Well... not as well as we could dream of, but we have some very interesting functioning technology. Have you seen this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8kAhBAqMYU&t=10s
(Ignore the blood, it was an experiment.)
Notice the enemy is reacting to each punch - and doing it depending on where the punch hits the body.

It's something we could develop more in a street justice power set, but, well, no use getting the cow before the horse.

It's a lot harder with the wide variation in possible body sizes, I bet.

The thing I'd be trying to figure out is how much of that is player control and how much of that is animations? Or has all this been solved by the street combat game genre?

Actually, it's not that dark. If you go back to the Devs Doing Nothing video, we had no light at night. It was _actually_ dark. As in coal mine. It's not perfect, but things are visible at deep night there. We're bringing it up in chunks.

It's not simple, but it's in a solution space that's solvable - our goal there is to make sure that we don't break something that allows us to stay in that space.

We don't currently have plans to do individually targetable locations in the standard game on normal sized enemies - it winds up not being so much fun - imagine Fallout without the time compression.

But yes, punches, blasts, projectiles - it's all depending on where it hits. It's a little bit more than rag-dolling, and we're kind of proud of it - we've been focusing a lot on the gameplay _under_ the pretty surface, and that's one of the things that's visible.

Story has gotten nicely complicated. Too bad Castalucci couldn't have tossed Arbalest out the window.

As for that video, the thing that I most noticed was how uncoordinated those NPCs were. Odo was very nice and smooth, but the mooks wasted a lot of time sneaking up on his target box. And they kept having to re-target. If Odo had been doing a Tanker's side-strafe-circle, they would never have even hit him, completely unable to stay oriented.

Don't feel bad about that, though. Other games I play, the enemies have the same problem. I can strafe-kite them at Melee range and almost never get hit.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Up to now I've never been that bothered about the lore updates. I think it spoils things I would rather discover on my own during actual gameplay. This video stole the show however. How have I never seen this? It's looking amazing!

Okay, guys, if you're only seeing that video for the first time, you should probably go through the Announcements forum, find all the others, and have your socks blown off.

And the excitement continues!

Jack 'Olantern' Snyder wrote:

“And you could’ve killed him,” Aurelia said. “This isn’t the Dark Age … what’s your name? What’re you doing here, anyway?”
“I’m your backup,” he said. “Your friend Alvarez sent me.”
She shook her head. “Get on the radio and call for medical attention, now.”

Ah, the perils of asking too many questions at once, you don't notice when one of them wasn't answered.
This, in my opinion, is the last point at which Aurelia could've turned things around; if she'd noticed her "backup" hadn't given a name yet, she might not have put her weapon away until she knew who he was (or at least made him make more Bluff checks ^_^.) But if Arbalest hadn't surprised her, the story would've gone in an entirely different direction, after that.

I expect Arbalest will survive, but if he gets taken to a hospital as a cop and they find out he isn't, he'll have some 'splaining to do!

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Zerohour wrote:

I normally keep on top of these things. But I took your advice and went back through the posts as far back as last June. I couldn't find the link to that video. So I'm either blind as a bat or something isn't showing up for me

... OK, now you've got [I]me[/I] wondering where I saw that. Was it Christmas 2015? O_o

With the YouTube dated January 7, 2017, I wouldn't think it was that far back... but I could've sworn it was older than this year.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Foradain wrote:

I expect Arbalest will survive, but if he gets taken to a hospital as a cop and they find out he isn't, he'll have some 'splaining to do!

I doubt he'll be taken to the hospital as a cop. Since there's a huge firefight outside distracting the cops, he'll probably tell them Castilucci nabbed her, then disappear in the melee.

Jack 'Olantern' Snyder wrote:

Castilucci kicked the villain in the back of the knee before he could move. Arbalest sprawled to the floor. Castilucci kicked him again, then again, smashing his head against the solid wood veneer of the dresser. He kept kicking until blood started flowing from Arbalest’s scalp.
“Jeez,” he panted. Gunshots and beam blasts still banged and roared outside. Arbalest’s chest still heaved, but Castilucci had neither the time nor the raw power he needed to take care of the villain permanently. He just hoped he didn’t wake up.

Last mention of Arbalest (aside from mentioning the window he came in through, as a potential exit for Castilucci and Aurrelia*) has him unconscious. If he wakes up, sure, he'll lie and fade away.

*BTW,

Jack 'Olantern' Snyder wrote:

As he stumbled made for the open window Arbalest had used to slip in the back...

seems a bit awkward. If you want to keep both verbs ([I]stumbled[/I] and [I]made[/I]), I recommend "stumbled, making his way toward the open window..."

Zerohour wrote:

Maybe the good Doctor will point us in the right direction as to where this video came from...?

It's one of the in-house demos Fred likes doing. It was attached to an unofficial update we posted after he was in a severe auto accident, to help show people what kind of work he does.

On the story, I might have a criticism (note: biochemist, not author :p), but are we reading a third person narrator or is it castulli's voice? It seems strange for a third person (omniscient or otherwise) to say "some fancy martial arts move". Though I guess it takes some knowledge to get into the specifics of such a move. Might've just left it at "flipped her onto the bed", since "flipped" implied a maneuver.