Berimbau is a multiplayer Source engine mod featuring fierce sword duels in a retro-future universe. The game features an open sword combat system that allows for creative use of combos, counter-attacks, and parries. This combat system encourages players to develop attack patterns and strategies to defeat their opponents, rather than random "knife-fight" melee combat. We plan to become a total conversion in the future, making this our own game, free to share with anyone who has Steam and the SourceSDK Base.
5 comments by Jkupo on Aug 4th, 2008 digg this super bookmark
So got some news for you all noble watchers of our little game that could, we've gotten an official website for the project, complete with full developers logs, archives of previous news posts and lots of media and movies. Albeit still a work in progress, the boards are more than functional, so please feel free to leave us your opinions and comments there as well. The website is as follows...
We've taken great care to have those up for ongoing discussions as well as any sort of feedback that you have. The dev logs are particularly amusing, as you can get a glimpse into the inner workings of the Ninja Workshop. This launch is also in conjunction with...
Berimbau's Intenal Alpha Launch
Thanks to some creative coding/file moving and plenty of help from our team and its consultants, we've succeeded in establishing our first Alpha test servers. I'll be setting up hosting of the actual install files this week and we'll be able to get all our alpha testers rolling so we can get some feedback from fresh players and new perspectives. This of course requires plenty of alpha testers, and the positions are still open, as we'd want players to be on there almost constantly, giving us bug reports, screenshots, and feedback on the forums and via email. So if you're interested, shoot us an email and we can get you the game files and into the duels. The contact info for becoming an Alpha tester is listed below, and you can contact any of the team via Moddb or email: TeamBerimbau at Gmail Dot Com.
Here's a rehash of the newest screenshots that are listed above, complete with new particle effects and random taunting.

Positions Still Open:
The following positions are available. While we do look for people with particular skills, a mix of many skills is even more valued than one niche. We definitely want people who are multi-talented. New listings are listed in red.
The people we look for should also bring some fresh ideas to the table. We definitely don't want to be slave drivers, telling you to make our mod for us. If you have an interesting idea to contribute to Berimbau, you'll be free to present it to the team where we make decisions as a group. The people have their ideas implemented the most often are the ones who are also able to do that themselves, so if you are both skilled and have many new ideas, here's your chance to try them out.
When you apply be ready to show work, portfolio, or examples of what you can do. A CV would also be required.
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Will there later be some sort of special attacks? Like for every different class of swordplay, you get a special style attack when you fill some kind of special bar?
Hi
We're trying to avoid any sort of "meters" or "bars" as a design choice. Instead, things will either be available or not, depending on the context (close to an opponent in front of you, etc).
We're playing with the idea of special attacks right now and we'll reveal plans for this in the near future.
Just a thought... Would it be possible to have the slash effect change color from when a hit is registered (So that it is white/blue-ish, then, at the point of impact and onward, it's red)? If that's possible, I'd like it replacing, for hit notification reasons (Besides the hit sound), the somewhat odd looking blood splatters that appear, which honestly just looks bad.
The videos and screenshots are pretty old. The current versions of the game have spark and particle effects whenever you make a hit.
Can you add splines for the sword trails?
En.wikipedia.org
En.wikipedia.org(mathematics)
Adding it into one of my games right now :P
I also noticed you need to work on the animation after you get hit, because half life 2 has it so when you get hit, you don't even flinch.
Maybe having a short flinch for certain attacks can force people to avoid being hit, and learn countering and dodging more. It also opens up for combo opportunity.
Last but not least, If the idea is to have fancy swordplay, this means that damage should be set to a low, seeing how you'd kill your opponent before pulling off a wicked combo...
EDIT: For flinches, it may be better to have it set so 2-3 hits on a enemy deals a flinch on them for around 1 second.
An alternative is that the flinch occurs on the 2nd hit with 50% chance and the third hit is 100%, but that may contradict itself and extend the flinching process...
Also, will the blocking be like gunz where after you block a enemy attack they get stunned? In real sword fights, the enemy will still swing after you block his attack, meaning harder fights.
"I also noticed you need to work on the animation after you get hit..."
In current versions we have a flinch animation :) The videos are super outdated now. Sorry!
"Maybe having a short flinch for certain attacks can force people to avoid being hit..."
Yup.. we want to play around with stuns. We're going to code this in as an option for the alpha so we can play-test this feature.
"...have fancy swordplay, this means that damage should be set to a low..."
The idea is to have really heavy damaging attacks be easier to predict and avoid. These do 60 damage, so if you get hit twice you're dead! The faster, lighter attacks do 15 damage and don't knock you back as much, so you can pull off great combos with these.
Scoring a hit should be challenging enough to reward players with precise attacks. Also, fights shouldn't last more than two minutes since there are players waiting in queue.
"EDIT: For flinches, it may be better to have it set so 2-3 hits on a enemy deals a flinch on them for around 1 second..."
Probably not. We want to keep the system as simple as possible so it's easy to learn, but difficult to master. We'll see though, through playtests, if this feature would make sense.
"Also, will the blocking be like gunz where after you block a enemy attack they get stunned?"
As of now if you block an attack at right moment, you're allowed to execute a counterattack. Counterattacks deal "heavy" damage (60) and are very fast. They're risky to pull off because you might miss the block and risk getting yourself hurt.
cool mod
Looks pretty cool. Ive played gunz it a good game. How about some more blood? Like some kill bill thing. When all the blood just starts squirting out.
Will there also be multiple weaponry used like those short katanas Ninjas used for quick assassinations? Those weaponry seems to work with hit and run tactics, along with acrobatics movements, because the blade is shorter.