General Melee suggestions

Post by **Shadowstar** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 6:58 pm

Yes, technically, but melee weapons won't work in non-chaos gametypes, and with the current public build, there are only two chaos gametypes: Duel and KoTH. But if you wanted to make a KoTH server where it's all melee weapons, that would work.

Kaboodles · Post by **Kaboodles** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:20 pm

Yeah...

A halberd/pike/spear thingy would be cool.

Anyway, I have noticed a certain fluke in the Templar's animation. I noticed this when I did a downards slash in heavy stance against some bots. I noticed that my character was slashing down on the blunt side. He was thwonking the enemy with the sword instead of slashing them, which is not right.

BTW, I think rolls would be cool. It would be awesome to be able to duck/roll under someones attack and spear them with a katana/daggers/whatever. More animations would be cool, as always.

RevivedWarrior · Post by **RevivedWarrior** » Sun Jun 20, 2004 3:55 am

This is just regarding the problem about making the animations for combos etc.

This is just an idea, but maybe adding special fx and camera work to pull off a combo without actually adding new animations ... thats if you are 100% that animations for combos will never be achieveable .. just an idea though.. I imagine that with fancy visual effects and camera work you could really simulate a combo.

Gunnplay · Post by **Gunnplay** » Sun Jun 20, 2004 2:34 pm

Maybe you could give melee weapons a limited ability to block projectiles, ala Jedi Academy. Granted, it wouldn't make sense to be able to block ALL fired shots. But, if you could deflect about, maybe 3 out of 5 projectiles fired, that would give a skilled melee fighter the ability to "close the gap" and get in an attack against non-melee weapon users.

Another thing. Although fast combos would make the game spammy, maybe you could add the ability to link moves into one another. If the moves could be cleanly linked, or at least be able to be executed in quicker sucsession, it would make the fights look better, and get rid of that "generic" feeling you get watching or participating in melee combat. Granted, for this to work, you'd need a LOT more moves for each weapon. Something I'm sure you guys are already working on.

Also, small weapons, like the Daggers, should be WAY faster. Easier to chain moves and quicker in general. Still give the ablitiy to execute head shots, just bring the general damage level way down, to offset the speed.

One last thing. Blocking should be an on/off affair. Not a pre-scripted amount of time. You could enable the mouse control up/down/left/right blocking, and you could make the weapons more sensitive to actual weapon-to-weapon collision.

I'm sure this stuff is already in the works. But, I think they provide a simple, yet effective way of enhancing melee combat now, as opposed to "when we are able to" or "when we have the resources".

jb · Post by jb » Mon Jun 21, 2004 12:15 pm

We did have some early left over projectile blocking code in the game but took it out at the last minute. It was something that we did back in 2003 and just kind of left it there. It never really worked right. Its something that we should go back and do as I feel that some things should be able to be blocked.. however other things like Rockets, Flack Ball and so on can not be blocked no matter how skilled you are...

And some of the other melee stuff does sound very nice to do just not shure if or when we can get to it...

Zachariah · Post by **Zachariah** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:10 pm

Actually that blocking was somewhat flawed , when the projectile hit the weapon , it spawned two instances. One of which damaged the player and one of which was reflected.
for example
you could fire one arrow at a guy , and it would stick in his head , but also fly off and stick to the wall nearby. Spawning two arrows.

Gunnplay · Post by **Gunnplay** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:45 pm

Pepito wrote:Actually that blocking was somewhat flawed , when the projectile hit the weapon , it spawned two instances. One of which damaged the player and one of which was reflected.
for example
you could fire one arrow at a guy , and it would stick in his head , but also fly off and stick to the wall nearby. Spawning two arrows.

