🧵 What makes satisfying 3D combat
Anonymous at Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:13:20 UTC No. 930253
From a VFX 3D perspective of course, to be on topic.
Anonymous at Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:47:20 UTC No. 930261
So I've got some blood splatter particles on the PC and the skeleton, the skeleton bleeds dust.
There's supposed to be stagger animations, but the skeleton knocks down the PC in one hit because he's not wearing armor. The animations are lergely placeholders but I think the flaw in them is timing.
Like the knock down is too squishy.
Gameplay wise I'm trying to emulate "Dragon's Dogma". You have light attacks and heavy attacks, and if you hold down either shoulder button you can do special moves associated with your sword or shield. The button for the shield moves also raises the shield to block.
Enemy AI just runs at you can attacks when it's in range. I do want them to back off and circle strafe like when theyre low on stamina or just to give the player some breathing room.
I'm rutterless at this point, but I think making combat "juicy" and fun is going to be the most important element so I asking for like a priority list. What's the main issue. What's absolutely necessary. What's secondary. etc
Anonymous at Tue, 20 Dec 2022 02:03:09 UTC No. 930265
>>930253
>Enemies need to actually try to kill you.
>Hit validation - there needs to be a reaction from the opponent, through animation and or sound
>Strategy/Depth - being able to just mindlessly press the attack button gets boring.
i also really liked dragon's dogma and am working on something of my own as well
Anonymous at Tue, 20 Dec 2022 05:34:01 UTC No. 930297
>>930253
a little bit of procedural animation can make the fights less repetitive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPo
Anonymous at Tue, 20 Dec 2022 08:15:15 UTC No. 930315
>>930253
smooth and short animations and highly responsive controls, nothing of which is board-related.
>>>/v/
Anonymous at Tue, 20 Dec 2022 13:11:13 UTC No. 930334
>>930315
Learn to fucking read you retarded piece of shit.
Anonymous at Tue, 20 Dec 2022 21:59:26 UTC No. 930408
>>930265
Ok here's my new animation list
for the skelly
>weapon bouncing off a shield
>flinching (as opposed to being knocked back or stunned. Just for hit readability)
>a dodge (to respond to light attack spamming)
>a counter attack to follow the dodge
>blocking
>parrying
for the player
>weapon deflect off a block
With these the skeleton will have responses to spamming forcing the player to be more tactical. There is already a flinch animation for the player and the skeleton but they're not implemented right, and frankly arent dramatic enough to be noticed anyways
Anonymous at Tue, 20 Dec 2022 23:20:42 UTC No. 930432
These are great. I want to play as the skeleton
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 05:57:22 UTC No. 930460
>>930334
this thread only exists because you wanted to humble-brag about having made some placeholder-animations for your indie troon garbage. be glad you got an honest response.
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 06:32:44 UTC No. 930463
>>930460
I'm not OP, lmao. Just give up.
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 08:01:58 UTC No. 930470
>>930463
give up what? my initial post is 100% correct, this is an off-topic thread.
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 17:50:48 UTC No. 930513
>>930460
I am op
So what? You need another blender vs maya thread? There should be more project threads. I'm making a game that game has 3dcg in it and I am very glad and surprised I got real responses. thanks to that I got direction to fix a problem ive been hung up on for months.
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 17:59:23 UTC No. 930515
>>930513
>So what? You need another blender vs maya thread?
no, what i am actually looking for on this board is solutions to highly detailed topology problems, workflow improvements, plugin recommendations and input from people excelling in fields i haven't delved into yet (such as state-of-the-art procedural modeling in houdini).
since 100.00% of this board is below my expectations, i choose to shit on everything you non-persons (literal NPC's) post.
my way is correct, yours is wrong - ergo the entire board must change, not me.
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:05:36 UTC No. 930517
>>930515
Oic you do nothing and it makes you mad when other people are trying.
You keep my thread bumped with flaccid hate and I won't be back till I have content.
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:14:17 UTC No. 930518
>>930517
you couldn't be more wrong if I held a gun to your head and made you try.
>flaccid hate
cold contempt. I've been doing this longer than you, i am more capable than you (even in animating, which i hardly put effort into) and unlike you i do not have the primitive urge to attention-whore beginner-to-intermediate results by off-topic posting on an anonymous basket-weaving-forum.
