The Crunchy Combat System

Hi curious soul,

I have some cool updates about The Great V Project I’d love to share with you! 

In this update:

• The Crunchy Combat System ™
• Unreal Physics Based Animations
• Stealth and bottles!

The Crunchy Combat System™

I decided that I want the combat system to be fun in this game. And fun, to me, means: a variety of approaches and/or a hit system that makes you feel the “crunch” of the hit.

This idea was conceived also as a result of the following highly brilliant considerations:

• I want this game to do at least a few things that are not commonly seen in other horror-like indie games.
• A crunchy combat system™ is one of these.
• I always thought that games that make a good show of a crunchy combat system™ are instantly better.

After throwing my brain at it for some time I deliberated that  the crunchy combat system™ will be the next thing.

A few more random things I came up with while thinking about this:

• It’s easier and more fun for me to code this rather than trying to figure out if there is another similar feelgood solution in the field of level design. 
• The above is a sin. Soon it shall be rectified.
• If I can do this, then I can actually rely on combat from a design perspective. I'd have some sort of free-pass filler asset. I could throw in a combat sequence pretty much anywhere and it’s going to fill the level and not kill the fun. That's profit.
• I need to be careful with that. Because I don’t really want this to be a brawler.

But just imagine, you are turning yet another dark corner and you face a sudden enemy encounter; you have earlier collected a big wrench. Look who’s smiling now.

Then maybe I can have the weapon break after a series of hits, to balance it out. We'll see.

Unreal Physics Based Animations

With this goal in mind I turned to Unreal’s Physics-Based Animations. Something I’ve eyed for a long time and never found the right excuse to dive in.

Unreal Physical Animations is a framework within Unreal’s animation system that simulates physics interactions in animations. It allows to turn on and off physical simulation per bone at runtime. For my goal, this means that I can use it to make characters react to hits in a convincing way* without needing to author a single hit reaction animation. I am indisputably an evil mastermind.

The Physics Asset Editor in Unreal. Everybody do the flop! 

It took me a full weekend to sort out, increasing my debt in fresh air and healthy social life yet a bit more. But hey, now you can do this:

Have some anger to spare? Enjoy my mannequins! Ps: they signed a document where they gave me consent to be abused in any way I see fit.

Stealth And Bottles

Bottles have some technical problems in the current live build here on itch. The code that used to calculate when they had to break was broken... Isn’t that poetic?

Anyway, they have been fixed! Hooray, the royal bottle stealth cliché is now operative. Now you can pick up bottles safely and use them to distract your annoying home mannequins while you’re tending to your chores.

It’s nothing to scream about but it might come in handy here and there when designing levels.

Ah, I will make this good stuff available for public testing soon. I want to build a small showcase level around it for you to try it in a fun context. Keep following, updates will follow soon.

Want to know when I am releasing another update? Come and join my newsletter at: https://fontanagames.com

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*please note that "convincing way" is different from realistic. For example at this point of development, it seems like characters are a bit made of rubber. But honestly, it still feels good. And it’s fairly easy to tweak.