Zeno Clash Melee

[Jeeves]

Hi everybody.

What is the general opinion on the melee combat in Zeno Clash?. What do you like, dislike about it etc?.

Thanks in advance.

[Stormy]

I couldn't grasp it. The hits didn't seem to connect properly, it's like the hitboxes weren't lining up properly, or it was only colliding along some edges. The range was all off too, sometimes when the animations look like you should have connected, you would totally miss. I got the feeling the viewmodel wasn't synced to the the world at all, so the calculations for the hit connections were all simulated, rather than being a part of the physical engine.

Beside that it was frustrating because I could never string together any combos. I hate melee combat where you get blocked and you simply stop punching. in real life if someone blocks you you just throw the next punch. And if you miss you don't stand there in a daze opening yourself up to a counter attack, you pull your guard back up or follow through with a hook/jab from the trailing arm. I got to just after the wierd-as-fuck hallucination bit where the muppet gives you an acid trip amongst all that bamboo and just gave up. Fantastic art but could not handle the controls. I'm sure a niche of people somewhere absolutely loved it.

[nub]

Yeah for me the range of your punches felt really misleading and inaccurate. Combos are definitely tough to pull off too. It's still a pretty cool game regardless. They definitely expanded their boundaries with the sequel, too.

[no00dylan]

I really enjoyed the combat in Zeno Clash- it was hard to get into, but once I did it felt pretty nice and natural to me. I hope more first person melee games come out.

[Jeeves]

@ Stormy : So as the player, you feel that the melee hit system has been abstracted wrongly between the engine and the player( Talking about the buggy hit-box calculations ) to the extent that it feels broken?. You ever play fight night champion?, if so what do you think about the physics hit system in that?.

@ Nub : So less difficult combos; and easy gauging of effective attack range.

@dylan : As you probably guessed, I'm working on something that is going to have similar gameplay to Zeno Clash. I'm trying to make a good melee system with a physics hit system. It's quickly becoming more complex than the one in Zeno Clash. I'm working on the system, and if it's any good i'll try and make a mod out of it.

[Stormy]

I felt that the viewmodel of the hands wasn't actually a part of the game world, and so it couldn't connect with the game world entities properly. Maybe if the viewmodel was removed entirely and a worldmodel was used instead the physics engine would handle the collision better than a floating impact point in front of the player.

[Jeeves]

Thanks for your help guys.