Best Way to let players choose attack animation

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#1

So I am making a fast paced game tht involves a lot of melees i made an advanced melee system with swordphin’s raycasthibox module. the melee system has a lot of cool stuff stamina,weight math there is a lot of math behind atk speed too and the best part is tht if u click harder it will atk faster. so basically ovral rlly cool system i also made each part have different healths and armour points and they can be cut off.
due to this i feel it would help the players strategize if i supply em a way to control the animations.

overall i have figured out 2 ways so far:

i) I could somehow link it with movement and jumping like if they have been moving forward that
implies the enemy is ahead of em so it will do the uptodown; if the last turn they did was
toward the right then right to left, stuff like that.

ii) basically multiple buttons on the ui and keyboard controls, pretty simplistic.

nothing is too hard to script btw so feel free to suggest smthg tht might be hard to script.

note: we want to make it playable on devices such as mobile,consoles, pcs with trackpad only and stuff like tht so if possible dont make it too dependant on controls

#2

You will want to keep the attack flow simple yet intuitive if you’re going for an advanced combat system both so it’s easier to learn and so that you will have less trouble implementing it cross-platform. Generally I would not recommend multiple buttons to attack unless

  1. It’s intended to be a PC-only experience, which then go wild with keystrokes (i.e. Black Magic II).
  2. You have a low amount of buttons to support many combos and base the used attack on the player’s movement. For example: main attack, skill/stance change and ultimate attack.

So in essence I like the first option better. Movement-based attacks allow you to create interesting combos without remembering a whole lot of controls beyond the primary ones.

Don’t go too hard on the movement-based attacks if you can; just a simple difference between a standing/walking and running attack, whether a sweeping swing or a forward lunge, can make for some good gameplay and strategic fights based on the chosen weapon.

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