Melee could go a long way... ideas

[eightpass]

First off, great job with the ChaosUT2 Mod. Congrats.

Now, I know that the team have all worked hard on the melee aspect of the game, and it is quite enjoyable to play... However, I feel with a few tweaks it could be excessively mindblowing action

As it is, functionally, it works very well, but I can't help think that it could be faster paced. I've turned the game speed up and it plays even better.

After reading the Melee 101, I feel some of the following tweaks shouldn't be too hard to implement, as the core work has allready been done.

These are only suggestions, but if enough people agree with them, perhaps they could be thought about for an upcoming patch!

T1. Reduce the 1 second swing, to 0.5 seconds.

As a result, the moves will be quicker, and give a better feeling of control to the player. Not to mention less processing time when calculating the .1 second iteration for collisions.

T2. Animation, which I'm sure a few melee fans out there will agree, is slightly buggy (e.g. You get out a sword, start running, and the upper torso animation appears to be static. But if you perform a block, and then start running, the upper torso animation is great).

Regarding the animation - the most prominently disheartening feature is the standing pose. To be honest, it looks emotionless & devoid of action/spirit. A suggestion for this (you're gonna shoot me anyway), perhaps have a standing pose for each weapon type. (e.g. Katana -> Samurai Stance. All other Swords -> Swordsman Stance. Axes -> Two handed stance/Swordsman Stance. War Hammer -> Barbaric Stance).

At the moment, and I don't mean to be insulting, it looks like they're waiting for a bus, instead of bracing for action in face of thier own death

T2.1 Double-Jump forward has lost some finesse, not entirely sure why the animation was removed, perhaps to account for the added over head swing attacks. But surely the animation can be interrupted.

T3. Perhaps for non Duel games, a player not wielding a gun (but wielding a sword) could run that small bit faster. To give the 'In-Your-Face-I'm-Gonna-Cut-You-Up' HacknSlash types (like me ) some chance of dodging flak from some of the less sportsmanly players?

Thanks for reading this far.

I don't know what ya'll will say, but hopefully some of the ideas presented here have crossed your minds.

[GB]

hmn....


a lot of those animation "bugs" are to do with how the bone system in ut is set up. Im not a animator, but a lot of wrist actiosn and arm defromations simply cannot be performed becasue they deform the skin too much or clip through the player.

As for the stances, i presume it was beacause of work limitations. Having spoke to the guys who worked on these, i found its deceptive how long even simple anims take to get set up, so individual stances would take a loooooooong time i reckon.

also, funnily enough, i think you are the first player to ask for a speed boost in melee...lol most of us slow the game down signifcantly - i play on only 70% speed.

[eightpass]

I do understand, I have done alot of bone animation for Quake1 Models in the past, and I totally agree that animating a simple bone structure to imitate complex movement is by no means an easy task. But is by all means possible!

Regarding:

a lot of wrist actiosn and arm defromations simply cannot be performed becasue they deform the skin too much or clip through the player.

I feel the actual attack animations are great. I would leave them as they are (but change 1 of them i.e. the double jump forward with a katana attack on medium stance - it's quite un-natural). Its the Idle stances that I would change. Even having just one Stance, animated differently to standing with both legs together (waiting for the bus), would boost the entire mood of Melee fighting.

[LoQtUS]

First off, great job with the ChaosUT2 Mod. Congrats.

Now, I know that the team have all worked hard on the melee aspect of the game, and it is quite enjoyable to play... However, I feel with a few tweaks it could be excessively mindblowing action

As it is, functionally, it works very well, but I can't help think that it could be faster paced. I've turned the game speed up and it plays even better.

After reading the Melee 101, I feel some of the following tweaks shouldn't be too hard to implement, as the core work has allready been done.

These are only suggestions, but if enough people agree with them, perhaps they could be thought about for an upcoming patch!

T1. Reduce the 1 second swing, to 0.5 seconds.

As a result, the moves will be quicker, and give a better feeling of control to the player. Not to mention less processing time when calculating the .1 second iteration for collisions.

