eightpass wrote:Also, the idea of Horizontal, Vertical and Jab moves, is a VERY good idea. And it will also give you a better mental picture of how to animate them.
Thanks!
Anyways, eightpass, the UT melee system is extremely good. In fact the only thing i think is lacking is an oscar for best animation!!
Seriously, the melee system is fantastic. LoQ is right in saying that CUT is not a realism mod. Also, Im sure the Team is trying to improvise the mod as much as possible. Maybe the swings could be faster, maybe pigs could fly... I dont really know. You have good ideas but I think your ideas also suggest making the melee system from scatch again.
One more thing: IMVHO, the melee system does not work in a map that has guns as well.
LoQtUS,
I did not intend to sound as though I meant to 'jab upwards' - I meant 'jab' as in a forward thrust. jab as in stab, rather than slash (horiz/vert).
Admittedly, mace, hammer and axe weapons dont easily fit into a jab situation. Unless you want to bash someone off a ledge.
If one thing is to be changed for Melee, please change the Katana double-jump-forward-attack for the medium and heavy stance (the one where you spin around slowly, defying reason, sense, logic & physics). It lets the katana down
On a side note, I wonder is it possible to be able to 'aim' the sideways attacks in light stance, such that you can choose to aim at head hight?
I also reccommend you all have a go at Melee with the MultiDodge2k4v3 mutator in CDM, very challenging and of the utmost fun!
eightpass wrote:On a side note, I wonder is it possible to be able to 'aim' the sideways attacks in light stance, such that you can choose to aim at head hight?
You can aim all melee attacks vertically, to a certain extent. Your view is centered on your character's torso, making it difficult to see anything with your view completely level or when you're looking up.
eightpass wrote:Admittedly, mace, hammer and axe weapons dont easily fit into a jab situation. Unless you want to bash someone off a ledge.
Why not? Extended punch !
eightpass wrote:
If one thing is to be changed for Melee, please change the Katana double-jump-forward-attack for the medium and heavy stance (the one where you spin around slowly, defying reason, sense, logic & physics). It lets the katana down
NOOOOOOOOO!!! I love that move!. Its so easy to get a headshot with. try it...
eightpass wrote:
If one thing is to be changed for Melee, please change the Katana double-jump-forward-attack for the medium and heavy stance (the one where you spin around slowly, defying reason, sense, logic & physics). It lets the katana down
NOOOOOOOOO!!! I love that move!. Its so easy to get a headshot with. try it...
I actually wrote in my guide that it's good for letting the other guy hit YOU. Hehe.
I've been playing alot of both Chaos and Rune lately. The mod I've developed for Rune is basically an Invasion mod, it adds monster waves to the game. One thing I've started to notice, especially when playing against other players is that in Rune, it's pretty much over in one hit. In Chaos, theres more strategy involved. One-hit kills are fairly rare and you have to really hit them to do it. There's more maneuvering, and more of it depends on the actual move you make. In Rune, its not so much about making the right move as it is just making sure your enemy is near you when you attack. In light of this, I'm actually starting to gravitate toward Chaos more now. Being able to compare PvP combat between the games in real-time has really given me some revelations. Our animations may not have been made by professional animators on a salary, but rather by animators with professional talent doing it because they love it. I can see that the difference there is one that's very difficult to quantify with numbers or anything else. It's just feel, and sometimes, the feel of a game is the most important thing of all.
Sorry I have not replied just was busy with lots of stuff. Some good points here.
First of all the speed at which the weapons swing is a topic that not everyone agrees on. We have seen it in this thread already, some say faster, some say slower and some agree. No matter what we do there will be a group of people that are not happy with that. But not really much we can do as we can not please anyone.
As far as the animations not fitting. I would agree there are a few that could be tweaked or replaced. I think loq's animations were great and most of them are prefect. Of course with anything (take my slopy code for example) there is always room to do better. And please I am not saying anything bad about the animations. I am just say that few things in this world are prefect.
Then we come up with the old idea of how to balance the melee weapons with the other weapons. I am sure you all have heard the saying "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight". And thats what we need to follow. There is no way in heck that if you and I are oppsite ends of a hallway, you have melee and I have almost anything else, that you should survie. However you should at least have a chance to try. So far the team has not found a way that we can all agree that works. There are some good ones here and good ones that we have talked about in our development forums. But none seem to work well. And thats why we have not done it yet. One idea that I just thought about is this:
In non-melee only games allow the melees to do a lot more damage when they hit that they normally do. I dont think instant death is right here...but say high chance to do 70 to 90 hp to your enemy is decent. This way your still faced with the challange of getting there. But once your there you stand a much better chance of making it through or at least really hurting the other player. And then maybe make an award or some annoucement for this type of kill. Imagine a sniper on face, you slip behind him, grapple up to where he is. He sitll does not see you as he is zoomed, you swtich to your melee and slicely slicely
Finally the block. I still dont see why people dont like it. It shold never be any automatic block. Other wise lamers will just to blocks all the time and be really hard to kill. When I play the bots or HH I have been able to block almost every attack (except of course when surrounded). There is a thread in our development section to see if we can adjust the block. What else needs to change with it? More control over where the block is?
