top of page

Combat System

This Combat System focuses on practicing curating a clean combat experience while exploring what makes a good combat system.

In this project, I create a simple 5-hit attack combo that the player uses to take on enemies. Rather than attempting to create a full experience, I wanted to take on the challenge of simply focusing on this small piece that could make up a larger combat system.  

ezgif.com-video-to-gif-converter (1).gif

Project Main Goals

For this project, since I am mainly focused on a basic 5-hit combo melee attack, I wanted to create a versatile attack string that felt fluid and powerful. The last combat system I created was more focused on strong heavy attacks and lacked a bit of depth but this time around I wanted to lean into something faster.

To accomplish these goals I worked in Unreal Engine using a combat pack from the FAB store that I mixed up to create the kind of experience I wanted the player to feel.

ezgif.com-video-to-gif-converter (3).gif

Workflow

Maka Albarn Fight GIF.gif

Designing The 5-Hit Combo

When I started this project I first gathered inspiration for how I wanted the main combo to feel. I wanted something fast that still packed a bit of a punch. two of my largest inspirations come from the character Maka, a scythe user from the show Soul Eater, and Kena from Kena: ridge of Spirits. Here are some of the main takeaways that stayed with me as I built out this system:

  • Maka

    • Fast momentum based attacks

    • Flashy movements with her scythe

    • Can quickly change between quick attacks and heavy finshing blows​​

  • Kena

    • Quick direct attacks​

    • Overwhelms enemies with long combos​

    • Can quickly intertwine various combat moves for all situations from enemies afar to groups of enemies​

Ideating the Right Combo

After analyzing my inspirations thoroughly I started to lean on some of the lessons I gained from Wilson Santiago, Combat Designer on God of War. Many of the pointers he gave me centered around how do you want this to make players feel, and how can you evoke that feeling. These are some of the ways I wanted to evoke a certain feeling with this combo:

  • Speedy attacks

  • Heavy Finishing moves

  • Large weaponry

With a strong idea of ways I wanted to give players this unique experience I knew the direction I wanted to lean with the weaponry and style of attacking the player would use. Players will swing around a massive Axe in a quick 5-hit combo that ends with a strong finisher that cracks the ground.

ezgif.com-video-to-gif-converter (2).gif

Implementation and Game Feel

ezgif.com-video-to-gif-converter (4).gif

After gathering my thoughts for the sort of attack feel I wanted to create, I got to work by creating a sequence of anim montages from the FAB store pack that best suited what I was looking to create. 

After creating the player's attacks I worked to recreate that speedy feeling by changing how fast animations played and blended between each other, so that if moves were ever stopped inbetween tow switch the style of attack it still felt natural to do so. Then I finished the system off by creating a ground effect and giving it a slight camera shake for whenever the last hit connected with enemies. Lastly I created an enemy dummy for players to attack.

Lessons from My Mentor

After presenting to Eric Seaman, he inquired a lot about the animations that I used in creating this combat system. After giving him more details on my process and the experience I wanted to create he pointed out two main flaws with my systemt:

  • There are contrasting ideas within the combat I want to create along with the visual of the player's weapon itself

  • My animations create this mixed style of combat that doesn't naturally flow between movements to create a coherent style​ to the combat

Thouhg hearing this was hard it opened my eyes not just to how combat is done but to something important in all systems you create. There has to be coherency within your system and how it works and why you make certain design choices. When these two key things dont align or have contrasting values, what you're trying to create can fall short.

ezgif.com-video-to-gif-converter (5).gif

Takeaways

My biggest takeaways from this project really came from setting my expectation but also working on consistency within the systems I create. Contrasting values or ideas take away from the system itself and everythign you're trying to accomplish and these lessons heavily influenced how I went about designing future systems as to not pack multiple ideas into one to overload or even attempt at making a system that does all too much without doing one thing really well.

bottom of page