown against you, you''d have a split second or so to react to it, based on the speed and skill stats of the enemy throwing the attack. If you don''t catch it, it counts as a hit. You basically try to block it with either your left or right hand by clicking with the left or right mouse button on the grid. Of course after clicking, that hand becomes busy for a second or so, and a block can fail if the other hand is in the way (i.e. you can''t block the squares to the left of your left hand''s position with your right hand). The recovery time before you can block again with that hand goes down as your speed and skill stats go up. The location you have to block on the grid wouldn''t be random either. An attack coming in from the left would appear somewhere on the left part of your grid, and an attack against your head would appear in the upper portion of your grid. You can block with whatever is equipped in your hand. Shields would work by having a much larger block radius. To attack an enemy, you''d simply left or right click on them. This would of course require you to move the mouse cursor away from the defensive area, making it difficult to both attack and block at the same time. Where you clicked on them would determine where the strike appears on their grid, if they were another human player (as opposed to an NPC). It would also be possible to partially block a technique. Say there''s a fireball that takes up a whole bunch of grid squares. You can block a small portion with your sword hand, and still take most of the damage, or block a big chunk of it with a shield and only take a little damage. Some techniques could be completely blocked at the source. For example, a slash goes across the length of your entire grid, but if you block it, all the grid squares after the block point are automatically blocked. Complex techqniues like cross slashes and twin delta stab combos could be learned and unleashed to spice it up a bit. "Quit blocking all my attacks!" "That''s the way the game is played foo." "Alright, eat this, scatter shower!" "Wtf, argh" "Hahaha, I''d like to see you block all of those hits!" Well anyway, what do you think of the idea? Is it feasible? (lag might be a problem for multiplayer games I know)

I had virtually the same idea when designing a hand to hand fps combat system. Essentially, a big red "danger" blurry blob appeared on the fist/weapon of an attacker as a visual aid describing the incoming attack. If you could aim at it (with your view, in typical fps fashion) before it hit, you automatically blocked. Obviously, the size of the danger blur could be changed to increase or diminish difficulty. I didn''t want to complicated it much further than that, though. It was elegant enough.

Sadly, it got binned along with the game. *Sigh*.

-Bezzy

To the AP- a "hand to hand"FPS system?!!

FPS means First Person Shooter. Not a bad idea, I just feel in the mood to prove someone wrong.

So...how does this "reproductive system" of yours work? -Anonymous

Wow. And I thought *I* was anal!

If you must know, the game WAS a first person shooter, but hand to hand combat was integrated into the fray as a kind of offhand system. There were no extra buttons to attack with hand to hand, or indeed, any close range weapons. No matter what you were armed with, you could still fight hand to hand. Simply get in range of the enemy, press forward while aiming at the enemy, and you throw a punch. Pressing jump while in mid air near enemies was an automatic kick. Spinning the mouse really fast near an enemy was a spin kick. There were other methods of attack, but those were the base three implementations. All the moves could be combo''d, so you could do two flying kicks (matrix style) followed by a spin kick quite easily.

I called it Integrated Kungfu. There is a basic implementation of it in the Matrix Quake 2 mod, but that does not include the blocking system that I mentioned.

And I am impotent so my reproductive system is moot.

-Bezzy

entivore. I''ve also thought about how to make a system work that adds player skill to the character''s skill. A problem with using player skill for defense is there''s not much time to react if you wish to make the battle seem realtime.

An alternative might be to incorporate player skill on offensive moves only and the let character skill handle defense. I think offense is better suited to player skill because he or she can be thinking a couple steps ahead instead of purely reacting.


--
http://www.3dcgi.com/

I''m with 3dcgi on this. I''m not much for martial arts, but I fence, and defence is a combination of forcing your opponent to do something you expect and paper-rock-scissors style anticipation. Actually trying to implement a reaction-based defensive system requires either bullet-time to make it possible or some sort of AI help.

Maybe you could have a defensive "stance", like in a fighting game, which increases the chances of blocking or dodging an attack. Or you could give the player the power to regulate distance and movement, rendering attacks unsuccessful, and then use character stats to determine the effect of attacks that the player doesn''t dodge.

I''m reminded of Secret of Mana. Most of the time, you tried to stay out of reach, but when you had to get into it, your character would bock, or dodge, or do that little handspring, when attacked. You didn''t dodge or stop all of the attacks, but you would eventually reach a level at which no Rabite stood a chance against you, and you didn''t even really have to fight them anymore. you could stand stock-still, with no player input, in front of an angry lullabud and go get a sandwich, and when you came back, that stupid flower would still be whacking away at empty space as your hero ducked and dodged away.

