Soldier Axeman overhead attack.

New enemy: soldier axeman. He is almost identical to the swordman, with the difference that he has more health and and hits harder.

Placed enemies in the first tower.

I went back to iterate on the greybox level, I’m fixing the stairs since the enemies couldn’t walk on them (steps too narrow, navmesh didn’t like it).

The Green Knight is ready to be placed in the level greybox.

Thank you for the positive feedback! :D

I introduced a new enemy, the Green Knight, who is a stronger version of the Silver Knight, but uses a spear instead of a sword.

He has different attacks: a running attack where he strikes multiple times and a winding overhead thrust, which has a long but slow range, and finally a forward thrust.

Also, as with the Silver Knight, it shares blocking attacks with shield, a shield bash attack and a cure animation.

The block has a probability that it can be followed by a Heavy attack or a Shield Bash.

The Shield Bash is a shield attack that puts the player in stunlock. In this state the player can only cancel the stunlock animation with a dodge.

The cure happens if the Knight is with less than 50% health. The less health he has the more likely he will try to cure himself. The cure restores about 75% health. If he is too close to the player he will try to move away.

The cure animation is just over a second long so the player can hit him before he can cure himself. If he get attacked during the heal, the Knight will not try to heal after few attacks, and then he will try to heal again.

Also, I placed the Silver Knight in the Greybox map and tested it.

I continued to implement running spear attack, now it should hit three times in a row:

Running spear attack that hit multiple times:

Winding thrust attack, powerful but slow attack, so easier to avoid.

I am adding a Knight counterpart, which is more dangerous and uses spear and shield.

Knight’s block with particles:

The Knight when advancing always has the shield up to block attacks.

Implemented Knight behavior that, if the player is too close, tries to back away before healing.

Implementing the Heal for the Knight: once injured, he will try to heal.

Shield Bash attack.

Silver Knight animation for the Shield Bash attack, which breaks the player’s guard.

This past week I implemented the Stunlock: in particular cases (like when the player’s stamina is over), an enemy's attacks causes you to temporarily be paralyzed, leaving you vulnerable.
 
Stunlock time is about 2 minutes, but it can be canceled with a Dash (reducing the Stunlock by half a minute), so you can dodge some of the enemies' attacks at the last moment.

I put a slight camera shake and an animation where the sword and shield disappear on screen to emphasize the Stunlock.
In addition, I added a new enemy, the Silver Knight. It will be a kind of mid-level Boss, and there will be only one in the game.

It has 3 attacks: Heavy, Thrust and a Swing Combo attack. He often walks, but if the player gets too far away, he starts running.

It's not completed yet, I'm just finishing implementing a couple more features (like the ability to send you into Stunlock and the ability to heal himself when his life is low).

Animation for the Stunlock, compared to the Parry I moved the shield more upward (than sideways) to emphasize the stun, and I will move the sword behind so that I emphasize that you can’t attack.

I start implementing stunlock, when an enemy’s attacks causes you to temporarily be paralyzed, leaving you vulnerable to consecutive hits.

I add the Stunlock to the Player’s FrameData datatable (110 frames of stunlock, Dash can cancel it).

Launch animation after a frontstab, where the knight is thrown to the ground.

Added the other animations that were missing (like the hit stun). There is still a lot to do for the Knight, his moveset is more complex, as he is almost a mid-boss.

Close-up of the Knight during the Swing Combo attack.

Knight’s Heavy Attack. Compared to the Thrust Attack which has a 40% chance of performing the attack only from far distance, the Heavy Attack can be performed more often but only at close range.

The Knight during the Thrust attack animation.

I have included a new enemy, the Soldier Spearman. Compared to the normal Soldier, he has a spear that allows him to strike from a greater distance. He has 3 attacks: the Quick Jab, a Heavy Attack and a running attack.

In addition, I have started to implement another enemy, the Knight, but I am still in the early stages.

I have also added the Rolling Boulder in the Greybox map, moving it using a Sequence, and placed more enemies in the map.

I have fixed various various bugs, but I still need to fix some of them (also visible in the gameplay video).

I finished with the Spearman, I start implementing a new enemy, the Knight.

Spearman’s lunge attack, has a very long range.

Attack animation for the Soldier Spearman.

I start implementing a new enemy, the Soldier Spearman.

Rolling boulder placed in the greybox level.

This past week I implemented the rolling boulder, one of the traps in the level. It's a cinematics instead of being a physical object, because I wanted full control over its movement.

Then I made a modification to the Soldier Swordsman, some soldiers are throwing firebombs instead of going at the enemy. They are often placed in high areas to endanger the player in certain areas.

I also made changes to some parts of the level, such as widening the stairs where the rolling boulder will have to fall and finished placing enemies in the first tower of the level, especially enemies that throw firebombs at you.

In the gameplay video I didn't include the rolling boulder since I haven't finished adding it in the greybox level yet, it will be for the next video.

I am prototyping a trap, a rolling boulder.

Placed one soldier firing firebombs from above, and another ambushing you around the corner.

This week I’m returning to level greybox. I am placing a soldier who throws firebombs at you from above while you’re fighting a skeleton.

I finally managed to post a new video about my progress! These weeks I implemented a couple of gameplay mechanics. I added the Parry, since in a serious combat system I think it’s an important mechanic.

The parry is active in the first 10 frames of the parry animation, in which any attack is parried, leaving the enemy in a state of knowback and possible counterattack by doing a Frontstab.

For the Parry animation, I edited an animation via keyframe inside Unreal Engine so that the player’s left arm moves to the left.

For the frontstab instead, I added some camera shakes, adding some forward-backward spring shakes, some rotational swings, and a slight camera zoom by tweaking the FOV.

Backstab mechanics, on the other hand, work similarly to Frontstab but must be done behind the enemy. To be valid, the player must be no more than 60 degrees behind the enemy.

So far I have used the same animation as Frontstab, but with an addition of an enemy throw. I don’t really like the enemy throw animation (a sort of a forward roll), I’ll probably replace it with a throw animation.

In the future I will fix the animation of the stabbed sword, I would like the hand to turn the sword in the flesh of the enemy, kind of like what happens in the Backstab animation of Demon’s Souls.

In addition, I changed the animation of the Hit Block knockback of the enemy, so that it is more distinguishable from when the enemy received a parry.

After the parry it is possible to frontstab the enemy. I was going to post a picture very similar to the backstab (but with the enemy turned instead of his back), so I thought I would do a series of screenshots with highlights.

Today I’m going to start implementing the parry.

Tweaked the camera shake and decreased the FOV a bit during animation.

Added hit backstab animation for the enemy as well.