Well, do you think it's something that could be fixed? Melee weapons are currently absolutely useless outside of Duel matches. Trying to attack a gunner with one is basically a kill for him. Plus, when two people decide to go at it with melee weapons, some jerk always runs in and gets two free kills. Coupled with the fact that the shield gun is quicker and more effective than any of the melee weapons, and you begin to see no reason to use them. If not blocking, then SOMETHING must be done. It's simply unbalanced...

jb · Post by jb » Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:23 pm

Gunnplay wrote: Well, do you think it's something that could be fixed? Melee weapons are currently absolutely useless outside of Duel matches. Trying to attack a gunner with one is basically a kill for him. Plus, when two people decide to go at it with melee weapons, some jerk always runs in and gets two free kills. Coupled with the fact that the shield gun is quicker and more effective than any of the melee weapons, and you begin to see no reason to use them. If not blocking, then SOMETHING must be done. It's simply unbalanced...

Granted your right its un-balanced and we need to work on that. This first patch is mainly about bugs so let us plan on trying something to even it up. Ideally your not suppose to win when you bring a "knife to a gun fight" however the blocking in JK2/A is a bit extreme once you get high enough levels. Some where there has to be a balance....

Zachariah · Post by **Zachariah** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:26 pm

EDIT: JB beat me to it . . . Used the knife to Gunfight quote and everything . . .

Gunnplay · Post by **Gunnplay** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:40 pm

True. Very true. Going head up against a gunner SHOULD be suicide. And, blocking projectiles is kinda unrealistic also. But, this is also "Unreal" at the same time. I have a little idea. How about speeding up a character using a melee weapon? By like 1/4 faster than a gunner. Or, the speed of the attack animation could be sped up, maybe? There are times when I could be standing right behind someone. I swing while he's occupied. He turns completely around, aims, and gets off two shots before my attack ever even really BEGINS it's animation! *breathes* I apologize. I'm a Jedi Academy fan, and I just love the way they balanced melee and projectile weapons into a coheisive experience. I just love Chaos, and I belive it could be better than most games. OK, I'll let you guys get to work. You have a lot to do....

Kaze · Post by **Kaze** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:51 pm

You can't speed up the attack animations of any of the weapons for some retarded unreal engine thing, which I still don't believe or understand fully. However that is my main complaint in melee is that the animations seem slow. If there was a way to speed things up or reduce the animation time in general so as to allow a series of attacks in sequence it would help the gameplay.

Unfortunately Chaos will never have melee on par with the Jedi Knight games. The team at Raven totally rewrote the Quake 3 engine to basically make there own engine which can handle melee and animations and so forth. One of the bad things about JKA was that it was a great game with no mod support.

TKATK · Post by **TKATK** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 6:12 pm

if only mods would be allowed to heavily modify a engine....

_fLaK_mOnKeY_ · Post by **_fLaK_mOnKeY_** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 12:54 am

FurrySound wrote:There is a stance indicator... its a 'power' bar on the lower right side by the ammo indicator... emtpy is light, half full is medium and full is heavy stance. Are you not seeing this when you change stances?

wait . . . is there a stance indicator on the bottm right side that says 'light', 'medium', and 'heavy'? never saw the power bar you speak of, or maybe i'm just not lookin, heh.

Frosty · Post by **Frosty** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 2:32 am

1. i think it would be a cool options to have weapon trails, glowy ones like the grav belt trail, with an optio to be always on, on atack (like the grey ones we have now), and on strike (so it has a trail from point of impact to end of swing).

2. instead of having combos that are atack atack atack (such as those in OMF), how about something similart to adrinline codes as set ups, for example left forwards back block to put a katana in its scabard, and then atack to do a lightning speed strike taking it out of the scabard. if combined with timing and a forward dodge/crouch jump, you could do that cool 2 ninja jump by each other, one falls down thingy.

3. Have a short sword sheild combo as a weapon choice. cus that would be cool

chaoskirina · Post by **chaoskirina** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 7:16 am

here is one. its a custom blade. the titan blade. it uses two hands but is perhaps more able to block and very powerful. it lacks in slashing speed and reduces movement, as to not topple over. it is pyramid shaped except the middle has the bottom extended up by half the length and a handle. plus it is two sided. it takes a while to recoil but for those who master perfect timing and know when to strike, this is their blade. the blade size is about half a player. in all, handle and all. soemtimes it cuts too deep into the ground and gets stuck for half a second. then the player swings it out with a tremendous force. it does a little more than a warhammer. one anim for it would be to spin really fast with it but you would need to stop a second to get your balance straight.