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Up Topic Development / Scenario & Object Development / The general role of the mouse and (Melee) Weapons
- - By boni [at] Date 2012-06-18 17:29
After having the Controls reworked a bit, I'm still not exactly happy with how the mouse is used. In general, the left and right mouse button have replaced ControlThrow and ControlDig. Some stuff, like melee weapons, are still designed around that concept, however I feel that it's obsolete and we should design accordingly.

I'd like to introduce a general design rule: Everything that's activated by use (=mouseclick) takes the mouse-position into account, if possible.
The mouse has 3 tasks: Providing position, direction and clicking on UI stuff. Mouseclicks should only be used in conjunction with those, and not recuded to buttons. Every new(ish) object actually already uses this rule. Barrel/Bucket use it for example. Throwing stuff uses it.  A borderline-example is the hammer. Clicking opens the construction menu, which, in turn, uses the mouse. Placing the construction site onto the landscape uses the mouse as well.

Now, on to melee weapons! They don't use this concept. I've been playing around with Zapper and KKenny yesterday, and noticed that it's rather hard to hit a moving enemy. I propose the following changes:
* Melee-Weapons Swing/Stab towards the mouse, instead of just in front of the Clonk
* Clicking the mouse button starts and holds the swing animation. Releasing it executes the actual attack. (like the bow, for example)

The idea behind those changes is to allow more control when fighting with melee weapons. At the moment you can't hit a jumping enemy, or one standing above you on a ledge. The aiming-change is to allow that, and the swing-on-release should increase your chances of hitting, as you can time the strike better. It'd also allow us to create more diverse weapons like a big spear to stab, instead of swing, or control the direction the club knocks back. (Oh and clonk baseball. Definitively clonk baseball.)

As I'm rather uncertain about pulling the changes through, I'd like to spark a discussion and hear your opinions here. Any negative side-effects I overlooked?
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2012-06-18 17:36

>or control the direction the club knocks back


You can already do that with the mouse!

I have to say that I had dozens of iterations until the melee weapons were like they are now and felt decently playable.
One of those iterations took the cursor into account, too - but I have to admit that I didn't dive into that since the lack of animations made that hard:
If you want the player to aim with the sword, I want a good animation to actually show "hey, I am hitting at a 40° degree". And that means a swing-and-hit animation for every possible angle

>* Clicking the mouse button starts and holds the swing animation. Releasing it executes the actual attack. (like the bow, for example)


I am scared that this could feel too sluggish when in an actual fight - just a feeling, though

>Everything that's activated by use (=mouseclick) takes the mouse-position into account, if possible.


Also, on a different note: in the beginning the sword had a variety of different strike-types that took the mouse into account - the last remainder of that is the downwards strike when jumping.
But an interesting idea does not always mean a playable and intuitive thing for the player - because of a slow feel while playtesting (and the lack of animations, I admit), I scrapped that the last time

I don't want to say that I am completely against it, I just want to encourage thinking twice about what that would accomplish and how that would change the actual gameplay in any scenario that we currently have
Parent - - By boni [at] Date 2012-06-18 17:41

>If you want the player to aim with the sword, I want a good animation to actually show "hey, I am hitting at a 40° degree". And that means a swing-and-hit animation for every possible angle


Think of bow-aiming. In conjunction with click&hold it'd also allow backwards-walking while fighting with the sword!

>>* Clicking the mouse button starts and holds the swing animation. Releasing it executes the actual attack. (like the bow, for example)
>I am scared that this could feel too sluggish when in an actual fight - just a feeling, though


I had those concerns too, but if it's still the same speed, or maybe even faster than now, a simple mouseclick still will be instant-attack.

> different animations/attacks


Yeah, that would be a possibility too of course. Or taking into account the relative/absolute change of the mouse-position between clicking and releasing the mouse button! Sounds pretty unhandy to me though.

>I don't want to say that I am completely against it, I just want to encourage thinking twice about what that would accomplish and how that would change the actual gameplay in any scenario that we currently have


What do you think why I created a topic. ;p
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2012-06-18 17:44

>Think of bow-aiming.


I believe the bow has one action for every angle. I could be completely wrong, though

>Sounds pretty unhandy to me though.


It was "click above your clonk for upwards strike, below for downwards, on your clonk for zelda-swing-attack, etc" - not much different from what you suggest, or is it? :)
Parent - By Newton [de] Date 2012-06-18 17:53

> I believe the bow has one action for every angle.


No, just two animations blended into each other together.
Parent - By Nachtschatten Date 2012-06-24 15:59 Edited 2012-06-24 16:02

> Clicking the mouse button starts and holds the swing animation. Releasing it executes the actual attack. (like the bow, for example)


Hm, I wanted to provide feedback on that behaviour of another object anyway, but it fits here as well: Last time I played around with OC a bit, the grappling hook was shot when releasing the mouse button instead of when pressing it. This felt extremely terrible! I'd expect things to shoot when pulling the trigger (= clicking the mouse), not (far too late) when releasing it again.
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Up Topic Development / Scenario & Object Development / The general role of the mouse and (Melee) Weapons

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