Chade on 16/7/2003 at 11:01
The trouble with that sort of improvement in stats is that you get a situation where the palyer himself actually can be worse at something as his character get's better at it ... not really a very desirable result, IMO.
BTW, about thief, I think what was good about thief was actually the animations used for the guards attack. Although that sounds a bit wierd, the end result was that the guards would start attacking, and the animation would tell you what the "dangerous" ground was, and give you a set predictable time before it became "dangerous", and it was all timed very well, which made spotting and avoiding the "dangerous area's" quite nice ... but I think they could do more in Arx Fatalis. (Although I'm reminded of the phrase "keep it simple stupid" right now ...)
Oh, btw, apologies in advance for a long-winded, theoretical, and somewhat pretentious post ... but I think it has some good idea's in it.
The trouble with Arx is that you need a system which takes into account that the player could have hugely varying combat skills, could be fighting one, or two, or up to 4-5 monsters at any one time, could be facing melee or magic users, could be fighting in the open, or in a rightly constricted tunnel. and could be using either a weapon/shield, weapon, or !BIG WEAPON! ... and it has to change appropriately depending on whatever combination of these the player has.
At the moment, I'm thinking that the best way to make combat feel unique in different circumstances and yet still play well depending on the skill's is to imagine combat as a combination of two "games":
The first "game" is the actual act of fighting something. it is governed mainly by mechanics of swinging a weapon and blocking them. To cope with multiple mosnter's, the player's actions are built to affect area's more then they are to affectspecific monster's. It is concentrated on an area roughly in the 90 degrees in front of the player, and, is mainly shown to the palyer via the graphics rather then the sound (which is left as the ideal mechanism for carrying information for the other "game", which I'll get to in a moment). In order to allow both intense combat with one tough creature or multiple weaker creatures, it allows for both a fine and large scale of difficulty. The results after a moment of this combat might include the health of the creatures involved, the distance of the creatures involved to the player, and their mental state (stunned, afraid, wanting support to attack ...)
The second "game" is the act of managing combat with groups of creatures around the player. It is governed mainly by the AI of the creatures being battled with, and consists of the act's of monsters fully aware of the player, and closing in as a group to commence the first "game" with him. It takes place all around the caster, and is mainly shown to the player via audial clues. The way the player has an input into this game is via the output of the first game, which is why I included such things as the distance of monster's relative to the player, and their mental state. The player's success at this game is how well he manages to "split" the monster's attacks so that he isn't overwhelmed from all sides at any one time and can get on with the first "game" with as few time constraints and requirement's of extroadinary success as possible.
Ermm ... someone please tell me if I'm making a total botch of explaining this!!!
And no, I'm not currently going to go into exactly how these games would work. I'll think about that later. To use programming as an example, moment this is more like the outline of how a program might be structured then a description of the nuts and bolts required to make it work. I thought I'd better get some opinions on this before thinking more about it.
Shadowcat on 17/7/2003 at 22:33
Quote:
Originally posted by Chade The trouble with that sort of improvement in stats is that you get a situation where the palyer himself actually can be worse at something as his character get's better at it ... not really a very desirable result, IMO. It depends a bit on what the developers are aiming at, I suppose. In third person RPGs this kind of thing happens all the time, because you (the player) are not expected to do everything manually. I don't think a first-person view has to exclude this sort of feature, however.
It seems to me that if your basic game design includes the power to improve your characters abilities arbitrarily by 'leveling up', then you will invariably end up with the situation where your character should be better at certain things than the player could be, and so in some ways it seems wrong for certain abilities to always depend primarily on the player's skills, regardless of the character's skill
Again, this kind of feature should probably be optional, and would certainly require careful implementation and testing, but I think it has distinct possibilities.
Chade on 19/7/2003 at 01:03
I agree that if you have arbitarily chosen skills, then fighting someone when you have low skills will almost certianly have to be harder then fighting that same person once you acquire better skills.
But if you're fighting someone of your own ability as a character, then I don't think doing this at a higher level means you will have to find the act of fighting easier. And I imagine that that's what would happen with your suggestion. In fact, if you're aiming for it, I think there are definately ways to make combat between equals require more player skill as well as character skill at higher levels.
As a very, VERY, simple example, if you had something like thief's fighting system, except with more accesible blocking, then if you swung your sword faster at higher levels, and moster's did the same, you would probably find combat required better skills from you as well as your character having better skills.
Well, I imagine you would, anyway.
