It just occured to me that I've never seen close combat done particularly well on first person style PC games. Oblivion came close, but it's still not a satisfactory fighting system. I feel there is much potential in the mouse for really dynamic beat-em-up-esque swordplay that has never really been utilised. Suppose we wanted a system where the player has say a dozen different moves, each with a corresponding block and/or counter, where each move can be performed with simple movements of the mouse or with easy-to-reach buttons on the keyboard. How would you go about this? It seems natural to suppose that hitting the attack button while dragging the mouse downwards would result in a vertical slash, but would such a system be too analogue in feel? I'm aiming for a system that feels quite precise; where you wouldn't accidently make the wrong move at the wrong time. Any comments appreciated. Your opinions on the following would also be greatly helpful: To those who have played Morrowind and/or Oblivion (in particular those who played with predominantly melee based characters): did you find the first person view or the behind view more natural when swinging a sword around? Do you think it's necessary to keep the mouse movement as "look in x direction" in the standard FPS style? In particular, is looking up or down really necessary when aiming is not really an issue and you seldom face enemies at a different height? What actions would need to be available to you in a melee fight in order to give it a "beat-em-up" feel? I.e. is it the choice of moves, combos, ability to counter your opponent etc. What other games have you seen with a "first person close-combat" engine, and how did the main fighting work? What aspects worked well? Which didn't? Many thanks in advance.

I think that allowing click-drag mouse movements would be a great addition to the fighting. You could make brief mouse movements and swing your sword in that direction. Left-click-directional-drags could attack, right-click-directional-drags could be more purely defensive movements.

With that sort of style, I think a FPS view would be much easier to understand, though it might still work third person.

You could still implement combos as in any other fighting game, but it would really allow you to have a lot of control and precision.

If you made the wrong move at the wrong time... well, that's the whole point, isn't it?

It's not sword play, but if you have an xbox, give Breakdown a try. It does some interesting things with Melee control in first person. It has some gunplay also, but it is extremely limited. I enjoyed the game, but I think I'm the only one sometimes ;).

Let me see if I can remember the details, You move like in a standard Xbox FPS, and you also have a lockon. There are evasion moves using the jump button, and two triggers for attacks.

Theres also an Old DC game called Maken X that uses first person Melee. The controls are about the same as Metroid Prime on the gamecube.

Char

BBHudson, the game 'Die by the Sword' does exactly that with their 'Vsim' system. You could move your sword arm freely. Personally I preffered to use the keypad to control my arm (6 then 4 is slash from right to left, 1 then 8 is backhand upward slash). It included dismemberment, beheading and if you struck someone's weapon you could 'block' their attack. At times battles got a little odd, but I loved that system. You could also press 0 / right mouse button to extend your armor for slower stronger further reach attacks.

You should check it out, that game also has the most satisfying ending I've had in a game.

Mount and Blade. Best melee combat in any game I've played. www.taleworlds.net
It puts Oblivion to shame in the combat gameplay arena.

What if you used a mouse like a joystick in the beat-em-up games like streetfighter. The mouse buttons become like the punch and kick buttons.

Couple that with the wasd movement control of most FPS games and you could make an interesting control system that used the mouse and the keyboard.

One problems with just allowing "click and drag" to freely control your weapon is that there's no way for you to feel resistance with the mouse. If you try to strike with a sword, and it's parried, you feel it because your sword just won't move the way you want it to. Same when it hits the enemy, it tends to stop there.
With a mouse, you can just keep dragging it, and then it'll eventually get "out of sync" with the onscreen weapon, which *can't* move through everything like a hot knife through butter.
At least, that's a problem you have to take care of one way or another if you try to implement that kind of mechanics.

That said, it's certainly possible to give a more "direct" control of close combat.
A couple of months ago, I participated in a school project to make a game in 1 month. We ended up making a game a bit like what you describe.

What we did was, when you get close to an enemy, the "regular" FPS controls are disabled, and instead you move relative to your enemy. So if you try to move sideways, you circle around your opponent instead. The camera automatically keeps centering on your opponent too, so while you can drag it sideways, it'll keep sliding towards the center again. Then the player could drag the camera in any direction, and press the mouse button to make an attack from that direction. If you wanted to strike from your left, you just look a bit to the left of your opponent, and click. If you want to stab him, you look down and click, and so on. We then added the ability to parry in the same way (Look left and right-click to parry an attack from that direction)
Of course there were plenty of other features we would have added if we had time. We never really got evades in (were planning that you should be able to dodge attacks too, by circling around your opponent), and position should play a greater role too (some moves should force your opponent backwards, and coupled with the ability to circle around your enemy, you'd be able to push him into a corner where he couldn't evade, or make him fall down a ledge or similar)

Actually turned into a surprisingly solid combat system. I might be biased, but I think our combat system was far more fun than, say, Oblivion. [grin]

Decent game, that mount & blade.

