Melee could go a long way... ideas

[LoQtUS]

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.

I dont think any of them are perfect. Allthough there is still lots of work to be done on it to finish it. we have animations that still arnt in Like the stances. Yea, but at that volume a few aint bad.

The question of whether or not to balance melee with guns is not one of realism, but one of gameplay.....
... 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.

I couldnt agree with you more. Believe it or not im actualy thinking one shot one kill. The shield gun is like that. Or atleaste do = to the shield gun.

I really liked the way Jedi outcast handeled challenges. The two players went untouchable to everyone else, and fight to the death. maybe when we go into this mode it switches to melee mode and does the same damage as in duel. Might be fun.

I like the way you are thinking on the blocking too. Maybe we could do some sort of shield the generated either from a shield aparatus on the arm or the weapon itsself. If we did it from the weapon its self it would have to be magic. Spa always said if it works in a comic book it works in chaos, so what about maybe some special magic manuvers to go with the shield. Ehhh just thoughts.

Count me as one that shares your view point I think this would be a great mixture with CCTF. it might be fun to fight your way aross a map on a vehicle, jupm off when you get to the flagg and the defender chalenges you to a duel. You kill him and take the flag. Hop in you vehicle and fight your way back with it. Besides it will alow us to work on vehicles too

[lord_kungai]

IDEA:

Just like the gravbelt, howabout a shield belt.

It spawns, you pick it up. Or you can start with it.

It has a timer and a key bound to it.

Only, instead of reducing gravity, it crwates an impenetrable shield around you for a few seconds.

Only problem, the shield stops all projectiles/beams, including yours. Anything you fire while the shield is on can rebound and harm u.

Melee weilders can activate the shield and run at a gun holder. No damage will be sustained by the melee weilder and he can turn off the shild and the gun holder can get sliced up goooooooood!

Goes against the "dont bring a knige to a gunfight" principle, but, what the hell...

[jb]

The blocking this still has some issues to be figured out. And shadow is right. We have real world vrs game world to figure out.

Real World:
For example from basic physic there is no way a human being can hold up a melee weapon and block say a sniper round shot at him. I mean todays sniper rifles can take a .50 cal bullet and punch it throught "think" metal armor in some cases. And even if if the player could even get his weapon up and in the bullets path in time we have to deal with moment transfer and weapon damage that the bullet traveling at that rate would do to the melee weapon. It just would not bounce harmless away. And if it was not a sniper, then you have even a worse case to say you could block mini-gun fire. What about a shot gun blast. Your gonna to stop all of those little pellets at you? I mean it just is not possible.

Gameworld:
Chaos is not a realism mod, so maybe it wont matter.


TBH I feel that you have to have some minor happy balance of the two. You dont want to go to one extreme and say for each weapon you pick up you move slower or how can one human hold and ERDW, Claw, RL, Sinper, CPP, Deemer, xbow and Nade launcher at the same time? But then again you dont want to go to far to the other side as well. So I have always prefered to still have some reality but not enough that it effects gameplay or the ideas of what we wanted.

So in this case, I would say that a melee could stand a decent shot of blocking most of the engery fire. Maybe slow moving projectiles like the arrow. But no chance against "bullets", rockets, flack cannons, ect.

Then the harder question is how do we make so it can not be taking advantage of? Say if we go to far to one side again with its blocking to it block almost everything, then why even use the normal guns when 90% of shots wont hit? Do we put a limit on how long it can block. Do we add a blocking strength (simular to what shadow suggested in a developmental thread)? Do we allow challanages in DM to get melee on melee fighting? If so how do we ensure that again it wont be used in the wrong way? Epic's sheild gun does have draw backs that it can not block everything, its needs energy to block that wears down with time and or damage it "absorbes". Their sheild gun also have a much larger "blocking area" than a melee weapon should have...

So I guess in my mind some very minor cases blocking would help, but to balance the melees with guns with other weapons we should try to seek other ways.