This may be possable with code but not the animations. Not all of the animations are the same length. Some are 15 frames and others are 20 frames they are playd at 15 frames/second. This roughly calculates to 1 second for the shorter anims( Ie: the light namuvers and the Lunges) to 1.5 seconds for the Longer animations ( ie: the Heavy manuvers). To make these animations with less frames then 15 and playning them at 15 f/s would make the motion jerky Imagine that you are holding your sword up right at one moint and then stabbing at your full length as fast as you can blink your eyes. This is the type of movement that you will get as the frames become less and less. So, To reiterate, This may be able to be done with the code ( I think you will find it will have the same effect) but to do it withe the animations would look verry bad.

T2. Animation, which I'm sure a few melee fans out there will agree, is slightly buggy (e.g. You get out a sword, start running, and the upper torso animation appears to be static. But if you perform a block, and then start running, the upper torso animation is great).

Regarding the animation - the most prominently disheartening feature is the standing pose. To be honest, it looks emotionless & devoid of action/spirit. A suggestion for this (you're gonna shoot me anyway), perhaps have a standing pose for each weapon type. (e.g. Katana -> Samurai Stance. All other Swords -> Swordsman Stance. Axes -> Two handed stance/Swordsman Stance. War Hammer -> Barbaric Stance).

At the moment, and I don't mean to be insulting, it looks like they're waiting for a bus, instead of bracing for action in face of thier own death

There are animations for the " stance" pose for each weapon. They are in the package and waiting to be added by the code. They have been there since I started doing the melee animations. These animations are a single frame at current. The reason they are one frame is because the coders tell me that they cannot get the code to run them properly. Theese animations, If the coders can get the stance animations to play properly I will continue through and make a run animation to match the positioning of the stance. Each weapon has its own stance. None of them are the same except the Bastard Sword and the Templar.

T2.1 Double-Jump forward has lost some finesse, not entirely sure why the animation was removed, perhaps to account for the added over head swing attacks. But surely the animation can be interrupted.

We removed no double jump forward animations. If you are talking about the flip animations they were removed by Epic. Again we havnt removed an animation. Maybe I am just not following what you are talking about here.

T3. Perhaps for non Duel games, a player not wielding a gun (but wielding a sword) could run that small bit faster. To give the 'In-Your-Face-I'm-Gonna-Cut-You-Up' HacknSlash types (like me ) some chance of dodging flak from some of the less sportsmanly players?

Thanks for reading this far.

I don't know what ya'll will say, but hopefully some of the ideas presented here have crossed your minds.

I have been trying to urge the team to look at ways to make the melee system more compatable with the guns for a while now, but to no avail. I think maybe some special manuvers for each weapon that will give them some range may help. I have quite a few ideas on ways to do this but i dont want to give them all away now

[General_Sun]

Well you would know how I voted in the poll question.

But I think that the game should be made slower... Not faster. So we have time to think and work out complex strategies/formations when talking about team games...

[lord_kungai]

T1. Reduce the 1 second swing, to 0.5 seconds.

As a result, the moves will be quicker, and give a better feeling of control to the player. Not to mention less processing time when calculating the .1 second iteration for collisions.

T2. Animation, which I'm sure a few melee fans out there will agree, is slightly buggy (e.g. You get out a sword, start running, and the upper torso animation appears to be static. But if you perform a block, and then start running, the upper torso animation is great).

Regarding the animation - the most prominently disheartening feature is the standing pose. To be honest, it looks emotionless & devoid of action/spirit. A suggestion for this (you're gonna shoot me anyway), perhaps have a standing pose for each weapon type. (e.g. Katana -> Samurai Stance. All other Swords -> Swordsman Stance. Axes -> Two handed stance/Swordsman Stance. War Hammer -> Barbaric Stance).

At the moment, and I don't mean to be insulting, it looks like they're waiting for a bus, instead of bracing for action in face of thier own death

T2.1 Double-Jump forward has lost some finesse, not entirely sure why the animation was removed, perhaps to account for the added over head swing attacks. But surely the animation can be interrupted.

T3. Perhaps for non Duel games, a player not wielding a gun (but wielding a sword) could run that small bit faster. To give the 'In-Your-Face-I'm-Gonna-Cut-You-Up' HacknSlash types (like me ) some chance of dodging flak from some of the less sportsmanly players?

Nice ideas!!!

I like the first one a lot (venalanatomica, im sure i had asked for a melee wep speed boost before eightpas, though ). As for the animation, it doesnt bother me that much. But the last one, i disagree with. melee wep handlers should no be made to move faster. thatll make it too much like CS.

