First and foremost – a quick group update; We’ve been spending some time prototyping and planning different assets for our project. In the near future we’ll be looking to start bringing some of our work together to stand up our text adventure game for the first time. Looking forward to the challenge that awaits.
Last post I described a technique used in video-games to enhance impacts known as “Hit Pause”. This week I thought I’d continue the trend with another interesting technique, this one lovingly referred to as “Suck-To-Target”. This concept is used less so in classic fighting games and moreso in combat games where the player is generally fighting NPCs (non-player characters).
At its most basic, suck-to-target is responsible for helping the player land attacks that might otherwise whiff, generally making for a better gameplay experience. Its aimed at alleviating the problem of depth perception and attack-distance judgement:
Lets imagine your character is about 4.5 meters away from an enemy and you have the choice to swing a big club towards the enemy. Lets say the attack would translate your character forward 3 meters and the club swing would extend your reach an extra meter. That would mean that you’d end up extending a total of 4 meters towards the target, causing you to whiff and leaving your character vulnerable to the enemy’s attack. Well nothing about that experience is fun, so suck-to-target essentially allows a game to nudge a character forward a bit faster in cases like this so that by the time the club starts to swing, you can guarantee it will impact the enemy. This makes for a much more satisfying gameplay experience and if done well, the player shouldn’t even notice the assist.
In terms of the logic behind suck-to-target, it’s actually fairly simple. I.e. If your character is within x distance of your target, interpolate your character’s position towards the target and guarantee arrival within a specified window.
Until next time!
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