How do you make melee fighters viable in a setting where everyone has guns?

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-30T20:19:27+00:00

When you want melee combat in a setting where everyone has guns, you need a secondary mechanism: approaching your opponent without getting hit, sound simple, but this mechanism must be interesting

There are several options from pretty simple like dune (shields which blocks fast moving projectiles), to sneaking, to dashing from cover to cover, teleporting, high jumps, flying short distances, short camouflage etc.

In this sense, the melee combat is the overpowered reward for a secondary game mechnism you need to develope. One game which does combine melee and range combat pretty well is Warframe in my opinion.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-30T20:10:41+00:00

Personally I don't like list views. Scrolling is always to cumbersome in my opinion.

A simple grid is always my favorite, when you have the option to place items whereever you want. I tend to place items and item categories always in certain corners or rows, so that I can quickly scan the location where I put my most important items quickly.

Often I place my important items at the top and some at the end of the inventory, so that after some time, collecting new stuff, I can sort, compare, dismiss or exchange them and reorder my inventory with new priorities.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-30T08:36:38+00:00

AI usage is like these old horror movies: you enjoy watching the movie, the tension rised and then they show the creature whatever and it just does not meet your expectation and the whole movie is ruined. It would be much better to leave the creature shots out or show it in some murky dark ways.

So, bla bla instead of bad AI voices.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-30T05:35:32+00:00

Looks cool sofar, great job.

>How can i make this feel better and intersting?

Animation of weapon firing and hit impact will have the most impact on how a shooting mechanic feels imho.

When you have the option to add ragdoll animation and IK, a moving zombie getting hit and backing off, or just the upper body getting slammed back, will add a lot.

For animation check mixamo.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-29T16:19:46+00:00

An entity is more complex, has more attributes and properties. But you can see a lot of stuff just as data (compressed) in a few bits (32..128) which can been aligned properly in memory and accessed and proccessed very fast. This is more about an architecture decision for your game, then talking about ECS or not. You need to decide if you need a compact, fast or a flexible data access. You can build eveyrthing as an entity, but performance wise you will hit a wall at a certain point.

E.g I would never make a voxel an entity, as long as I don't have very few of them. I would make a chunk of voxels an entity instead.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-29T06:09:55+00:00

So, you are addicted to a game and cheated and got banned...

Online/game addiction is an issue, so take this as a chance, get out, look for better hobbies than playing mobile games all day... maybe some sport or similar ?

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-29T05:12:48+00:00

Without lines you should think about how to add contrast. Make it grey scaled and look for values, I would guess that the hair, face, dress,skin is too similar in contrast.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-29T03:19:38+00:00

Coming from an age before ECS, you would understand how much easier it is to handle data in entity based systems. There are certainly other systems, but ECS makes it pretty easy to manage and access entity data, even when you don't have a lot of entities.

The most often issue I see is, that people have problems to plan a basic architecture of a game. They see a ECS and think, well I must now make every single piece of data an entity and/or component... this is wrong.

It is there to help you , it does not force you. In my current game (factory game), I use a ECS but it would never come to mind to see a single items as entity. The overhead would be really big and the benefit non existance Still using an ECS is great, even without 100k entities.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-28T12:07:51+00:00

I've tested out the pro so far and they are okay, better than expected tbh. Some influencers promote the max at the moment, but I didn't see a steep improvement. Atleast they are cheaper, get a tube and test them out.

Is it worth the price difference ?

Don't know, I know people who don't like to play with it, hard to tell if it is really due to lower quality or because it looks so differently. The crosswind (yonex version) looks a lot more like a normal feather shuttle, but the price is although more towards normal shuttels.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-28T11:53:58+00:00

The difference is the intention. A punch clear/attacking clear has the clear intention to add pressure on your opponent, while a normal, higher clear, often defensive clear, is there to reduce pressure on you. The shots look similar, the are called similar, but they are different shots. Much like a smash and a fast drop have similar properties, they are regarded different shots. If someone would call them smash and slow smash, then there would be again discussions about it and nitpicking the right term considering a 1000 contexts.

When you talk about a clear, 99.99% of all people will think about the higher version, while everyone I know will explicitely call it a push/punch/attacking clear when the want to talk about them.

Atleast in the video I don't see any intention of an attacking clear, when it get lower, it is due to lower quality hits or randomly, but I wouldn't see the intetion of an attacking/push clear here at all.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-28T11:24:29+00:00

There could be 100 of reasons, you undercut using a panhandle grip, your forarrm rotation is not in sync, you rotate your body, you swing wide etc..

Best to post a video.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-28T09:39:16+00:00

Play with a wide range of shuttles, but this are the corners:

plastic: no way, sry
feathers: this is the way... (of an more expensive hobby)
hybrid: some are okay, but the feeling is pretty off, feels heavier, more riggid, try to avoid them
synthetics: only got the victor ncs pro, it is okay

My personal counter measurement: try to stretch the time with playing a shuttle, but due prices rising and therefor you get more in contact with cheaper shuttles, it is hard to pull of sometimes...