This system combines the two. The player is in charge of the more tactical elements, like distance and the direction the character faces, but when somebody takes a swing that has a chance of hurting you, the character''s stats decide how well they do. Tough guys, you''ll keep your distance and try to outsmart them, but against weaker, slower, dumber enemies, you can just march in there and Miyamoto Musashi them into the dirt.

I personally don''t believe in chance where a player''s decisions or ability is concerned - it undermines their ability to make and enact their strategies (micro or macro). So as long as the passive "block" suggested was consistant, I would be fairly happy with it. Otherwise you get Morrowind''s misnomer: aiming at an enemy, attacking, and THEN rolling to see if you''ve hit, defeating the fact that you needed to use some amount of skill to aim and fire in the first place!

But I do think the method could work. The major problem people seem to have with it is that it''s a new skill to learn (even though it''s not disimilar from simly aiming at someone in a typical first person game). You''re semi right about the bullet-time idea being a requirement. If the game was as fast as fencing, you''d have no chance! But if versimiltude is forsaken for the sake of balanced, acceptable speeds of approaching attacks, then the method could be happily implemented. Just needs tweaking on the skill side, that''s all! (Or atleast, I can''t see any fundamental mechanical flaw with it - both methods (passive and active blocking) require you to choose between attacking and defending).

-Bezzy

The problem with trying to model melee combat is that it''s just so incredibly complex and intuitive. I''ve studied martial arts on and off for about 13 years (maybe about an actual 4 years of actual studying in class mostly in Shotokan but also Aikido, Choy Li Fut, and a smidgen of Escrima, with the other years just practicing on occasion what I knew so as not to lose it). I also took two semesters of fencing, and with my Aikido training, I have a passing familiarity with iai training with a bokken and suburi (no live blades though I do have one).

Of all the many sparring sessions I''ve had, as well as play fights with many friends from many different styles, I think that trying to bring this to a computer simulation is in my opinion near impossible. Shooting a gun in FPS doesn''t even really truly do the actual act justice, and trying to emulate martial moves is even more fraught with complexities.

The trouble is in timing mostly. Even if your opponent gets in the first attack, that doesn''t necessarily mean he has the advantage. In Aikido, you learn two primary ways of dealing with an aggressive attack: Irimi and Tenkan. In irimi moves, you actually go into the attack. If you think about a circular attack (say for example an exaggerated right hook or a roundhouse kick) the closer you get to the center of the "pivot", the less damage the attack will do (think of it as moving into the eye of the storm). Tenkan defense basically draws the attackers intent further than it was supposed to be, making the attacker go off balance (much like the Tai Chi concept of, "when pushed, pull and when pulled, push"). There''s also the problem of disarms...sometimes having the first attack can be bad because that''s precisely what the defender wants you to do. Also, even if attacks "miss", there''s always the chance for a follow-up. For example, I saw a fight once where it looked like attacker A threw a roundhouse kick that Attacker B blocked and trapped. Very quickly, Attacker A did a side drop to the floor, extending his other leg out to trap Attacker B behind the knee. Attacker A then scissored his legs, causing Attacker B to fall.

While these concepts are formalized in Aikido, in real combat, many styles do the same thing. In Fencing, irimi can be something similiar to a riposte/lunge, in wrestling, it can be a shoot to the legs, and in boxing it can be a clinch.

So how do you model something like melee combat? I personally think that a turn based system is probably the best way to go. You can set your stance, and set up primary and secondary modes of attack and defense. Melee combat happens so quickly and instinctively, and your body reacts so quickly, it would be very diffucult to model this through the computer in real time.

You can go ahead and make a real time player-skill based system, but I think you''d need to implement some kind of AI assist to help the player with certain moves. As the current technology is, fighting style games are simply too action/reaction based and real combat is much more fluid and dynamic than that (moves with moves within moves).

Without being able to match the human body''s vast vocabulary, ofcourse a computer game interperatation is going to have to be "selective". But that''s true of all games. I''m personally happy with an interpretation of the myriad of subtleties of a martial art, rather than an insanely complex and inelegant simulation. Rather than try to clone it, I''d try to take its essence and extrapolate that into something different, but the same. Err..

-Bezzy

Since I wrote that post late last night, I was tired and didn''t collect my thoughts very well. In a nutshell, what I was trying to say was that melee combat is very instinctive, based on intuition, and reflexive in nature. This is very hard to do in a computer where you are trying to actively and consciously do things to make your character act.

That''s why it''s called a martial "art" and not a martial "science". If you think too much, and if you consciously try to guide your actions, you''ll wind up losing more often than not. But when a player interacts via a computer to control his character, the designer explicitly has to make concrete control structures to make the character move and respond. This isn''t how real fights tend to work.

So you could fudge it a little and try to make combat more reactive and straight forward. You could essentially build in some reactions with certain key combos much like fighting games do. However, I think the real issue is if players want to play an RPG or play a fighting game.