Also shadow brought up the older versions of chaos. Back then blocking was a random event. Getting a block was nothing more than passing a random check. And the position that you saw your sword had almost no bearing on when/where a hit/block was taking place. The current melee system has no randomness to it at all (it may be quirky or buggy at times but there is no random chance other than to figure out which sound to play when we have more than one sound for that function). Its all based in real XYZ space. Hits are only valid if two objects are in the same XYZ space, or for blocks if the bones of the weapons are with in a few game units of each other.

[TKATK]

i myself woulda like the addding of Jedi Knight style dueling,One challenges,Other replys,Invisible to everyone else and start fighting(as loq said)

imo it woulda been nice IF melee could reflect back only bullets(Who said the weapons are made of metal?)

[Shadowstar]

Jb has some good points there. The strength system I suggested in Dev could actualy solve our problems here with a minor addition. We take the damage level of the shot and compare it to the "swing strength" of the weapon (which is based on stance, and will automatically be higher if a blocking move is being done). If the shot damage is above a certain fraction of the strength (maybe half), the shot goes through, if not then no. We can treat certain weapons as special cases (like ERDW - would always ignore melee blocks). Sniper rounds do enough damage that they would probably get through any block. We can give the melee's a "magical projectile shield" or something, that creates a small field around the weapon that blocks shots within its strength. But this field would have no influence on melee vs. melee combat.

This would be something of a merging of ideas, but I think it could work. It should promote gameplay and fairness/balance, without completely stomping realism into the dirt. (Whoever invented magic - bless you.)

EDIT: I should add that, of course, a shot could only be blocked when it actually touches the weapon's blocking radius. So you could still hit someone by aiming away from where they could effectively block. It's similar to situations in HL2DM, where someone is holding something like a large table with the gravity gun and you're shooting at them, but the table is deflecting it. You can still take them out if you aim at thier feet or some part of thier body the table doesn't cover...

[eightpass]

Alot of great ideas have been mentioned in the last few posts.

Here are my thoughts regarding blocking.
For single projectile bullets CPP, sniper rifel, cutter, crossbow etc.. Could be plausable to say that you blocked with your sword blade at an angle, deflecting the bullet, so the blade itself doesn't receive the full impact of the project, but causes the kinetic energy to glance off at an angle?

I agree that you cannot block Flak or Rockets.

For enery weapons, could we say that a blade could reflect the energy as though it were light?

I also agree with the idea of a small invisible 'field' that blocks these weapons. Otherwise to block projectiles you'd have to have extremely fast and accurate reations.

This would work alot like the Shield Gun.

Regarding Weapon/Animation speed:
Another idea, the blocking at the moment has a duration of 1 sec (as far as i know), it might just be me, but it would be better if it was alot shorter, like a twitch reaction. (as you know, when you play UT alot, you get used to the firing rates of all the weapons). At the moment, you could block the first shot, but the block would still be recovering by the time they fire again.

Loq said before that speeding up the animation would visibly make them look very bad, because the player has to raise the weapon before attacking. But a solution to this would be to have the stances with the weapons already raised, ready to swing. This would allow you have less frames for the animations making attacks more responsive. All the S1 stances would be excellant with a few frames removed. Loq mentioned this would make them choppy looking, but UT interpoliates between frames so it shouldn't look too bad at all.

As for S2 and S3, these stances could be removed altogether. (now that IS just me, I know most of you like the other stances )

The main problem with the animations is the stance itself. again i'll mention the head of the player looking off to the right. thats probably just me being picky again. Remove the stance altogether and have a look at what it looks like. I beleive the normal gun wielding stance suits the melee weapons alot more.

Another thing I've come across is that when you get up close to a gun wielder (difficult to reach him), and start hitting him, you realise he has a Shield/Armour(impossible to kill him), perhaps it would be more fair to allow a melee weapon to ignore a players shield/armour. I don't see how an energy field could stop a blade or hammer.

Shadowstar:-

EDIT: I should add that, of course, a shot could only be blocked when it actually touches the weapon's blocking radius. So you could still hit someone by aiming away from where they could effectively block. It's similar to situations in HL2DM, where someone is holding something like a large table with the gravity gun and you're shooting at them, but the table is deflecting it. You can still take them out if you aim at thier feet or some part of thier body the table doesn't cover...

