Let’s Discuss Weapon Types and Basic Attacks

Oh, readers. Dear readers. Welcome. This week, we're bringing you some attack animations in GIF form in order to chat about the different weapons that the girls will make use of in Undead Darlings. Without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into them!

So first, let's go over the three basic attack types. If you've played a Shin Megami Tensei game, or Dark Souls, or any number of other titles that employ weapon types as strength/weakness attributes, these explanations should be familiar to you by now.

1. "Slash" weapons — these include swords, knives, or other implements that cut as their primary mode of doling out the pain.
2. "Pierce" weapons — these include spears and projectiles. Any weapon that has to be "thrust" into a target can be categorized as a "piercing" weapon. Hey, synonyms!
3. "Blunt" weapons — these include maces, fists, and shields. Blunt weapons pretty much "smash" the enemy instead of cutting them to ribbons.

Enemies will have certain weapon types that they are more susceptible to, similar to elemental strengths/weaknesses. Coupling these weaknesses together will boost your Exponential Exploitation multiplier, which we can go into at a later date (we first need to create the logic behind the EE system before we blab all about it; don't want to mislead!). Anywho, let's take a gander at the basic attack animations for the various weapon types, shall we? It may be worth mentioning that we slowed the animations down to 15 frames per second so you can get a reeeeal good look.

Slash Animations

This is the basic attack for sword weapons. Swords, in this game, include the standard stuff (Found a broadsword in a hospital? Why not?!)…but it also includes "modern" stuff like machetes, fire axes, and more. We had to use a black background in our GIFs because the attacks themselves lose a lot of visual impact if left on a white/transparent background.

 

 

This is the basic attack for knife weapons. Since knives are generally wielded by quick characters, or characters unable to wield larger weapons, it gets two quick strikes in its animation.

 

 

 

The first and most standard skill in many RPGs, this is the animation for the "Hard Slash" skill, which is more powerful than normal attacks, but will eat up your skill points (MP, SP, or whatever). As such, it was animated to evoke a bit more "oomph" compared to regular slashes.

 

 

 

Pierce Animations

Spears are interesting to animate, since making a "thrust" in 2D space is a pretty fun challenge. This was created to give a sense of stabbing straight ahead into the enemy, and it works well. Especially when compared to…

 

 

 

The projectile attack, seen here, had to be different from the spear's thrust. To achieve this, we went with an animation that seems smaller than the spear's thrust, but comes across as a projectile piercing into an enemy thanks to the subtle rotation effect in the animation.

 

 

Blunt Animations

The blunt animations are all culled from the same concept, but it's the details that set each type apart. This is the mace animation — it is set apart by having a subtle, horizontal aspect mixed with some small items rising upwards so that it looks as though the attack is coming down from above; basically, someone whomped the enemy over the head with a big mace, and the ensuing "small items rising upwards" is supposed to be like a shockwave to counter the downward motion.

 

Here's an animation for bare fists, or fist-type weapons like brass knuckles. Similar to the mace animation, it has a large blunt-force effect, but has a more curved element to it with a central circular element. This, hopefully, helps to differentiate it by giving the sense of "throwing a right hook" or something, which are generally not "straight" lines more like the rings seen in the mace attack.

 

 

Last but not least, the shield attack animation! It definitely gives off the vibe of someone charging forward and smashing into a foe with a big ol' riot shield. These weapons deal out fairly low damage, but they're shields. It's to be expected, and will often be wielded by characters who need the defense boost in order to survive (characters with a "mage" build will use them the most).

 

Welp, that's it for this week! It's a taste of what's to come, to be sure, but it's good to see some stuff moving around for a change, huh? We're implementing these animations into the battle system now, and enemies will react and animate when hit. I wanted to make a GIF of that as well, but…well, all things in moderation. Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to drop us a comment or join The Dungeon, where we can respond in a more direct manner if you've any questions.