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:25:01 UTC No. 930520
>>930513
You're just encountering the normal retarded /3/ crab mentality. It's not even worth replying to in my opinion
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:30:14 UTC No. 930522
>>930520
>shunning crystal clear off-topic-garbage is crab mentality
i am literally the guy that asked for more in-depth discussions about state-of-the-art topics, you illustrate comptom nigger.
drown in diarrhea for all eternity please.
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:31:53 UTC No. 930524
>>930522
*illiterate
I am correct, you blender NPC'S are wrong. you will not get rid of me.
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Dec 2022 23:17:54 UTC No. 930554
>930522
lmao look at this pompous coomer retard who feels compelled to drop completely unrelated soicialmedia thots with each post as he feels just as attention deprived as them.
no (You) for you.
Anonymous at Thu, 22 Dec 2022 20:42:27 UTC No. 930651
OK I got the skelly to block when you spam him too much with your sword, but then I realized it doesnt really drive home the point unless your attacks donk off his block.
I'm going to have to redo all of the enemy behavior from scratch because it's just a mess of code that barely works rn. This skeleton represents the most generic enemy behaviors. Everything the skelly does every other potential derivative enemy will be able to do.
Anonymous at Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:24:24 UTC No. 930659
>>930651
good idea, you should have a small punishment for spamming the same attack til you get blocked, i think recoiling and making yourself vulnerable for a second is good. does the skeelton recoil if you block his attacks? you can even do bigger attack = bigger recoil, higher risk higher reward
Anonymous at Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:29:53 UTC No. 930660
>>930659
Just got player deflection implemented. It could stand to be a bit more punishing but here I got him to block me a few times in a row.
Implemented RN you can "power block" and it makes the skelly play his fall on the ground animation by timing it right. Deflecting when you're just holding block isnt in yet but it's all part of the plan.
Anonymous at Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:44:10 UTC No. 930665
i zoomed in a bit more. Couldnt get him to block as many times this try. But you can see it.
He counts how many times he's been hit without himself hitting back, and if it passes a threshold he goes for a block. If your weapon is heavy enough to stagger him then you can stun lock him, but he can break the lock by blocking. Gotta adjust how thats calculated thought because i seem to either by knocking skeletons on their ass too easily or they're acting like they have super armor
Anonymous at Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:49:46 UTC No. 930667
>>930665
i can't tell if the attacks are hitting. i thought the skeleton would do this when hit >>930415
also is that motion blur or just bad webm encoding?
Anonymous at Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:51:41 UTC No. 930668
This is just fun
I have this lever which is interactable. When you use it it plays a little animation. It only activates w/e it activates after the animation is done. The gears are non intractable but like the switch also activate other things when it's dont with it's animation. Then the portcullis is a proper door object with a robust collision to stop clipping which turns off rather than just moving out of the way. You could make chain reaction mechanisms and have for instance one of the things in the sequence be broken so you have to fix it or w/e.
Anonymous at Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:54:18 UTC No. 930669
>>930667
Yeah so the skeleton is supposed to react to the hits with that flinch animation but either his stats atm are set super high or the sword's are super low. In either case characters should flinch to damage most of the time and only ignore it when there's some special reason.
That blur affect is the skeletons trail particle behind his sword. I just discovered theyre set to an errored shader. It's supposed to look like the players. Just a which streek.
Additionally IDK how to encode webms. I'm C&P ffmpeg codes to trim the videos.
Anonymous at Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:59:47 UTC No. 930670
>>930669
>>930667
ah jeez the skeleton's "blood" was also borked so he was bleeding blurry.
Here I set the stats correctly and you can see I can stun lock him till he manages to block me.
The stagger + the dust help indicate contact quite a bit better.
Anonymous at Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:30:24 UTC No. 930688
>>930687
Kew I'll check it out.
Anonymous at Sat, 24 Dec 2022 10:46:10 UTC No. 930873
>>930253
>good animation
anticipation, suspense, payoff. stiff animations feel like shit to play with
>indication that your attack connected with the enemy.
things like hitsounds, blood splatters, sparks, that pause thing that monster hunter does when you land an attack
>responsive controls
if the game doesnt do the thing i want it to do when i press the button then i want to strangle you
Anonymous at Sat, 24 Dec 2022 12:28:44 UTC No. 930882
I was too focused on her ass
Anonymous at Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:40:34 UTC No. 930903
>>930873
>that pause thing that monster hunter does when you land an attack
I like this thing.
>anticipation, suspense, payoff.
To put it in practical terms, I am to pause the animation briefly on poses. So in my most basic sword strike i could linger on the initial point where he's brought his sword back, buzz through the swing, then linger on the end.
Anonymous at Sat, 24 Dec 2022 20:55:11 UTC No. 930925
So here's a new behavior.
Skelly gets defensive when his stamina is drained. Keeps his distance till it recovers. Still tweaking stamina regen rate. He recovers from his defensiveness very quickly here. The point being when you're fighting groups, you can cow some of them off and fight them a few at a time. Special abilities will affect enemy stamina.
I just wish I knew wtf I was doing with encoding these webms
Anonymous at Sun, 25 Dec 2022 01:22:33 UTC No. 930958
Basically just copy Fromsoftware.
>Hitting an enemy needs to actually have animation blended stun overlays that apply to the bone area you hit, so hitting a creatures arm makes the arm flinch, independant of their current animations
>Having any animation that looks playback/stop start to idle pose etc is trash, you will never have satisfying game feel, animations need to blend seamlessly and be well designed with tae events to flow into one another
>Proper feet IK at least so the footing of your character is always realistic and drives the rest of the animation into looking correct
>Attack animations need to be hyper fast at the point of contact with good sound/effects and feedback reaction wise
The VFX perspective is the literal last thing that matters for combat being satisfying. You can have no fx or particles at all, but hitting a mob with well done animation and sound systems gets you 90% of the way there. Particles are just for extra oomph, just like screenshake effects
Anonymous at Sun, 25 Dec 2022 01:40:19 UTC No. 930960
>>930958
>>Having any animation that looks playback/stop start to idle pose etc is trash, you will never have satisfying game feel, animations need to blend seamlessly and be well designed with tae events to flow into one another
now this is an interesting problem. For most of my animations I animate transitions out of and back into some relevent neutral pose. I notice there's this like pausing during the animation transitions. in this animation>>930422 you can see the skeleton is at the apex of his reeling animation in the first frame. I'm relying on the blending between animations to give it this very satisfying pop. Specifically inspired by DS weapon deflect animation. I havent gone through and tweaked transition parameter, but it's still "squishy". I dont know what it is I need to do to get that very satisfying pop.
>>Attack animations need to be hyper fast at the point of contact with good sound/effects and feedback reaction wise
I'm using a collider bound to the weapon model for hit detection. Which I know is wrong for this reason. If the collider moves too much in a frame it could jump over the enemy collider and miss. But assuming I change that, and am free to have animations as fast as I want. Could I parse what you're saying to men that the flow of the animation should be less consistent? Like in pic related I have 1/2 second animation. The sword's momentum is pretty consistent through out. What if it were slower up to the point of about being straight out to the side, then proportionally much faster. such that it's still 1/2 second?
Anonymous at Sun, 25 Dec 2022 01:45:52 UTC No. 930961
how's this on improvements?
I cant actually edit this animation. It's ancient, and when I say place holder I really mean it. I used FK so it'd be faster to reanimate it from scratch which i ought to do anyways.
Anonymous at Sun, 25 Dec 2022 03:07:07 UTC No. 930967
>>930253
What I've gotten from videos analyzing KH2's combat (and say what you will about its ease or w/e, it's undeniably satisfying on both a visual and visceral level):
>Strong follow-through on sword swings; that means settling and possibly momentum that moves the center of mass in the direction of the swing
>For quick movements, generous hitboxes that can sometimes hit even before the swing itself lands; this is fine for PCs because you're trying to give the player a sense of power, it doesn't feel unfair
>3 layers of interest/feedback that you've input a command and connected, usually the animation itself, relevant vfx, and enemy reaction (not just to the presence of a hit, but the character of it, too)
>Tactical variety; DMC et al. give you direct control, KH sets up the type of hit you do based on enemy proximity, enemy count, air or ground initiation, etc., and it's still the player's "choice" in that they will instinctively know what attack is coming out based on those factors and can choose to attack or change one or more of said factors
>Robust lock-on
Anonymous at Sun, 25 Dec 2022 17:46:45 UTC No. 931020
>>930967
Good stuff. I particularly liked air combos in kh. How you magentize towards your enemy when you attack. Testing combat these past couple days I've noticed I'll attack to the point of moving past the enemy. A subtle force that turns and pushes the player towards the enemy like in kh could help that.
Kh context sensitive attack selection won't work on this project because I have a different plan for attack selection. However, I do remember the first swing in a combo having a long lead up followed by quick hits and a final payoff attack. Very juicy and fun to do. My next step will probably involve redoing my attack animations completely. A slower opening attack, with rapid strikes only available if you connect could add another tactical layer as well as make combat more satisfying
Anonymous at Mon, 26 Dec 2022 00:53:30 UTC No. 931045
>>930253
https://youtube.com/watch?v=LNidsMe
I saw this vid years ago and was blown away, I never played this game but what he is showing in the presentation is fast and responsive that many games (devs) even today seem unable to do
Anonymous at Mon, 26 Dec 2022 00:58:42 UTC No. 931046
I did not redo my attack animation but I got the slow down on hit working.
This is 10% speed for 3 frames whenever the weapon hurts the skelly.
>>931045
This video and the other video posted have been haunting my YT recommended for a long time. Maybe it's a sign.
Anonymous at Mon, 26 Dec 2022 06:25:22 UTC No. 931061
>>930315
>VFX 3D perspective
your problem seems to be more of a game design one than "VFX" whatever does that mean to you
For snappy animations see nintendo games, they usually have the tightest controls (BotW, SM Odyssey). Study them and apply on your project.
Anonymous at Mon, 26 Dec 2022 06:28:27 UTC No. 931062
>>931061
Btw from the clips ITT I can see you can't animate for shit and don't even know the basic principles. Learn to animate first or off source it to someone competent.
Anonymous at Mon, 26 Dec 2022 18:01:01 UTC No. 931107
>>931062
>source it to someone competent.
Are you volunteering?
Anonymous at Tue, 27 Dec 2022 23:45:02 UTC No. 931256
I built a new rig and redid the 3 hit light attack combo. There are no very dramatic pauses right before and after swinging. Experimenting with some of the ideas in >>930687 where characters kind of move from pose to pose. I think it's over pronounced so I'll trim it back, however it's made the movements a big more readable as well as made the fight with the skelly much more tactical. Way more often he's able to whip out a block in the middle of a combo.
Anonymous at Wed, 28 Dec 2022 04:05:21 UTC No. 931279
>>931256
>>931257
I am sorry but this is terrible. Go back to basics, start over and do it again.
Anonymous at Wed, 28 Dec 2022 04:37:48 UTC No. 931286
>>930253
VFX has to go well with ACTUAL Animation first, something you clearly lack.
The other method is HOW you will approach the development of your game first, the type of animations would be somewhat acceptable if its not the main focus of combat, just exploration.
An amazing game that did this for the 3DS was Shin Megami Tensei IV, but in that regard you should also focus on having a great world building and OST, good luck on that.
https://youtu.be/vj_opFakhWI?t=711
Anonymous at Wed, 28 Dec 2022 09:31:28 UTC No. 931310
>>931279
nta but what is a good reference for "the basics", is there an animation bible? Or a good course you'd recommend?
Anonymous at Wed, 28 Dec 2022 20:29:36 UTC No. 931363
>>931286
Thanks. Im secure in my world building and i got someone to work on music with me.
You bring up an interesting problem which is what slurred this thread. The game is an exploration, but with procedural environments. Procedural levels tend to either be nonsense or very generic. I have a few different prototypes where levels are made where you gotta do things like hit switches or.collect keys in a specific order to.progress, but given what the game's about and how it works I may want levels which are more just big spaces to explore. Therefore deep combat is needed to keep these spaces interesting. If monsters are fun to fight then a maze with monsters in it is fun to explore. If combat's an afterthought then puzzles are needed, but even scaleable puzzles will get stale very quickly, and I've been having trouble building scaleable puzzles. I want to burn the candle at both ends. I'll make procedural levels which are mostly non linear spaces to explore, with mild "get this, so that, go here" elements, which are then populated by monsters that are interesting and challenging to fight.