Week Five: Good Progress

Small little update today, was going to post yesterday, just forgot to (oops!)

I really got rolling this last week, but I didn't add a lot of visual information, so there isn't going to be any pictures or videos or anything like that. 

I did end up making a test dummy instead of an AI, because I found it was just as easy to hit it around as it was to get hit, and I used that to implement player response to hitboxes. I do still need to make that simple testing AI for things like blocking and other aspects of the fighting system though. 

My current thoughts for the  fighting system is to follow an intuitive ruleset: the harder something is to pull off, the more damage it should do.

The two basic attacks are a stab and a slash:

 A slash is quick to perform, has a large hit area, and as such, it does the least damage. The slash is also the easiest to counter, either by slashing at the same time or by blocking.

A stab takes a little bit longer to perform, but it also has a longer reach than the slash. It's hitbox is more narrow, and performing a stab haphazardly could leave you vulnerable.

Im still not too sure on the counters for a stab, but I have a list of possibilities. Depending on overall rebalancing, I may change what is implemented:

• Slashing a stab is the only way to counter it, and this would disarm the stabber, OR
• Slashing a stab is the only way to counter it, but its more of a parry, neither side is punished, OR
• Blocking, while not totally stopping a stab, reduces it's damage, OR
• You must duck a stab

Or maybe some combination of the above. I'm not sure how much fun niddhog-esque insta death would be in this setting, so depending on how much damage a stab actually does will probably determine how it is countered.

The whole point of calling the game Shishkabob is to sort of highlight the fact you can impale your friends, by throwing your swords at high velocity. I'm not sure I would want a standard stab to do this.

I'm quite certain that I want two straight forward throwing attacks based off their non thrown counter parts as well, a throwing slash and a throwing stab.

A throwing stab would for sure be an instant kill, at any speed, just because of how hard it would potentially be to avoid, and pull off.

All throws have to be cocked back using the same buttons as their non throwing counterpart, just holding them for a certain amount of time before releasing.

A thrown slash would probably do as much damage as a standing stab, and would stay stuck in the recipient if it was a killing blow. It would have a circular hitbox, and visually look like, well, a sword spinning quickly in the air.

A thrown stab would have an even narrower hitbox than a standing stab, and act like a projectile, like the thrown slash would. This will always kill on hit, and stay impaled in the recipient.

There are a lot of interesting visual things I would like to do with the impaling feature, and just in general, but that will have to wait until the whole of this RPS system is implemented.

Until next time! Hopefully by next week I'll have some interesting visual changes to show.