Actually, i think only the melle wep anims should be made faster, to compensate for the (apparently) slow speed of the player.

[eightpass]

I have been looking at the ChaosMeleeAnimations. I'm curious to know what program was used to create them. The bone structure of the UT2004 player meshes is extremely felxible. There is very little that can't be done.

Comparing the Melee animations to that of the standard player animations (HumanFemaleA) of the actual game, really shows that the Melee animations are of a tremendously lower standard. (Probably due to deadline limitations?) I'd hate to think it was just lazyness!

A prime example. Look at the Katana S3 animations. Noone can move their wrist like that. And it is a good example of how NOT to animate with IK/FK.

This sounds very harsh, I realize. But it is just a critisism.

If you were to use 3dsMAX4 CS, I strongly feel that all the animations could have been done far better.

You may be thinking, put your money where your mouth is, and I'd be glad to. I don't have access to your source code, nor have access to your source animations, but if I did, I would gladly help bring the quality of the Melee feature to a higher standard.

As you can tell, the mere fact of the Melee feature's existence has gotten me very excited. THE FEATURE MUST LIVE ON!! And of course, evolve! BUT before you add too many things to it, consider that the further you go, the harder it will be to come back to fix the basics.

[TKATK]

i have always wondered,why hasnt anyone made threads about the potential of mug/cctf....

most of the suggestions seem well placed,and i would certainly like to be able to stop bullets,move faster or something else with melee during C-gametypes(or else taking out your sword is suicide)

my guess is that some animations are a bit cheesy becosue of MSUC,dont release in time=you cant compete

[The_0men]

Eight pass you got nice ideas there. Been kinda wishing most of them would come to be too for a long time. Mabe for each weapon the speeds could be different.....like melee weapons would be lightest and move fastest when equipted and stuff like redeemer and gravity vortex would make you move the slowest outta the bunch.

TKATK thats a damn nice idea about stopping bullets with melee weapons. Somthing a little more cool and matrix style!!! Hmmmmmm given me an idea.....mabe a melee map based on the highway scene in matrix relolutions. Would be cool jumping car to car and stuff like that. A scene for total chaos and lots of explosions!

[Zachariah]

I believe that melee users going faster is not the way to go , nor is blocking bullets. we decided against those two Long ago.

[eightpass]

We all know that a person wielding a sword, charging towards someone with a flak cannon, is going to die in the blink of an eye.

So here is an alternative idea to faster melee users.

Allow to melee user to dodge with no delays. (this would work alot like the 'fast-dodge' option in in the MultiDodge2k4v3 Mutator).

It would at least allow players bent on using melee weapons to practice enough, gaining enough skill, to dodge flak.

[eightpass]

FirstPerson Melee:

Good:
You can see yourself.

The motion is great when you're running. (provided hiccup1 isn't in effect - more on that in the bad section ) It really puts you into the action.

When you get hit by arrows, you can see them stuck into you.

Bad:
hiccup1 = When you first go into Melee mode by taking out your weapon, the characters head is looking to the right, but the body is facing forward. This probably accounts for the posts I read that said FirstPerson is confusing.

hiccup1 also happens when you get hit by anything. PResumably, after the 'Hit' animation is over, it trys to return to the 'Stance' animation for the weapon. This evidence, along with inspection of the ChaosMeleeAnimations package shows that the stance animations for the player have the head looking to the right. SmallNote: This could be fixed no problem, its only 1 frame per weapon for the stances!

Has anyone else noticed this?

[MassChAoS]

Refering to Melee in standard gametypes, player speed, bullet blocking, weapon speed, special abilities, etc. have all be suggested and no one agrees to anything. However, logically the player speed and/or weapon speed might as well be the only way to properly balance the melee weapons in a standard fighting situation. Unless you can get close enough to damage a player shooting rockets at you, you're a sitting duck.

Of course, this only applies to standard gametypes... I could care less if you slowed down the actual Melee gametype.

[Zachariah]

well firstperson melee is probably cofusing because it doesnt exist in chaos. at least not in any complete way that is meant for public viewing. Fist person melee was explored but turned away from.

[Shadowstar]

It might be worth some time to play around with the animation speed and see if we can come up with something better. We'll have to see how much of the team wants to spend valuable development time on that though.

Currently, we are working on improving a variety of things, so it will need to be decided upon and then scheduled if it is to be so.