Additions to Lugaru 2: Blocking/Shields

[Eric]

I decided to seperate the topics in the "Additions to combat system" thread. The following are quotes of recent comments in regards to Blocking and Shields.

One idea I had was to allow turner to make several consecutive blocks/reversals. This could be implemented by making a separate block ability--for example, when an enemy attacks, you can either press forward+shift to attempt a reversal (harder to time correctly, but more effective) or press back+shift to block. When blocked, the enemy would try to continue the attack, though in perhaps a slightly different manner, allowing you to block again or try a reversal. RPG elements could be factored into this as well, such as reversal ability, blocking ability, etc. These could be implemented in terms of time ranges (i.e. Turner with high blocking ability = longer time "window" in which do block attacks) or effectiveness. This could be applied to sword/general weapon battles, as well. Or, this could just be applied to really difficult enemies to make it seem like an epic duel. These additions would make the fighting even more fast-paced and involved, similar to (for example) The Matrix movie battles -- numerous rapid blocks and reversals, both in terms of kicks and punches. On a completely unrelated note, I also think it would be sweet if Turner could wall-run/climb, or engage in "bullet-time" (though I realize it could be difficult to do so in terms of Multiplayer). What do you guys think?

I'm gonna bring it up again, what about rmfitzgerald50's idea of blocking? That seems like a really fun combat enhancement. It won't be like Zelda's use of a indestructible, full recoiless shield, It would be like the Xiao Xiao's series of unarmed blocking (kinda like Jackie Chan, every one likes Jackie Chan). But ya, the enemies would continue to stay extremely aggresive so you could back up to put the enemies at the disired location, or get ready for a strong reversible move.

[Eric]

I think you should be able to reverse reversals,
for example if some one counters your roundhouseskick, you would grab their neck with your other foot and do a throw while fliping

it should be hard to do these but have them do massive damage


in fact, any attack should be reversable.

[Zantalos]

This is going to relate to year old posts (I'm not sure if you guys like reading or not, I find reading posts are amusing)

I think, reversals should be a little bit more difficult and there should be a blocking ability. And I would love, if Lugaru2 would feature more complex (and longer) swordfights.

The reversals are kind of blocking in their own right. I don't think blocking is needed if reversals are available. Reversals appeal more, anyway, and help the fight to flow more easily in my opinion.

There is blocking, but it is automatic.

Like Oni ( I am a great fan of Oni ) ?
Well, this is perfect, exactly what I had in mind.

The reversals are kind of blocking in their own right. I don't think blocking is needed if reversals are available. Reversals appeal more, anyway, and help the fight to flow more easily in my opinion.
.

But sometimes, especially when you fight four rabbits or more, a reversal consumes to much time. Or even worse, I want to escape with a roll but Turner reverses a attack instead and another rabbit knocks my down.

After looking at the concept drawing, I got an idea. Using the sword sheath as a weapon. Give Turner the ability to block or stun his enemies with it. If you wanted to make it even more interesting. Make the type of sheath of a sword random. For example, some swords would have wood sheaths, making them kinda crappy to use for blocking, but still able to stun with them, while others, have metal sheaths. Heavier, so Turner swings it slower, but you can block and parry with it...Or even mix it in with hit combos...hehehehe...

bareley any weapons are made of metal sheaths. this is based on my idea in "turner concept art", but i realized that they would break far too easily. besides, most sheaths are made of hardened leather,, and are useless. the other really used sheath material is laquer, which i suppose could be used as a weapon.....

Swordstick+parrying cane?

Yes, but you should only be able to get it from the old-fart wolves/evil bunnies you fight.
"GET OFF MY LAWN YOU YOUNG WHIPPER-SNAPPER!!"
"In my day bunnies looked up to their elders!!"
*pulls out sword cane*
"Come here so I can wack off your knees!!!"
*takes a step forward, snapping his back*
"MY SPLEEN!!! AACK!!! ARRGGG!!!"

Seriously though, that's a cool idea.

So I'm going to continue off of this. Sword battle are pretty short. They're short because fighting is just disarm and kill (disarm with parrying, not with reversing 'shift'). This is pretty fun when your are trying to kill multiple people one by one like a super ninja, you just engage an enemy, disarm him, and cut him open like a melon, it's fun and rewarding to watch. So I really have no arguement, I just thought that longer sword battles would be cooler, even though I don't know how Lugaru would have both.

