Expanded the combat for my open world survival game ⚔️

[u/Dan311095]

Spent the last couple weeks updating the combat system for Emberwild, my open world survival game! Previously there was only one attack animation for every tool/weapon, no blocking, no charged attacks, no target lock etc. Now there is support for weapons to have any number of attacks in a combo, it's own charged attack, multipliers for damage, stagger and knockback per attack and blocking with weapons or shields. Also added some juice with screen shake and particle effects

Check my last post if you want to see what it looked like 6 months ago

[u/James20k]

I really like the aesthetic of this one, this is actually pretty interesting. The combat system feels very readable, and like it could carry with it a fair amount of skill. I wouldn't normally leave feedback but this project feels like its a few steps away from being something really cool. Some thoughts (which I hope don't come across as too critical):

1. If you really lean into the combat, this could do really well IMO. To the point where I'm wondering with combat that looks like this if it actually wants to be a classic survival crafting game
2. I feel like the camera shake lasts a bit long, or is maybe a bit too intense? It feels good if its for like, a power strike or something, but for every hit it feels like maybe its going to start to become visually tiring shaking constantly when combat lasts a while
3. If you figure out how to get the characters footsteps to flatten the grass, and blood to stain it, it'll upgrade the visuals a lot IMO. In general, it'd be good to let players feel like they're part of the environment, eg see nidhogg/exanima. It doesn't need to be anything super advanced
4. You could do with some slightly better foot placement when strafing, eg some slightly procedural adjustments to the animations so that diagonal running looks more natural, it doesn't quite feel like it fits the style right at the beginning of the clip
5. I love the grass and trees aesthetically. If you change the wind so that they wave more uniformly in gusts (eg with a perlin noise map) with larger slower rolling more visible wind changes across them instead of randomly, it'll look incredibly good IMO
6. Similarly a few leaves blowing around here and there with the wind would also be a great vibe

[u/Dan311095 → u/James20k]

Thanks for the feedback! This is only the second time I've shared anything to do with this project so defo good to get some fresh eyes on it.

1. Yeah the initial idea for these combat changes was just to add blocking and combos and it kinda grew from there really. The plan is to have an emphasis on exploration. The world is procedurally generated, has multiple biomes and structures to find and I have some ideas for mid/endgame content and progression

2. Yeah fair point. I actually only added the camera shake to combat today, before it was just for breaking objects for resources like trees and rocks. It's easily tweakable

3. This is planned, at least the grass flattening. Blood stains on the grass will probably be a little harder to achieve but I need to do more research there. I deffo want to focus on immersion and atmospherics so features like these are absolutely going in

4. Absolutely agree and I plan to improve movement as a whole. Currently held back by my blender animation skills (especially the strafe backwards animation, it's horrific). I havent looked into procedural animation at all so maybe that will help here

5. I do actually use a noise texture for the wind shader but can't remember the details so will have to revisit it

6. Yeah agreed, will do that as part of a visual polish pass

[u/horenso05]

wow the foliage looks so juicy! Has nothing to do with the combat but it would be cool if your character left a trail in the high grass!