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Swordsmanship and vidya. (Or: Complexity, depth and simplicity in game systems.)
(I haven't been able to longpost properly for two weeks. I am letting it all out. Be ye warned and all that.)
Part 1: The Problem
This episode of Extra Credits is a pretty good jumping point into the essential problem of this thought experiment. That is, how does on transmit a system from real life into a video game? Swordsmanship is a fantastic example because it's both simple and complex, and has a great deal of depth. Furthermore, real swordsmanship is a system I can guarantee most people don't understand, so it also presents another problem -- assuming one has successfully integrated a real life system into a video game (within the limits of what is engaging to play rather than overwhelming), how does one then teach that system in an effective manner?
For those who have no inclination to watch the video or otherwise can't, here's some relevant terminology:
- Depth is the amount of viable options within a game, more or less, drawn from every system of the game. Good games are almost always deep in some respect or another; an extremely linear game might have a great deal of ways to overcome its linear obstacles, for instance, or a sandbox game might provide its whole world as a problem to be solved by the intuition of the player (such as Minecraft).
- Complexity is more nebulous. For our purposes, it's the amount of mental strain placed on a player during play time. This obviously means that complexity is highly subjective. It also means that complexity is severely reduced by teaching a system in an effective manner. A good example is the Legend of Zelda games, since they're typically highly complex in their entirety, but each mechanic is taught and reinforced throughout the game both divorced from other mechanics and in unison with them. The use of something like the hookshot or a mount are good examples.
So if we intend to integrate accurate (within reason) swordsmanship into a video game system, we have to ensure that its depth to complexity ratio favours depth considerably, and that the complexity is then reduced by an effective teaching method -- probably broken up reasonably evenly throughout the game. What we can also do is look to other games that have tackled the same problem to see how they handled it. I'll briefly give my thoughts on three:
Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Outcast (Revenge Of The Semi-Colons)
Jedi Outcast, to my mind, has the most accurate system of swordplay in video games insofar as the use of a single, two-handed sword designed for cutting attacks is concerned. It achieved this by tying the eight cut directions to footwork, which was accessed via the standard WASD movement controls. If you moved to your right, you would cut from left to right horizontally. If you moved forward right-diagonally, you would make a diagonal cut from left to right. Each lightsaber was a collision object in the game, so they would bounce and slide off one-another. In addition, lightsaber damage was very high and the automatic passive blocks enacted when not attacking were unreliable, ensuring that clever movement and deliberately chosen attacks were the key to victory.
Jedi Outcast's system, for all its lack of complexity, wasn't well taught and as a result lacked depth as well. Without any guidance on how to use the system, most players didn't end up investigating their options in a lightsaber fight and tended to hope for a lucky hit. While there was a rock-paper-scissors relationship between the three styles or stances, it wasn't enough to make the system as deep as it could've been.
Mount & Blade
Mount & Blade has, much like Jedi Outcast, low complexity and low depth in its combat. This is mitigated to a great degree by the depth of the other gameplay systems, but the appeal of Mount & Blade would run dry very quickly if it was simply amount moving from sword fight to sword fight. Under the default settings, one chooses the direction of their attack from four directions using a mouse click, movement and a release of the mouse button. Defending is done with the other mouse button in exactly the same way. The system is robust, easily understood and has room for a fair diversity of difficulties, but is ultimately far too simple to make single combat particularly challenging.
The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Much like the other two games, Skyward Sword has directional attacks, except via motion controls rather than button clicks. The use of a motion control and a lock-on system frees up general movement around the environment in combat, potentially adding a lot of depth -- depth that was never taken advantage of. Unlike the previously mentioned games, Skyward Sword has Link's sword attacks locked into advancing footwork, meaning that an attack will always halt lateral, diagonal and retreating footwork, severely crippling the depth of relational positioning that is present in the other games. This is quite a shame, since 3D Zelda titles have always had excellent dodge mechanics that fit right in with the "springing" of many sword techniques.
