Aware Stage Combat

Because we've descided that Society Stage combat will play out in a similer fashion to "Mount and Blade," we can already say a few things about how Aware stage combat will need to work.

For one, it cannot be a targeted-hotkey style, a la Spore or WoW. The player will be able to attack at nothing. They will be able to miss. The left mouse button should probably be the most used button in combat.

Now, unfortunately we can't rely on player designed menuevers via ragdoll manipulation, because the player won't be the only one in combat.

Now, please discuss so we can finalize the concept and work on polishing it. Please keep in mind that the more similar we can keep it to the combat in our next stages, the better.

Ok, what we need are options, and lots of them. First off, we need to determine whether a creature will fight at all. Most creatures run instead of fight, except if they are guarding young. Therefore, if a creature does not guard its young and always chooses flight over fight, we don't need to worry about combat for that creature.
The hard part is getting the game to do the wild amount of things that an animal can do. Some animals have one defense that they always use, such as the bombardier beetle. Some animals will use their teeth and claws. Some animals have a special appendage for protection such as the ankylosaurus. To better understand what creatures use to fight and why, we're going to need to do some homework.

The homework is: watch an post nature documentaries of animals fight. In the name of research, animals will be harmed in the making of this system.

Here's a few obvious ones to start out.
Battle at kruger

Wasp Dance-off

what about other way of flight? i mean like distracting the predator and making them run away or give up. there is this spider ( i don't know what type, i searched a lot but i cant find it name) this spider has barbs on its back and a dog tried to eat the spider and the spider using it hind legs kicked back the barbs int eh dogs nose and made the dog run away. so what about distractions?

Mike: Distractions can be added later. Right now we need to figure out how core combat will work.

Scio: I've found most vertebrates use the mouth almost exclusively for combat, with claws mainly serving to grip prey. Hpwever, that doesn't help us given that there's no garuntee that a creature will even have a hinged jaw, let alone behaive the same way.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Mike: Distractions can be added later. Right now we need to figure out how core combat will work.

Scio: I've found most vertebrates use the mouth almost exclusively for combat, with claws mainly serving to grip prey. Hpwever, that doesn't help us given that there's no garuntee that a creature will even have a hinged jaw, let alone behaive the same way.

I say any exposed bone should be a combat tool.

@Mike- it's the red tarantula, I believe. Its tiny hairs cause a burning sensation when they touch sensitive areas such as the nose and eyes.

Yep, it's the Mexican Redknee.

~sciocont wrote:

I say any exposed bone should be a combat tool.

I was about to say "What about defence!", when I realized that bones are far to fragile to be used like that.

Anyway, that still leaves us with the problem of invertebrates.

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

I say any exposed bone should be a combat tool.

I was about to say "What about defence!", when I realized that bones are far to fragile to be used like that.

Anyway, that still leaves us with the problem of invertebrates.

Yes, yes it does. Any sharp or very strong appendage?

~sciocont wrote:

Yes, yes it does. Any sharp or very strong appendage?

And that circles back to defence issues.

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Yes, yes it does. Any sharp or very strong appendage?

And that circles back to defence issues.

Combat programming is Belgium. Keep watching animal planet until we come up with something.

~sciocont wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Yes, yes it does. Any sharp or very strong appendage?

And that circles back to defence issues.

Combat programming is Belgium. Keep watching animal planet until we come up with something.

That won't help. All we got there is migets running a dog shelter!

scio- thanks was looking for the name of the spider

but anyway i found this - http://www.cracked.com/article_17612_the-6-most-badass-murder-weapons-in-animal-kingdom.html

some of these we talked about (venom) but others like the pistol shrimp, there type of combat would be great to be include in-game. also a question i thought of, what about turtles? what i mean i that we all know most turtles don't have teeth. they compensate by having a sharp beak and strong jaws. that would be a nice addition.

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Yes, yes it does. Any sharp or very strong appendage?

And that circles back to defence issues.

Combat programming is Belgium. Keep watching animal planet until we come up with something.

That won't help. All we got there is migets running a dog shelter!

Dear FSM I hate what has happened to animal planet in these past years. Belgium. To the internet!

Quote :

also a question i thought of, what about turtles? what i mean i that we all know most turtles don't have teeth. they compensate by having a sharp beak and strong jaws. that would be a nice addition.

Beaks are exposed bone, sharp and strong, fitting into the category we have already created.

Perhaps we could say that it has to be at the end of an apendage?

Tenebrarum wrote:

Perhaps we could say that it has to be at the end of an apendage?

Yes, that would work.

~sciocont wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

Perhaps we could say that it has to be at the end of an apendage?

Yes, that would work.

There are still a few loose ends that leaves, such as octopi beaks.

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

Perhaps we could say that it has to be at the end of an apendage?

Yes, that would work.

There are still a few loose ends that leaves, such as octopi beaks.

Octopi don't use them for combat, but yes, you are correct.

