Signals and Light

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@Videogmz 10 күн бұрын

Great video! Thanks for the tag buddy.

@rafaelbatistadelima1139 10 күн бұрын

very well made, keep it up!

@user-ih2gf1iq8e 11 күн бұрын

Top notch content!! Keep going!!

@rammenmaster96 13 күн бұрын

A couple tangential thoughts: 1) Air combat games (e.g. Ace Combat) fit into this in an interesting way, in that offscreen attacks are often the norm, but you have radar/missile warning systems as diegetic attack indicators, and you are expected to rely heavily on them. 2) I really like Devil May Cry 3 for giving pretty much every enemy attack a distinctive audio cue. Even though enemies in that game aren't strictly supposed to attack from off-camera, sometimes you pan the camera away just as they start their attack or the enemy might be hard to see amidst everything else that's going on. I actually rely on sound more than visuals to score parries. In general, I think audio cues are underrated for action game attacks. It's been shown that humans respond faster to auditory stimuli than visual.

@signalsandlight 11 күн бұрын

Good points! I'm super unfamiliar with air combat games, but I think some aspects of off-screen indication are fundamentally inspired by them in a lot of other games that borrow similar concepts. For audio, the games I got hung up on recently are particularly overwhelming with their audio and music design, so they really fall back on other things like UI (or characters just literally shouting at you). I think weirdly a lot of great examples I can recall that have great sound design for clear combat feedback also don't have that many off-screen attacks, but audio can also help manage concurrency, so that's a really good point that I missed! I mentioned audio a bit in the timing video, but there are so many layers to these things.

@Katanalein 14 күн бұрын

I appreciate the credit for my clip! Great video keep up the good work!

@AugustRx 16 күн бұрын

I call it bad game design and compromising

@melon4200 18 күн бұрын

Great video, I think the God of War reboot games are a great example here as well. When I was playing GoW 2018 I really wished the franchise had stuck to a top down camera view. I really appreciate how the developers added these little quality of life features to allow the player to remain aware of enemies off screen, my favorite being how your companions would tell you when there were enemies behind you. Regardless, the camera perspective just felt to me as if it was a poor choice for that kind of game, especially as there were many occasions where you couldn't really position yourself to be able to see all enemies in a fight. While I get that there can be an advantage to not showing all enemies at all times, like making positioning more important, needing to rely on UI- elements so often to dodge off-screen attacks was just pretty annoying and somewhat unreliable to me. I suppose whether or not you're fine with the new camera in these games mostly comes down to the ration of how much you appreciate having to keep all your enemies in check versus how annoyed you get by attacks frequently coming from off-screen.

@melon4200 18 күн бұрын

I think a really underrated point made in this video is considering how punishing it is to get hit by an attack off screen. It really comes down to the nature of the game, its overall difficulty and consequences for dying. If I die to an attack coming from off screen in a Souls game where I lose my progress, or a competitive game where I lose my rank, it's going to be much more frustrating than dying in a game with unlimited lives and frequent checkpoints. I think that should really be one of the most important factors when designing how the game deals with off screen attacks. In a game that is already very difficult or that punishes players for dying, I think it might be better to just take the bayonetta approach and design enemies so they can't attack from off screen. Personally, I would much rather play a game that feels a bit too easy than a game that feels frustrating and unfair.

@M4Dbrat 18 күн бұрын

If the player's attack direction is tied to camera (like in FPS/TPS games, or nu-GOW, or even your typical hack&slash game that's very reliant on lock-on while tying the camera to it) or camera movement is slow, there's an extra layer of skill to the game that comes with information management. The player has to build their attack plan around it, commit less to offense and know when to tactically reposition to keep different enemies in the view. Although, in more timing/combo-heavy games (like DMC) this might detract from the experience as the positioning element isn't that present in your decision making, your tactics won't change, repositioning due to camera would simply interrupt your flow. In games like Monster Hunter or Soulslikes where positioning IS the flow, managing the view fits right in. It's all about balance, know where your game sits The video already mentions that having a decently-sized HP bar helps with stray hits, especially when those hits only do damage and not knock you down or whatever. But really, what you want is for enemies to be more predictable. If an enemy has a consistent pattern of attacks and movement with little to no randomness (either RNG or just from chaos of the game with positioning and stuff), then the player can learn to deal with it even without seeing or hearing any attack telegraphs (if you can beat it with the monitor turned off, it's good enough to be placed offscreen). Adding an extra touch of predictable randomness (for the case of pure RNG, make it trigger every couple seconds. For emergent randomness you can get creative) would keep the enemy from getting entirely internalized by a skilled player so they'd still have to stop and reposition to see them. There's also other tactics that could work consistently, like kiting for melee enemies (they can't attack you if they have to catch up to you), circlestrafing for ranged enemies (if they can't aim where you're going to be, only where you are) or body blocking (enemies hit each other while aiming at you). A smart player can treat the collision from level design and visible enemies (which is what limits these tactics) as a makeshift attack telegraph for offscreen enemies with a creative way of dodging

