3rd Person v1.2 Update! - Melee Combat Preview

After the awesome release of our Third Person Template at the Asset Store, we are now working on a very cool update that will include Melee Combat based on the Dark Souls series, which means that will have a Lock-On Target system, Combo Attack and Defense, health system, respawn system and of course a really cool AI.

We begin building our AI, and we call him "Bot16" lol.

Using native features of Unity 5 like the Navmesh and OffmeshLink we manage to create a very interesting AI that uses the same structure of our Character Controller, that is Character > Motor > Animator > Controller

Bot16 AI can pursue the Player and make every action like Jump, Climb, JumpOver stuff, crouch, go Ragdoll, etc...

After lots and lots of hours coding the AI, we begin to code the combat, first we try using a new Layer with a UpperBody mask, but soon we realize that the transitions work way better if you have a blend tree of the locomotion.

By using a blend tree, we can use the Unarmed animations as a base and make new animations holding different kind of weapons, and them, changing this blends according to each weapon.

To make a Strategic Melee Combat such as Dark Souls, the character need's to stop moving when attacking, this way you need to wait the right moment to attack and block, and the root motion takes care of the rest.

By pressing the Lock-On input, the character will enter the Strafing Movement and if you have a Enemy close, it will auto lock at him, you also can change the target.

When the Enemy dies, you can choose to leave the ragdoll body there with or without physics (to increase performance)

We are developing this new features on a very modular way, so you if you don't wanna melee combat, just don't add a Weapon to the Character, and he will behave normally.

And now, we are polishing everything, creating new animations and making some moreee new stuff like Recoil when you hit a wall, and also a AI Creator just like the Character Creator window. Lot's of work to do yet, but we are getting there :)