New melee system

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Sidenote: I know that beta 1.2 was ment for all new melee but I'll try anyway

Part I: Prelude

Over time, alot of complaints scour these forums. Some disgust it, some just don't like specific things, and so forth. They are pretty much based on the current melee system. This is why I'm creating this concept.


I understand that some didn't like the "renovation" so I thought of a possible solution that might balance things out a bit or two. To make a long story short, I thought of a new melee system.

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Part II: What went wrong?

What went wrong? Not an easy question to answer, yet something did went wrong. People complained about arrows, that it involved no skill. Other's didn't like the simple melee and so on. Let's take a closer look about the complaints:

-the simple melee knockbacks, too short and too easy
-pressing arrows isn't skillful and it's boring
-teleport delay, who needs it anyway?
-swooping, some can't stand double tapping
-advanced melee is too slow

If they were minor problems, there would be no need for alarm, but these problems are the core of the current gameplay.

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Part III : The new system

FIRST OF ALL: The second mouse button is exactly the same as it was in 1.1, the knockback distance, the speed, all the same, the only thing that should be different is the damage. Other than that, there is no more tele delay, look at the bottom of this page to see what might be a possibly solution for that problem.

I'll describe my ideas using several situations.

You're swooping at the opponent, and you connect. If you hold the left mouse button before you connect, you will do a fast throw. You grab his arm/head/leg, spin 1 or 2 times and throw him away. This will cost a pretty big amount of ki but lesser than the throw now and the enemy will also be thrown less far (charge-able maybe?). In any case, it should be fast so that you only have a few seconds to aim before automatically releasing your opponent.

Let's assume you're ssj so we don't have to worry about ki. The moment he is being thrown, I can use simple melee to hit him again or I can use advanced melee on him while he is still flying. I choose advanced melee. The prepunching starts and at the same time the player has to input his arrows so that when the prepunching is done, the moves will begin right after (in other words, no more annoying pauses). Of course this also means that the enemy player has to press/guess the arrows while being prepunched.

When the enemy has dodged the moves, both players will be sent flying back, so no more turn based crap. If you have enough ki, you may try to knock him back using advanced melee to add another simple melee hit. To prevent advanced melee being used 3 times in a row. The player cannot use advanced melee for a specific amount of time (if it is all a big combo, not normally) or has to use at least 1/2/3 simple melee hits before using advanced melee again in the combo chain. However, in a 2on1 your teammate is not restricted to the fact that you just did advanced melee, but if you look at the bottom of this post, you can see what will happen if you swoop someone in the back. If the enemy is stupid enough to turn around to land right into your face, you can spam advanced melee as much as you want.

But what if you start advanced melee before the player is actually hit? Or simply said, what if you use advanced melee like you would now? To keep things fast paced, it could be a grab and a headbutt or a kick to the stomach and a smash to the back, sending the player down. The knockback distance would be same as we have simple melee now. And to prevent it from being spammed, it could only be used 2 or 3 times though it would be possible to simple melee it even after the max hit has been reached, same goes for advanced melee. That way there are less pauses to slow things down. Perhaps that pressing left would knock him to the left etc.

Now for the blocking system. The simple throw I just made up could easily be used over and over. To prevent it from being spammed, the throw will be reversed when the enemy blocks. That way it will stay risky and you’d have to strike when the enemy isn’t blocking.

When the enemy players blocks a simple new melee hit (the last one I mentioned) both players will hit eachother and a struggle will start. The animation shows that the players are sparring at a fast rate, but neither of them do damage. Not long after the sparring has started, the player who blocked gets the chance to input various arrows for the opponent to dodge. The same goes for the opponent, once that is done, both players will be knocked back unless one of them dies first.

Now, you might think blocking is overpowered and encouraged, but that’s why we have 1.1 melee back in. In 1.0 you could hit right back when you blocked, in 1.1 it was tougher to do so.

There are now 3 possibilities to attack a player:

- simple 1.1 melee
- simple new melee
- short throw

what happens when you block?

