Click to attack or not to click to attack

Discuss Daggerfall Unity and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.
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pango
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by pango »

I checked the code to see how hard it would be to implement. But right now DFU does not allow to turn using keyboard; not while swinging a weapon, and not otherwise: the keys bound to TURN LEFT and TURN RIGHT are not currently wired to any action...
And implementing them is not trivial either, main problem being what acceleration profile to use (in other words, "how fast should you turn"). So I don't know if they're plans to implement that eventually.
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Teralitha
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by Teralitha »

Might as well get used to the quick click :) Its really better anyway.

BansheeXYZ
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by BansheeXYZ »

pango wrote: Sat Jul 20, 2019 6:49 pmthe keys bound to TURN LEFT and TURN RIGHT are not currently wired to any action...
Well it's the same thing as looking left and right, thus redundant and depriving your character of sideways movement. I'm all for options if they're useful, but I'm not a fan of giving people rope. Sometimes it's worth forcing people to learn a superior method. I'm not good at analogies, but it's maybe like showing a voodoo doctor real medicine.

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Teralitha
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by Teralitha »

I have to bring this up again, because I have been intentionally trying to get my weapon to do a forward thrust while using the click to attack option and it seems impossible. After several tries on both enemies or not enemies, just moving forward and changing angles, I cannot get thrust to happen at all. But every other attack type does work, but not consistently. For some reason, moving forward and attacking doesnt produce a thrust. If I am standing still with no target, the attacks come at random of every kind except thrust.

Your attack type does matter to a degree, in the chance to hit. Thrust is supposed to give you the best chance to hit with shortblade and I think longblade too.

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Jay_H
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by Jay_H »

Click to Attack chooses a motion at random. Your movement doesn't affect it.

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Teralitha
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by Teralitha »

Well Im not seeing it use thrust in its randomness.

NoobioDF
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by NoobioDF »

Well, there is another way to go, and I believe this was not uncommon back in the DOS game days.

Basically, you would use three different key binds for each attack type. Then you could keep the Mouse for Mouselook and movement, and the problem is solved.

What keys I don't know. One could try Z, X, and C -- but those who like C for Stealth, might not like it. Each key represents either an attack style, like say Z for Slash, or it could be a modifier. So no modifier is could be Slash as your basic average attack. Z might be a modifier timed with your attack click to give Chop, and then X for Thrust. In that example, you'd save on one extra keybind if needed.

Another way to go is similar as above paragraph, but you use R, F, and V -- again this is not dissimilar to how to attack in say the very old DOS Pirates! by Sid Meier.

Sure, the player would have to rebind other keys that are currently standard, so I'd make this only an option set if one wanted to do the work.

In many DOS games you used the NumPad for this, which currently isn't being used at all. Then you'd go ahead and just not even use the Mouse for movement at all, if you liked. So you could have 4, 5, 6 and 8 being used like an ASWD set up (here being 8546 as exact equivalent) and then you would have 1, 7, 9, or 3 to fool with for either modifiers or types of click swings.

Anyway, it's another option. I'm sure others can think of similar ones. Not a high priority perhaps, but very clean method, provided the game code allows for such methods.

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Decrepit DaggerFan
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by Decrepit DaggerFan »

Contrarian that I (sometimes) am, I'm sticking with mouse-swing melee combat. It was and remains a favorite feature of Daggerfall. In fact, the pre-release announcement its loss in Morrowind was catalyst of my very first email of complaint to a gaming studio, where I accused them of 'selling out to casuals.' (I was young enough to be passionate about such things back then.) Unpolished as it was/is, DF's mouse-swing melee remained my favorite RPG combat system all the up to 2018's release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which now holds that honor. All this said, I certainly don't mind a swing/click option in DFU. Choice is a good thing.

On the other hand, I happily use Unity's archery options, as I never cared for the way classic DF handles it.

gimble
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by gimble »

I prefer to use manual weapon swings. Objectively, this makes a significant difference in the early game where landing a hit consistently is important.

Looking at the actual code, the thrust attack adds a +10 chance to hit at the expense of -4 damage: this is an excellent tradeoff in the early game against low level enemies where actually landing a hit matters more than raw damage.

Code: Select all

       {
                    // The Daggerfall manual groups diagonal slashes to the left and right as if they are the same, but they are different.
                    // Classic does not apply swing modifiers to unarmed attacks.
                    if (onscreenWeapon.WeaponState == WeaponStates.StrikeUp)
                    {
                       damageModifiers += -4;
                        chanceToHitMod += 10
                    }
                    if (onscreenWeapon.WeaponState == WeaponStates.StrikeDownRight)
                    {
                        damageModifiers += -2;
                        chanceToHitMod += 5;
                    }
                    if (onscreenWeapon.WeaponState == WeaponStates.StrikeDownLeft)
                    {
                        damageModifiers += 2;
                        chanceToHitMod += -5;
                    }
                    if (onscreenWeapon.WeaponState == WeaponStates.StrikeDown)
                    {
                        damageModifiers += 4;
                        chanceToHitMod += -10;
                    }
                }
The above snippet is from -> https://github.com/Interkarma/daggerfal ... aHelper.cs

Interestingly, the left diagonal slash has a different effect compared to the right diagonal slash - the right diagonal slash has +5 to hit with -2 damage, while the left diagonal slash gets -5 to hit with +2 damage. I didn't know that before looking at the code.

Subjectively, I find this feature of daggerfall makes combat more "visceral" and "satisfying", compared to Morrowind. I also enjoy mount and blade and do not find directional attacks awkward to use. I can understand why some prefer the click to attack method.

BansheeXYZ
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Re: Click to attack or not to click to attack

Post by BansheeXYZ »

gimble wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2019 4:41 am I prefer to use manual weapon swings. Objectively, this makes a significant difference in the early game where landing a hit consistently is important.
This is negated, though, by two things:

1) Its effect on mouselook. Mouselook gives you total control over turning acceleration, so it's basically a vital part of movement. If swinging mouselocks you, then you can only move in cardinal directions during swings. So you're going to get hit more from not being able to move and retreat exactly where you want while swinging. You'll find yourself rubbing up against walls and obstacles waiting for your swing to end so that you can both move and see your enemy again.

2) Getting less swings in, because when you try to "control" your swing, you can only do that by doing it slowly so as not to trigger an overhead chop. That and losing sight of your enemy is going to hurt your DPS.

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