Spitter on 21/7/2003 at 12:59
Skills and combat. I was thinking along these lines. If you can execute different sort of "moves" in combat (ie. more than the five or so swings in Arx now), perhaps a skill devoted to combat should not really increase the damage the moves inflict, but instead activate more freaky and deadly blows for player to use? Thus a novice swordsman could only do basic swings here and there, whereas an adept warrior could slash more than one opponent at a time, make false moves to fool his enemies, et cetera.
Maybe.
lancaster6 on 22/7/2003 at 22:12
i used to play a game called "die by the sword". however u moved the mouse was how the sword moved. almost comlete range of motion except for 1 flaw. in order to hit any1, it seemed i had to kneel.if it would have had a button to re-center the sword position after the attack, might have been helpful. the alignment seemd off to me, but the concept was gr8. if they could use that , but narrow , or be able to adjust the range of motion to each player's personal style, that might be something to consider. of course, not being a programmer, i dont know the complexities, but they were close with that game. some refinement might be pretty cool.
just another opinion ,
but its mine so it doesnt smell so bad to me hehe
daveodeth on 24/7/2003 at 11:06
Quote:
Originally posted by James Sterrett A few quick thoughts on combat systems...
Whether or not we like it, the "hold to swing" system does have some grounding in reality. [My basis for the following: I was a fencer for 6 years, spent a summer on grounds crew mostly using a machete, and have had sporadic training with other bladed weapons.]
1) It makes you go back and forth. That's reality, folks. Fights with bladed weapons are grounded in distance. Back off, prep to attack, duck into range to attack and back out before the enemy can reply.... it's real. I spent a tremendous amount of time as a fencer both learning to play with, and playing with, the distance to my opponent.
2) The hold down the mouse to swing... a heavy weapon take a lot of time and muscle to wield. Even a machete, which is a fairly light sword, takes a noticeable amount of time to ready, even when you're trying to work fast and know what you're doing. A heavy sword makes matters worse. A two-handed great-sword is six feet of steel and four to six inches across. Its momentum is amazing; it takes a lot of effort to make it move, and a commensurate effort to stop it (thus it delivers a lot of energy to the target, making it a deadly weapon). In other words, holding down the mouse to prep your next swing isn't unrealistic.
None of this means you have to *like* holding down the mouse button. That's a different issue. :) But it does produce some realistic effects.
If you really want a realistic treatment of the sword, you have to look at Die By The Sword - though it skirts the ragged edge of Trespasser's sin, in making you learn a new interface to control "your" body. But is it fun, which is surely the point.
James Sterrett on 24/7/2003 at 13:42
Fun *is* the point, yes - though fun is also a slippery term. Lancaster6 quite liked Die By The Sword, while I did not. There are people out there would would rather dig their eyeballs out with hot pokers than play Thief or System Shock or Arx.
Thus, in asking the question, you need to be clearer on what it is that's fun for you....
ToxicFrog on 5/9/2003 at 20:16
Moving aside from the debate on melee combat systems for a moment...
One thing I would like to see: MORE RANGED WEAPONS! The bows in Arx were almost completely useless in my experience - can't they give us a longbow, and a few flavours of crossbow?
One thing that worries me: Why, oh WHY are they simpifying (aka "crippling" in my sight) the skill system? Complex character building is one of the most fun parts for me, and taking that away just seems silly.
Shadowcat on 6/9/2003 at 03:18
Totally agree on the ranged weapons... My character used the bow (hard to shake that Thief habit), and hence I put most of my combat skill points into that, and was rather disappointed by the lack of better bows to be found :(
Erik Boielle on 20/10/2003 at 12:36
Hello All.
If you take a look at, some of the stance thingies the suggest for weilding longswords in two hands involve holding them over your head.
See the Art of Longsword Combat, book 1 at
(
http://www.aemma.org/training_top.htm)
But apparently, a properly balanced and well made sword isn't as heavy as you might think.
Then you get proper two handed swords that are just massive and are used differently.
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I think you could do something for swordfighting with something of an energy meter - You, you adopt a stance through use of your mouse wheel, and then your energy bar each attack drains some energy until you've made a few blows at which point you have to go on the defensive while it recharges.
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I think its important to try to avoid situations where you can make an anoyingly crap character through bad decision.
Slike I wanted to play a gunslinger in Arcanum, but after a while I gave up and went with a half ogre melee specialist and kicked everything to death with very little effort.
Vary complex lists of stats and whatnot leave me worrying about where to invest my points.
