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Original post by BBHudson Yes, I own a Bokken and used to practise Aikido. This was one of the main inspirations for this system.

Hey, me too! :) Well, I don't have a real bokken, but I make do with bamboo. You could probably kick my butt in a sword fight.

Anyway, it sounds like you have a lot of ideas, and I guess the best thing to do next is just to experiment with a whole bunch of control schemes. Let us know when you have your first prototype. :)

You practice aikido and you're only are considering 'blocks' in that game?
Oni didn't have a particulary inspired combat/control scheme. Actually it has a pretty steep learning curve and I find myself 'relearning' it whenever I lay it down for a few months. However, the one thing it did really well was how certain throws would move you around enemies, which made them very effective in dealing with multiple enemies. Of course they used an easy gimmick: You were invincible while executing a throw. But the essence of the throwing system was particulary strong: You would sneak into a group of three armed guards, then your first attack would be to throw the one in the back against one of the others, move around the third, perform a human shield move where you could control his arm to fire at the other two, then when he wriggles loose you roll over a weapon, picking it up and start firing straight up.

As a capoeira practitioner I think what many martial arts / fighting sports miss, is the way you move around, make combat a circle instead of a line where you simply advance and retreat. This is one thing that aikido and capoeira share.

The view from behind is more natural for a combat system. For melee combat, you would want to have a similar situational awareness as if you were standing there. A first person view eliminates real dodging. You can run back and forth and sidestep alright, but the distancing is hard to determine and ducking hardly works. The view from behind just translates into straight visual information what would normally be a combination of hearing and quick glances.

Thief games, especially the first one, The Dark Project, have nice sword fighting duels. They're very hard, though. No chance of getting out alive if you confront several enemies at once.

One idea I have is to control the sword's velocity instead of it's position with the mouse. So a short left-to-right gesture gives a slow slash, while a long movement gives a fast slash. This way doing complex back-and-forth slashes would need the user to decelerate the movement first by moving the mouse in the opposite direction as the mouse. This would add a feel of "inertia". Faster slashes could do more damage, too.

And as previously mentioned, the title Die By The Sword had quite nice gameplay.

-Riku

Hmmm.

Imagine Diablo II with a few changes: WASD movement and a different style of combat: right click uses a defensive ability, left click uses an offensive one.

Normally, pressing the right mouse button causes you to execute a block/parry. Holding the right button and moving causes you to roll around/evade.

Say you have a shield equiped. Right clicking once will cause you to block, moving will cause you to roll around.

With a sword, you will attempt to parry. When you move, you still evade/roll.

The scroll button cycles through your selected offensive attacks. Different abilities are triggered and modified by different mouse movements with the left button. Generally, one click performs the standard attack - e.g. with a fireball, you shoot a fireball in the direction you click. By moving and holding the button, you charge up the ability and/or modify it in an intuitive manner. E.g., you hold the left button and spin the mouse while using the fireball ability and your character's fireball casting animation switches to a spinning cone of fire ability, and when you release, a spiraling fireball thingy goes flying out at your enemies. The player has feedback in the form of changing casting animations.

Spacebar is jump. If you attempted to jump onto a ledge, pressing the right mouse button would cause your character to reach out and grasp the ledge - a defensive ability. The left mouse button is always attack or offensive, unless you had, let's say, a grappling ability "equipped" at the time, at which point it would grapple the ledge.

Hmmm...that's a cool combat system. I think I'll use it in my game.

Edit - New idea. Using an offensive ability after/while parrying/blocking executes a grapple sort of attack - you control the enemy and do something based on your offensive ability equiped. Say you have a wind attack equipped. After you grapple, you can spin around and throw your enemy far away in a gust of wind. If they're low on health and you're using fireball, you blow them up. Cool beans...

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Original post by 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.

Well, sure. But the same thing happens when you look up to far in an FPS, run out of bullets and keep clicking, or walk into a wall. So long as there is some form of feedback, the player usually can make do. Now, force feedback mice would be amazing for this sort of game.

I like the idea BBHudson had of making most of the gestures short (much like Firefox's mouse gestures, really) so that it wouldn't be too much of an issue. Making the big, powerful strokes or stabs require larger mouse movements is also nice.

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Original post by BBHudson 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.

I like it! Certainly, using the shift/control buttons would be easy to do, and would allow for many more combinations.

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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.

Heh, always true.

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Original post by 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.

Oh, I agree. Eight arcs might work, too (allowing vertical, horizontal, and all four diagonals), but you would just have to test users' error rates. Other than that, the controls should work, and the difficulty of the attack, block, and combo controls become a fairly free game design choice.

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This sounds great! I think the key point here is the "lock on" as you enter combat.

You might well be stuck with a lock-on system. I think your only choice might be (besides only ever allowing the player to fight one enemy at a time) to check the player's and enemys' positions and choose the most appropriate one based on distance and direction the player is facing. Of course, you could not mess with the player's screen (that is, not lock the player's view onto any one target) while still locking the player's attacks on the target. That way, you would be able to switch between attackers fairly easily.

As far as the controls go, you might not have to freeze the screen. If all of the gestures would be performed while holding a key (or a mouse key) down, then you could simply not let that action affect the view (except as a sort of minor force feedback). If you did find it necessary to freeze the screen, simply toggling with or holding down the shift/control/capslock key could do the trick.

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Original post by Dunam As a capoeira practitioner I think what many martial arts / fighting sports miss, is the way you move around, make combat a circle instead of a line where you simply advance and retreat. This is one thing that aikido and capoeira share.

Well, I don't think many martial arts restrict you to one axis once you start sparring, grappling, or otherwise doing something other than a taekwondo white belt form. Now, I've yet to see a game that really demonstrates the huge circling effect that goes on during most fights, and that would be nice to see. The main reason for that is that the enemies almost never move! They simply stand there! You can circle around them if you like, and they will turn to face you (at least, they'd better), but rarely will the enemies force the player to move, especially laterally or in a circle.

I think you've got a real point about the behind-the-character view. The standard first-person loses so much because it lacks the ability to quickly and easily look left, right, up, or down without moving the head, as well as the ability to move the head. Peripheral vision is usually crippled in these games, too, so there's a lot to be said for making up for these losses with the view from behind. Good call!

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Original post by Dunam As a capoeira practitioner I think what many martial arts / fighting sports miss, is the way you move around, make combat a circle instead of a line where you simply advance and retreat. This is one thing that aikido and capoeira share.

Capoeira? Cool! :D I love how Capoeira uses your whole body through space. In Aikido your legs could pretty much be replaced by tank treads and no one would notice. You're not supposed to bend over at all (though that could make game controls simpler, hmmm). But in Capoeira, you go upside-down, and sideways, and spin around. Someday I will have to learn that.

One thing I want to say is "Think outside WASD controls!" And why hold a button to make the mouse control the sword? Mouse movement should always control the sword, at least in a sword fight.

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One thing I want to say is "Think outside WASD controls!" And why hold a button to make the mouse control the sword? Mouse movement should always control the sword, at least in a sword fight.

Because it's easier to control. You still need to be able to adjust your mouse position on your desk without tossing your sword into a lake, and probably still need a basic look ability.