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Lord Of Decay is a dark fantasy RPG video game for PC and Mac being developed by Sandbox D7 that allows players to command an undead horde and wield dark magic. You are a master of the dead. You are a lord of decay.

Report RSS Dev Diary #21 - Combat Rework

The combat system has been rebuilt with four pillars Character System, Mount System, Skill System and Combo System.

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We've been in radio silence mode lately because there are a number of large systems that are currently undergoing rework.
Much of the work is under the hood so there has not been anything to share with you.

Another reason for the news silence is that I am still heavily involved with my contract work and at the moment.

We will try to broadcast updates at least every two months in future.

With that out of the way let's talk about the combat system and it's rework

Combat Overview

The combat system in previous builds you might have played was very crude and was barely suitable for the demo.

The big picture is to switch to a combat stance when in range of enemies. This will prevent you from running or strafing at a run with the notion that restricted mobility will increase tension and make combat more difficult.

Before it was easy to dodge dodging projectiles or avoid melee attacks by continuously running sideways.

While in this stance you will be able to attack, side step and dodge which will feel much better.

Let's talk about the four pillars to the new combat system.

Character System

Scott is working on a system that will spawn a character and then apply armour and clothing based on the character's class.
The newly spawned character will be then given the correct skeleton and animation state.

Not having to hand craft each character saves Scott a whole lot of time.

This also introduces some variety with creating with gender, skin colour, hair styles, eye colours, etc.
All character classes will still have an identifiable silhouette, but they will no longer look like clones.

You can read more about it on the forum here.

Mount System

Now that characters are built individually they need to equip weapons at the time of spawn.

The new system takes into account the character's class and then gives them the relevant weapons.
This system supports left and right handed props and can also support dual wielding classes in future.

You can read more about it on the forum here.

Skill System

I been working on Skill System 0.3. That is to say this is my third attempt at building a skill system.

In this attempt everything is defined as a skill. Every action from your basic attacks to your magic projectiles to your tornado attack.

Each skill is defined with a damage type, duration, cooldown, animation and which hand is used. The statistics of a skill can be bound to a mounted weapon/body part or can be completely arbitrary.

All skills are animation-driven which will look more convincing and provide a better way of gauging enemy attacks as well as judging your attack range.
I'm going for a Skyrim or Dragon Age Inquisition feel.

I really underestimated the difficulty of this one and it has taken most of my time.

You can read more about it on the forum here.

Combos System

Now that all actions are skills it is possible to use skills in a sequence.

Your equipped weapon will use predetermined combos. However, you can chain these skills with any of you other unlocked skills in any order you like.

Combat will become more dynamic and fluid allowing you to create your own play style.

The real beauty of this solution is that NPCs will use the same systems and combat tuning and extensions should be easy and provide a fair playing field.

All of the systems above have required me to spend countless hours writing editor extensions for Unity to make game dev fast and flexible.

As you can see we have not been idle. Plenty has been done since November.
Now that most of the ground work has been done we hope to have more to show you soon.


You can follow us on Twitter or Facebook for all the latest news, pictures and updates.
You can get involved in the discussion on the Forum or track our progress on Trello.

Watch the latest dev videos and technology demos on YouTube

Thanks for the support
Damian
Sandbox D7 Team

Sandbox D7
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bleedingapathy
bleedingapathy

good too see your still passionate about this and have been tinkering with it still. best wishes with your endevors.

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