Parry, evade and block animations

[Aragorn83]

I'm fond of isometric games. They look like you're playing little soldier figures and it's awesome (childhood nostalgia for me). But I was always looking forward to see block, evade and parry animations (in games like PoE, Baldur's Gate etc) like it was in KoTOR. I'm not a programmer and don't know if it is possible with Unity but that would be really nice feature.

[Lamppost in Winter]

There's a dodge animation, which is nice. Unfortunately no shield block or parry animations that I've noticed. I always liked the blocks in Dragon Age: Origins since it always came with a satisfying "clang!" sound, but they never fired often enough.

[Wormerine]

I dunno. KOTOR made it look like kids beating each other with toy lightsabers. Than again, so far Jedi Knight only did lightsabers well.

[Aragorn83]

I dunno. KOTOR made it look like kids beating each other with toy lightsabers. Than again, so far Jedi Knight only did lightsabers well.

I'm not saying that it should look like in KoTOR. Games are pretty different visually and using different perspective. I just say that it would be nice if there were some in Pillars.

[Osvir]

As I understood it from the same "request"/"wish"/"dream" I did during PoE1 Kickstarter is that animations are costly by themselves and then further introduce new bugs (which would take time to fix and "time = money") and would introduce gameplay changes.

New animation frames making other enemies that your characters are not currently "blocking" or "parrying" continuing to attacking you (like in DA:O or similar, IIRC) or just standing still waiting for the animation to finish (like DA:O or similar, IIRC).

It's a nice dream/vision/wish, but alas, I think we will not see it until perhaps much later installments and many years to come. My dream is a bit grander, and is something more akin to Assassin's Creed animation, but with RTwP combat, and having your characters block, parry, evade, take damage, damage, several foes at the same time, making combat something of an Action Movie or perhaps even a more realistic take and slower.

Point is, that would require so many resources that I can't even begin to realize how much time it would take, but it is just a dream. So much for the AI to consider, distance, and I believe one would have to first design the game to be turn-based somehow, based on distance instead of squares or hexes (fictional "meters", "radius" or fixed "tiles" and have, e.g. an attack animation take place over 2-3 "tiles" fluidly, and then unleash it somehow).

It looks like Wasteland 3 is doing something "similar" to what I imagine, but in a Turn-Based environment (it looks freaking sweet). At 1:28 it starts, and you can see the enemy character "Fish-Lips" making an attack that looks like it takes place over several "Tiles", but it is so fluid! Would be chaos and so costly to code in a RTwP environment (think that not only one character would move in Realtime, but all characters, and some encounters can be up to 10-15 enemies at a time, + your party) but the end product would be so muah!

Edited February 16, 2018 by Osvir

[Witness41920]

I would love to see some block/parry animations as well and have to agree that the "clang!" sound effect that accompanied blocking in DA:O was super satisfying. If it is possible to include these animations in the Unity engine without causing animation/sound sync issues with the pace of the gaming engine then I would be fully in favor of this. 

[Archaven]

That would be a neat idea but i think it's too late for that now? As the game is nearing release and resources should be allocated on optimizations, bugs and balance it the meantime.

Edited February 16, 2018 by Archaven

[Wormerine]

@Osvir, I wouldn’t put much faith in the Wasteland3 demo. It looks like an upgraded presentation of concept rather than genuine gameplay. If final game will look nearly as look as this demo I will be impressed.

 

A more serious reply to OP. If they were to implement that kind of stuff it would better be intergral part of a system rather than cosmetic. Animations take ingame time to play out - what if you parry two enemies one after another? Does the game slowdown to play out two animations? Does system forbit to enemies to perform an attack at the same time? Can you only block enemies in a cone in front of you? Does blocking influence you recovery? I think there could be a very neat combat system designed with that in mind.

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

I also loved the combat animations in KotoR, it never felt static or boring to watch, while the game mechanics were round based but KotoR had a fairly high budget and could afford those animations as it was part of the Star Wars franchise. Such animations certainly don't come cheap and require a lot of work, they are not something that is added easily or quickly so i doubt we will see anything like that if it isn't already part of the game yet. 

[Aragorn83]

@Osvir, I wouldn’t put much faith in the Wasteland3 demo. It looks like an upgraded presentation of concept rather than genuine gameplay. If final game will look nearly as look as this demo I will be impressed.

 

A more serious reply to OP. If they were to implement that kind of stuff it would better be intergral part of a system rather than cosmetic. Animations take ingame time to play out - what if you parry two enemies one after another? Does the game slowdown to play out two animations? Does system forbit to enemies to perform an attack at the same time? Can you only block enemies in a cone in front of you? Does blocking influence you recovery? I think there could be a very neat combat system designed with that in mind.

I'm not saying that a character should parry/evade/block every time it happens during the fight. I'm talking about cosmetics so that fights would be more realistic and not just written in your fight log journal.

