Melee Attacks - Keep it Simple and Stupid

[blackcat2k]

After playing through the Dungeon Lords demo with a melee and ranged character. One can see that their needs to be a lot of polishing on the melee attacks in the game.

Melee attack hit detection is severely short which leads to a lot missed attacks due to nothing more than not being able to judge the distance between the player and opponent.

It's probably too late in the development to redo the animations. However, the animations of the attacks should be more definitive when they come out. You hit the attack button. You shouldn't be guessing whether or not your character would be able to hit the enemy.

A lot of people reference the way Morrowind handled melee attacks when talking about the melee combat changes in DL. Still, Blade of Darkness (a much overlooked close combat oriented game) did a good job with making melee attack moves that had good hit detection and clear execution. The moves came out slower than they do in DL, but at least you could tell that you actually hit the enemy you were aiming at. A lock on target button would help as well in ensuring more accurate melee strikes.

In addition, if the character models wouldn't slide all over the place during combat it would help would combat out a lot.

A lot of these changes may be too much too add to game with it being so close to release. However, if they were added it would increase the playability of DL by a huge margin.

[Tenka]

After playing through the Dungeon Lords demo with a melee and ranged character. One can see that their needs to be a lot of polishing on the melee attacks in the game.

Melee attack hit detection is severely short which leads to a lot missed attacks due to nothing more than not being able to judge the distance between the player and opponent.

It's probably too late in the development to redo the animations. However, the animations of the attacks should be more definitive when they come out. You hit the attack button. You shouldn't be guessing whether or not your character would be able to hit the enemy.

A lot of people reference the way Morrowind handled melee attacks when talking about the melee combat changes in DL. Still, Blade of Darkness (a much overlooked close combat oriented game) did a good job with making melee attack moves that had good hit detection and clear execution. The moves came out slower than they do in DL, but at least you could tell that you actually hit the enemy you were aiming at. A lock on target button would help as well in ensuring more accurate melee strikes.

In addition, if the character models wouldn't slide all over the place during combat it would help would combat out a lot.

A lot of these changes may be too much too add to game with it being so close to release. However, if they were added it would increase the playability of DL by a huge margin.

The following are already fixed/added (stated by Chuk22, one of the Developers):

- Melee Hit detection increased
- Visible Targetting (optional)
- Absolute Fixed Camera (optional)
- Reduced amount of knockback taken from hits

The biggest problem I thought was the latent camera follow, made it rather difficult to see what you're aiming at especially when turning, thankfully that will be fixed with the Absolute Fixed Camera.

[Vampire_X]

didnt they also say there will be a health bar or something so you know the enemy is also dead? I like in games where it shows the damage your doing above the enemies head i like that so you know how much damage your doing.

[vesselle]

i don't like health bars. they're too contrived for me.
i can't wait for Call of Cthulhu, as it doesn't have ANY kind of interface. you know when you've been driven insane because everything you see looks whacked out, you know when you're attacked because you get knocked back and your vision blurs or your hand can't hold a weapon because your fingers are broken... :D
it's about darned time! :p

V***V

[Priest4hire]

There have been a number of games without health bars, or even interfaces. The classic Another World has no onscreen interface of any kind. The problem is that while a health bar might be contrived there just hasn't been a really good alternative. After all, it's still a game. No health bar works best with games that have almost no health anyway, like Delta Force in which the first shot is usually deadly.

[Tenka]

didnt they also say there will be a health bar or something so you know the enemy is also dead? I like in games where it shows the damage your doing above the enemies head i like that so you know how much damage your doing.

There already is health bars in the game, when you hit someone it appears down the bottom along with the number telling you how much damage the hit did. Chuk also stated that the optional Visible Targeting will indicate the enemies health when you pass over an enemy.

[Cathail]

i don't like health bars. they're too contrived for me.
i can't wait for Call of Cthulhu, as it doesn't have ANY kind of interface. you know when you've been driven insane because everything you see looks whacked out, you know when you're attacked because you get knocked back and your vision blurs or your hand can't hold a weapon because your fingers are broken... :D
it's about darned time! :p

V***V

I have to agree with Priest4hire on the health bar. The problem is that "in real life", you would see wounds, visual effects of fatigue, erratic swings, etc. While not impossible, it would require many sets of separate models for every body part and many separate animation paths for all body parts for all situations for every creature. This becomes quite prohibitive with the current technology on several levels, not to mention the time to create all the artwork and animations.

In Call of Cthulu, if it's anything like the old p&p game, combat usually is going to be decided in one or two blows. In Cthulu the general rule was, unless it was small, combat was bad. If it was small you could kill it quick. The visuals for insanity do sound interesting though.

[mkreku]

I'm also interested in Call of Cthulhu, but that game is almost as bad as Duke Nukem Forever.. It's been delayed for what? 2 years now?

Anyhow, why not make the health bars (either at bottom of screen or above enemy heads) optional? I'm playing World of Warcraft right now, and that game toggles health bars above enemies on or off by just pressing 'V'. It works well, especially when you're in a group. When you play alone, you're not too bothered in seeing the monsters health on top of their heads, since it's always visible in the upper left corner, next to your portrait. But when you're in a group, in an instance with super difficult enemies, it is vital that everyone in the group focuses on the same enemy (to bring them down one by one as fast as possible) and that's when the health bars on top of enemies heads come in handy. I could imagine those types of health bars having the same use in Dungeon Lords co-op.

[ByblosHex]

CMon now lets all argue about problems that dont even exist....

[Cathail]

CMon now lets all argue about problems that dont even exist....

But those are the only ones worth arguing about ;).