Essay Text: https://open.substack.com/pub/signalsandlight/p/how-does-enemy-attack-timing-work
This is a follow-up to my first and second posts covering the basics of enemy design in my effort to pay forward what I've learned as a AAA combat designer.
The third part of this series establishes terminology for describing how enemy attack timing is controlled in action game combat design, and it explains…
- How Deterministic, Reactive, and Randomized attack timing work and why game designers would use them depending on a game’s needs.
- How timing interacts with attack animations to clarify to the player how to understand incoming attacks.
And I'm curious what other people think about the topic! I'm open to feedback as I will write a 7th part after the whole series is finished to try to connect all the pieces together and grab any nuances that people may have felt I missed in the earlier parts.
I'm trying to remain high-level enough that a wide range of game design interested audiences can easily engage with the subjects, but also to touch on the nuances of these topics enough to hopefully be useful for folks who are considering combat design as a craft. I'll admit that "timing" is perhaps one of the most obvious aspects, but my biggest focus is providing the foundation for how to talk about and approach these topics.