@signalsandlight 18 күн бұрын

Great additional thoughts! I think I got a bit caught up more with some of those concepts when I was working on Melee versus Ranged, and I got so focused on specifically camera management on the AI side here that I wasn't necessarily thinking in the frame of mind of how a player can find ways to manage it in spite of a given camera design. I think I took a lot of your points here for granted to a degree, as my frustration in some games is that they make all of those things very hard to accomplish due to the verrrry high complexity of their off-screen enemies. But a bunch of very good points there, I'll keep some of that in mind when I get to writing Part 7 where I want to synthesize the ideas more than I did across these first six. Learned a lot just in the structure of how to write this sort of thing after working on this series, I think in the future I'd treat more of what I wrote here as pieces to tie to more concrete examples rather than just describing the concept and letting the video clips do all the work for me without providing context on more of them.

@jacksontaylorh 18 күн бұрын

Bro this series was unbelievably good. There’s almost nothing else out there right now that matches up to the quality of information here. I really appreciate the work that went into this and will be hungrily devouring everything you put out!

@signalsandlight 19 күн бұрын

As always, in trying to get the channel off the ground, any social media boost is appreciated! Twitter: twitter.com/SignalsAndLight Instagram: instagram.com/signalsandlight/ TikTok: tiktok.com/@signalsandlight Bluesky: signalsandlight.bsky.social

@SarpSerter 16 күн бұрын

Dude.. this video is way better than a 800subscrier channel. Your thumbnails, tittles, Description, The actual video content! The editing.. Its all too good. I struggule so much with all of those things.. Mostly due to a lack of time.. But did you follow any tutorial or reached out to someone to help you out with making your channel so professional? I need help so much.. Here are some likes and subs..

@signalsandlight 16 күн бұрын

@SarpSerter , thank you! No specific tutorials or anything I can point you to, unfortunately. I went to undergrad for film and got into shooting and editing a fair amount then, did graphic design a lot between high school and now, decided to go into game dev instead, but gengerally just learned a lot about using creative software tools over the last... 15 years, now? If I ever have a question about how to do something specific, I just look it up, there are definitely tons of tutorials out there for After Effects and Premiere. It just comes down to spending a lot of time doing it, learning from your past work (trust me, I made some stuff when I was 20 I wasn't happy with at all), and persisting. Otherwise I'd say it ended up about 40 hours of editing per video (I'd say it probably averages to like 3-4 hours per minute between cutting footage, adding clips, making graphics, and adding music). I would say the small thing I learned the most about that I was happy with in these vids was how to make motion graphics templates (MOGRTs) in After Effects for Premiere. All the title cards and whatnot here are MOGRTs that expose a bunch of parameters like text or which specific backgrounds to show and things like that so you don't have to remake a graphic multiple times just to change a few things. I also learned about the scripting language in After Effects for things like controlling the text of game titles sliding in and using math to get the position to work no matter how long the title is. But that sort of stuff just transfered what I learned in game dev, to be honest. There was a brief time I thought of doing a post mortem video on how I do some stuff, but already not getting enough views at the moment to think about that. 😅

@SarpSerter 16 күн бұрын

@@signalsandlight I have some experince in after effects and creative cloud tools as an animator but I think I lack more the direction of the script you have for the video and the general idea you create for audience to click your thumbnail. I am honestly so lost to why your youtube didnt blow up i just watched every video you made.

@dsnhusuhduh 19 күн бұрын

good work, im making a game and want to learn more about game design, since i can only code and make sprites

@taizeen1805 Ай бұрын

I really like how informative this video was, but you're writing/speech could use a bit of work. the phrase "in this essay" is already kinda clunky in a written work imo, but it becomes very distracting when you use it repeatedly in a video. (I understand that this video is based on something you first published as text first, but it would present better if you just mentioned that at the beginning/end and rephrased the wording throughout a bit to make it sound more natural.)

