Melee Attacks

[Baker]

In Quake, the melee attacks of any given monster only vary by damage.

What some ways to diversify the melee attacks of enemies?

My short list:

1. Stun. Player can't move or moves at lower rate for a second or 2.
2. "Poisoning". Continual damage for a period of time or until X is done (in some games this is dressing the wound or whatever) and in some Quake mods this may be getting a health box.
3. Player can't attack again for a moment or 2.

Any other ways to diversify melee in a way to differentiate enemies except by damage [within the scope of QuakeC] ?

[frag.machine]

4) player being pushed (the Quake 2 berseker melee attack is a good example);

5) vision blur and view angles disorientation;

6) player dropping the current weapon.

[Wazat]

I had some interesting ideas for monster attacks in Conquest, some of which you can see if you download the mod. Some melee attacks:

Hell knight swings his sword down, and a red shockwave expands around him. This damages and flings all creatures around him away.

Knights can have 2 additional colors. Metal knights are slower but hit harder per attack, and are well-protected against physical and light attacks (don't go at them with a nailgun). Light knights glow white and move very fast, and swing their swords very quickly. This makes them hard to avoid because they can close the distance quickly and stay on you. However, there's one more melee trick to worry about. Each time they are damaged, they discharge electric sparks (just higher than melee range) that will harm anything they hit.

Sounds make a difference. The horror monster (flying critter that spits poison/flame at the player; got the model from Prydon Gate) has a rather crunchy bite sound that really tells the player he's in trouble. Horrors can kill you at melee pretty quickly, and the severity of the sound effect is a great way to indicate this.

Other ideas that didn't make it in:

Vampiric attacks - the monster can stay fairly healthy by continually damaging the player. This is most effective when the monster has a health bar, numbers float up showing damage and healing, or there's some visual effect showing that something is traveling from the player to the monster.

Immobilize - The monster may have a tongue or harpoon that grabs/impales the player, either pulling him in or preventing him from moving far. My ancient and bloated Wazat mod had a grappler monster that would harpoon the player from a distance and draw him in, allowing the grappler to zap him with its short-range lightning attack. It was an evil monster...

Slow poison - Poison can have a number of effects, and slow is one of them. Slowing either the player's movement rate or attack rate, or both, is a good way to really put the pressure on him and make him FEAR that monster.
Moving slowly puts you at serious threat of melee enemies, including the monster that poisoned him, getting into melee distance and staying there for more than enough time to kill. A huge portion of Quake is out maneuvering and dodging enemies. Take that away and you've got a worried player.
Reducing attack speed makes it harder to kill the threatening enemy and its buddies. This gives them more time to do their evil deeds, and the player can't kill them right out before they get another shot off.

Latch onto the player and keep hurting - parasites that suck blood until shaken off by changing direction or jumping; rottweilers that bite and hold on, dragging behind the player and both slowing and damaging him; enemies whose melee attacks can leave timebombs on the player that will detonate, and he must jump and change direction like crazy to shake them off in time... you get the idea.

Steal a weapon - the gremlins in mission pack 1 were dangerous if they got too close.

Steal or destroy ammo - each attack reduces a random ammo count by 5-10% of its maximum. Stolen ammo is returned in a backpack when the enemy dies; destroyed ammo is gone forever.

Penetrate armor - This melee attack goes right through armor, still damaging the armor but not being reduced by it.

Lasting max health damage - Each attack reduces the player's maximum health by 3-5, and it takes the player 30-60 seconds to regenerate his max health back to normal.

Swing the player's aim left or right - Imagine a fiend whose side to side slash actually goes very quickly, and hits with so much force it turns the player's view left or right. This disorients the player and makes it hard to land a shot, increasing the need to keep a distance from the fiend.

Short-range fire breath - the fiend inhales and blasts out a fire breath, about 2-3 times melee range.

Permanent immolation - The enemy is made of lava or otherwise continually burns and radiates heat. When it is near the player, the player takes damage. This damage may increase with proximity.

Melee attacks ignite the player - Damage over time is evil. The player must find water or a health pack to put out the fire. Maybe also let them put it out by jumping around/changing direction. Maybe.

Stun followed by slow effect - This is a very effective attack. If the shambler hits the player with a special slower-than-normal attack that swings both claws downward, it stuns the player for 1 second and slows him for another 3-5 seconds.

