Castle Torgeath 1.5.0 – Melee Combat Upgrade

Lunar

Hello everyone!

In this release, we made improvements to melee combat both for the player as well as how the enemies operate. The player animations have been reworked to provide a better feel when hitting something. We also adjusted the hit effects for all enemy types so that they look better and are more accurate. Finally, we created differences to how many enemies fight giving you new challenges to adapt to.

There are several things that we did to upgrade the melee combat. The first was adjustments to blood effects from hit damage. They were enlarged to create a bigger impact, and their trajectories were modified to make them go further and become more noticeable. The second upgrade was how the player’s swinging felt. In order to have more of an impact the swing was slowed at the approximate point of contact giving it the feeling of resistance and weight. The third upgrade was changing how enemies react to the player’s attacks when they are attacking. Previously, a potential stun reaction in the enemy could could break the tempo of the fighting but now only non-stun reactions occur when an enemy gets hit while attacking. Lastly, we made a reduction to the power-up’s particle system to make it more visually appealing.

While a lot of melee upgrades were made, the most important improvement was the increased differentiation among enemies. Many skeletons and spiders will now attack more aggressively without falling back or dodging and can chase the player better as well. Skeleton archers and sorcerers will now react if the player engages but runs away which means if the players decides to go for the kill he will be forced to commit. Demons will now retreat if the player cycle attacks it and retaliate with a fire ball at long range. Attacking the orcs directly is now much harder and will very likely result in a hit on the player. Thankfully, the orcs are slow and easy to outmaneuver. The final differentiation is that the wolves if hit will attempt to flank the player forcing him to move.

Here are the full details of the update:

Adjust all enemy hit effects to look better and be closer to expected hit area
All player melee animations adjusted for better feel when attacking
Skeleton archers and sorcerers will fire range weapons if you try to run away
Demons will back up and fire spells at you if you try to spam them with melee weapons
Most skeleton types and some large spiders will never dodge
Frontal attacks on orcs are now much more dangerous and will need to outmaneuver them
Wolves will dodge and try to go around you if they are hit
Slight change to look for melee special power effect
Enemies always do no-stun hit response when in middle of an attack.
Fix some minor issues found in our testing and reported by the community

New combat scene in The Battlements: