A few changes to melee animations + new attacks.

[The Pope]

-Swinging weapons should be able to attack diagonally. Mice are precise enough to have eight attack directions.

-Both over and underarm thrusts should be available.

-Polearms need new swing animations.

-The current two hander animations are good for swords.

-Two handed axes and hammers could do with their own set. The current polearm ones could work, though the forward hand should slip down the grip as it goes for extra reach.

-Not all swings should be the same. The combat would have a fair bit more depth if each one had different preparation speed, damage, swing speed and recovery time.

-The speed stat should effect preparation speed and recovery time rather than having ridiculous looking slow motion swings.

-Rather than repeating the same blow over and over being the fastes, attacks should have a few that they recover into fastest. For example, left to right then right to left.

-Polearm thrusts could do with a bit of knockback against infantry; they're kind of useless if an enemy can just get impaled and walk up to you with your spear in his gut like nothing happened.

-Shield bash deserves being suggested again. And again. And again

 

[Dain Ironfoot]

yes, yes, yes and yes again :p

 

[Balinux]

Agreed! And adding to that, there should be better fingting sounds, not only for wounds, but also when attacking the caracter should make many diversed vocal sounds for each attack. The greatest would be when we swing a great polearm from up-down.

 

[Tiberius]

Eight ways to slice through your enemies *drools*

DO WANT

 

[Volkier]

Agreed! And adding to that, there should be better fingting sounds, not only for wounds, but also when attacking the caracter should make many diversed vocal sounds for each attack. The greatest would be when we swing a great polearm from up-down.

Wouldn't you get tired a lot sooner after all that screaming?

As for the OP, I do indeed agree that it would make combat a lot more diverse and entertaining (especially if this went in-par with horse improvements : ). The downside however is that it pretty much requires the whole combat system to be re-vamped ::\

 

[bobsters34]

Yesizors.

 

[The Pope]

Agreed! And adding to that, there should be better fingting sounds, not only for wounds, but also when attacking the caracter should make many diversed vocal sounds for each attack. The greatest would be when we swing a great polearm from up-down.

Wouldn't you get tired a lot sooner after all that screaming?

As for the OP, I do indeed agree that it would make combat a lot more diverse and entertaining (especially if this went in-par with horse improvements : ). The downside however is that it pretty much requires the whole combat system to be re-vamped ::\

It's not a total revamp. The code for figuring out mouse movement direction and selecting an attack is already there, so it just needs to be set up to work out diagonals too. Attacks can already have different effects - thrusts are already quite different to cuts. So most of the work would be animations.

 

[Trooper5445]

Sounds like good ideas.

 

[Merlkir]

yes. It mostly sums up all my wishes.

What I think might be moddable:

- more random animations for the "same type" of a swing/block. Would add variety while keeping it simple.
- by pressing a shift button in battle your weapon switches to another weapon with a different set of animations/attacks. The weapons look the same and have the same properties, just the attacks change. You let go of shift, the weapons switch back. This might be a way to implement Secondary attacks and shield bashing.

 

[The Pope]

One idea I posted a while ago was to vary the attack from each starting position based on mouse movement when you release.

Up, Down = Overhead chop
Up, Up = Pommel bash
Up, Left = Shield bash
Up, Right = Overarm thrust

and something similar for each position.

 

[Dindi]

sounds great and add will to the atmoshpere when fighting, will the ai do the combo moves with the current ai system or will the current system require editing.

 

[Balinux]

Agreed! And adding to that, there should be better fingting sounds, not only for wounds, but also when attacking the caracter should make many diversed vocal sounds for each attack. The greatest would be when we swing a great polearm from up-down.

Wouldn't you get tired a lot sooner after all that screaming?

Screaming would be only with the most powerful blows, the rest would be more like simple throat sounds that people do naturaly. Realism is the goal.

 

[Balinux]

One idea I posted a while ago was to vary the attack from each starting position based on mouse movement when you release.

Up, Down = Overhead chop
Up, Up = Pommel bash
Up, Left = Shield bash
Up, Right = Overarm thrust

and something similar for each position.

The shield bash could simply be like: right mouse button(raise the shield); left mouse button - once- simple shield tackle, twice- violent shield bash.

Edit: this, because the attack button is unused during shield defence. This way it could be used to make such combos.

 

[Kaptain_Krunch]

sounds good to me, full support, i think its great, doesnt sound that hard to make, altho it probably is 

 

[PIL313]

Agreed! And adding to that, there should be better fingting sounds, not only for wounds, but also when attacking the caracter should make many diversed vocal sounds for each attack. The greatest would be when we swing a great polearm from up-down.

Wouldn't you get tired a lot sooner after all that screaming?

Screaming would be only with the most powerful blows, the rest would be more like simple throat sounds that people do naturaly. Realism is the goal.

as longs the sounds would not become to repitive because no one wants to hear the same sound over and over. Although i think it would definatly be worth it

 

[The Pope]

The shield bash could simply be like: right mouse button(raise the shield); left mouse button - once- simple shield tackle, twice- violent shield bash.

Edit: this, because the attack button is unused during shield defence. This way it could be used to make such combos.

That works too. Either way, it would add some more depth to the combat and make it look more fluid. Particularly on polearms - it's just ridiculous that merely holding down block makes you immune to spear thrusts.

 

[LokiGodOfFire]

the new attack directions are a good suggestion, since those were the swordsmen first training hours spend on, after they were strong enough to swing a sword

but i'd like more to have some counter attacks than having pommel bash etc....
since you cant really use those attacks in a large battle.

best would be trip and disarming attacks for countering:
block---> yxou block an attack
directly after blocking the attack button --> counterattack

 

[Zathan]

-Swinging weapons should be able to attack diagonally. Mice are precise enough to have eight attack directions.

-The current two hander animations are good for swords.

-Two handed axes and hammers could do with their own set. The current polearm ones could work, though the forward hand should slip down the grip as it goes for extra reach.

Regarding two-hander animations; I've always though it strange how attacking with a large axe, glaive or poleaxe the animation for the overhead chop goes from your front and lifting the weapon straight up above your head. I feel that doing that motion with a heavy, high-momentum weapon would unbalance you or possibly top you over?

I'm absolutely no expert so I could easily be wrong here, but wouldn't it be more sensible if you had to swing the weapon starting from low, swinging backwards behind you in an arc thus ending up with the weapon overhead and ending the swing going forward and down, sort of an anticlock-wise motion?
Especially with a large, high-momentum axe I feel this would make more sense. Polearms would give you more control because of their long handles and you'd be able to counter the momentum.

Anyway, I like your ideas very much and would be thrilled to see new animations.

Zathan