What's wrong with analog controls? I'm tired of pressing a button to automatically slash my sword. To me it feels more imprecise to activate a scripted motion of my weapon when I could control its motion directly. Have you played Ragdoll Masters? It is my favorite fighting game because it feels so kinesthetic, not like mashing buttons at all. N is another good example of a very precise, kinesthetic, analog-feeling game.

While their controls do take a little while to master, they are much more intuitive than memorizing combos and the actions attached to different buttons. Once you get over the initial learning curve, you can improve gradually without feeling frustrated with the controls. The only thing to worry about when designing these games is how to make that early period engaging and rewarding enough to get players through.

Have you ever tried swinging an actual physical stick around like a sword? If you haven't, I recommend that you try it. It might give you some insight into the issue. When making controls for melee combat, I would avoid using buttons for special actions, or click-and-drag for special actions. Instead, make it like the real thing as much as possible. Make the mouse movement correspond in some way to hand or arm movement. Make pressing the mouse button correspond to tightening your grip on the sword - if you try it in real life, I think you will see the significance of relaxing or tightening your grip. That could be enough for a first-person control scheme.

Another control scheme I had thought of would be something more like Ragdoll Masters. This would require more of a top-down view. Make mouse movement correspond to horizontal body movement, and let the arms swing somewhat loosely, but still in control in front of the body. Then pressing the mouse button would raise the sword arm (and when released the arm would fall back down to its normal position). This would allow for some fun slashing moves.

Anyway, these are just some ideas, and you will probably want to test out a lot of different variations to see what you like best. But definitely get used to physics-based controls. It's a lot more fun. :)

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Avatar God You could make brief mouse movements and swing your sword in that direction. Left-click-directional-drags could attack, right-click-directional-drags could be more purely defensive movements.

That's pretty much how I want it - instead of a simple block button like in Oblivion you would need to counter an opponents attack with the correct block. What I would add would be a third mouse button (or possibly a keyboard button) pressed with a directional drag that indicates stances. Ie you click and drag up to hold the sword above your head, click and drag diagonally down to hold the sword at your side etc. In each position the attacks and blocks you can perform would be different - so you could possibly force your opponent into a position where he cannot block the next attack. Balancing is a major issue here though - you wouldn't want any ultimate "unblockable" strategies, but something with a (albeit much more complex) rock/paper/scissors kind of vibe.

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Avatar God If you made the wrong move at the wrong time... well, that's the whole point, isn't it?

It depends - I wouldn't want the "right move" to be difficult to pull off. The "skill" of the game would be recognising your enemies attacks and choosing the right move to counter it. In such a setup the more analog it feels the less precise your attacks become - for instance you don't want a drag and click at 65 degrees to be completely different to a drag and click at 70 degrees, because no amount of skill from the player can get that right every single time. I think dividing the directions up into 6 different arcs would be an appropriate - this leaves you enough space for error and (along with the 6 different positions) gives you many different attacks.

Thanks Charthepirate, Dunam, and Professor420: I will do my best to try those games.

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Spoonbender One problems with just allowing "click and drag" to freely control your weapon is that there's no way for you to feel resistance with the mouse. If you try to strike with a sword, and it's parried, you feel it because your sword just won't move the way you want it to. Same when it hits the enemy, it tends to stop there. With a mouse, you can just keep dragging it, and then it'll eventually get "out of sync" with the onscreen weapon, which *can't* move through everything like a hot knife through butter. At least, that's a problem you have to take care of one way or another if you try to implement that kind of mechanics.

Indeed; this is the main problem with having a truely analog system. Since I wouldn't ever want it completely analog, a subtle touch with the mouse (along with button presses) would result in a full attack, so the resistance is not really a problem. However, if you concentrated attacks in one direction you'd eventually end up with the mouse falling off the table. To combat this, you'd need a neutral command (i.e. where no buttons are held down) where the mouse essentially does nothing - so you can centre it without accidently making an innapropriate attack or suddenly looking at the ground. This leads me onto my next problem - if the mouse does nothing while commands are neutral, how do you look around, and more importantly how do you turn left and right? This is of course based on a wasd system where the keyboard dictates strafe movement only.