Clone - Imagine a translucent orange tarbaby which glides along the ground instead of jumping. It moves quite quickly and, if it touches the player with a melee attack, clones him. Either it spawns a clone of the player next to the tarbaby (and the tarbaby can spawn more and more clones with future attacks until killed), or it turns the tarbaby into a copy of the player. Either way, the player must now deal with a copy of himself that is carrying his current weapons and ammo, has an average of his current health and the tarbaby's health, and possibly has additional defense and offense boosts. That's one enemy the player will make his priority to avoid touching!
You could even have this tarbaby imitate other monsters. When the player finishes killing a shambler, it could suddenly explode into one or two orange tarbabies that the player has to now deal with. Those tarbabies will either morph into a nearby powerful monster, or will try to touch the player to become him.

Devour - a large tarbaby or dragon that can swallow the player or absorb him into it. The player must attack from the inside to blast his way out. Explosions work best, but the player will damage himself in the process. In the mean time, the player is taking acid damage.

For coop - a monster whose attacks plant eggs in the player. If the player dies, the eggs burst out of him as small monsters to attack other players. Alternately, the monster might infect other monsters around it automatically until the player finds it. Then when the player(s) kill the monsters, they have an infestation swarm to deal with as well. Makes seeing that particular monster surrounded by other creatures an ominous sight.

Petrify - Each successful melee attack causes a cumulative slow poison. This slows the player's movement (and possibly attack speed) for 30-60 seconds. As this happens, the player hears stone grinding sounds as his body hardens, and he takes damage over time. The more poisoned the player becomes, the slower he is. If the player accumulates too much poison, he becomes a statue and dies. If he otherwise dies with the poison, he becomes a statue that way too.

Blindness - The melee attack of a scorpion knocks the player back and blinds him for 3 seconds. This blindness can either be total blindness, or just very darkened vision (i.e. a barely transparent black model around his head).

That's all for now. Have fun!

[Dr. Shadowborg]

[Baker]

[Wazat]

[ratbert]

[Baker]

[Wazat]

I like the idea of teleporting scrags. That's a neat spin on the monster that really changes the fight.

You might implement that in a melee character, too. He can instantly teleport behind the player and melee attack before the player realizes what happened. Just be sure to avoid/cancel the teleport if a telefrag would occur.

Another idea is to give the enemy a charge-up ability that boosts their next melee attack, or boosts all their melee attacks for several seconds. For example, if you load up Conquest and fight some hell knights, you'll eventually encounter a hell knight that is glowing and transparent orange. These guys are NASTY. For one of their attacks they raise their sword in the air and sparks fly all around them, warning the player that they're charging up. They then point their sword forward and unleash a powerful electric blast from the sword tip.
If instead of doing a ranged lightning bolt you powered up the hell knight's attack damage and movement speed and gave their attacks a knockback, stun and/or slow effect, that could be a *very* cool melee ability.

Melee attacks can be differentiated in simpler ways as well. For example, giving one enemy an axe, another a sword, and another a vicious set of claws makes their melee attacks very different in the eyes of the player.

Another method is detailing. One enemy might have a flaming sword. Using the newer model formats, attach some flaming objects along the spine of the sword so that it's constantly burning. Likewise for ice or electricity. You can do some pretty cool lightning effects with my spark lightning code from Conquest using only QC, or you can employ an engine feature. Alternately you can simply change the color of the sword with the skin - red for a red-hot sword, blue for ice, etc. It's less dramatic than a sword spouting flame, but easier to do and perhaps kinder to players with more rigid engine/cpu limitations.

Quake also makes use of rapid-fire vs one hit melee attacks. Knights swing in an arc and rapidly damage in small amounts every 0.1 seconds during the swing. Shamblers deal their damage in larger bursts instead of rapid-fire -- each swing of a claw is a separate damage instance.

These three more mundane methods can make a big difference in how an attack feels for the player.

[r00k]

boomerang Axe
or that thing from Xena Warrior Princess
http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/swblades_2079_15899609.gif

[xaGe]

..That weapon goes by the name Chakram. Its actually made up of 2 pieces that can be split into two halves and can be wielded separately for hand-to-hand combat.

[Dr. Shadowborg]

Or a really big huge freaking Scythe.



Incidentally, regarding the Chakram, I'm pretty sure the 2 piece thing is unique to the one Xena uses. You can actually use one as a weapon in this patch: