Hello All,
Long story short, a friend directed me to exanima, I was curious and purchased it, then played the novice/expert arena or some hours. I love it, but I also see big problems, let me explain myself.
I should point out that I am aware the game is at a very early stage, but please bare with me.
The physics works beautifully, performance is flawless, and the feel of everything is realistic. The problem is everything is realistic "after" you perform an action, not the action performed.
i) I mainly played with a longsword (2-handed, like the german longsword). My first question would be to ask "Why would someone swing a 2-handed sword with an unbalanced, full force motion?" One tries to get the sword to contact with the neck, or openings in the armor, once the contact is made a relatively minor pressure is enough to "cut deep", if they are wearing heavy armor no matter how hard you hit you will not cut them unless you manage to contact that thin bare skin just underneath the helm (depends on the helm). This might be asking for too much detail, however at least the 2-handed sword could be a faster more balanced weapon.
ii) The major problem I see with combat is this, imagine a hypothetical scenario, your opponent has executed a swing and missed you, his right side is wide open. In the current game I have basically 3 options, swing the sword while (standing, small step back or forward, dash back or forward). The problem is that you see this case very often, standing and small steps does not cover enough distance for the blade to contact the opponent, however dash covers an excess amount of distance and the hilt of the sword contacts the opponent. Thus we have missed a perfect kill swing.
This is the simplest of cases, sometimes your opponent just finishes an overhead swing which you guard with your sword to your left, where your sword is underneath his weapon, assume he is leaning forward and unbalanced, thus not having an opportunity to block our weapon comfortably. Now when I tell the character to execute a left to right swing, the logical swing would be to lift the sword up toward his underarm and score a hit, or if the position permits even go to the neck. However what we see is that our character insists on executing that left to right horizontal swing, usually getting tangled with the opponent and missing the opportunity.
This unfortunately removes a lot of realism and enthusiasm, apart from excessive CPU/GPU power and insane controller skills like (2 mice + keyboard) the only way I see to circumvent this problem would be with implementation of skills.
Say, one implements a skill named "Perception", and this skill triggers certain moves, say the probability of triggering a move goes with (Perception Skill) % to a maximum of 80%. Then when say our weapon is in a very favorable position, and the player executes the correct directional command (left to right swing in the previous example) then the character immediately goes for an underarm, or neck cut whichever is possible and favorable.
Your thoughts and comments are appreciated...
Long story short, a friend directed me to exanima, I was curious and purchased it, then played the novice/expert arena or some hours. I love it, but I also see big problems, let me explain myself.
I should point out that I am aware the game is at a very early stage, but please bare with me.
The physics works beautifully, performance is flawless, and the feel of everything is realistic. The problem is everything is realistic "after" you perform an action, not the action performed.
i) I mainly played with a longsword (2-handed, like the german longsword). My first question would be to ask "Why would someone swing a 2-handed sword with an unbalanced, full force motion?" One tries to get the sword to contact with the neck, or openings in the armor, once the contact is made a relatively minor pressure is enough to "cut deep", if they are wearing heavy armor no matter how hard you hit you will not cut them unless you manage to contact that thin bare skin just underneath the helm (depends on the helm). This might be asking for too much detail, however at least the 2-handed sword could be a faster more balanced weapon.
ii) The major problem I see with combat is this, imagine a hypothetical scenario, your opponent has executed a swing and missed you, his right side is wide open. In the current game I have basically 3 options, swing the sword while (standing, small step back or forward, dash back or forward). The problem is that you see this case very often, standing and small steps does not cover enough distance for the blade to contact the opponent, however dash covers an excess amount of distance and the hilt of the sword contacts the opponent. Thus we have missed a perfect kill swing.
This is the simplest of cases, sometimes your opponent just finishes an overhead swing which you guard with your sword to your left, where your sword is underneath his weapon, assume he is leaning forward and unbalanced, thus not having an opportunity to block our weapon comfortably. Now when I tell the character to execute a left to right swing, the logical swing would be to lift the sword up toward his underarm and score a hit, or if the position permits even go to the neck. However what we see is that our character insists on executing that left to right horizontal swing, usually getting tangled with the opponent and missing the opportunity.
This unfortunately removes a lot of realism and enthusiasm, apart from excessive CPU/GPU power and insane controller skills like (2 mice + keyboard) the only way I see to circumvent this problem would be with implementation of skills.
Say, one implements a skill named "Perception", and this skill triggers certain moves, say the probability of triggering a move goes with (Perception Skill) % to a maximum of 80%. Then when say our weapon is in a very favorable position, and the player executes the correct directional command (left to right swing in the previous example) then the character immediately goes for an underarm, or neck cut whichever is possible and favorable.
Your thoughts and comments are appreciated...
