After a lot of thinking of how I could go about doing this I felt the approuch of "Bring solutions, not problems" was kind of the way I wanted to do this. I practice Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA), this puts me in the position of probably knowing about things such as sword guards and the body mechanics behind it than many others, which makes me also notice when things are just in a sense "wrong". But instead of complaining about it and telling you how "wrong" this or that animation or pose I thought it would be better to just provide you with resources. Pictures, videos and text about the subject that ppl that know about being an artist and making games far better than me can hopefully gain some inspiration and maybe guidance in what they do for this subject. So what I will do for you quite simply is just post some pics and videos with content pretaining to melee combat. I hope these will help you guys at VR out somewhat at least. I will try and order/categorize them a little for ya also. Cheers!
Most (maybe all) videos are of so caller flourishes/drills. Where one person goes through cuts, thrusts and sometimes parries of different kinds.
Two-handed sword/Greatsword/Bastard Sword (Commonly known as longsword in HEMA)
Pictures:
Guards 
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnu8q1Axj4Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgDcCNNaIRY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXGiSP29VFA (A really good video of a very basic cut with a lot of added information that is usefull)
These are of the sword called montante, also known as (more popularly) zweihander. Basically "damn big sword". Sometimes reffered to as Greatsword in HEMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB5v6lPBsyE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjZdaH22Zws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ1MQ3CJGIw
Links:
These two articles go through the German and Italian guards for longsword, with pictures :)
http://www.swordschool.com/wiki/index.php/The_12_guards
http://www.thearma.org/essays/StancesIntro.htm#.WEtEU1zHmUk
One-handed Sword/Broadsword (Commonly known as Arming Sword or Side Sword in HEMA)
note: most of these 1-handed guards can be done with a shield or buckler in the other hand streched out in front of you.
Pictures:
Guards
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INuThjaKPgc&t=3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9tkq1yzcg0 (A korean sword dance)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgzm1DC6uTE (Korean swordplay display of single, double and big two handed sword. Can't speak of its validity(All the spinning leaves me a bit skeptical and I know nothing about korean sword arts) but it is damn cool.)
Links:
Sword+Buckler
Pictures:
Videos:
Links:
http://www.salvatorfabris.org/BologneseGuards.shtml
Sword+Shield
Pictures:
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtBLsw56-3Y
Links:
Staff/Polearm
Pictures:
Some ideas on Spear+Shield, the normal under-arm hold and the less commonly used over-arm, something which might be interesting.
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR7H93TY-Lg (A flow drill with polaxe)
Links:
https://grauenwolf.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/meyers-quarterstaff-guards/
Rapier
Pictures:
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRFb1hilp3s (A video about the mechanics of the iconic lunge)
Links:
Bow
Pictures:
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcu-8GvaqFk (old footage showing of kyujutsu. You can do more than just stand and shoot)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk (Shooting of Lars Andersen, bold claims to be taken with a grain of salt. Awesome nonetheless. Linked by Sevens)
Links:
Other stuff:
Going to add this as I think it is something important as I have had many discussions about this and I feel like it is a pretty misunderstood topic, the gentleman in the video is Matt Easton, a HEMA instructor and a very respected guy within the community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgq1wiPKzzI ; (About the differences of sword/mace/axe and more)
Another thing I would like to add is that of movement, and the movement when it comes between the relation of the hands and feet, but first let's take a look what the old masters said :)
"Heavy arms do not go quickly to the step,
Light ones go and come like an arrow in a bow.
The sword is placed in her care,
So measure blows and steps together
So Science keeps you safe."
- Filippo di Vadi (translation: MARCO RUBBOLI, LUCA CESARI)
"Again I say to you, that in teaching your students the principles of the edged weapons, that with
the targa, & rotella, & brochiero larga, & single sword, & sword and cape, sword & dagger, & of
two swords, & of many other strong weapons that you use, remember always the standards of
movement, from guard to guard, forward, as behind, & from the side, & for deviousness, & in
every way that it is possible, & to teach them to accompany the hand with the foot, & the foot
with the hand, otherwise you would not do well, so that if you that teach walk over such a sign
you will teach it in place, where others are not that you did not teach. Otherwise, you upset the
foundation with those you teach.”
