Melee Combat Design
Following the Alpha phase, I took full ownership of the hand-to-hand combat system, serving as the bridge between animation, programming, and cinematic design. During a critical four-month Beta period, I was tasked with auditing and revitalizing the game's final five boss encounters. I developed and executed a comprehensive tuning strategy that redefined boss behavior, difficulty scaling, and cinematic integration, ensuring the game’s climax met our high-action standards.
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Key Contributions:
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Systems Ownership: Managed the technical and mechanical integrity of the core melee combat system through shipping.
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Boss Encounter Revamp: Authored and implemented tuning recommendations for the final five boss battles to improve pacing and player challenge.
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Cross-Discipline Leadership: Synchronized efforts between combat animators and programmers to polish hit reactions, timing, and cinematic transitions
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Below are three different boss fight examples and what I tuned for each:
1. Solomon – The player fights Solomon three times in the game, each fight getting progressively harder. To accomplish this, I made the following tuning adjustments: higher health, decreased time to enter blocking mode if the player spams a combo, increased blocking probability multiplier, increased chance to chain attacks and decreased the amount of time in between attacks. The tuning adjustments may be viewed in the video above.
​2. Divandelin – This dramatic fight on an airborne cargo plane was fun to tune. Divandelin was escaping prison and I wanted him to fight like he had nothing to lose by tuning several values: giving him a fast attack speed, reduced time between attacks, high blocking probability and to counter how fast I had to tuned him to be, I didn’t alter his damage multiplier like with Solomon III. The fight can be seen in the video above.
3. Castel – Castel and Divandelin share a fight set so I had to adjust several tuning variables to help differentiate the two fights as much as I could. First, I made Castel faster than Divandelin but not have as good a chance to chain attacks. Second, I gave Castel a higher percentage chance to perform a takedown but set Divandeli to deal more damage on a takedown. Lastly, I gave Castel a higher percentage to block but do not allow Castel to block for as long as Divandelin. The fight can be seen in the video above.