Testing the combat system
Over the past couple of months Joshua and his friends have tested the mod in its current state. The feedback on the close combat wasn't in favour of the melee combat and as a result we have attempted to improve the combat experience by reducing the movement speed, increasing the attack range and implementing two new features to assist in combat.
The line between nice to have and need to have should not be taken lightly, as new features usually tends to take more time than first anticipated.
Our current project plan is as seen here:
Player lock
The idea of a targeting system is not new, but it has not been considered essential before now. This feature has taken about a month of development to reach its current stage.
Most of you who follow us on discord have probably seen these video clips from the first 2 weeks:
and after some additional fixes to the camera angle:
Today the lock is also detached from the target when the target dies and if you die. We also resolved a CTD bug.
This will be included in the next test session that takes place in the next 2 weeks.
The bugs with the Redfire which can be seen in the last video, is something we will focus on when we have confidence in the melee combat system.
Melee aim assist (aka magnetic attraction)
Due to the rapid fast movement in close combat encounters, we wanted to increase the accessibility to the melee combat by not expecting pin point accuracy from you.
We are currently experimenting with idea based on the combat system from "The Matrix: Path of Neo", where your aim will move towards an enemy player if the player is within a certain angle from your cross hair and within a certain distance from your character.
The current implementation is not ideal as it changes your view in an instant:
This is due to the complexity of Half-Life's software architecture on the client side, and due to the lack of understanding the above result is currently a proff of concept we will test in the next test session.
We would rather want to make the solution change the angle of the character without moving your crosshair, which will require some way to interface with the movement system from the weapon system.
Sometimes it is as easy as using a global variable and hope for the best, but other times that approach is prevented by the compiler or can cause crashes when playing.
Alternatively we will attempt to slope the view, so there is no lack of orientation.
Other modification:
We did run into some issues when we attempted to create a sprite container to render the stun sprite, but after working on the client side, it is highly likely that we can resolve the issues there by letting the client update the sprite position based on its predicted player positions.
We also wanted to create a blurry faded effect to the view screen of the player who takes damage, it appears that there was a pre-implemented but unused feature for exactly that on the client side.
These are some things we will return to when the animation of Ichigo are in place.
Currently we are also looking at dashing in the air, as the movement appears to be curved, this is something we want to resolve as part of the issues with the movement system, as it indirectly affects the fighting in the game.
We hope this update can bring you some overview of what we have been doing since April. We post updates frequently on Discord and often share some images and videos from the development chat as they are made on the fly. Not all of that content makes it to Moddb as it doesn't meet the standard for articles, so if you are interested in small updates, then meet us at Discord.