This is good. Also, if the melee player crouches, wahey, even less places they can get hit, BUT they cannot move so quick. So this is a good balanced idea in itself!

TKATK:-

Jedi Knight style dueling,One challenges,Other replys,Invisible to everyone else and start fighting(as loq said)

There is a flaw in this idea. Two players could decide to initiate a duel and then team up, effectively becoming an invincible team!! Unless you disallow them to attack other players.

[TKATK]

There is a flaw in this idea. Two players could decide to initiate a duel and then team up, effectively becoming an invincible team!! Unless you disallow them to attack other players.

as i said they become invisible to all others,and everyone else becomes invisible to them(If you run away from the other dueler the duel is broken)

the only thing that could be done is 2 players dissapearing from the game(maybe make a rule that a duel can only last 1:30 so that the FC cant hide)

[Shadowstar]

We could treat the duel like a Duel, that is, the same rules that apply in the Duel gametype. They have a timer, and if one isn't dead by the timer, they are both killed and get a negative frag. But I'll agree, there is a potential for flag-carrier lameness with duels. Maybe we should simply disallow dueling when one of the participants is holding a flag (or a BR ball).

As for the Stance Strength/Blocking idea, I think it seems to merit testing in the next IR, as there seems to be alot of support for it and little to no opposition (both here and in the Dev forums). What do you say, JB? Can we do it?

[Zachariah]

What about those votes that say that melee shouldnt be changed? I know mines one of em.

[eightpass]

i can't help think that those that dont want melee changed are those that do not use melee in DM. - Duel mode most likely wont be changed. But for DM, something should be done.

Then again, I could be completely wrong

[Zachariah]

i can't help think that those that dont want melee changed are those that do not use melee in DM. - Duel mode most likely wont be changed. But for DM, something should be done.

Then again, I could be completely wrong

Melee weapons were made for Deul , not DM, thats why.

Im not saying that Melee shouldnt be balanced for gameplay value. Im saying that none of these Ideas sound like the right way to do it.
And also , I feel there are better places our time could be spent at. Such as gametypes , and weapons.

[Shadowstar]

Im not saying that Melee shouldnt be balanced for gameplay value. Im saying that none of these Ideas sound like the right way to do it.
And also , I feel there are better places our time could be spent at. Such as gametypes , and weapons.

If that's the way you feel, then your opinion is noted. Unfortunately, "better places" doesn't really say anything. If you've got something you want us to work on, post something about it in the Dev forum. Right now, I'm waiting on JB's feedback on this to see if we can try it in internal testing.

If we can get that done, we should all have some better ideas about whether or not these changes are a good idea.

[lord_kungai]

My 2 bits:

CUT Melee rules, but could be made less 'rigid'. I saw many pics of somersaulting or flying players in CUT 2. Now the players only somersault for certain moves/attacks. They also seem to have a torso and legs that think differently.

But its still frikking good, especially as it has been incorporated on the UT engine (as opposed to JK3JA).

[jb]

Right now, I'm waiting on JB's feedback on this to see if we can try it in internal testing.

I think balancing the melee weapons abit against the other guns is something we need to do. The idea you have has merit. But right now we just dont have time or the manpower. Jim/Gas have their hands full with the ChoasCTF changes (team teleporters, flags on vehicles,ect). I have SolidSnake "contracted" to do the beast. That leaves me to do EVERYTHING else (fix the bugs, do the gameplay tweaking, fix the vehicles, ect). I just dont see us have time in the next few IRs to do that kind of change. When Rymthix is back (he had to take a few weeks off) then we can see as he was the dedicated "melee man".

[Shadowstar]

Thank you, JB, that's all I was waiting for. I have no problem at all with waiting, just as long as my idea doesnt get forgotten. I just hate to see good ideas get forgotten. If we can make a note to discuss this again when we have the time, that would be ideal.