Furthermore, Skyward Sword fails to make clear whether it uses four axes or eight directions for the purposes of player attacks and enemy parries. Its failure to teach this actually increases the complexity of the game as players may struggle if they think about swordsmanship in a way that diverges from the game's design (and it doesn't take a swordsman to make that mistake). Ultimately, for all its depth potential, the system of Skyward Sword increases its complexity and then fails to take advantage of the depth of its mechanics.
So what?
What we can tell from these prominent examples of swordsmanship in games is that each game has had a failure in simplicity or in depth. So if one's intention is to make a swordsmanship system more accurate to real life (and therefore more potentially complex), then the teaching requirements for the system are higher than in any of the previous games. In addition, balance is a major factor; if there exists a dominant strategy in the system, then depth evaporates as most players ignore all but the easiest road to power.
Next: Conceptualising Swordsmanship For Gamers
Comments
"Range... Speed... Priority... Know and master all of your attacks!"
- Ryu, 3rd Strike
yay swords
Part 2: Conceptualising Swordsmanship For Gamers
I guess the best place to start here is by asking, "what is a gamer?". There's as many answers to that question as there are gamers, and observers of gamers. But my highly subjective opinion would be this:
A gamer is a person who loves experiencing and mastering systems, and uses digital means to achieve that end.
If that's true, then gamers are possibly the ideal audience for any work dedicated to explaining systems of swordsmanship. The trick, then, is to present mechanics in a way that makes logical sense and seems intuitive once grasped. And it may be easier than otherwise expected. To explain how this can be achieved, though, I have to cover some of the basics of swordsmanship, fencing, the use of polearms or what-have-you -- not that any of those things are significantly different from a systematic point of view.
Guards, Wards, Stances And What They Are
Something I seldom see used in games, and even less often accurately, are guards, wards, stances or whatever you want to call them. They are one of the fundamental elements of any system of close combat, particularly when it comes to the historical weapon arts of Europe. To put things simply, a guard, ward or stance is any position from which one acts in a fight. In general, however, guards do not "open" or "close" a swordsman's ability to use certain attacks (apart from some obvious examples). They may make certain attacks more efficient or less efficient, but in general, any attack can be made from any guard.
Rather, guards are tactical tools that define which of your openings are covered or open, or how you threaten the enemy, or how you might respond to an incoming attack. Aragorn's famous upright guard from The Lord Of The Rings films is a wonderful generalist for both attacking and defending, but must transition to make effective thrusts; the classic guard wherein one's hilt is at hip level with the point at one's adversary thrusts well and defends well, but its hewing strikes lack a certain oomph. Therefore, guards have to alter, in some way, the tactical conditions of a fight. Furthermore, one has to balance guards against one-another so that players make conscious choices about which guards they wish to use in order to fight certain techniques, or other guards.
But what even fewer people understand is that guards are often transitional. That is, one may exit a guard via an attack and will want to end their attack in a different guard. That means the tactical nature of a sword fight is as fluid as the guard transitions contained therein. And then, certain guards are most often deployed at certain ranges and whatnot.
Okay, Now Make It A Game Mechanic
Okay.
Say we're on a PC. We intend to use the mouse for most sword controls, since we want a directional system without compromising footwork and we're including a lock-on system to eliminate conflict between mouse functions (that is, camera view vs. sword movement). Let's say we've saved the left mouse button (LMB) for attacks. We'll use the right mouse button (RMB) for some basic guards, and we'll choose guards that defend the body so as to combine functions. Neat, huh?
Most sword systems include at least four guards or, if you like, two guards that are mirrored on each side of the body. All four of these guards point towards the adversary. Two of them have the hilt at one side of the head and a little forward and out -- that's one guard for the left side and one guard for the right side, both being "high" guards. Two of them have the hilt at one hip, again being one guard for each side, being the "low" equivalent of the previous guard.
To give an example of how these defend, consider the upper left version of these pointing guards -- above and forward of one's left shoulder, sword pointing towards one's adversary. If there are eight attack directions, this would defend from the descending vertical, the falling diagonal towards one's own left side and the horizontal towards one's left side. So one guard protects three out of eight possible attack directions.
These four positions alone can parry almost any attack made towards the human body, and since this is a game using the most prominent factors of swordplay (some of the more finicky things being left out), these four positions will probably guard against any attack within the hypothetical game.