-Achille Marrozo (translation: William E. Wilson)
So what I hope you can understand what these are saying, and if not let me explain. The hands move at the same time or before the feet. But let me link you a video with the wonderful HEMA instructor Roland Warzecha that takes time to explain this in more detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0LpsnO0E4U .
Footwork of longsword but can be applied to most medieval weaponry. The "triangle step" at 3.27 might be of interest for animation for it is a step which does not move one much but allows for smooth cuts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1tTDcakB0w&t=195s
Another suggestion and consideration for animation of strikes and footwork is that the fighter does not need to necessarily be moving forwards, every strike can be done with a passing forwards AND backwards, making it possible for animation of taking some steps forwards and some backwards again to the original position making it so the character does not have to move away while striking.
Not directly related but this gentleman does some of the most excellent videos regarding armour, it's shaping and anatomy of it.
https://www.youtube.com/user/neosonic66/featured very educational and hopefully something that can help when creating armour in the game.
More Armour stuff, this time a project from Lumecluster where they made a fantasy armour inspired by practical and historical design.
http://lumecluster.com/making-of-sovereign-armor/
I also want to mention two more resources for when it comes to that of sword design, theses are the Oakeshott Typology for double edged medieval swords and the Elmslie Typology for single edged medieval swords (Here is a picture of the basic Elmslie Typology , I suggest watching Shediversity's video series on Falchions, Messers and the typology here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWklwxMTl4szgOkBBVjaSJeqd25uHAnl4), I am not saying that you should only keep to this or anything along those lines, but I hope these are good for inspiration and to show that there are more historical blade and hilt types than just the straight cross-guard with a parallel running blade. (Picture of Elmslie and Oakeshott together, including pommels and quillons https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/30/56/fc/3056fc0078601467652abc8b42b800ee.jpg)
NOTE TO KILSIN/VR: I am unable to edit links and make them look pretty in editing tool, I can go in to the source and HTML it in manually but it would be nice to have the button that is there when you make a Reply/Post also in the Edit version.
I hope these things were of help to you at VR or anyone else for that matter.
You can ask any question and I will do my answer it, I am not an expert but I will do my best.
Thank you for your time.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu/Svartie
Sicario said:Great examples of character and combat animations/movement include games like Dark Souls 2 and 3 and, yes, Guild Wars 2.
Maybe the most basic weapons in DkS2/3. Real life sword battles are super boring to watch, which is exactly why movies and games tend to stylize things. No offense to OP.
Really cool post for sure.
I would say though that the best possible solution to good animations is to hire an advanced martial artist to do a few motion capture sessions in a studio and just apply the data. Pretty standard these days. And if you can adjust the animation is use based on weapon type and even armor worn, I'd be ecstatic.
Oh! oh! Or even have martial artists from different disciplines so that animations reflected a fighting heritage based on race :) An Ogre would look pretty silly in a fencing style.
Liav said:Maybe the most basic weapons in DkS2/3. Real life sword battles are super boring to watch, which is exactly why movies and games tend to stylize things. No offense to OP.
Sicario said:Great examples of character and combat animations/movement include games like Dark Souls 2 and 3 and, yes, Guild Wars 2.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu/Svartie
Nice Post , You remember that gravity is fully in play in RL when you compare to the swordplay on many games out there. I like some of the classic and artful forms and stances taken by the swordsmen. Pretty and Dangerous at the same time.
At the very least it would look great if trainers in the game made use of them; or some kind of Guard Stance with a choice of visual styles was available that tanks could use when a mob is being pulled to help deflect the first blow.
@Youmu, fair points for sure regarding GW2 and DaS. I think if anything should be taken from those examples, particularly DaS, it's the character movement in general. Feels organic and natural, and would be a wonderful target to aim for.
For the combat animations, it's tricky since a balance needs to be found between actual/historical and entertaining/stylized for the player. So, I guess when drawing to those examples, I think DaS does an adequate job finding a compromise that works.
Also, your post is incredible and fascinating, just wanted to mention that! I loved reading through it.
The #1 reason why reproducing realistic combat animations is practically impossible in a game like Pantheon is due to the fact that in reality, movement is intrinsically tied to the use of weapons. You can't stand perfectly in place while swinging a sword. However, unless you want combat like TERA, you can't reasonably have movement tied to sword swings.