- nothing, you will receive little damage and will not do a dramatic counter attack
- struggle, nothing too special or destructive (unless a hidden combo is used)
- counter throw, but less ki needed

That way, you can decide what risk you are going to take and what to avoid

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When thrown into a wall, the player can again choose simple or advanced melee to hurt the enemy some more, but he has to be fast or the enemy might walljump away. I won’t make this too complicated, if you can nail a simple melee shot on someone in a wall, it will be no different, except that it will do a little more damage. When doing advanced melee, you start prepunching him, also, doing a little more damage when it’s over, you jump backwards a little. After one of this has been done, the victim still stuck in the wall will have a small time of invulnerability to escape. I don’t mean 2 or 3 seconds, no, just enough to dodge. Maximum would be 1 second.

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I was discussing this concept with a couple of friends and we were thinking about all kinds of crazy stuff. But in the end we thought it could be fun.

When you advance melee someone in the back, you'll see an animation of you kicking or hitting that person in the back ,unless they’re already being thrown or hit, (groin for the humans?) which takes about 5 hp max, then you can do 2 things.

* Grapple hold, you'll grapple him (full nelson style) and then you can swoop. While swooping you can press right mouse, to release him again, kind of like throwing only this time you're mobile and it takes a tad more ki (holding + swooping). It wouldn't be blockable or you couldn't get loose because you're pretty vulnerable when attack in the back. Only if the enemy has insufficient ki, you could revert the throw or simply stop him from swooping.



When it's 2v1, you could play with the enemy, but you'd have to be behind him and catch him when he is being thrown by your buddy. However, to balance it a bit, it would probably require a great deal of ki just to hold the enemy tight. Though you could make some nice stuff with it hehe.

== Buu cell and frieza could possibly use their tails or tentacle to grapple their enemies, perhaps even hit them in the back (frieza saga anyone). When they do, they'll grapple first and then start hitting afterwards unlike the others but will still do the same damage (1 hp per hit, 5 hits max).==



* Special move (only when they have 10 hp or less) sorta like a fatality from mortal kombat. Some characters would have a special finishing move.

Buu, absorb
Cell, absorb
Frieza, laser in the back/head ? or a disc? or strangle with the tail?
Gohan/goku, small kame?
trunks, chop him in pieces or simply sting his sword in someone, for extra gore, he'd decapitate him or even both
vegeta, break his neck (with a nice crackling sound of course) perhaps rip it off afterwards or something
krillin, destructo disc used as a chainsaw
piccolo, the same he did to babidi, use his hand to cut someone in half. Perhaps kick one half far away from the other or rip out his spine

Of course, cutting buu or cell into pieces would force them to regenerate, but since they can't yet... I don’t see that as a big problem atm. Hehe, while you're at it, perhaps a nice sprite that'll say FATALITY and the voice along with it or am I getting a bit too carried away?

Either way, the effects of absorbing would be up to the team, becos I haven't really thought that out, most likely because this is just a bit too whacky for ESF but hey, who knows?.

========================================================

Cool moves

Just 4 random situations that could occur while playing

- Player 1 hits/kicks/throws another player to his teammate and he uses it to swoop in his back to initiate the grapple hold so he can throw the enemy into a wall.

- Player 1 grapples the enemy and swoops/throws him to his teammate. Player 2 tries to do a frontal swoop to start the prepunching, once he has done that he makes his moves and eventually kicks the enemy player to player 1 again. Player 1 swoops against his back and finishes the enemy with a special move.

- Player 1 is being attacked by an enemy player, and presses block at the last instant. He reverts his foe’s throw and uses it to toss him into an teammates beam/ball/bomb which happened to be close

- Player 1 is under assault by 2 enemies and in a quick move, he throws an enemy into the other, giving him time to charge up for full ki. When done, one of them attacks him but player 1 uses simple melee to pull of a 3 hit combo to finish the first one off. I’ll leave enemy 2 up to your imagination.

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Part IV: Other stuff

As for the swooping system, there is nothing wrong with double tap imo, but others seem to prefer the old targeting manner. So I was thinking about the scouter and decided to convert it to swooping.

modes :

1. 1.1 swooping, clicking once targets, clicking again swoops
2. 1.2 swooping, double tap to swoop
3. mixed mode, clicking once targets, clicking again swoops, while double tap is also possible.

In case of mixed and 1.1 mode: when selecting a weapon other than melee, the only way to swoop is double tapping.
This way, the player has the choice to decide what he/she prefers and it isn't unfair, because you can easily switch ingame.

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As for the tele's I've noticed that people worry about tele scripters and such (I don't understand why, they only waste their ki anyway) but they have an opinion too. This may have already been suggested, but possibly in a little different way.

Charging tele's

A simple press on the teleport button will do the same it does now, a teleport, same distance, same ki, nothing changes. Holding it will take more ki, but you can go further. In other words, you can press 2x teleport rapidly or you can hold it but the ki usage and distance is the same, the only thing that is different is that the second method is one teleport while the first method are 2.

Optional: when you charge a tele, you will see a charge bar, there will be several parts of the bar that will light up when it is reached. It will indicate how many teleports are charged. Something like this maybe?

(this is just a crappy example)



That way it'll be a little easier to determine how many tele’s you’re charging and the distance you’re about to cross.
The moment you press the teleport button, it will not charge right away, a minor delay time (like the current tele's delay) will stop that. Once that time is passed, the charging will commence. Because charging itself takes time, the longer you charge the faster it will go (including the draining on your kibar). When your ki is depleted and you have not teleported yet, you can teleport the distance you have charged or you can cancel it. Canceling will be done by pressing the charge up (for KI) key the same time the teleport is charging. That way, you'll just charge up (perhaps some of your ki return because you haven't really used it yet).

You can charge your teleport, while you are swooping, so that when you hit someone you’re tele is already charged and you can perform the combo easier. Makes everybody happy because we can still do it the way we used to.

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You see what I'm heading for here? Both old and new ways co-exist. This system also encourages teamplay because what is more tempting than grabbing someone from behind (no, not like that) to throw him into a wall. Especially if he isn’t looking. You could get mad players because they don’t like 2 on 1’s. But I believe that it is teamplay that made mods such as CS and NS so popular. If you work alone it gets boring after a while. I myself enjoy teamplay allot. Why do you think people want to be in clans? For the fun, the teamwork. Besides, if you want 1 on 1’s you know what you can do.


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Seems you guys came up with some great ideas. Sounds real good to me, so i'll back you up with this.
 
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This would be one heck of a gameplay if it ever came ingame.

10/10.
 
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indeed...it would rock da house, havent touched ESF for 1 or 2 months now, havent even tested teh patch :O

i hope teh esf team at least considers it to implent a few things out of it :p
 
The Viking
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Allthough i can't really complain about the current system. This one does look a lot better. However, I really doubt it, that the team will even consider building a new melee system. If they would, this should be the very system they should use.
 
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I understand the team isn't waiting for a new system, they just built one and redoing it will take a huge amount of time. IF they are going to use (parts of) this system, they shouldn't overrush, but instead put a part of it in every beta/patch. Of course I don't even know if they like it or not, let alone use it.
 

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Nice ideas, I like this a lot better then the current system. I have a concern for a couple of things though, mainly that you said that it would be cool if you could link simple melee and advanced melee together. I agree that this would be nice to see, but if the knockback distance was the same as it was in 1.1, the only way that would be possible is making them fly back hella slow ;/.
 
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Why do you think I created my so called "simple new melee"?

It's basically the current knockback distance and speed only with a different animation. However if it is blocked, there is a risk that you will be damaged. When using 1.1 melee, that risk is smaller because you can escape easier. But it is also alot harder to pull it off. Other than that, those are not the only two ways you can do it. The (faster) throwing part uses less ki and you will fly not as far like in 1.2 so this too could be used as a link to initiate advanced melee. This is possibly the easiest way and therefor also the most risky thing to do because once this move is blocked, the move is reverted and you're the one being thrown.
 