So with this in mind, we'll use RMB to move our sword towards diagonal quadrants of our body, each mouse movement being "weighted" towards one of these corners. Between these four positions, we'll defend from every attack being made toward us -- but it'll be far from the only way to block, negate or otherwise void an incoming attack.
But there are other guards, right? Of course. But I attached a set of "universal" guards to RMB as a defensive mechanism, since these four guards appear in almost every system of swordplay out there. As for non-pointing guards? Click the middle mouse button (MMB), perhaps. Click it twice for a second one. Hold it for a third. Using two mouse buttons and a directional control, one can encompass between five and seven guards -- plenty! This is also neat because it separates those guards that have direct parrying applicability from guards that have other functions -- such as ones that deliver powerful cutting attacks, or ones that lure an enemy into attacking a "free" opening.
Next: Cuts, Thrusts And Compression
die monster you don't belong in this world
Damage models don't come until later. Be patient!
one question, Alex:
What do you think of the Bushido Blade games?
Yeah, especially with the stuff at the end in the Academy. I basically thought it was blind luck my first time through and resorted to Force Push + rivet gun for some of the courtyard skirmishes.
I do however have fond memories of the first lightsaber duel on Bespin. The dude yells and jumps out to fight you on the catwalks, but my first time through he landed on my head. Of course when bad guys land on your head they Force Jump off it, so the guy fell off the catwalks altogether while I just sat there like "wait, what?"
Either or. This is less a hypothetical game and more a hypothetical game system -- it would be equally applicable to a Renaissance fencing student's adventures in a big city, a medieval mercenary's trials and tribulations or what-have-you.
It would require tweaked animations and rest positions, but for the most part, polearm guards are identical to sword guards beyond the grip alterations.
Never played them. I often hear people praising the damage models of those games rather than their systems, though, so I'm not particularly convinced they're really that committed to providing an accurate system of swordsmanship.
By now, they're dated. But you, being as analytical as you are over combat, I think you'd really enjoy the games. You should give either one or two a try. 1 is my personal favorite.
I may do that when possible.
But anyway,
Part 3: Cuts, Thrusts and Compression
I'm not sure if there's a term for this in game development or design, but I'll call it "compression" -- that is, when one control operates multiple mechanics, or when one mechanic has more uses than are immediately obvious. The classic example of this is context-sensitive action buttons. Again, Zelda games provide excellent examples, where the A button operates both conversations with NPCs, moving obstacles, pulling levers and so on and so forth. But I think we can do one better.
In short, the last segment looked on handling four guards common to a variety of different sword styles with one held key (right mouse button, or RMB) and a directional control (the mouse movement itself). You can think of the hilt positions as "nodes" -- one to each side of the head, and one to each side of the hips, with each of these four positions pointing the blade at one's adversary. Perfect thrusting positions, right? Wro-- oh no, actually, absolutely right. Swordsmanship isn't heavily esoteric -- if something looks like it's good for cuts, thrusts or what-have-you, it probably is, and the four guards discussed previously are no exception.
So our left mouse button (LMB) is currently free. Cool beans -- we can use that to enact a thrust while holding RMB. And there's nothing saying that the transition between these guards can't be light cuts in their own right (and they often are), so an enemy getting caught in RMB guard transitions could take damage as well. With RMB, LMB and mouse movement, we've encapsulated four thrusts and a number of cuts already.
As for heavier cuts, LMB on its own hasn't been used yet, so we can use a Mount & Blade or Skyward Sword style of directional input to enact these attacks. Like the lighter cuts above, these transition from guard to guard, so a heavier cut thrown from your upper right will end in the lower left pointing guard. With a lock-on system, these cut controls don't have to conflict with camera controls, and unlike Mount & Blade, your selection needn't be set in stone until you release LMB.
So let's review:
This is what I mean by compression -- in just two buttons and a directional control, we have 28 options for a player in any moment, not including external factors or those pertaining to more advanced techniques. Which means that within a single "moment" (the time it takes to take an action) in a battle between two swordsmen within this system, there are 28*28 possible kinds of conflict -- in two moments, it becomes 28^4. And so on and so forth.
Next: Supporting The System (Content)