There should be different kinds of blocking animations that are chosen at random, to spice up the duels. Maybe a way to do this and engage multiple enemies at the time would be automatic stance changing (since you want to kill multiple enemies really fast, but you still want to have longer battles in duels). When you fight one rabbit (detected by how many rabbits are currently "red" on the map), your moves will be more based upon one person, there will be lots of blocking when an attack is executed, less disarming, and more quick dodging (all done by clicking and shifting. Maybe there shouldn't even be weapon stealing reversals when you already have a weapon, it seems pretty pointless when you have a disarming swing attack).

Multiple enemies makes your stance more open, your normal swings are now horzontal and vierticle (skewed diagonal), and your forward attack is now a wide sweeping sword slash (clicking, and then forward clicking, like unarmed body punches and round house kicks). So that can can hold your own, blocks are quicker and have a built in spring back so you can ditch the scene or avoid lots of enemy attacks after a parry (the style could be like hit and run, that's what I do in Lugaru. Fighting all of them at once would be sick. There would be so many blocks and swings that would have to be fluently done at the same time throughout the whole battle. But it seems kinda cheap because I'm not sure if Turner has those skills). Anyways, the disarm move (swing that knocks the weapon out of hand) now sends the weapon straight up or in a long sideways arc (as opposed to throwing the weapon striaght to the ground). Pretty much all the attacks are focused on slowing down the oppenents, not setting up long combative duels that are set for single opponents. It would be really cool if you could walk and attack, you'd be walking through a crowd of bunnies and blocking and swinging while you're spinning around and fighting (like in the movies! Matrix or something, Neo vs. all the Smiths).

If that just seems too complicated, use the parrying stick/sword technique. A sword comes equipped with both a reflective sheath and weapon, or throw out the sheath idea (I guess it might seem unreal, although there are hard metal scabbards, not sure if it's enough to block with). Instead, use different weapons altogether, there would be blades like katanas that are used to quickly kill an opponent, but can't hold a duel cause you can't block with them. Polearms and are used to attack multiple enemys, spears are for quick dispatches, even if they're in a group. Then there are swords that are balanced, not really excelling at anything, but can be used at anything. Parrying rods which have high recoiling swings, they knock out weapons and have blocks that shake up the enemy (kinda like swinging a pipe into a hard surface, hurts your hands and stuns you). Finnaly staffs are defensive weapons, they are used to block the body from most blunt attacks and can stop blade swings, and of course, they'll still have the ability to wack the knives out of unfortunate hands.

[Zantalos]

I like being able to reverse reverses. Instead of just catching yourself after a bad fall, your reverse should be to counter the opponent's reverse. The leg mounted, takedown (I think you would call that the uhh, head scissors takedown, or the hurricaneranna,) seems like it would end that fight prety fast, which may not be that bad of a thing (especially if you're the kind that wants to make challenge times of 6 seconds). But I would like counter reversals to be quick and reversible. Again, there could be multiple random animations so it doesn't look so stale but, all the moves could be reversed again and again (using the same simple animations, so that people know when to hit reverse). Their could be change after change and have really long fighting matches. You'd have to set how often the computer could reverse because I don't know a good percent for reverses (maybe an 80% chance of countering if you fight a boss or a really skilled opponent). The counters would be fast but have a big enough room to reverse also.

And then, after you do mess up and get hit, your hand spring follow-through (or roll), should be based on when you hit the ground (like right when you touch the floor), not on when you get hit (cause that's when you'd do your counter reverse).

[Eric]

I'm kinda drunk so I can't focus on your entire post in order to respond to it, I will do so later, but I hav e a quick preliminary response

There should be different kinds of blocking animations that are chosen at random, to spice up the duels.

Reversals (and presumabley blocks) will be much more, if not entirely, physics based, unlike in L1 were they were scripted and repetative. Fear not, you will nolonger be bored by constantly reversing in the same way.

[Homocidal Ham]

I like being able to reverse reverses. Instead of just catching yourself after a bad fall, your reverse should be to counter the opponent's reverse. The leg mounted, takedown (I think you would call that the uhh, head scissors takedown, or the hurricaneranna,) seems like it would end that fight prety fast, which may not be that bad of a thing (especially if you're the kind that wants to make challenge times of 6 seconds). But I would like counter reversals to be quick and reversible. Again, there could be multiple random animations so it doesn't look so stale but, all the moves could be reversed again and again (using the same simple animations, so that people know when to hit reverse). Their could be change after change and have really long fighting matches. You'd have to set how often the computer could reverse because I don't know a good percent for reverses (maybe an 80% chance of countering if you fight a boss or a really skilled opponent). The counters would be fast but have a big enough room to reverse also.