@taizeen1805 Ай бұрын

0:40 that's a lot of splinters

@AliceLoverdrive Ай бұрын

The game I'm working on currently has a problem with feeling like you are stuck in a washing machine when fighting multiple enemies. Thank you, this was enlightening.

@rodneyabrett Ай бұрын

Sometimes that can be a deliberate choice from the combat designers, as it adds tension to fight. Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Devil May Cry does this. I've heard it termed as "jailing the player". What it does is force you think about positioning as part of your fight strategy rather than the classic cheese strat of kiting enemies down a narrow chokepoint so you can pick them off 1 by 1. These types of combat designs are the exact opposite of something like Stellar Blade, which feels almost like a game of chess where you wait for your "turn" to counter-attack and you're really only managing one enemy at a time, despite visually seeing many enemies around you.

@AliceLoverdrive Ай бұрын

@@rodneyabrett well, it's not a deliberate design choice for me! But turns the issue was that crowd control options were too slow to execute.

@rjose705 Ай бұрын

beautiful. Subbed instantly. This time of knowledge is hard to find.

@idounnowatuwant Ай бұрын

Thanks to your series of videos I was able to implement an attack ticketing system in my own game for handling enemy concurrency! It works really well. I would've never known about this approach if it wasn't for watching so really thankful for that!

@signalsandlight Ай бұрын

That's awesome! I'm so glad they could have that kind of impact on someone's work! A lot of concurrency management stuff is really quite easy to prototype and play around with, and it can make such a big difference even if you keep the systems simple. Maybe if I have time one day I'll dig more into a practical explanation of how to do some of the more complex attack manager stuff, but I feel like the games that benefit from that the most are really high-budget with tons of complex enemies, so the bigger win for smaller dev teams is just in knowing the basics of how to approach the concept.

@idounnowatuwant Ай бұрын

@@signalsandlight For sure! If you ever get around to digging more into this stuff - I'm a day 0 watcher. Well anything you put out is a day 0 watch/read for me :). makes no difference. Also agree 100% with your take. The game dev in me found "attack tickets" an easy system to understand - because to me "combat" is an "event", and of course you need tickets to attend the event! And then the systems programmer in me got scared because I remembered how hairy implementing and debugging concurrency management systems can be.

@signalsandlight Ай бұрын

OPEN TO FEEDBACK / QUESTIONS - I haven't recorded Part 7, so if there's anything in this or other parts of the series folks want more nuanced takes on, leave a comment! As always, in trying to get the channel off the ground, any social media boost is appreciated! Twitter: twitter.com/SignalsAndLight Instagram: instagram.com/signalsandlight/ TikTok: tiktok.com/@signalsandlight Bluesky: signalsandlight.bsky.social

@signalsandlight Ай бұрын

@mike_wake Ай бұрын

I really like your videos: a lot of useful information presented clearly. Was not sold on the Evil Twin bit at first, but I think you've found a good balance with it :) If I were to suggest something: I’m not sure the long-ish intros with no narration is a good idea. They are connected thematically ofc, but don’t communicate how the rest of the video is gonna be. It’s anecdotal, but usually, I feel much more compelled to watch something that starts with a hook. Like a question, a claim, or even a short summary. It lets me understand if that’s something I’m interested in and if I like the presenter. (Worth noting that I initially saw you on cohost, so I knew I'd be interested from the post there)

@signalsandlight Ай бұрын

@@mike_wake -- That's good feedback! With these being my first really detailed videos, I'm definitely learning to balance a variety of stylistic things. For instance, some people like the other character, and some people don't. I'm more inclined to find a way to use them better than just remove them (I think the first videos had some less engaging bits that could've used more thought/revision, and these later ones are much more focused on the actual topic being presented). But that's an interesting note on the intros. I wanted to try for something that felt engaging and stylistically fun as a hook into the video. One of my favorite content creators is @Max0r so I wanted to have fun with some music montages. Still, it's definitely valid that without any kind of narration contextualizing what they mean and how they relate to the video, it might feel too out of context? That said, the metrics on the first 2 minutes of my videos are quite good so far (~40%), so I don't think it's entirely failing me! But maybe I could do better there. My bigger issue is click-through rate, so I've been trying different approaches to thumbnails every few weeks to see if anything helps. 😅 But there's a LOT I have in mind thinking of any future videos. They will probably be about games for the most part for a while, but eventually also other topics, so I'm gonna be thinking more about how to clarify the identity of my work past just "information about how games work."

