Rayyan H
Stagger System
When the poise gauge reaches its limit, the hit that breaches the poise gauge and future hits for 3 second will trigger a stagger which will interrupt the target and perform other actions depending on the conditions. In case you need a refresher on what the poise system does, you can click here.
Using the same hit data for receiving poise damage, the type of knockback dealt is also specified in the hit information
The stagger system is all wrapped up into one ability that handles the logic for what to do during hitstun. Knockback application, aerial suspension, and even getting knocked down are encapsulated into this ability to help make it easy to manage.
For example, whether an attack has vertical knockback or not influences if the target remains suspended in the air or gets propelled up/down when they are airborne.
When a target does go flying however or alternatively gets hit with negative vertical launch forcing them in a knocked down state, a listener is set up to listen to when they hit the ground which can be used to enable both the enemy and the player to recover from the knockdown state.
On the player side, a target that is knocked down cannot be launched again until they get up. This prevents the player from re-initiating an air combo which would in turn stun lock most enemies that do not have aerial recovery options. This works both ways as this prevents the player from being flung around like a ping-pong ball once they finally hit the ground.
This is the behavior tree section that is used to handle the AI logic for getting out of the knocked down state. By sending the jump event, the enemies can use their get up abilities which usually is harmless and allows them out of the state.
The Hell Claw however has a more offensive get up that can ensnare a player into its combo as getting up from being knocked down does NOT invoke action intervals (which is what prevents them from always attacking).
