Slashing, piercing, crushing, and ...slapping!

25.10.2009

Thanks to your replies in the previous combat post! I've read them carefully over and over again in the dark of the night, and tweaked and tweaked. And here's the short of how combat in Driftmoon works right now. Bear in mind that Driftmoon is an RPG, and not a very action oriented at that. This is not Diablo, and you will not be blindly fighting enemies for hours at an end: you'll be doing much more questing (eg. exploring, finding interesting places/items, solving mysteries, having deep and/or entertaining discussions - perhaps even meeting Bobby).

Combat will be real time, but can be paused to use items and give orders. I switched ranged combat from Diablo style constantly clicking into a more strategic style. Now we click once on an enemy to attack it, and from there on we select from various attacks we want to use. In the screenshot we are wielding a bow and a shield, so we can select from two bow attacks (Double shot is cool!) and one shield attack (ram enemy).

Another change is that we have damage types. The basic damage types are slashing, piercing, crushing, and slapping(!), and we're going to have more for magical weapons and creatures. The skeleton is pretty resistant to piercing damage, as arrows go straight through it. Flying insects are resistant to all other damage types than slapping. So you can kill them simply by slapping them real hard.

The new system also allows you to wield all kinds of weapons simultaneously. Wielding a shield and a bow in the same hand is not prohibited. If you happen to find a spiked helmet, you can use that to headbutt your enemies. All weapons can have multiple different attacks. And I'm actually thinking of making the torch a weapon as well!

Personally I like the new combat system. It allows a fair bit of strategy and differentiation, and it is fairly simple in the beginning while it can get more complex later in the game. Plus we've got slapping!

Your comments?