A few things I noticed:
-The impulses are.... Oddly fast/far. I didn't see those when I tested it, sorry
-I will add a tutorial as soon as I can, a movelist as well.
How could I improve the way the combat feels?
Viewing post in Living Festival Demonstration jam comments
Apologies for how much I was rambling. I'll try to recap and add things below.
- Smooth animations really are everything here. If the player character animation goes back to idle, players will assume the combo string has been broken. The recovery time after a swing should be a lot longer. Worse comes to worse you can let the player dodge cancel the recovery animation.
- Swapping between sword and fist should either be instant (probably best for a fast paced game like LFD,) or should only be (and mostly always be) possible when in idle. It felt extremely finnicky and I have no idea why.
- Dodge should not be E, that way the player can control all of WASD.
- Standard attacks should be predictable. I shouldn't be flying all over the place just by hammering the basic attack button.
- Non-standard attacks should have a point: IE, chase attacks, stun locks like juggles. It seems you have these but they're still very finnicky. Your running chase strike is way over tuned and should stop at the enemy it targets. Your upper cut juggle is probably fine, but at least right now there doesn't seem like much of a reason to chase them up to try to attack in the air. You might even want to add some sort of AoE attack, like a spin attack, to hit enemies all around you if you get surrounded.
- There needs to be better camera controls, such as turning the camera and having the camera face the enemy better while targeting. The camera does try to keep the enemy in view, but in my experience, targeting cameras tend to feel best when they try to roughly keep the player between them and the enemy.
- Something as simple as decreasing the jump gravity could go a long way into making the jump feel better. You can also reduce the jump strength to match if you don't want the player to go higher with lower gravity.
Well, that's going to my to-do list. Thanks for the advice, I need that.
Any ideas for a better dodge key? V?
When you say predictable do you mean the attack impulses send you too far? Because that's something I noticed in your video. That is REALLY damn weird, because that isn't how it behaves in my testing. If you've seen the MP4s I post on the threads, you'd probably noticed the attack impulses aren't rocketing you around. It's much more manageable there. I'm going to have to look into that somehow.
If you must know, the purpose of pause attacks are usually to be more multi-hit style combo extensions.
Any ideas for a better dodge key? V?
I'd make the dodge key ALT probably, but that's just because it's easy for my thumb to reach without accidentally hitting SPACE. In the future you will probably want to add keybind customization.
When you say predictable do you mean the attack impulses send you too far? Because that's something I noticed in your video. That is REALLY damn weird, because that isn't how it behaves in my testing. If you've seen the MP4s I post on the threads, you'd probably noticed the attack impulses aren't rocketing you around. It's much more manageable there. I'm going to have to look into that somehow.
Yeah, the biggest thing is definitely the impulse. I had a friend test it, and the game behaved the same on his computer. If I had to guess, it's an issue tied to frame rate. As far as I can tell, I'm running LFD at 144 FPS on a 144 Hz monitor. If you have a more frame limited monitor, such as a 60 Hz monitor, and Unity is tying the game's frame rate to your monitor's frame rate, and the physics aren't properly set up for it, physics impulses could become massively over tuned at higher frame rates. This is a very common problem, even in professional video games. Mind you, like I said, that's just a guess. I don't know for sure.
EDIT: I tried setting my monitor to 25 Hz and ran the game again. It didn't seem to make a difference, so I could be wrong.
If you must know, the purpose of pause attacks are usually to be more multi-hit style combo extensions.
Yeah that's perfectly fine. My main issue with the combo system is still the fact that the player character goes into an idle stance before continuing the combo.
Probably will add keybind settings later on. E is usually my "Dodge/Dash" button for anything I'm playing. And yeah, that whole impulse thing is REALLY weird. I'm going to have to look into this. I use a 60hz monitor if you must know. That's outright bizarre.
As for that last one, do you suggest I have the player hold the pose at the end of an attack a little longer before going back to the basic pose?
As for that last one, do you suggest I have the player hold the pose at the end of an attack a little longer before going back to the basic pose?
Yeah that's a simple fix. It might look a little awkward but it will be easier to understand than what you have currently. Either just hold the follow through, or make the return to idle a lot slower.