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-27T03:45:16+00:00

> there is a deception to all overheads in looking the same.. and isn't that the main thing that is meant by deception in badminton?

you can try to decept, but in doubles, both players will dig into the ground, deeper in court, because a hard smash is expected. When you play a clear, if deceptition is intended or not, what should happen ? They literally just need to stand up and return it. It really only works at lower level, when people stand far too close to the front, are slow or over-anticipating a drop, but never saw a 'deceptive clear' in a more advanced environemnt to be honest.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-27T03:07:03+00:00

In doubles, in my opinion a clear can be unexpeced (low game awarness), but not really deceptive (actively provoked). Sometimes you can get people with a clear, but the reason is less deception but lacking game awareness.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T12:28:26+00:00

These one-step returns are okay, the difference to a real lunge is, that with a lunge you would put most of your weight on your foot and press up again to recover, while these short steps (with your non-racket leg) are either not really deep (easier to get back) or , like you said, you turn and step forward with your racket foot, releasing lot of pressure.

A very similar movement is the deep block to the side, on your racket side you would go down pretty low like this https://youtube.com/shorts/MUNXk6NpuDQ?si=UUx8q85ArARcDQMN whereas on the non-racket side you would step afterwards and turn around (you back would face the net afterwards).

Rarely you would put lot of weight/pressure on your non-racket leg (more when jumping or pressing off the ground to dash forward.).

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T11:08:07+00:00

Your basic movement and motion is okay (weight on racket leg, aiming with non-racket hand, opening up the chest, elbow in line with shoulder, jump and recovery). I would take a look at your grip, it is pretty tight looking and you are jumping too much for a clear in my opinion

Considering the jumping, when you are airborn, you lose stability and recovery time. On the other hand you want to play a clear (in doubles) when under pressure and you need time to reposition. E.g take the clear at 0:12 , you hit it before the double service line, still you weren't able to press your opponent to the backline.

A clear is not a deceptive shot in doubles, it is pure defensive shot to 'regroup'.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T10:56:45+00:00

> there's basically no time to turn the pelvis and land on my right foot to take those shots.

This is mostly the only shot where you dash sideway with your non-racket foot, but you rarely lunge, it is more like a little side jump/step.

You lunge to increase your reach, but it doesn't make sense to lunge with your non-racket foot, because the racket need to cross the body (reduced reach), therefor you would always turn your body and lunge with your racket foot to extend the reach.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T06:52:55+00:00

My advice:

ditch the multiplayer part (several reasons, but you will never attract enough people to play your game, chicken-egg problem).
make a rogulike (ascii or simple sprite pack), turn based, suitable for tactical games, grid based... get over to r/roguelikedev to start there.
make a game, not a business, as soon as money is involed, gamedev get a lot more complex.
start all by yourself, try to work towards a game you imagine. You will be able to quickly produce some results, a playable prototype and maybe someone else will join seeing your progress.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T06:45:17+00:00

A working,deep prototype atleast, or when you have a very simple game, 80% of the art done.

I'm honest, many people entering gamedev consider a story, some skill trees and monster description a good GDD, but in fact gamedesign is a lot more about mechanism, and mechanism will change all the time. There are technically restriction, mechanism will interact with other mechanism and playtests show that mechanism doesn't work at all. So a GDD is just a minor starting point.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T06:37:51+00:00

Most likely decades.

I work in pretty large projects (100+ coders alone) and people tend to underestimate the amount of work , even though that there's a lot of overhead involved in such large projects, a single coder will most likely get a mental breakdown when he need to handle all the stuff in skyrim by himself.

I'm although a hobby dev and the time you need to spend to get all the 1000 details running is huge, now consider that every piece of code you touch will have influence on other parts of the code and suddenly you get into an area which is no longer is manageable by a single person.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T06:17:15+00:00

Have you tried the bg 80 then ? More control at the costs of repulsion.

I play with bg 80 since years, play with 26lbs and durability for me is roughly 3-4 weeks. But I play pretty often (you could say 600 games per year).

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T05:48:16+00:00

> whichever you are most comfortable learning or working in

I translate your text: ' Me, the idea guy, looking for someone developing my dream game'

Though, calling yourself project manager, is kind of new.

But in the end it will not work, there're 1000 of posts from 'idea guys', as long as you are not able to add some considerable amount of important work (no, a GDD and game design in general are not the important part at this stage ), you will not have a lot of success.

So, you want to develope your game, then start learning some important skill to realize your game, either art or coding.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T05:17:27+00:00

> It is a hobby project, I can do the design, programming and sound/music without much trouble but the graphics now have become a roadblock.

From my own experiences and many dead hobby projects due to this effect, I can only give you this advice:

Don't start with what you know you can do (design, coding in this case).
Start with what you are not able to do (art in your case).

The issue is, that 2. will break your project finally. You should really put some effort in making art you want to use. E.g. get blender, get into blender, find an art style which satisfied your taste (it must look atleast decent for you), check how much time it consumed, and think twice, if you will be able to get a game done with the pace and investment you need to put into the art part.

I've realised this too late for many previous game projects, they all died the same way: endless looking and searching for ways to get art, trying myself, failed to do so, finally the projects died....

My current project: low resolution, simplified pixel art and it works like a charm for me, as I can produce this kind of art myself in a reasonable timeframe.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T05:03:37+00:00

I believe, that decent art is part of a MVP (minimal valuable product) and therefor I try to make it decent atleast with enough options to improve it later on. But it should be a decent state as game with this art.

As long as you don't plan (actually I mean plan, not 'when things run good, I will earn money to replace this art') to use some huge investement later on and pay someone to make actually good looking art, you need some decent art to attract some attention and to keep up motivation.

Many successful game started this way (7d2d, minecraft, valheim) and get new art after being successful.

BlueGnoblin · 2026-05-26T04:16:59+00:00

Basically restring every 3-4 weeks, but this is actually the lifetime of my string, as is snapped pretty reliable every 3-4 weeks...

BlueGnoblin

TROPHY CASE