Vagrus: The Riven Realms - Companion Combat Actions

Myrthos

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In the second installment of the Companion Combat Guide for Vagrus: the Riven Realms, more information on the companions actions in combat is provided.

Movement

All characters can Move to any adjacent position on their side of the battlefield. If they move into a position that is occupied by another character, that character is pushed out of the position it occupies and has to be moved into an adjacent free position (even to the position the moving character has just left).

Melee Skills, of course, can only be used from the front row. Additionally, not only do characters in the front row prevent melee attacks against characters directly behind them but also make them more difficult to hit with certain Ranged Skills (those that have the Line of Sight property), so moving and positioning is paramount in Companion combat. By extension, Combat Skills that move enemies can be extremely useful to get to pesky support or damage-dealing enemies in the back line or to prevent melee-heavy enemies from using Skills.

Targeting Basics

Skills vary vastly in what or who you can target with them. Some skills target an enemy (or several enemies even) while others your own Companion or Companions. There are also certain Skills that target empty positions and leave some kind of delayed effect on it (for example, a hail of arrows to strike anyone entering the position). Finally, some Skills only target the user, typically self-buffs.

Melee Skills can only be used from the front row. They can only target front row enemies that are adjacent to the attacker's position or back row enemies if no front row enemy stands in the way.

Ranged Skills can target anyone on the given side of the battlefield. A subset of Ranged Skills have the Line of Sight property - these receive a flat penalty to Accuracy when targeting an opponent behind another enemy or an obstacle (thus gaining Cover).
More information.
 
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Throwing in a few images here from the original post just to make a bit more intriguing. Hope that's okay. Cheers! :)

Movement (Swap between companions)
swap.gif


Targeting adjacent enemies (Cleave by Sedarias)
cleave.gif


Targeting a full row (Gas bomb by Garrik)
combat-gasbomb.jpg


Skill use including a movement element (Receding swing by Javek)
receding.gif


Targeting adjacent enemies + a movement in one skill (Strafe by Morwen)
strafe.gif


Enjoy!
 
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I really like the detail shown here in melee tactics, certainly makes me more likely to give this one a try. Thanks for posting all the information on this project and the pictures as well.
 
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Looks good reminds me of a game I played a few years back.
 
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Very nice design, clean attractive art! Only gripe is that the units look quite stiff when they're not attacking. If they had some kind of slight ambient animation, breathing or movement, it would be an improvement.

Not going to keep me from playing though!
 
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Reminds me a lot of the first Krondor game, save that this aspect seems to be taken from the side rather than aft. Looks great to me either way, I'd really give this one a shot based on what I've read and seen so far.
 
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I really like the detail shown here in melee tactics, certainly makes me more likely to give this one a try. Thanks for posting all the information on this project and the pictures as well.

Glad to hear you like these updates. Will keep them coming then. .)

Very nice design, clean attractive art! Only gripe is that the units look quite stiff when they're not attacking. If they had some kind of slight ambient animation, breathing or movement, it would be an improvement.
Not going to keep me from playing though!

Yep, you are spot on with that observation. The good news is that the character idle images are going to be animated exactly like that (breathing, shifting back and forth a bit, etc). That was one of the key take aways right after putting together the first companion combat prototype, and so since then all the asset sprites have been prepared with that in mind. It will be only the matter of animating them when there's capacity in the team for it. Probably only in the polishing phase but worry not, it's going to happen!
 
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