And then, after you do mess up and get hit, your hand spring follow-through (or roll), should be based on when you hit the ground (like right when you touch the floor), not on when you get hit (cause that's when you'd do your counter reverse).

well instead of having infinate animations i think the best solution i actually to have a 10-50 move loop of animations and make it so that the counter to the last move would be the first move

it would look so cool in multiplayer to see one person reverse a punch but the other person would flip and land then spin and toss the person but then the first person could roll backward and kick the first person

ps. i think you should have to do more than just click shift to counter reversals

for example you should have click jump and left to counter a round house kick-reversal
(making rolling out of an attack somtimes more appealing than a counter)

pps. and also for when fighting lots of people there should be a super reversal for every reversal that would be super hard to do but wen done correctly turner would kick the person, jump of of him and do a spin kick hiting any one around

you should only be able to do this if there is more than one opponent


in addition, to make fighting multiple enemies more fun (and give enemies a reason not to just crowd him)

you should be able to do triple spin kicks that are only moves that cant be countered (but could easily be dodged)

it would also affect AI, if your enemies notice that your getting crowded they might back up a little

and if you have allies, they somtimes back away if in a group

[Zantalos]

So yeah, now that all the moves are physics based, I don't think it matters if you have multiple animations or not (sorry, I didn't mean infinite). I change my mind to have only one type of animation per move, it makes fighting alot easier when you know which way to reverse an attack into something.
Oh! But there should be ways to reverse things with aim, to give you more control. Like Turner will shift his wieght to where the mouse is pointing, to kind of direct which way his enemies will go, when he reverse-throws them.

it would look so cool in multiplayer to see one person reverse a punch but the other person would flip and land then spin and toss the person but then the first person could roll backward and kick the first person

I like this idea, to be able to reverse move after move, while still fighting the opponent, not having to instantly break the chain with a back-hand-spring.

For executing reversals, they should be generally kept the same. Lugaru had alot of complexion in it's reversals, enough that you could do them, but less that you could still easily miss your timing and eat it. So that's how I would like to keep it the same, to have the reversals simple to do like the: hold space and click when you miss your leg cannon, when you get cought and are hurled to the ground hit shift near impact, duck shift to avoid round-house kicks and release to reverse, and back (s) click (left click) when someone swings at you with a sword, diagonal click for a fast-no point reversal disarm.
There's just so many combinations to remember, but all of them are easy to know, you could just make up the key combinations and you'd probably get them correct, most of the time. So I don't think there's much room for change, unless of course more attacks are created.

I also think the enemy AI should keep the same fight tactics. When you fight a big gang of people, they should work together to kill you, it shouldn't be Chuck Norris style where he beats his enemies up one at a time. The bunnies should crowd Turner, maybe even circle surround him if the difficulty is on hard. The fact that the bunnies all attack at once make fighting multiple enemies more realistic to how fighting should be like, they should help each out other when one gets in trouble/reversed.
But I also think that reverses should change to blocks when he fights big crowds, he should automatically set his moves based on the situation, and not reverse just to get kicked in the head.

[Homocidal Ham]

there should still be a move (or moves) to attack several opponents at once

there are moves to hit several opponents in real life

[Albab]

In vampire:the masquerade, the direction your punch went depended on which direction you were pressing on the keyboard. Worked quite well.

[Nuky]

In vampire:the masquerade, the direction your punch went depended on which direction you were pressing on the keyboard. Worked quite well.

Too bad you aint got three dimensional keyboard arrows... amongst other things...

[Albab]

Oh, right. xD

But I think it had something to do with your aim and also there were different things that each one did, not just directional. Like, if you pressed left and clicked, you'd use your left hand.

[Nuky]

left-click == right hand, right-click == left hand... Hit direction due to direction running and aiming (if looking up, do a hook (ie hit upwards))?

[Albab]

I meant... Eh, forget it. xD Anyhow, you should get a sheild. Cause.. you know, I'm just that good at staying on topic.

[Zantalos]

Ya a shield!

There should be a weapon that you could equip on your left hand. When using a one handed weapon (sword), your off hand (left hand) could be used to hold a lighter weapon like a knife to duel wield with. Or, you could just use a shield to make blocking more automatic, maybe giving less of a kick back when blocking. But it won't be so... Ninja like, might slow down gameplay too much or something

[Albab]

If it's an RPG, you should be able to choose between heavily armoured tank and leather armoured assasin/theif, shouldn't you?