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This system is really interesting. I like it alot as well. Should definitely get rid of the boring intermissions between combos. :laff:
 
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i like it though i have nothing against advanced melee this seams a bit more trickey and DBZ-ish :D

PS Killa the boring intermitions can be goten rid of by changing 2 animations for each character
 
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Grega said:
i like it though i have nothing against advanced melee this seams a bit more trickey and DBZ-ish :D

PS Killa the boring intermitions can be goten rid of by changing 2 animations for each character
It'll definitely be more DBZ-ish that's for sure. This system, from what I read, will allow 3-way fighting, or even more. :D
Yah I know. I just don't feel like modifying the models. :laff: Besides, I'm no animator, or modeller. ;)
 
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I'm looking for a someone who can host a 1MB zip file for me so that I may clarify some things using footage from several episodes. If anyone can host, send me a PM and I'll send the file.
 
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Speak to Styx, i think he has a bit of space on the new site he's got.
 
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i really like this idea, the melee system sounds incredibly superior to the one in place now, i am particularlly fond of the "Fatalities" being a big mortal compat fan.
When you advance melee someone in the back, you'll see an animation of you kicking or hitting that person in the back ,unless they’re already being thrown or hit, (groin for the humans?) which takes about 5 hp max, then you can do 2 things.
Hahaha kick him in the groin i like that. Still a bit confused about how you start advanced melee, can you just fly into them and initiate it like you can now? Throwing someone and then melee'ing them while in mid flight seems a bit brocken, throwing is already annoying as it is
 
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Well, it was the best I could think of, because it would allow harcore players to use 1.1 melee, and others could use the more "simplified" methods (throwing and simple new melee, as I call it) and to make sure that throwing couldn't be spammed all the time a simple press on the block button would reverse it. But if any of you have a suggestion on how to handle it differently, I'd like to hear it. :)
 
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It's great it would be 1.2 with the speed of 1.1 with som cool new stuff I really love it.
By the way the mixed swoop, charged teleport and the old knockback (old knockback was way more like dbz then this one where you need one teleport to make a 2 hit combo besides who complained about it annyway?) would be handy to add (bring back) in a patch cause it would speed up the game 2x
 
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Some situations I have thought about:

When player 1 is being grabbed from behind and therefor grappled, how can his teammate help him?

- When his teammate uses simple melee on the enemy player, he will just knock backwards, unless he is hit in the back, the a large amount of ki will be drained from his kibar.

- When his teammate uses advanced melee, he will try to strangle the enemy player from behind, forcing him to let player 1 go. When that happens, your teammate and the enemy player will be in a struggle.

The enemy will lose some hitpoints per second and your teammate will lose Ki during the struggle. For both players there will appear a struggle bar, the same one when you get a beamstruggle. The enemy player will be in the red part and your teammate will be in the blue. When the enemy holds his left mousebutton, his ki will drain, but it will increase the chance of getting loose. If he loses all his ki, your teammate will do a tight grab and the enemy will lose an amount of his hp (20 hp?) the enemy will then fall down slowly and stunned, not able to recover for 2 or 3 seconds. If your teammate loses all his ki first, the enemy will break lose, turn around and the player will be free do things again, so he can teleport away to charge up or he can use any kind of melee on him, whatever suits the player most.



==================================================================

Headons

At the moment, when two players hit eachother with simple melee, they both fly back and damage was inflicted on both. I think it would be better if it were to be like this:




Gameplay wise, both player will just collide, maybe a special animation of the fists or elbows colliding but it will do no damage, it will only cost extra ki. This situation only applies on a headon (so while swooping).

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Ok, here are some extras, they're more eye candy than an addition to the game but hey...
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Teleports

I described how they could work, but now I'll describe how they would look. For me the after image just didn't create the right feeling. They weren't bad, but something was missing. In beta 1.1 they were an ordinary sprite. But take a look at this video and pay attention to how they teleport.

www.yoomie.net/zforces/Styx/CellvsGoku.zip (thanks to styx for hosting)

You see? Instead of fading away, it looks like lines are being erased. Take a look at this pics for a little clearer example.











