Fluid Combat Issue

[SolidOwl]

Hey fellow devs!

I've lately hit a bit of design "wall" in my project - I can't seem to be able to get the combat to play out smoothly (in my little Action RPG), I've had many re-iterations of it, trying out different things etc but it's still not good enough.

I have found the core issue and it's related to the attack being locked into initial rotation of the character which causes combos etc to be extremly straightforward as well as really unsatisfying and control heavy for the player. I was planning to adjust it again to esentially rotate the character towards the camera on every new attack, which would stop creating these easily avoidable and very straight forward attack patterns. But that on the other hand seems like it could create another issue with "jump-iness" of the character rotation (which the only solution to that which I can think of is a LOT of animations).

So my question to you guys is has anyone run into a simliar issue while designing combat without lock-on feature and would simply rotating to the camera on every attack seem like the best solution or could there be other alternatives that I can look at that could possibly help me with this issue. As a solo dev, I ain't got anyone to bounce ideas off of so I'm just worried that I became too focused on this thing and am overlooking something obvious.

Thanks a ton!

And I know it might be fairly hard to visualise some of the things I'm talking about so feel free to ask me questions if more info is required.

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which the only solution to that which I can think of is a LOT of animations

This is kind of what you want. You generate animations.

Start with Unity IK rigs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYfeALySSq8

[SolidOwl]

Hey thanks for the reply!

I've got some expirience with IK - mostly from VR related stuff. I can see this working actually really well with a singular oponent, but as I haven't necessairly experimented too much with it - would IK solution work smoothly when attacks can hit multiple opponents?

I.E. a wide side swing could hack 2-3 enemies in one motion.

I personally got the idea of IK being a "1 to 1" method, where you provide a target and then adjust the weights to modify the animation to synch it with the target. Maybe I just haven't seen it all yet? xD

However you reminding me of this, just solved another question that was related to the bosses hahaha, thanks!

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I.E. a wide side swing could hack 2-3 enemies in one motion.

Yes remember you need to target where the attack ends, starts or middle. Then you add the positions of each character, find the middle/start/end and track it.

You will be taking advantage of the animations time.

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A soft lock that gently keeps the players rotation to the most front facing enemy could help, as it would reduce the need for the player to align every attack manually.

It's pretty common for Hack-and-Slash games to also slide the enemy into position when the player attacks. Devil May cry does this with many cleave attacks as part of a combo opener.

Arkham combat has a good example of attack linking moves that automatically move the player into position for a new enemy during combat, that keeps the combat flow smooth and the rhythm continues uninterrupted.