Dark Souls combat only works because of the type of game Dark Souls is.
Definitely, I'm not advocating for Dark Souls combat or a perfect replication of those animations, my point is that more organic and natural feeling animations and movement have a big impact on game immersion, and finding a way to refine towards that direction would do a huge benefit for Pantheon and its longevity.
Sicario said:Definitely, I'm not advocating for Dark Souls combat or a perfect replication of those animations, my point is that more organic and natural feeling animations and movement have a big impact on game immersion, and finding a way to refine towards that direction would do a huge benefit for Pantheon and its longevity.
I see. I can agree with that, then, as long as it doesn't become cumbersome.
Having been an avid player of the Dark Souls franchise (thus my avatar) I've come to experience some annoyances with it. Among them are the numerous buggy interactions with world geometry due to the huge variety of unique collisions that can occur with the numerous different animations. Another is the really awkard pause when rapidly changing directions while sprinting. While things like this serve Dark Souls well for the time of game that it is, I still get frustrated with the controls at time when PvPing because I turned 3 degrees too sharply triggering a pause animation and I get wrecked as a result. Dark Souls also has movement acceleration which is absolutely atrocious in MMOs. Absolutely can not happen. While it looks and feels wonderful in Dark Souls, it is absolutely unsuitable for an MMO.
How do you make realistic emulations when designing a game that can't reasonably have movement acceleration? They seem mutually exclusive, which is why MMOs historically have terrible animations compared to games like Dark Souls and The Witcher 3, etc.
Deleted for it double posted.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu/Svartie
Adden this, something some might find interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgq1wiPKzzI (Video about training and skills required between different weapons, a bit more info in main post).
I recognize that and MMO's, especially in the more classical style are a very different beast from real life and other more action oriented games and this is why I tried to keep the content to things that are more static, such as guards and strikes. In an MMO you usually have pretty static positioning, it is not a 1v1 fight where you have someone moving and you are constantly moving with/away from them, MMO's are not games of "footwork" so to speak.
Skycaster said:Nice Post , You remember that gravity is fully in play in RL when you compare to the swordplay on many games out there. I like some of the classic and artful forms and stances taken by the swordsmen. Pretty and Dangerous at the same time.
At the very least it would look great if trainers in the game made use of them; or some kind of Guard Stance with a choice of visual styles was available that tanks could use when a mob is being pulled to help deflect the first blow.
I would absolutely LOVE to see NPC's of all sorts stand and do some of the historical flourishes, a class trainer standing there doing his drill and if you interupt him he maybe takes a higher price on the training or a sword master at some remote place in the world which might be part of one of those Epic Ability Quests we heard about on the stream, a lot of potential places to put in those, even the Kata from japanese marital art or chinese stuff would be nice too. Although very few would recognize them it would warm the hearts a lot for those that do and instead of coming up with something entierly new I think using the historical and real stuff would be very cool in this case.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu/Svartie
UPDATE: Added some more info together with some quotes from some italian masters and a video on the subject about movement and striking. In summary, hands move first, feet move last.
I will keep trying to update this when I find or remember more things that might be useful for y'all.
It would also be cool to see what other people thing would be cool resources for combat animation, pretty curious what you people think would be nice caster animations and movements (I might be coming with some of this soon).
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu/Svartie
Having something as detailed as Asian MMO's but not as exaggurated in movement would be nice, I feel like Korean MMO's animations feel a little "floaty" and that the characters are skipping around a bit too much, tone that down and I think it would be pretty awesome.
Another UPDATE: This time on some basic footwork, specifically longsword but it was used for many weapons in the middle ages. of particular interest might be the so called "triangle step" at 3.27. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1tTDcakB0w&t=195s
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Neonseraphim said: I will like to add that animations is one inexpensive way to improve the look of the game and often times ignored by American MMOs. Koreans have it right, their animations are very elegant that you feel good just by moving your character around (Lineage 2, Tera). I hope that with Pantheon we can have a happy medium when it comes to animations + gameplay + graphics/sound + performance.
Not sure what has you convinced that anmation is "inexpensive". That process is painstaking.