Last edited by jb on Tue Feb 08, 2005 7:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
jb wrote:Then we come up with the old idea of how to balance the melee weapons with the other weapons. I am sure you all have heard the saying "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight". And thats what we need to follow.
I thought this wasn't a realism mod...
I'd say the melee weapons should be at least as effective as the shield gun vs ranged weapons.
Sweet. I'd like it to be able to absorb projectiles and gain special abilities for a time. Like shock rifle gives it Double damage, Napalm grenades/MUG flames/flaming arrows set it aflame, MUG ice frosts the blade, Poison grenades/arrows poison the blade, Disruptor magnetizes the blade, etc.
The question of whether or not to balance melee with guns is not one of realism, but one of gameplay.
So, given that, you have to think about the actual kind of gameplay scenarios that would involve a melee user versus a gun user.
Here are my thoughts:
Some people don't like the AR or CPP as a starting weapon. They might be tempted to go with thier Melee weapon.
The problem here is that, currently, there is no real reason to use melee instead of the shieldgun as the shieldgun is just so much more powerful.
The solution would be to eliminate the shieldgun, because there is just no way any smart player is ever going to go up against a shieldgun with a melee. Is this fair? I'm not sure. Some people really like the SG.
But, if we don't remove it, we have basically removed the melee's as viable in CDM. Nobody will really want to use them (as it is now).
So that's one situation.
Say that we eliminate the SG, now the melee weapons are actually viable in melee combat. But they will still be much less useful than the guns. So, we need to make the melee's fill in the role that the SG did (but in a more Chaotic way). To do this, we should either increase the damage, or the animation speed. Since animation speed seems to be a thorny issue (From the responses, now I'm not sure if it is possible or not... Seems like I'm getting mixed messages), I'd go with damage. From a gameplay perspective, this seems like the right thing to do. As for reflecting shots, there are two reasons to go ahead with this:
1) Chaos allowed the sword to reflect shock rifles and such in CUT1. I'm not sure, but I think we even allowed it in Q2Chaos. Why suddenly change that?
2) It fills in the role of the SG, which does the same thing. If the melee weapons are to be a viable replacement of the SG, it makes sense to do it.
As for reasons against it:
1) It's not realistic. Why should a piece of metal be able to reflect fire?
2) Perhaps it makes melee weapons too powerful. This is debatable. I tend to disagree, but some may not.
If there are other pro's/con's, please bring them up. But as far as I can tell, gameplay and tradition seems to support allowing melee blocking.
So, you'll have people using melee's if they prefer the melee weapon over thier other options. This will have them using them against people with guns.
Another situation where someone might use melee weapons in a guns-game is if they run out of ammo. Although it doesn't happen often, it does happen more than you would think. Especially in maps with relatively few pickups. In these cases, there may simply be nothing else they can use. If the pickups are far apart, as in some maps, they may not be able to continue running away. Some players are very good at dodging shots. These skills could save them if thier melee weapon was powerful enough to take down a guns-user in one or two hits.
Another situation: I've noticed in some CDM games that some players will challenge others to a melee fight in the middle of the game. While this is not incredibly intelligent, sometimes they will actually agree and it can add a nice bit of variety to the gameplay when it does happen. If someone comes at me with a melee weapon, i will often pull out my own melee weapon and duel them there. I will usually skip over my shieldgun when I do that, simply because I just don't think the shieldgun belongs in a game with melee weapons, and if the other guy is using a melee, maybe he agrees. It is a nice break in the typical shoot or be shot action, but is easily ruined by the interdiction of an AR-toting maniac who decides to spray the two combantants with bullets and grenades.
As you can probably tell, I'm generally in favor of making the melee's more powerful in standard games, but, as I've shown above, this is because, from a gameplay standpoint, there are more pro's than cons. Personally, I believe that gameplay is more important than realism in a computer game, and therefore, that bias is reflected in my opinion. Others may not share this viewpoint and thus would be inclined to disagree.
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. Just some things bug me like everything else in the world...