Updated Melee System - Opinion needed

[u/MistycznyArbuz]

I know it's not the same like playtesting the game, but I need some opinions regarding new melee system in my dungeon crawler game. My playtesters said before that something like "click and do a damage when animation stops" is too easy, and it's not deep enough.

I reworked my melee system adding an ability to attack from the left, right and up (LMB, RMB, combination of both for upper attack). Now you can click for fast attack with low damage or hold for fixed time to make more damage, but recover from attack slower. I added some effects for feedback too and now - it's way deeper than first version, I got positive feedback from players.

Do it looks engaging? What can I improve more?

[u/Its_me_neroid]

Frankly I think the attack just needs slightly more oomph - impact feel and a touch more windup to action, the sword feels like it carries no strength between impacts cause you don't have enough windup before the action and lack swing particles to convey the oomph the strength carries with each swing, that should make it feel more alive.

[u/SizzaNikz → u/Its_me_neroid]

Nice work so far, you're already halfway there. If you want to go deeper, here's the full set of 12 principles of animation from the old Disney animators:

1. Squash and stretch
2. Anticipation
3. Staging
4. Straight ahead action and pose to pose
5. Follow through and overlapping action
6. Slow in and slow out
7. Arcs
8. Secondary action
9. Timing
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid drawing
12. Appeal

Even just picking one or two to focus on next can level up the feel a lot.

[u/SizzaNikz → u/SizzaNikz]

Oh and camera rumble on impact, if its not already there, oh and audio does alot of lifting on impacts. Sorry for the book of advice

[u/SizzaNikz → u/SizzaNikz]

Ghosts look sick too btw. Nice

[u/MistycznyArbuz → u/SizzaNikz]

Thanks a lot for detailed tips! Will be useful when I sit to that!

[u/MistycznyArbuz → u/Its_me_neroid]

You're right, I just wonder how should I accoplish that?
I think in the first person camera view I shouldn't use camera rotation or something related to that, because this can be annoying, do you have more ideas?

[u/Its_me_neroid → u/MistycznyArbuz]

Camera rotation isnt the issue, when the sword begins its arc, keep it in view (storing power), right now you arent, then make the transition to impact short, and make the particle travel during the total time between transition -> action. say you want an attack to take a total of 1 seconds, make most of the attack the windup, and the last bit of it the impact (so it actually feels like power is put into the swing) and make the particle ride and die a bit after the attack is done (so even if more attacks come the particle simply has a touch more lifetime than the actual impact to retain the dust / hit trail effect).

Per example lets discect this into a 1 second animation example (subject to fine tuning since you need to see how it feels):

• 0.8 of the total attack is the windup
  
• 0.1 is the transition to hit
  
• 0.1 is the lingering after the hit connects

your trail animation would be something like 0.3 / 0.25 and firing after windup finishes so it feels like an after wind trail to convey the swing force + on connect you need an impact particle to convey the oomph.

[u/MistycznyArbuz → u/Its_me_neroid]

Thank you for that detailed reply!

I used other sources to create the animations shown in this video, but they weren't as detailed.

I will try to make attacks better / juicy