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[VideroBoy]

I'm thinking of giving enemies in my game an explicit attack animation, as opposed to them doing damage on simple contact like in most 2D Zelda-likes.

I'm just wondering though: how easy would it be for players to avoid such attacks? Avoiding contact with the enemy itself is not too hard, but separate attack animations would have to be slow enough for players to possibly move out of the way.

[Fallsburg]

Well, the ease of dodging depends on a lot of things. Off the top of my head:
- The reach of the attack
- At what point in the animation does the attack do damage
- Is there any warning (Link to the Past enemies that create projectiles always [I think always] have some sort of clue that they are going to attack)
- The speed of the attack (a sword just appear or does it have move out from their body)

If you want to do attack animations, I say go for it.  Worry about the balance and difficulty of dodging once they are in place, not before as you can always tweak them.

[Konidias]

The attack itself doesn't really need to be slow. Just make sure there is a way for the player to read an incoming attack. The most natural way to go about this is to give the enemy a lot of anticipation prior to attacking.

For example, an enemy that punches at the player would just require the enemy drawing back their hand to emphasize the punching motion. Because of this antic pose, the player will think "the enemy is about to punch!" and then can dodge before the actual punch happens.

This is basically how real combat works as well. This is why martial arts training teaches you to hide your anticipation and watch for your opponent's. Anybody who draws their hand far back to punch is going to lose the fight to anyone with any fight training.

But it works well for enemies in videogames. For most attacks you can achieve this by just pulling back the attacking limb (arm, leg, etc) before bringing it toward the player. For enemies with no limbs or whatever, you're going to need to get creative and have them flash red or shake or make a particular sound or something. Just anything to alert the player of an incoming attack before it's too late to dodge.

[shadowdim]

Give the player a fast-dodging ability. A quick side step, maybe.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

another alternative: perhaps it could attack every x seconds, and the player would learn the rhythm (this is used in shmups, which don't have an indication of when something is about to fire)

[Seth]

Give the player a fast-dodging ability. A quick side step, maybe.

This is what I was going to suggest, something like the roll ability in Minish Cap.  Personally it sounds much more fun to dodge with an ability than to simply waddle away.

[Dustin Smith]

A Zelda-like from earlier this year, Dragondot, had a jump button that worked rather well. As others have mentioned, visual cues and a consistant rate of fire are also sound.

[SirNiko]

Alternately, make the enemy attacks have large areas of effect and deal significant amounts of damage, but have enemies telegraph their attacks in obvious ways. The combat strategy shifts to the player acting defensively until they recognize the pattern of the foe, and then fight conservatively while they watch for the signs that indicate if they should stay close, step away, jump, shield, etc.

[Guillaume]

In the Zelda Oracles on GBC, you can deflect the projectile based attacks (ie. moblin shot arrows) with your sword, with the proper timing. Works really well!

[Fallsburg]

In LttP and the original Zelda your shield (depending on the level) will block most projectiles.  This lets encourages the player to not just hack and slash constantly, perhaps something similar would work for you.

[VideroBoy]

Now, remember I'm talking about hand-to-hand attacks here.  For ranged attacks I'm just going to make the projectiles slow enough.  The player doesn't get a shield.

One thing I'm trying to balance is the symmetry between the player and enemy NPCs.  I want the player and NPCs to roughly play by the same rules, so I don't want to give the player too many cheats.  For example, players execute their attacks as soon as they hit the attack button, so the attack will likely have no lead animation.  If enemies have a lead animation to their attacks, the player having no lead animation would be a "cheat".

That said, I'm starting to lean towards pre-attack lead animations.  This animation can be longer or shorter to tweak the difficulty of the enemy.

I'm not sure about giving the player an explicit dodge or quick step ability since I'm trying to keep the controls down to a minimum and I don't want to add too many features.

This is a little hard for me to figure out since the only Zelda-like games I've seen where enemies had explicit attacks were action RPGs. In these games there's typically a to-hit roll, so attacks simply pass through the player randomly.

[Ego_Shiner]

i agree with the dodge suggestion. it works really well in games like aria of sorrow and its especially necessary if you cant jump

[baconman]

First, it doesn't have to be slow enough to dodge; just have it be something players can choose to avoid by taking a certain approach to. But if you're going for a dynamic battle system, I'd suggest a rock-paper-scissors approach.

Quick attack hits first. Quickly, followed by a cooldown that's covered with a hit reaction, but not if you whiff it.

Block and counter responds to that, by blocking (presumably) a quick attack (with some margin of error), and counterattacking. Also, you still get the attack, blocked hit or not; ends with the appropriate lag (but a little more forgiving than QA's, since you make up for that by telegraphing).

Charge-up, increased-range attack, that can be unblockable (and possibly hard to dodge), but have enough lag so a step-in quick attack easily beats it out (but it can still catch a charge-counter, with a safe range advantage). Similar to power-attacks in Tekken.

Balancing the timing is where the most work goes into this, and really, that's just simple math. Make a timechart and see what works for best flow.


Apart from that, it just comes to ranges and range play. Direct in front only? Tile or two away? Half-circle arc? Goes-forward-3-tiles and hits, but misses up close? Also, if you want some really dynamic battle action, don't forget that your attacks can involve mobility as well, not *just* be stand-and-swing.

Really think about how you want these battles to feel, and mess around with ideas like that. You can have a simple, semi-technical hit reaction system without recreating SFII. But certainly, if you want fair without shields, multiple attacks is a must. Even if you just associate one type of attack with an item/weapon, and then allow 2 to be equipped.