For the past few days I have been working on this combat system but I feel as if the attacks have zero impact whatsoever. Any tips?
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There’s a few things you can do to make combat feel more satisfying:
First and foremost, there’s a reason most media, be it movies, anime, and video games, use camera movement, like shaking or zooming in/out to emphasize the power of various attacks or scenes of action.
The video doesn’t have sound so I’ll go ahead and assume there are sound effects, but in the case that you don’t, having very punchy, very impactful sounds help makes combat so much more satisfying. Adding variation to each sound effect, like subtly changing the playbackspeed for every hit, makes the sounds less repetitive and annoying. It’s not entirely necessary but it adds a little more realism to actions or attacks.
You can also make the particles way bigger. Having bigger, brighter particles makes the attacks more flashy, even if they don’t entirely make the attacks stronger.
I think your animations have a lot of oomph, so no need to change anything there. That said, it doesn’t seem like the particles and animations don’t line up at the beginning of the combat demo, but it seems to correct itself later on. Don’t know if that’s a latency issue, or if it’s anything you can change, but if you can, then by all means necessary make sure the particles are persistent with the attacks.
Hope these help; those particles are really cool.
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Since, I am assuming this won’t be on a seat, camera shaking would be totally feasible if you create a event connecting to a camera shake script
Two words:
Camera Shake.
You can get a pretty good camera shake module here. It’s adjustable, but the default presets will probably suite your needs
Edit: I would also remove the vignette. It looks like you’re being damaged, not damaging someone else.
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- camera shake
- knockback
- particles going outwards
These 3 things, other than that your combat system looks great!
I noticed one thing though - the particles sometimes appear before the animation plays. This looks weird and is visible in the first seconds of the video.
I think, you should add blood in critical hits… It will make the game more interesting…
The biggest problem i can see is the legs arent animated…
If you animate the legs, the character walking animation doesn’t play, so game-animators mostly avoid doing that.
Raise saturation then decrease it
FOV zoom maybe?
You did animate the legs with the kick? and the walking animation isnt working in the video anyways?
umm…
Anyways…Some animations want to be weighted in such a way that 2 play at the same time, e.g. walking and light slash attack.
Other animations should disable and override all other animations but also alter player movement speed and direction. A thrust attack should lower your turning speed to almost zero and move your character forwards etc…
This is how dark souls does it - this is why the combat feels so weighty…
I’ll see if i can find you a tutorial somewhere…
Here is a few tips that could make combat feel more powerful.
Camera shake (few people have said this already.)
Make camera shake when receiving or dealing damage.
Using FOV can also enhance and make it more powerful.
Let’s say your character is dashing/charging a attack forwards, increasing the FOV can give the illusion of speed.
Using color correction / post processing effects
I know in a few games, when a enemy is killed or a critical hit is dealt;
Color correction is used to saturate (or desaturate) the screen for a split second.
Some games temporarily increase the bloom effect when a kill is made, others give it a red tint.
- If there is extreme or frequent flashing I recommend making this a toggle and add a warning for people who are sensitive and prone to seizure.
Use POWERFUL and impactful sounds
- Good sound choice means almost everything!
Use sound effects that really make your speakers/headphones PUNCH right into your eardrums.
Use distorted or LOUD sounds for attacks that deal a lot of damage.
Really make them hit HARD.
There are also certain sound frequencies that will slam the speakers harder than others, I suggest looking into that if you like sound design. 
- Just be careful not to make your players deaf.
Include a volume slider so you don’t have to soften sound effects yourself for the player’s comfort.
Let them decide how loud they want the sound effects to be.
Animations with powerful moves and poses
This one is a bit underrated in most Roblox games imo.
But animations.
When a character punches, make the movement really fast, when the fist hits, make it stop abruptly.
After that make the fist slowly retract and relax.
If you want to take the extra step, you can disable interpolation for a brief moment and manually keyframe it.
Too much interpolation (or using the wrong kind of interpolation) can sometimes take away or destroy the illusion of speed, impact and unpredictability.
This is also why some animations have fighting moves at different frame rates and speed.
Animation curves are also great for this.
Oh also, the starting position really matters.
Before a character punches you should put them in a strong and expressive “I’m ready to punch” position.
Exaggerating movements also helps.
Some animations are just too subtle or don’t have the body parts move far enough.
Try more extreme positions and see what that looks like.
Some games literally have the character stand in a slightly unnatural position but because this only happens for a few frames you don’t notice.
Smearing / trails
Roblox doesn’t really have an easy way for making body parts stretch or deform unfortunately.
But maybe by using trails and beams you could get something going.
I recommend with experimenting by making the arm see-through during a punch and see what that looks like.
What you could do is when a character punches, you make the arm transparent and make a few copies/duplicates of it in an extrapolated position.
But this is very experimental and requires a bit of work.
I hope these tips help!
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Oh sorry, It looked like they animated the legs, my bad.
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you could add a red highlight to the enemy and make it fade out
You could make the general punch just faster. For example, you could keep the charge up speed the same, but just make the actual punch a tad bit quicker than it already is.