You might also want to try an old game, Prince of Persia (an old platform game with really smooth/good animation).

For sword fighting to be 'fun' for the player I would think certain conditions would need to be met:

* There should be no best attack/best combo that the player can learn early on, then repeat to defeat all enemies. This make the rest of the game feel like a chore (checking for such combos can be hard, its likely easier to design a good ai opponent).

* Skill should be progressive. As players progress they should be able to hone their technique, so that if they where to be sent back to an earlier part of the game they would do alot better (due to the l33t skillz they have mastered to progress in the game)

* The controls should not be overly complicated. A small number of moves that can be combined is better than many special moves. An example would be to have a safe attack, a risky attack and a block (combined with normal player actions like move and jump)

* Collision detection needs to be good. It will ruin the player experience if the swords don't seem to work just right.

[EDIT]: Removed really old from PoP description. Its 286/386 era, which is not as old as some Gamedev'ers will remember.

[EDIT]: Thief is also an ok example of a sword fighting system (though it suffered from the first point, there was a method you could learn that was unbeatable, making you an uber killing machine)

[edited by - michalson on May 6, 2002 10:54:54 AM]

Jedi Knight 2 has a pretty good lightsaber fighting system, though the blocking is automatic (auto blocks if you''re not doing something else like attacking). It would be too hard to play if it was manual though because of how fast the action is.

While I''m here I just want to give props to Raven Games. They make some good shit

I agree with Nacrus: Soul Calibur and its prequel were great games as they provided a myriad of special moves which were linked to keypresses that made sense. This made it easier to learn them. The other important aspect was that there were several defence mechanisms, each appropriate for different attacks. So if your opponent got used to using one defence mechanism, you could try a different type of attack. It wasn''t just a button-mashing fest - it was a high-paced tactical game where you''re trying to find the weaknesses in your opponent''s defence while protecting yourself from the same fate.

4 buttons plus a directional control is adequate for this sort of game, I found. Having said that, being able to redefine a few more to your favourite combinations was also very useful.

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how about tackling the problem from the bottom up? Learn how to fight with a sword, *then* worry about how to translate it into a game... apart from olympic fencing (which you should be able to learn in almost any bigger city) here´s a few links to get you started:

www.dreynschlag.at (german, with photo tutorials)
www.zornhau.de (german, with training photos)
www.freifechter.org
www.fechthalle-muenchen.de

www.thehaca.com (historical armed combat association)
www.sca.org (society for creative anachronism - tons of links but somewhat disorderly)

what about this kind of interface:

When you are in "fighting mode" or "sword drawn out", a table of buttons will appear on screen. (table as in data arrangement).

So you could have, for example 4x5 table of buttons. Each one has a little graphical picture of a particular attack method. So by clicking on each button you get different kind of attack. Furthermore, the types of attack could be organized by rows, like the first row of buttons is all "high" or "head" attacks, 2nd row could be "middle" attack, 3rd could be "low", and 4th could be something special. To make things even more elaborate, lets say that right mouse click means "attack" and left mouse click means "defense".

When player fights, he can keep left hand on the arrow keys to control character movement and keep right hand on mouse. Mouse allows quick and easy way of selecting a particular attack method and it helps the player seeing available buttons on screen.

What do you think guys?