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Original post by Ned_K I don't advocate dumbing down games. Not at all. But neither do I recommend these complex approaches to combat and the like.

Ermm, what is so complex about fighting stances? Most fighting stances are entered automatically via an attack. Such as a sword being slashed downward could enter a crouched stance. What the player does after entering a stance is up to them. They could just press another button and make a tiny combo, or they could do another crazy move that puts them into another stance. The great thing about a good fighting engine is that you can play them dumb or you can play them smart. I'm not creating an MMO or even an MO at all. So that means my dumb players will have to upgrade their skills further to defeat tough opponents, rather than doing a crazy psycho death combo in a few seconds flat.

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Combat on computer games will NEVER be realistic. You are fighting via a mouse and a keyboard. There is a forced disconnect that cannot currently be escaped with today's technology.

Having your character hold his opposite arm up while he attacks without a shield is just lame, it's not unrealistic. I'm not caring about realism at the moment.

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Rather, it just means that the gameplay itself, rather than a system that emphasizes reality (as it were), would appear to be far more important.

How are combat stances and shield battle techniques leaning toward realism and away from gameplay?

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As I consider a game, I look at it first from a global perspective. I feel that this is more effective than putting together a game around a dense and unwieldy combat system. The combat system should not come first, which is what seems to be the case so often.

That was my assumption as well. That's why I'm messing up on the combat design phase :)

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Original post by Jiia Quote: Original post by Ned_K I don't advocate dumbing down games. Not at all. But neither do I recommend these complex approaches to combat and the like. Ermm, what is so complex about fighting stances? Most fighting stances are entered automatically via an attack. Such as a sword being slashed downward could enter a crouched stance. What the player does after entering a stance is up to them. They could just press another button and make a tiny combo, or they could do another crazy move that puts them into another stance. The great thing about a good fighting engine is that you can play them dumb or you can play them smart. I'm not creating an MMO or even an MO at all. So that means my dumb players will have to upgrade their skills further to defeat tough opponents, rather than doing a crazy psycho death combo in a few seconds flat.

My comments were in reply to the full thread (and many other related threads and discussions) more than just to you. I see discussions here (in THIS thread) of "hundreds of stances and thousands of abilities", complex executions required to pull off "normal" combat, etc. I don't say any of this is bad, necessarily. I just tend to notice the Dungeons and Dragons obsession with detail detail detail because I have experienced it myself. Lots of detail can be fun, up to a point, and its rarely fun for the broader game-buying public. There are places in a game for detail, but once you have to wade through pages and pages of combos and combo creation and skill interaction, I consider the game to be a game made for only a very tiny audience, because few people will want to A) master the controls or B) master knowledge of the combat and how to put it together. I just feel the "keep it simple" philosophy to be critical to successful game design when it comes to the core engine (not including physics or what have you) as it relates to player interaction. If I have to read more than a few pages to get playing, it's problematic. There can be levels and layers of detail later, once I've played the game for a while, but these kinds of combat discussions rarely leave much hope for simplicity at a later date.

[Edited by - Ned_K on August 16, 2005 7:39:08 PM]

Oh, sorry.

For what it's worth, I'm my own animator, so I won't be adding hundreds or thousands of anything. Less than 15 stances per weapon at best. This is my action control-condition list:

• Holding forward
  
• Holding back
  
• Holding left
  
• Holding right
  
• Press high left (attack button)
  
• Press high right (attack button)
  
• Press low left (attack button)
  
• Press low right (attack button)
  
• Press jump
  
• Press block
  
• Release block
  
• Holding block
  
• Shield Equipped
  
• Shield Unequipped

These are flags, which mean it's possible to require several conditions to be true at once. But these are the only control conditions available to attacks and stances. For example, a single attack could have [Shield Equipped + Holding forward + Press high left], but it doesn't get any more complicated than that. It's the state of your character and the state of your enemy that will add the most variety to available actions. Instead of adding hundreds of actions to keep the player from getting bored, I would rather add a few that require complex decisions to figure out what to do next.

The diversity of combat is not there to require mastering it. At its most basic form, it's no different than your typical role playing clickathon. Mastering it would be reserved for munchkins, who want to go off and face the deadly outworlder tribe - which most players will run from. A middle ground is a player who knows which stances work best against which types of enemies or opponent fighting styles, and which attacks work best to counter an enemy who is slashing down at you.

Realistically, theres a "terminal velocity" at which you can swing a sword of a certain weight. For example, a fencer would be better off with a sabre and a shield(or two sabres) than two hands on a sabre. For this reason, I'm implementing a diminishing returns equation for users that choose to wield a weapon with 2 hands instead of one, in that:
If they can easily wield a sword of a certain weight in one hand, they receive very little offensive benefit wielding it with two. In this sense, there are no predefined 1 and 2 hand swords, only weights for all swords. Character strength/agility defines how the player should use a weapon. A two-hander for an elf could be a 1-hander for a half-giant. Its up to the player to decide what benefits him the most. The benefit will be shown on their stats screen, so there is no vagueness (I hate vagueness!) and I think players will appreciate this system.

I'm no martial artist though. Is this a realistic assesment of wielding weapons?

I believe you that they're two different skills, but surely a master swordsman picking up a
shield for the first time would be much better off than someone who had used neither.

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Original post by ScottNCSU In this sense, there are no predefined 1 and 2 hand swords, only weights for all swords.

It would be difficult for me to do this. Each weapon configuration can be compared to different character classes in most games. Fighting with a two handed katana is totally different than fighting with a two handed claymore. If I wanted to copy your idea for my own game, I would have to impliment an entirely new style for fighting with single-hand claymores. Way too much work for me. Even though characters can define themself to use a claymore with one hand on generation by mapping all of the functional animations, they cannot choose to switch between using two hands or not after the game is running.

However, I'll likely play around with single handed weapons by creating moves that use both hands to do certain slashes, or moves that toss it up with one hand, then grab and slash down with the other. Samurai seem to continuously alternate the number of hands on their sword. Or at least in movies :)

If you are differentiating between fighting styles based on the origin of the sword, then yes my system wouldn't work for you. Also, from what I've read, movies with samurai/ninja never properly mimic how they actually used swords. Samurai prefered spear to sword in real combat, for example. Sword was a last ditch effort :)

What about all of that jazz about it being their soul? :)

Well? You don't get your soul naked every now and then, it's more of a last resort thing, right? Same here.

A katana is a symbol.
A blade is straight.
A blade is hard.
A blade is brilliant.
A blade is pure, and devoid of emotions. No blade kills. Only the people holding them.
A blade has a cutting edge, and the bearer should strive for all these attributes.

This is, roughly, the true meaning of the "sword being the true soul of the samurai".

In the Middle Ages, training to fight with a shield was integral to weapon training. So there is no reason to separate sword from sword + shield, since you'd have learned both at the same time anyway.