Thank you both for your feedback!
First of all, I'm glad that it seems to have promise!
I find it interesting to note that, across the various fora on which I've posted prototypes of this mechanic, the reported difficulty of the combat has varied significantly, with some people finding it easy and others finding it very difficult. I suspect that most of those who find it easy are--as seems to be the case with you two--discovering and exploiting the AI's weakness to spammed attacks.
- attacking doesn't quite work as you described it. the instructions say 'swipe the mouse with the left mouse button held'. this would mean I need to click and hold, then drag. but that didn't quite feel like it because just by moving one pixel counts as a drag, and this sensitivity makes it impossible to get the attack the way I intend it to.
it felt more effective to move the mouse first, and mid-movement just click the mouse button
Hmm... Funnily enough, I had originally placed a minimum length and speed threshold on drag detection, but feedback on the version that contained that indicated a sense of lag in the input, which I think that I ascribed in part to the delay incurred by those thresholds. However, I also had a visible mouse cursor, which may have been producing a bit of dissonance between the near-one-to-one response of that cursor and the slower, interpolated response of the character.
This calls for more thought and experimentation on my part, I think.
- you can spam attacks indiscriminately, and the game becomes extremely easy
Heh, yes, I've encountered this myself, I believe. I'm not yet quite sure of how best to handle this, but do have some avenues of investigation to pursue, I think.
(For one, I want to do some research into how an actual combatant might be advised to deal with so aggressive a foe; I might also slow the player down, enforcing a bit of a pause after an attack, making the player a little vulnerable if attacking without thought.)
the collision detection is way too broad and generic (ie. at any angle will your sword block the enemy's) so it's really easy to turtle.
I'm looking into that--the collision system is something that I built myself (in short, I wanted a system designed to handle high-speed collisions), but I'm having some trouble with reliably finding appropriate collision normals for "glancing parries"--that is, situations in which the striking sword glances off of the defending sword (as in a downward strike glancing off of a near-vertical defender's sword). I'm working on it.
I also felt we both had too much health points ...
I agree, actually; I'll likely reduce the health at some point. For now, it at least reduces the amount of time between restarts. I might implement automatic restarting for the next version of the prototype; if I do, I may well reduce the health, too.
now you mention this is a game mechanic, so this tells me this is only a small part of your game.
Well spotted! You are indeed correct: I intend for combat in this game to involve scattered, discrete encounters, rather than the more usual business of wading through mobs.
btw it works in win8, but MS smartscreen filter didn't like the installer at all
I'm glad that it works, at the least.
I don't use Windows 8, and so am not familiar with the "smartscreen filter"--how is it responding? Is it like the warning screen that Windows 7 produces, encouraging the user to install only if the file is from a trusted source?
I fee dodgel it isn't useful as parrying, ...
Hmm... I have ideas for enemies that would somewhat rely on the player being able to dodge. At the moment I agree--successfully dodging is trickier than parrying, and can be tricky to attack from--but for now I think that I'll leave it in.
... and you will miss when dodge and attack most of time, maybe because of known issue.
Heh, true--although I've found that with good timing it can be a way of getting in a hit without the AI managing to parry.
Also, if you intently miss an attack (stab left or right side) will make enemy stay in parry mode, and you can drag a sword into body for free hit.
Ooh, well spotted--I'll look into that, I believe.