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Spoonbender That said, it's certainly possible to give a more "direct" control of close combat. A couple of months ago, I participated in a school project to make a game in 1 month. We ended up making a game a bit like what you describe. What we did was, when you get close to an enemy, the "regular" FPS controls are disabled, and instead you move relative to your enemy. So if you try to move sideways, you circle around your opponent instead. The camera automatically keeps centering on your opponent too, so while you can drag it sideways, it'll keep sliding towards the center again. Then the player could drag the camera in any direction, and press the mouse button to make an attack from that direction. If you wanted to strike from your left, you just look a bit to the left of your opponent, and click. If you want to stab him, you look down and click, and so on. We then added the ability to parry in the same way (Look left and right-click to parry an attack from that direction) Of course there were plenty of other features we would have added if we had time. We never really got evades in (were planning that you should be able to dodge attacks too, by circling around your opponent), and position should play a greater role too (some moves should force your opponent backwards, and coupled with the ability to circle around your enemy, you'd be able to push him into a corner where he couldn't evade, or make him fall down a ledge or similar)

This sounds great! I think the key point here is the "lock on" as you enter combat. I am trying to avoid such a thing, but after much consideration I believe it may be impossible without. One of the main problems with Oblivion was that if an enemy was standing say 10 degrees out from your direction, you would still attack straight infront of you (and in some cases miss because of it). At such a time it should be obvious who you are targetting, and your character should turn itself. Unfortunately lock on systems often fall down when faced with multiple opponents; how does the game calculate who you are intending to target when it can be ambiguous?

As for having alternative controls when entering a battle - I am probably (though I haven't yet tried it) against the idea. Unless there are real RPG style cut scenes as you enter battles (which I am definately against in a real time action game) there is surely a moment of ambiguity as you approach an opponent as to what your buttons do.

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Spoonbender Actually turned into a surprisingly solid combat system. I might be biased, but I think our combat system was far more fun than, say, Oblivion.

I don't doubt it! Oblivion got a few things right; the combat was certainly a cut above Morrowind for instance, but on the other hand it was still far too simplistic for my tastes. Though you had several power attacks at your disposal, most of them you never used, and the game was simply a rock/paper/scissors between attack, defend and power attack. It's the right idea, but too simplistic. In fact a lock on system would have worked wonders here; the sideways power attacks were in my opinion useless, whereas if you were locked onto an opponent this could have been a proper sidestep counterattack. I did like the almost sluggish brutality of Oblivion though - it wasn't pretty little flicks of the wrist for attacks, you really swung for your opponent and often staggered them even though they blocked the attack. This added a bit of gritty realism that most fighting games lack.

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axcho What's wrong with analog controls? I'm tired of pressing a button to automatically slash my sword. To me it feels more imprecise to activate a scripted motion of my weapon when I could control its motion directly. Have you played Ragdoll Masters? It is my favorite fighting game because it feels so kinesthetic, not like mashing buttons at all. N is another good example of a very precise, kinesthetic, analog-feeling game.

Well yes, that's what the system is all about. I just wouldn't want it to be too analog :)

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axcho Have you ever tried swinging an actual physical stick around like a sword? If you haven't, I recommend that you try it. It might give you some insight into the issue. When making controls for melee combat, I would avoid using buttons for special actions, or click-and-drag for special actions. Instead, make it like the real thing as much as possible. Make the mouse movement correspond in some way to hand or arm movement. Make pressing the mouse button correspond to tightening your grip on the sword - if you try it in real life, I think you will see the significance of relaxing or tightening your grip. That could be enough for a first-person control scheme.

Yes, I own a Bokken and used to practise Aikido. This was one of the main inspirations for this system. I'm not sure going as far as loosening and tightening grip is really necessary. What really annoys me with most fighting systems is the "one block for everything" idea. Even most beat-em-ups have only a high and low block, which is in no way realistic to real swordplay. The side view implemented by these games is never going to do justice to the information you receive by seeing an opponent face to face, hence why the first person (or possibly third person from behind) is so appealing (though maybe impossible, we shall see) for a really great fighting game. Also, most modern beat-em-ups are inherently turn based: one player attacks and the other blocks, so the defender gets the advantage and it is his "turn" to attack. I'm not actually against a turn based feel - this simply catagorizes who can get in the next attack first, and therefore who should go on the defensive - but I don't think simply having an attack blocked should cause a turn over. In particular there need to be several different blocks the player can perform. Suppose you can block vertically, horizontally and diagonally (there would be two variations of each with my 6 directional system - basically these would be exactly the same except it alters what position you are in afterwards). A horizontal attack is countered "correctly" by a vertical block - doing this would put you at the advantage so it's "turn over" in the usual beat-em-up fashion. However, a diagonal block would also parry the attack, but not quite as successfully, leaving the opponent still with the advantage. Hence in the simplest sense you have 6 attacks and 6 blocks. For each attack there are two blocks that fail and leave you damaged, 2 that successfully parry but do not "change turn" and 2 that both parry and give you the advantage. Of course the true beauty of this system is that not all attacks and blocks can be performed from all positions, so based on whats going on you might be able to second guess your opponent or force him into a position where he cannot block.