Combat Design

For my personal project Mirror of Shadows, I had to design the systems that the player will interact with to try and create an engaging system.

Underlying Systems Involved

Skill System

Using the ability to chain combat abilities together can lead to interesting combos as well as solving combat issues on the fly.

Button

Stagger System

This system handles what happens when the target actually gets staggered and plays into the air combo system.

Button

Poise System

This system was intended for the ability for players to potentially overwhelm their enemies or being able to counter play.

Button

Status Ailment System

This system adds combat depth as on top of the combo system, the player can mix and match status effects to their skills to help on the battlefield.

Button

Combat Design

The initial basis of the combat system was akin to Genshin Impact for handling stagger but Wuthering Waves for Stun/Parry. As of writing this, there are three enemy types, each one providing their respective role to the combat with more to come.

Ticket System

Utilizing Gameplay tags, I was able to create a system that requires enemies to have a melee ticket tag in order to attack, controlling the aggression of enemies in combat.

While waiting, enemy strafes around and selects a skill based on ground distance, height, and facing angle. Once a ticket is granted, that skill is locked in and the enemy tries to get in range to start the attack. After finishing the skill or getting interrupted, that ticket is returned and the process repeats.

Tick Aggregation

Enemies under the same enemy manager have their ticks batched together. This batched tick minimizes the amount of individual tick function calls throughout each frame while still granting tick capability whether it is components updating or behavior tree logic running.

Enemies

Silver Wolf

A common pack enemy type, they are not so dangerous alone, but in large numbers they can overwhelm the player. They are meant to be an introduction to the parry system to the player, showing the controlling capabilities of being stunned upon getting parried.

Thunder Slime

These amorphous beings specialize in range, be it artillery or creating pools of slime that will heal enemies and harm the player.

Platinum Hawk

These enemies often inhabit the aerial part of combat, being high enough to be out of reach on the ground, but low enough for the player to jump up and attack them. Their wide sweep attack while parryable can easily disorient players if they attempt to dodge through it or don't parry

Hell Claw

These are the brute type enemies. They hit hard and are also hard to takedown. They introduce the stun system to the player where dealing damage will fill it up as well as parrying their parryable attacks to fill up large chunks of their stun gauge.

Each enemy represents a counter to the player's tools in the combat system with their respective weakness.

Evasion

The Silver Wolf can sometimes evade a player's attack, completely negating the damage of that hit and creating distance. This can be countered with moves marked as undodgeable or inflicting the slow status to prevent them from dodging.

Slime Rain

If left alone, the slimes can unleash a burst of slime balls that stick to the terrain.

These slime balls can hurt the player but heal enemies, making them a higher priority target.

Launching Charge

The Platinum Hawk is dangerous in the air where the player has limited aerial options but not extremely effective on the ground as their attacks are easily dodgeable or slow to do meaningful damage.

Relentless Combo

The Hell Claw is relentless, capable of doing a long chain combo attack, retaliating while knocked down, or pick up the speed when the player strays too far making them hard to shake off.

This is was inspired by the God of War trilogy's enemy design philosopy.
Never only one problem