I’m not a big fan of bullet time anymore, it feels somewhat of a cliche in today’s games. It would have to be done invisibly to the player. I mean something like you’d enter melee combat mode, the game would zoom in and run in slow motion. Or at least slow enough for someone to understand what’s happening. But I’m probably going for the more strategic route and reserving the action based combat for Notrium 2.

I know i’m a lot more strict on this thing than i should be, but i’d like to think i still have a sense of what works in a game and what doesn’t.

Anyway, i guess i’ll flip my lid about this more when Ville starts showing us actual abilities that are going to be in the game and be the boring guy raving on about things nobody really cares about.

I’m not sure how ass-pulled your examples are, so i’ll not argue against every one ATM.

I do quite like the idea of having different attacks overall equal in damage but with different effects. That way, different attacks could be used for different enemies, or different situations, ie whirl attack when surrounded, even though it wouldn’t do any more total damage than another attack (instead spread the damage around, which may be very useful). Punch could stun the enemy for a few seconds. Headbutt would knock them backwards to give you more breathing room. Stab could lower their armour levels for a few seconds, allowing you to attack again with more damage. Burning arrows would cause less damage at first, but would drain the same amount over a period of time. Twin arrows would shoot two less deadly arrows that in combination provide the same damage, etc etc. That is sounding good to me; it would allow for very nice and varied combat, that evolves as the game goes on.

And I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought of this before, but the solution to entering ranged combat is very easy, and fits right into how things are already done. The type of combat you enter into when you right click on an enemy would simply be dictated by what weapon you have wielded at the time. If you don’t have any weapons wielded, your character would approach the enemy and enter standard melee combat mode, with special attacks like “punch” and “headbutt” being the only ones you can select. If you have a knife wielded when you attack the enemy, your character would also approach the enemy and enter standard melee combat mode, with special attacks such as “stab” and “slash” added to “punch” and “headbutt” (these two attacks should always be available, since you can “punch” and “headbutt” in melee combat regardless of what weapon you have wielded [with the exception of perhaps a large two handed weapon like a mace etc]). Having a sword wielded when you attack would add special attacks like “whirl attack”. However, if you have a bow wielded when you attack an enemy, your character would not approach the enemy, but would instead hold position in ranged combat mode, with special attacks like “standard shot” “fire shot” and “double shot” available to be used (I feel that in ranged combat mode, all shots should be directly controlled by the player since playing marksman is always good fun, hence the appearance of “standard shot” in the attacks that can be selected. That’s just my opinion though.).

Now, DRL mentioned magic, and that’s something that would be very, very easy to implement into this system. Once a magic spell is learnt, it would appear in the special attacks, regardless of what weapon is wielded (just like “punch” and “headbutt” can be used for all melee weapons). So, regardless of whether you have a knife, a sword, bare hands or a bow wielded when you’re fighting, you would still be able to use magic spells, as they are something that is learnt/aprt of you, not something wielded.