AlMadjus : Dev Blog #1 (Melee)

Our game project is a fast paced melee game, where Vikings bash hostile barbarians, and depending on game style selected you will battle; greedy monks, throat-cutting Blue-men, evil Skrealings, classic monsters, divine beings, and much, much more...

The game mechanics are based on a game-style that takes place outdoors, mostly in hilly or mountainous terrains, with lots of flora and fauna. This vast openness allows for supportive missile fire by using bows, javelins, and casting of missile type spells.

Level design is focused on the fast paced experience. Terrain, rivers, villages and other movement limiting – or streaming elements, add to this experience.

Al Madjus originated from a MMORPG project, and its mechanisms are a hybrid between the original MMORPG mechanisms and a simple hack & slash game. That means elements like Mana (spell casting energy), Berserk, Fylgia (inhabiting animal spirits), GUI & HUD (Viking styled), etc. all originate from Norse mythology and design patterns.

We plan to blog on a regular basis, and today we are going to start by describing; MELEE:


CONTROLS:
In our project planning iterations, we discussed the planned interaction with current and former top players of several different melee games. This process turned out to be extremely good for developing the game mechanics, and have resulted in a very complex combat system, allowing for dual wield, 9 melee attack types per weapon, bow shooting, and user defined left/right handedness.


The player determines if the character is going to use the right or left hand as the primary one, and both arms are controlled separately. Only the primary hand can hold an Arrow, a Totem, or a 2 handed weapon. (2 handed weapon disallows secondary wielding) Only the secondary hand can hold a Bow, a Shield, or a Ward.

Each weapon has its own range of animations for the arm/model. Depending on the players input these act in 3 major ways.

*upper (aimed at heads)

*middle (aimed at bodies)

*lower (aimed at feet)

The 3 ways of melee attacks are further divided into 3 sub-groups of attack style; Slash, Bash, and Stab, each with its own animation. This gives a total of 9 animations per weapon/item per arm.


CHARACTER:
No use in having a complex control system if the character is a single bulky box looking for area damage effects, so we divided into making local areas of health, and damage decoration.


We decided to use a character with hidden meshes, which can be toggled on and off. The character has 16 collision locations each with its own health amount. Some of these we consider limbs, others we think of as vital body parts. This means that the character can have 13 of its body parts swapped out with damaged meshes, and when doing so we also toggle the damaged ones possible child limbs off.

If a vital part is damaged below 1 the character dies. If a limb is lost anything held in it or its child limbs are dropped, and the character begins to bleed, this ‘runs upward’ and when the parent vital body part runs dry – the character dies.

Characters can also lose their eyes, and if an eye is lost half of the screen goes reddish.

As long as a characters health location is merely damaged it can be healed up by eating or drinking, or by the means of magic. If a limb or eye is lost magic is needed to regenerate it. Healing by means of magic can be a problem though, as most spells require the use of both hands.


WEAPONS:
The link between animations executed, and character locations hit – is weapons.


Weapons contain nodes to determine how characters wield them, and they also contain nodes which will be used for determining collision with opponents hit locations, their weapons, and/or their armor.

In our game, arrows do damage where their point node hits the opponents and they will stick in the enemy until removed.


STATS:
There are a couple of game elements not directly used in melee control, and animation. But they are inflicting on melee calculations none the less.

Stamina is a GUI bar filled up as time goes by, and nothing but normal movement is attempted; its value goes down when sprinting, swimming, jumping, melee, etc. is performed.

Berserk is a GUI bar slowly emptying as time goes by, and its value goes up when enemies are damaged. When it is filled up it triggers various effects such as changing speed, damage output, health, damage soaking, etc.


ENVIRONMENT:
Here are a couple screenshots from one of our levels. We haven’t explored materials to their full potential yet, but things are coming together.



More info @ our site