THE WEEKLY HYPELETTER - 14/07/2023

We take a look into the new Combat System.

TL;DR

Before we jump into this rather beefy newsletter, we’d like to address a small change moving forward. We’ve realized that we’ve been divulging a bit too much about the details of certain levels and encounters. To preserve some excitement and ensure a memorable experience when you play the polished demo, we’ll be keeping those discussions a bit more hush hush moving forward. We understand that we must keep our readers as informed as possible, but we don’t want to spoil too much and ruin the element of surprise.

Project Eris Highlights

Now, let’s delve into the meat of what’s been going on behind the scenes. This week, we’re hard at work on the Perk System, a system that will allow your weapons and abilities to have a little extra functionality. We have finished implementing the Combat System, and would like to cover some details on how this system works and provide you with a deeper understanding of its features.

Creating the Combat System

After players got to play the initial prototype, we gathered some feedback and showed some statistics in this newsletter. One of the key pieces of feedback we got was that: players did not find it fun when using their abilities. After becoming familiar with their abilities, it got repetitive and boring very quickly. This was mainly because the player was restricted to a single set of abilities. The creation of the Combat System is a direct response to address that feedback.

Originally, it was intended for the player character to have a single set of abilities that could be ‘upgraded’ over time through a skill tree. However, after receiving the feedback, we realized how this intention could have quickly led to ruining the player experience. We started to ask questions. In many games, what do players love having? More than the shiny new sword they got for slaying a boss. It is a choice. The freedom to choose what they want to use to slay that boss. So, we decided to add weapons into the mix so it would give a variety of choice to the player in how they wanted to engage with combat. We hope that some of the features of this system will help you understand how it can bring about a diverse combat experience. Let’s dive in…

Weapon Types

To bring variety to the player’s combat experience, we’ve introduced three distinct weapon types for the polished demo:

  • Energy Blade – excels in close-quarters melee combat, requiring players to engage with combatants up close.
  • Combat Bow – serves as versatile ranged weapon, allowing players to dispatch combatants from a distance with arrow projectiles.
  • Sceptre – offers a hybrid playstyle, enabling both melee attacks and ranged combat through energy bolt projectiles.

Example Energy Blade
Example Energy Blade
Example Combat Bow
Example Combat Bow
Example Sceptre
Example Sceptre

Players will have the freedom to equip up to two weapons of their choice, allowing for diverse loadouts. So, if you want to run something like double Energy Blades, you can do that!

Attack Controls

During playtesting, we found that having only a single way to attack with a weapon became boring and repetitive rather quickly as well. To make weapon attacks more engaging and intuitive, we’ve implemented attack controls within the Combat System. Each weapon can have up to three attack controls. The method of triggering these attacks will depend on your interaction with the on-screen weapon joystick.

  • Light Attack – triggered by simply tapping the on-screen weapon joystick.
  • Heavy Attack – triggered by holding down the on-screen weapon joystick and then releasing it.
  • Directional Attack – triggered by moving the joystick in a specific direction which commits a directional attack in that desired direction.
It’s important to note that these attacks can vary drastically for each weapon, but every weapon will have at least a Light Attack as a fundamental functionality.

Weapon Perks

To provide weapons with additional functionality during gameplay, we have set the foundations for weapon perks. The Perk System is actually what we are working on this week. 

When a weapon drops for the player, it will roll with a randomized set of perks from its perk pool. Perks are essentially Gameplay Abilities (GA’s) that are activated based on specific events or sequences. An example of a weapon perk we have been testing: Speed Demon – ‘grants +15% movement speed to the wielder when defeating a combatant‘. These perks are meant to encourage customization of your playstyle and build-crafting.

Damage Types

Each weapon will be assigned a specific damage type, which we’ll keep quiet about for now. We have plans to talk more about these damage types alongside another topic in a future Hypeletter. What we can share is that there will be four main damage types.

“This is Hyper, signing out.”

Hyper