Essay Text: https://signalsandlight.substack.com/p/how-does-enemy-ranged-and-melee-combat
This is a follow-up to my previous posts (one, two, three) covering the basics of enemy design in my effort to pay forward what I've learned as a AAA combat designer.
The FOURTH part in the enemy combat series is out! It explores the design and terminology for various types of enemy attacks based on their distance from the player. It covers…
- The core player verbs for interacting with incoming melee and ranged attacks.
- A definition of melee attacks that is based on the distances they travel.
- How games use motion warping to ensure that enemies can approach a player accurately while a melee attack is active.
- The basics of various types of ranged attacks and how to think about them in relationship to animation.
- Other types of unconventional boss attacks that don’t fall into obvious categories.
- And lastly, an analysis of how the distribution of ranged and melee attacks influences the sub-genre of an action game.
I'm curious to hear what other people think about the topic! I'm open to feedback, as I will write a seventh part after the series is finished to connect all the pieces and capture any nuances that people may have felt I missed in the earlier parts.