Cross-Counter
A downloadable game for Windows
Cross-Counter is a third person, one on one, player versus environment, arcade boxing game that is predicated upon the usage of the titular boxing move the “Cross-Counter”. For the uninitiated, the “Cross-counter”, is a boxing move that is a counter-hit where you strike the opponent with a cross (a punch done with the dominant hand) as they are attempting to hit you with a jab(a punch done with the lead hand aka the hand closes to striking the opponent). This technique also involves a slip so that the combatant doing the cross doesn´t get hit by the jab. Real-Life Example.
To achieve this, the player will have to read the opponent´s current emotions, which will communicate what move they are using so that the player can prepare the appropriate response. For example, if an opponent starts getting scared because they fear the player, they are more likely to use weaker and safer moves to fight, which could make them easily predictable and liable to a Cross-Counter. This is what Cross-Counter is all about.
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Cool idea but buggy and I have no idea what the controls are
The AI keeps spamming blocks and wastes all its stamina doing this. When I waste all my stamina the game is soft-locked as there's no way to get stam back. Walk animations are very jank, you let the key go and it still plays the animation despite you standing still. If the AI uses up all its stamina then it gets stuck in a blocking loop forever. The game is about baiting the AI to punch so you can land a "cross-counter". The more you hit the AI the more "scared" it gets, reducing how often they punch. Except if you punch them even once they get so scared that they literally never punch you again.
There's also no way to bring the AI's fear meter down, except letting them punch you. The thing is, if they're already so scared that they won't even try fighting back, the game is essentially a punching bag simulator since there's no way to make them less scared again. You could add a key that makes the player "taunt" to increase the frequency of their attacks. Also PLS increase stamina regen by at least 20 times
Wow didn´t think people would play this (this is for a university project assignment, and I will be honest the project was not in a finished state). And in a way I feel bad for you spending your time with this because even for an amateur project it isn´t acceptable (I could get into the specifics of why it isn´t up to the quality standard for the assignment and what led to that but that´s neither here nor there). Regardless thank you for your extremely detailed input. Most indie devs could only dream of getting someone to even try their game with no publicity let alone give their thoughts thus it is only fair that I respond to what you have pointed out:
- When I submitted the game for my Uni I had the control document separate from the game explaining how to play... Really need to include a control section, my b.
- Yep the walking animation is bugged because when you combine sub states for some reason the sub animation keeps playing fully until it is done (It´s a bug I am trying to fix).
- Unfortunately there isn´t much I can do about the walking animation looking bad because the mixamo animations don´t mix well with each other (like when you want to attack and move) even when I assign them different parts of the skeleton to animate (They are made for different contexts). There is a more complex implementation I had in mind for the walking animations while attacking, but that wasn´t in the scope of the build that I wanted to hand in for my assignment. Yet if it´s something that bothers you visually, I can take it as a sign that it is something that I need to bump up my priority list.
- Your complaints about the stamina are completely fair, though I do want to clarify that the way it is meant to work is less like a cooldown and more like a resource you try to maintain... So think less like dark souls and more like a magic bar in an rpg, but applied to normal attacks. You will notice that guarding and whiffing attacks costs extra stamina, and while you probably weren´t able to see this, when either you or your opponent get up, they use a big chunk of their stamina. If you have no stamina, you lose the fight. Unfortunately, the values are completely unbalanced, and as you say, it leads to the opponent just spamming block because they ran out of stamina. So yes, the regen of the stamina is going to be increased (thank you for the suggestion) but it is still part of the game design that eventually you end up with little to no stamina... but obviously, that should happen after you are almost done with the fight... and not 10 seconds into the round, which is, as you rightfully pointed out, ridiculous.
- Yes, the fear emotion was supposed to gradually decrease in the game´s design concept.. but I wasn´t able to implement it due to a bug with the way I coded how conditions are checked (This even happened in my uni presentation which was very embarrassing).
- Also the enemy was supposed to throw out jabs A LOT more frequently while in fear (Allowing you to cross counter!) but the wonked stamina system and bugs in the ai lead to the issues you described, where they never attacked!.
- Yes... I really wanted to add taunts! But I had trouble working with the states I already had and had trouble thinking/playtesting on how to balance it. This lead to me scrapping them early on in development, but I can definitely revisit the idea.
Thank you once again for what you written! Even if you don´t see anything about this project again know that I have taken your feedback into account to improve this project!
Great
;)