Yea, I think animation is one of the more expensive stuff in a game, probably only taken over by stuff like voice acting and cinematics
But animation is something that pretty much will be in the game, and I think the argument he might be making is that making a good animation and a bad animation have not much difference in cost, maybe.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Youmu said:Yea, I think animation is one of the more expensive stuff in a game, probably only taken over by stuff like voice acting and cinematics
But animation is something that pretty much will be in the game, and I think the argument he might be making is that making a good animation and a bad animation have not much difference in cost, maybe.
That could be his argument, kind of unclear. However, I have a difficult time believing that games with poor animation quality have them for any other reason than a lack of time and/or budget. I'm not very educated on the subject though. High quality, smooth animations are also more performance intensive, which may be an alternative explanation. All I know is that art assets are incredibly expensive and to my knowledge, animation falls under that umbrella.
Something to take note of as well (not directed at you Youmu) is that Korean MMOs utilize stylized graphics, and highly floaty/unrealistic animations. While the animations look good in the context of the game, Pantheon seems to be erring on the side of photorealism.
Stylizing things almost always reduces costs. It's what made World of Warcraft so successful, and widely accessible. World of Warcraft is probably the only MMO I've played where I can actually utilize my 144Hz monitor. Even in EverQuest which predates WoW by several years, well, let's just say that the game is so poorly optimized compared to today's standards that the performance issues will probably always exist independent of hardware.
World of Warcraft on the other hand, especially modern WoW, is an incredibly beautiful game. Very smooth animations, a very vivid and detailed world. However, heavily stylized.
Liav said:I have a difficult time believing that games with poor animation quality have them for any other reason than a lack of time and/or budget. I'm not very educated on the subject though. High quality, smooth animations are also more performance intensive, which may be an alternative explanation. All I know is that art assets are incredibly expensive and to my knowledge, animation falls under that umbrella.
Animations are almost always more memory-taxing than textures. Memory usage for textures is proportionately scaled to their quality. Memory usage of animations, on the other hand, is static. In other words, notice how there is no "animation quality" slider on your options menu. You can turn down the textures if needed. The animations are pretty much locked in. So if the game has too many high-memory animations... in addition to them taking more time to create, some computers may also have trouble running the game and there wouldn't really be anything they could do about it. So it's often a challenge for devs to find the right balance.
In regards to the OP:
I think seeing some of those stances in game would be really cool but a lot of them also look really silly. I don't want a fencing simulator. But I also want more than EQ's basic "slash....... slash......... slash........" animations haha. In the last stream, the animations for the Ogre Warrior looked pretty good - Nice, fast-paced, dynamic dual wielding with some kicks thrown in.
EQ2 actually does include an Animation Quality slider, generally serving an LOD function where animations further away from you lose smoothness. Almost the effect of taking a 60 FPS animation and having it slow to single digit FPS.
Another example would be Vanguard. Entire raids would often use illusions into werewolves, or the mask that turns you into a panther. The effect was a staggering increase in FPS as a result of reducing the number of unique entitites with unique animations.
As far as the memory usage statistics of animations vs. textures in memory, I can't speak to that. However, I'm 99% certain that animations are very CPU intensive. I am happy to concede and be proven wrong if evidence is presented to the contrary.
UPDATE: Adden a video of a polaxe flowdrill which I felt contained some cool strikes and insight in usage of the weapon to some degree. Also added some thoughts and considerations about footwork in the "Other" section. Also another flourish of the 2-handed "damn big sword"
Guys, I think this is a great conversation topic but not fit for this post, this was meant to be more a place of resources of animations, basically "This would look cool righ!" stuff. And I did not intend for it to be about the technical and mechanical aspects of animation (thought about making a post for that, we'll see what I do) but about the artistic aspect.
No offense, I just think this is straying a bit. Feel free to share and add to things you feel would be good animations though!
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
UPDATE: Added a video in the 2-handed sword section. Once again Matt Easton talking and demonstrating one of the most basic cuts, alot of good information in there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXGiSP29VFA
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
UPDATE: Added link to a channel bu the name of Knyght Errant. He does excellent videos about armour, a very knowledgable guy. And this link of the Lumecluster Soverign Armour, fantasy armour inspired by historical and practical design. Just me that just thinks "Gnome!" when you look at it?
Let us try and get rid of boob-plate and chainmail bikinis. :)
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