~sciocont wrote:

Octopi don't use them for combat, but yes, you are correct.

I assumed they would bite then run? (In the case of poisonous ones anyway)

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Octopi don't use them for combat, but yes, you are correct.

I assumed they would bite then run? (In the case of poisonous ones anyway)

No, octupi secure their food with their arms and then they just eat it. They swim away instead of fight.

~sciocont wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Octopi don't use them for combat, but yes, you are correct.

I assumed they would bite then run? (In the case of poisonous ones anyway)

No, octupi secure their food with their arms and then they just eat it. They swim away instead of fight.

Then what purpose does the poison of poisonous octupi serve?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Octopi don't use them for combat, but yes, you are correct.

I assumed they would bite then run? (In the case of poisonous ones anyway)

No, octupi secure their food with their arms and then they just eat it. They swim away instead of fight.

Then what purpose does the poison of poisonous octupi serve?

Keeps the prey from struggling.
Venom in the mouth is for predators.

That brings me to the next point.

From what I gather, most animals barely fight at all. It's usually a chase or ambush followed by a single, deadly blow.

That's not wonderful for gameplay, but it does help us program. It means we only need to go through a few different 'moves' a creature could use.

Tenebrarum wrote:

That brings me to the next point.

From what I gather, most animals barely fight at all. It's usually a chase or ambush followed by a single, deadly blow.

That's not wonderful for gameplay, but it does help us program. It means we only need to go through a few different 'moves' a creature could use.

Yes, I alluded to that earlier. Most animals don't know Jeet Kuen Do, so they rely on either running away, or using one surefire defense. There's really very few reasons, evolutionarily speaking, for an animal to evolve poisonous fangs and razor-sharp claws. It's really only going to use the fangs when it tries to kill something.

~sciocont wrote:

Yes, I alluded to that earlier. Most animals don't know Jeet Kuen Do, so they rely on either running away, or using one surefire defense. There's really very few reasons, evolutionarily speaking, for an animal to evolve poisonous fangs and razor-sharp claws. It's really only going to use the fangs when it tries to kill something.

Okay, so looking back on what we and Bashi had been tossing around when he was still around, most of our animations will probably need to be a combination of premade and context based.

So what I think we might be able to do is identify a number of points on the body (Exposed hardness at the end of an appendage) as a weapon. The game can then try a number of directional attack animations with the weapons.

Mouths will need to be another matter. I'd say that if the game detects the weapon's appendage as being the very front of the bezier curve that makes up the spine in vertebrates or worm-body in invertebrates (minus arthropods), the only directional attack that can be made is forward, preventing awkward attempts at directional attacks with the face. This will make it slightly more difficult for some of the more 'alien' designs, but in the long run I think it will look better.

Now, if a joint is detected at the base of two weapons or weapon arrays, the computer will try and animate these to function as a 'grip weapon.' Wolf mouths, lobster claws, raptor feet and the like would fall under this catagory. A grip weapon is not used in a quick strike, but to hold onto prey and keep it still as it dies. This is where animations come in again.

Grip weapons will have a basic, universal array of animations that are not context based, however, they will get contextual animations as well. The game will identify all the prey items for a certain species in a certain biome anyway, and can then run through animations of predators with grip weapons actively attacking the prey in a realistic manner, with more accurate model contact and a long period of grip. Predators will instinctively go for the most vulnerable parts of a prey item's body, ergo the neck for most Earth fauna. (This may need to be changed to allow crocodile style ambushes however) These animation attacks will be the goal most predators have in mind, as they will do massive damage, and count as a successful lunge/ponce/etc would for an Earthly predator.

Now, on the player's side of things, players will be informed of all weapons on their organism once they have completed their direct-edits, by highlighting the area the game has identified as a weapon. The player can mark any of these as not counting as a weapon, but may not mark areas for weaponization themselves. They can then assign the different weapons to either different hotkeys or the mouse wheel, which will cycle through them when turned.

In game, a selected weapon will have it's 'portrait' at the bottom right of the HUD. This will merely be a picture of the highlighted area. If the weapon requires any chemicals to function, such as venom or a ranged weapon (which need to be discussed), there will be an 'ammo counter' next to the protrait. These will be the same in the society stages, but regenerating the 'ammo counter' in Aware stage will consist either of simply waiting if the materials are naturally produced by the organism, or collecting required resource combinations if they are not.

Attacks will be a simple mouse-click affair. Directional attacks will work as the do in the following stages, click to ready the weapon, and release to attack. Directions will be detected through mouse movements. I'm not sure how to deal with awkwardly placed weapons though, like tail-clubs.

Grip attacks will require the player to be within a certain vicinity of the area of the prey's anatomy they wish to attack. This encourages lunges and pounces.

*Wipes sweat off brow* Okay, what have I missed?

That seems pretty thorough to me. It'll be very buggy to start out with just because of the complexity of the orgs, but it's good for now.

I think you've got most of it pretty well there, Rex. Nice work.