|
March 7, 2003 - Combat. It's one of the major staples of any RPG-style
game, and there are many ways to approach it. Some games use the turn-based approach,
where you select each member of your party and choose their attack. Often this descends
into a situation where you 'Summon the Seventh Demon of Kunarg', spend 3 minutes
watching a jaw-dropping spell effect where the earth is ripped in two, a 500 foot
monster climbs out of the crack and pisses lava over your enemies. At the end of
this, the world magically heals itself and the number '23' rises helpfully from
your enemy, the only indicator of the damage that's been done, or indeed what just
happened.
Other games use a real-time, randomised system, where the roll of an invisible pair
of dice dictates whether each attack equated to a wet fart or a lump hammer. Usually
this turns into a situation where both opponents run furiously at each other, screaming
their battle cries, before skidding to a halt a meter apart, pausing and then: Whack
, Thunk , Whack , Thunk , Whack , Thunk
. Uuuurgh . And someone gets eight inches of pointy stick up them.
Not being fans of either of these approaches, we opted for real-time, visceral,
hands on, meaty combat where you could work up a sweat bashing away at combos, or
contemplating your timing with the skill and audacity of Sun Tzu on coke. It seemed
so simple.
It wasn't.
So many things can go wrong. So many things did go wrong that we compiled our list
of all the things we learned to get our combat feeling anything more interesting
than an old ladies' handbag fight. Here are some examples:
1) It's not in the animation...
Of course we don't mean it. However, in order for a strike to go from start to end
pose, we're probably talking about a quarter of a second, maximum. Any more than
that, and the time between one button-mash and the next becomes rather frustrating.
Players start complaining about combat being 'too slow'. Frankly, anyone who can
swish a broadsword 180 degrees in a tenth of a second is probably a steroid inflated
freak, but apparently that's what feels 'realistic'.
2) ...it's in the posing
With that in mind you begin to realise that the players actually see more of the
end-poses than any other aspect of animation. If your hero lands a blow and finishes
up looking like he's had a poo in his pants then nobody is going to be impressed,
regardless how much damage it did, and regardless of how swanky the rest of the
move was. That last frame of animation is the one that's on screen most of the time,
so the character had better look like he knows everyone is watching.
3) Assailants and positioning
So, how about the assailants? Should they all run at you in a line? Should they
try to be tactical and sneak around the back? Should they try and maintain a specific
position relative to you? You have to be very careful with all this, or else you
risk bandits milling about effectively saying:
"Look, Mr Hero, I'm primary assailant -- I get to stand here, right in front
of you so you can thwack me firs... oh, hello. The bugger's moved again. I wish
you'd stand sti...aaaaarghsplat."
We opted for a complicated wheel-based affair that's far less interesting than this
picture of a cute puppy.
4) Playing (un)fair
If there's more than one assailant in the battle at once, then you have to make
sure they play fair, or more accurately, unfair. For example, we had to make our
bandits think along these lines:
- "Don't hit him when someone else is hitting him. It might be a really
good tactic lads, but he'll whinge 'There's only one of me.'"
- "Don't hide where he can't see you. Yes, I know he's allowed to, but he is
the hero and it's his privilege."
- "Take plenty of time to attack. Stop, yawn, point to him, hold up a bloody
sign saying, 'I'm going to attack you now,' if you have to, but make sure he doesn't
start moaning about how unfair everything is; even if he did run into a group of
seventy of your bandit mates without looking."
- "Oh, and make sure that you're blind. If you can see the player from over 30
meters away, just pretend you didn't, or he'll complain that he wasn't given time
to react. Spoilt little bastard. It's OUR lives on the line. Does he care? Well??"
|