It’s been a long road but we finally have melee combat implemented. It’s not exactly the way we wanted it but it’s a start. Right now as it’s implemented a single touch to an opponent will kill the player outright. You would think that this would give a melee weapon fighter a distinct edge in combat… you would be wrong. In fact, the odds of getting within striking distance is very slim.

You have to completely catch a player off guard to stand a chance at scoring a kill with a melee weapon.

The implementation of the melee weapons was quite a bit more difficult than anticipated as well. The system we originally built for handling firearms expected a series of features to be on all weapons that were held by the player. These features either had to be added to the melee weapon or the entire system required an overhaul. My first instinct was to do the quick and dirty approach but I thought better of it. So the entire weapon control systems for the game got recoded to handle both melee and projectile weapons.

Other feature improvements include a hit indicator which can be seen in the above gif. When the opponent is hit with a bullet you can see a white ‘X’ appear over the player. This is a simple billboarded quad with a transparent texture. This above all else was the most requested improvement to the game. Players had a difficult time knowing when they actually hit an opponent.

To improve some of the comedic qualities of the game we decided to change the dead body mechanics.

Now a players dead body reacts very similar to a bowling pin. This gives the game a bit more of a cartoony feel that we were going for from the beginning of the design for the project. Our target audience for the game is anywhere from 8 - 60 years of age and we wanted parents to be comfortable letting their child play. Removing some of the dead body mechanics we feel will help create a disconnect from reality.