I don't know if this could be accomplished in the first place, if it would I think it would be done with sprites. Instead of just having a couple of lines, they would also travel the direction you teleported, but it would only show for something like 1/10 th of a second, in other words really short but if you played it in slowmotion you could see where they went. Don't understand? no problem, why do you think I'm showing you all those pictures?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v259/Carneh/teleport1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v259/Carneh/teleport2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v259/Carneh/teleport3.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v259/Carneh/teleport4.jpg

Top view:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v259/Carneh/alt2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v259/Carneh/alt4.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v259/Carneh/alt6.jpg

This system will work with my chargable teleports, 1 teleport is simply the press of a button, 2 tele's take a while to charge etc.
1 teleport: the lines can "easily" be seen ("easy" because they're still hella fast)
2 teleports: less lines will apear so it is harder to see
3 teleports: only a few lines can be seen and they dissapear even faster.
4 teleports or more: no more lines
(I'm talking about the charge here because they're still one teleport)

The "lines" could be an animated sprite. Each model would have a different sprite (or else the colors might mismatch the model). But because it is done so fast, it doesn't need to be detailed or resemble the current animation the player is in.
In the show, when they teleported on the ground, a cloud of dust appreared from their feet, perhaps something like that is also possible without causing major lag or fps hits. I was thinking about the current explosion sprite only smaller and going one direction.

Other than that, what to do with the after images?
Well, since 1.3 is going to have more transformations, I guess that you'll also gain more ki when you trans.
3 teleports: a dim after image is projected and doesn't stay for long (0.25 sec)
4 teleports: a little clearer and lasts a bit longer (0.35 sec)
5 teleports: halfway there (0.50 secs)
6 teleports: the after image is almost full (0.65)
7 teleports or more: the after image is showed to the max and lasts one full second before it is completely gone
The amount of "seconds" indicates how long it takes before an after image is completely gone so it also includes the fading time.
It kinda makes sense, 1 - 3 teleports are more like fast movement (uberfast swooping) while 4+ teleports are a large distance so it would be more likely for them to actually teleport.
If you check the video again and look at 0:30 you can see cell doing a "charged tele" and as you can see, it takes while for him to complete dissapear.
However, because (to my knowledge) it is impossible to fade the after image out like they did in the show, I guess it won't be changed from how they look now. But if it somehow is possible to "erase those lines" than I think it'd be alot cooler and closer to the show.
Last thing about tele's, multiple teleport sounds (2 or 3 maybe), a longer one for the after image and a shorter one for the eeeh short tele's
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Stances
If the player uses 1.1 or mixed swooping mode this will be a liiiittle different.
When the player hasn't targeted an enemy, he will remain in his current default stance. But when he targets some, his stance will chance to a combat stance.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v259/Carneh/stance1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v259/Carneh/stance2.jpg

It's not a big change, but it would make sense, you target someone because you're about to fight (in most cases anyway) also, in the show when they were fighting and decided to have a chat, they weren't always in a fighting stance.

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Backflips
When you're about to hit someone with simple (1.1) melee, you can press jump to do a fancy backflip when you've hit him. Sort of like a walljump only on the player and faster.
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Last but not least..
IF the team doesn't use a new melee system in 1.3, I suggest that they could use my swoop and teleport system and create a server option which enables the owner to choose 1.1 or 1.2 melee, that should keep most people satisfied until a new system is created. To prevent HOWing again in 1.1, they could use the headon suggestion I made in this post.



Sorry for all the links but I can't do more than images per post so I had to remove the
 
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These are all great ideas and look verry cool :) and yes i agree the team should use ur charged teleport,mixed swoop and the old knockback in a patch it shouldn't cost them much work BUT it would speed up the game greatly and i think even the less talented players would find a charged teleport fun.
 
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I love the idea about the charged teleports and stuff. You've thought this through really well, i hope the team actually looks into this thread and give it some thought.
 
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i like it...well most of it, i didnt read it all, im not much of a "long posts reader" hate it when ppl do that TO MUCH READING...but i like the part that i readed lol
 

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