Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
We've switched over and converted everything to our new weapons format and implemented patching for saves. Now we'll be finalising some of the new features and start testing them on the beta branch. There's a tonne of support for new features here, so we'll definitely be doing this incrementally.
We've also finally figured out what to do with the slash rework. The basic idea is that slash damage will take the form of "hewing" for more impactful blows, and "cutting" for sliding hits. These will scale differently with slash values and different types of impacts. A somewhat related change we're considering is to also redistribute some slash into crush for all axe type weapons. Beyond being more realistic, the new slash damage system should interact nicely with the Draw technique, which we've also had some new ideas for including interactions with Remise.
With access to this much more detailed weapon data we are considering a lot of applications in terms of more weapon specific motions, behaviours and interactions. We've got a lot of new motions to design for all the new grips and as this is based on many new weapon categories it makes sense to further diversify weapons in general.
With all this recent focus on combat and animation, Madoc couldn't help taking a new look at some core animation systems. There's always room for improvement here, and whenever we succeed in making general improvements it also makes authoring easier, with less time spent trying to manually correct quirks and just leading to better results. One of the main issues we deal with is characters looking too floppy or "springy", especially with snappy motions or violent impacts. We put some new ideas to the test and one of these seems to be working very well. It's (thankfully) not changing how characters behave, but it does make movements and impacts look more solid and realistic.
At this point we feel like footwork is the weakest part of character motion, and we've identified a number of specific problems that often make leg movements look less than convincing and cause some odd issues. We've been aware of some of these for a good while, but we took a deeper dive and got a lot more specific. This isn't exactly a quick fix, we need to start from the bottom and work our way up as the dynamic balancer and leg movement are very complex, but with some clear goals now it's likely something we'll look at doing soon. Footwork isn't just important visually, but is central to gameplay, responsiveness and what we're able to do with the physics.
We definitely want to put a lid on major development of combat for a while, but these were some foundational changes that pave the road for a lot of things we need or want to do in future. Some of these will make an appearance on the beta branch very soon, and we can gradually introduce more and more as we finalise them.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
We've switched over and converted everything to our new weapons format and implemented patching for saves. Now we'll be finalising some of the new features and start testing them on the beta branch. There's a tonne of support for new features here, so we'll definitely be doing this incrementally.
We've also finally figured out what to do with the slash rework. The basic idea is that slash damage will take the form of "hewing" for more impactful blows, and "cutting" for sliding hits. These will scale differently with slash values and different types of impacts. A somewhat related change we're considering is to also redistribute some slash into crush for all axe type weapons. Beyond being more realistic, the new slash damage system should interact nicely with the Draw technique, which we've also had some new ideas for including interactions with Remise.
With access to this much more detailed weapon data we are considering a lot of applications in terms of more weapon specific motions, behaviours and interactions. We've got a lot of new motions to design for all the new grips and as this is based on many new weapon categories it makes sense to further diversify weapons in general.
With all this recent focus on combat and animation, Madoc couldn't help taking a new look at some core animation systems. There's always room for improvement here, and whenever we succeed in making general improvements it also makes authoring easier, with less time spent trying to manually correct quirks and just leading to better results. One of the main issues we deal with is characters looking too floppy or "springy", especially with snappy motions or violent impacts. We put some new ideas to the test and one of these seems to be working very well. It's (thankfully) not changing how characters behave, but it does make movements and impacts look more solid and realistic.
At this point we feel like footwork is the weakest part of character motion, and we've identified a number of specific problems that often make leg movements look less than convincing and cause some odd issues. We've been aware of some of these for a good while, but we took a deeper dive and got a lot more specific. This isn't exactly a quick fix, we need to start from the bottom and work our way up as the dynamic balancer and leg movement are very complex, but with some clear goals now it's likely something we'll look at doing soon. Footwork isn't just important visually, but is central to gameplay, responsiveness and what we're able to do with the physics.
We definitely want to put a lid on major development of combat for a while, but these were some foundational changes that pave the road for a lot of things we need or want to do in future. Some of these will make an appearance on the beta branch very soon, and we can gradually introduce more and more as we finalise them.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
