The combat for my game is an important aspect for me. I really enjoy playing games with satisfying combat. Making the player feel like a powerful Goddess (The protagonist is Freya) would be a great achievement for me. Therefore, I focused on the playability of the system. This meant making it learnable, effective and satisfying (Sanchez et al, 2009). Without a full tutorial, I had to be careful how the player would learn the mechanics considering it is a full combat system with blocking, parrying and combo attacks.
The document below shows the design I intended for the combat during pre-production. However, small changes to the abilities have been made and extra tweaks to make the combat more enjoyable has been done too. I want the player to play on a controller but most will most likely use a keyboard and mouse so a way to ensure both devices provide good combat was key.
I implemented a "sticky" system in which the player has a designated target based on several variables and this target is essentially auto-locked and is attacked whichever way the player is facing. I rotate the player and lerp them if need be so that they are in attack range and land more attacks. This is especially useful on PC. I also have it determine whether to apply root motion for the attack so the player is not ramming through enemies with the animation and instead remains on the spot. This actually improved the feel of the combat.
The player will have 3 weapons total at the end and 3 elements of powers. The player will have two abilities per element at their disposal and certain enemies are resistant to certain weapons/abilities (ice giants immune to ice abilities). The main issues I have had with combat is small reactions from the enemies such as jittering or the agent moving them across the map for finishers.
The AI was also playing up and It was strangely a result of using prefabs of the same enemy. Full details of issues encountered so far can be seen in my Logbook below.
Given the short duration of the project, I believe I over scoped the combat since I wanted a fully fleshed out, clean system with unique enemies that fulfil different purposes (enforcers, smashers, emphasisers). I have created the system mostly as intended but creating each of the enemies with unique attacks will require more time than I have if I want a decent amount of polishing.
I did also create a small combat prototype prior to officially starting the semester as I wanted to be prepared, this helped establish the look of the combat but proved to be a minor aid to implementation do to integrating much more later on.
Thanks for reading :)
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