[Wormerine]

I'm not saying that a character should parry/evade/block every time it happens during the fight. I'm talking about cosmetics so that fights would be more realistic and not just written in your fight log journal.

I assumed you do, and I don't think it would work in game's favour. Here is why:

 

Pillars has an issue were the game takes place here. The space which takes the most space and should provide majority of information is here. However, information that are needed to make informed decisions either aren't there, or are difficult to read. Addition of cosmetic animations to make combat look more natural would make this space look nicer, but would make it even less helpful that it is now - potentially even being misleading; suggesting your character is blocking, while he is being hit etc. 

 

Ideal situation would be to move gameplay from combat log and enemy sheet to game space. That is what Divinity: OS2 does much better than PoE. While you can check detailed enemy stats, they tend to be obvious by their character design (Oil Blob will be vonourable to air, healed by earth, firery enemy will be weak to ice, healed by fire etc.) Positioning, line of sight and distance is much more important. 

 

Creating an animation system, which would communicate gameplay in the game space would be a great addition - tank is blocking - he is not getting hit, the sword gets deflected by enemy armor - not enough penetrating etc. This brings couple problems:

 

1) topdown games aren't best in visually comminicating what is happening - especially with "realisitic" artstyle PoE has. 

2) animations take time, and if not used as an intergral part of a system, it could clash with game rules (which is what I have written about in my previous post). 

 

Game to utilize animation in a way that would benefit the game would require art and gameplay designed to directly support that idea. Adding flavour animations which don't support or go against gameplay (communicate actions that are not actually taking place) would do more harm than good... well, maybe beside a more effective advertisements due to better visual presentation.

Edited February 20, 2018 by Wormerine

[Aragorn83]

Warlock, come on! If you played KoTOR you could notice that your character doesn't always parry or block when they got hit and vice versa. Sometimes they receive damage but the game shows us that the character blocked. It shouldn't be exactly as it's depicted in fight log. The fights just look more natural and that's all. And you can still use the log to see what happens. It's not some new mechanic to these types of games. The question is if this could be done with Unity engine.

 

 

 

 

[Wormerine]

Warlock, come on! If you played KoTOR you could notice that your character doesn't always parry or block when they got hit and vice versa. Sometimes they receive damage but the game shows us that the character blocked. It shouldn't be exactly as it's depicted in fight log. The fights just look more natural and that's all. And you can still use the log to see what happens. It's not some new mechanic to these types of games. The question is if this could be done with Unity engine.

ha! Everyone has their preferences. I wouldn't treat KoTOR as a benchmark. 3rd person view made it impossible to really get a grasp on what is happening, attacks had to be manually order, forcing MMO style button smash, overall, it was rather boring. It felt like Baldur's Gate style starwars game, for people who wouldnt want to play Baldur's Gate. 

 

I am sure it is possible in Unity, I am not sure if what they build for PoE would support additional animations being inserted inbetween attacks.

[Multihog]

This was the #1 reason I enjoyed the combat in Neverwinter Nights. Playing the game felt like playing some map editor due to the incredibly blocky environments, but the combat was satisfying because the characters actually did some sidestepping, parrying, and blocking instead of just standing there trading blows. Dragon Age: Origins was also amazing when it came to combat animations. 

It's unfortunate that the fights in PoE2 will, just like in PoE1, once again look static, but the combat log gets most of the attention anyway, so it's not a deal-breaker or anything. 

Edited February 22, 2018 by Multihog

[Daled]

It'd be nice. But to be honest I never stood there watching the animations play out while being occupied by all the other things, like not dying for instance   plus the characters are pretty small, so there's that.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Daled

[Silent Winter]

This was the #1 reason I enjoyed the combat in Neverwinter Nights. Playing the game felt like playing some map editor due to the incredibly blocky environments, but the combat was satisfying because the characters actually did some sidestepping, parrying, and blocking instead of just standing there trading blows. Dragon Age: Origins was also amazing when it came to combat animations. 

 

It's unfortunate that the fights in PoE2 will, just like in PoE1, once again look static, but the combat log gets most of the attention anyway, so it's not a deal-breaker or anything. 

I also enjoyed NWN animations - all those shield blocks and sword parries - (you could even get your character to sit on a chair - which I think I used twice in over a half-dozen plays).

But many of them were 'fake' , like in BG when it looked like you kept missing but in fact they were just filling in animations until your 'turn/round'.

PoE combat is a bit faster and more things seem to happen at once.

As much as I'd love more combat animation in theory, I don't think it'd actually improve the game for me.

[alexis13]

I don't want them tbh, I like to pretend my char is like ascended and has near impervios body, meaning i just tank the **** straight to my body and it doesn't even harm me.

 

Kinda ruins the immersion if we start doing block animations and such, but i get you, just saying my thing.