@AliceLoverdrive Ай бұрын

I would be interested in hearing about player options to control the flow of the fight and what they look like, implementation-wise.

@ab7333 Ай бұрын

Would have been nice to hear more about close fps combat. I'm making a similar game to condemned criminal origins and looking for resource on the AI.

@signalsandlight Ай бұрын

@@AliceLoverdrive -- Yeah, I've considered doing a breakout on play defensive toolkits as it's own video, but I can definitely include at least a high-level overview of this in the conclusion video because I'm not sure when I'll return to high-level game design analysis (have a handful of different ideas in the pipe in the closer future).

@sirdires Ай бұрын

Doom scrolling shorts actually paid off for once 😂 This whole series essay has been so damn insightful. It really shows just how much goes into the process for games as a medium when all of this is just revolving around combat! Also, having both personalities express the gamer/game dev perspective is a funny unique addition! Sharing this and hoping you continue to make quality content ☺️

@matheuslima4093 Ай бұрын

Just found this video randomly the other day and it's an amazing game design reference! I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff from you and I'll be watching the rest of your videos sometime later this month. Best of luck with your channel man, I hope you manage to grow and get the recognition the quality of your work deserves.

@celesti-whispers Ай бұрын

here from cohost, very informative! i've actually been pretty curious about this topic due to jacob geller's video on group fight choreography in films and games, and recently having a bad time in a sidescroller beat-em-up where it's apparent that there's either no attack ticket system or that it's not tuned well. the part about tickets having weighting was eye-opening!

@idounnowatuwant Ай бұрын

I look forward to your vids every week! I've learned so much. Also the gameplay footage from various games you include in each vid is so great.

@usercontent2112 Ай бұрын

This channel is a true gem! I'm very happy youtube recommended for me!

@doodlemancy Ай бұрын

found this through cohost artist alley! this kind of thing is so hard to find ANYWHERE, thank you for making it!!!

@doteater6245 Ай бұрын

Found this on Cohost. Fantastic video.

@maxki187 Ай бұрын

like the structuring of the video. But your opening sequence was so long it made me want to turn off this video immediately. would be a shame because the rest is not bad. I agree with the other commenter on the alter ego stuff though, could live without it =)

@dillyttinn Ай бұрын

Huh, never thought of such concepts like tracking, fidelity or something from attack motions. Great video

@signalsandlight 2 ай бұрын

@GatoPapi_ 2 ай бұрын

Love the content. Extremely well structured and delivered. I don't think the alter ego is doing it any services though. It breaks the flow and turns me away from it.

@DrN0VA. 2 ай бұрын

I think this channel has a definite future! One bit of feedback though: You spent a good bit of time talkingabout what this essay is or isn't, which wasted a lot of time. It felt a bit strange to keep talking about what it was, rather than actually getting into the meat of it. Maybe I missed the point but I would've rathered you talk about the essay and why those things were designed X or Y way. Also loose the cult/alter ego thing, it just felt weird .

@kevinchen8116 2 ай бұрын

Love the content! Thanks for putting in the time and effort to make this. I was wondering if you could explain how these concepts translate to turn-based combat. Which principles stay the same, while which ones are different? What does timing look like?

@signalsandlight 2 ай бұрын

I must admit that turn-based and tactical games are hugely outside my wheelhouse (I actually mention in Part 2 why I won't be covering them). I would say, by and large, most of what's described here would require totally different terms in that context. For instance, tons of turn-based games have "reactive" behavior -- it's probably the MAJORITY of what happens in something like "Baldur's Gate 3" or "XCOM" -- but that doesn't really have anything to do with timing (and in fact, a lot of aspects of reactivity in general have nothing to do with timing, but it was just the best way to describe how sometimes an attack will always result from a specific condition with no randomization). In general, turn-based games don't have the concept of "time" in the sense that real-time games do. A player can take time for something to happen, and the game could even be sped up, and the results wouldn't change. Time becomes quantized and abstracted by the game systems, more of a resource and better described by a term like "action economy." An analysis of attack patterns and behavior in turn-based games would instead have more to do with chains of systems and mechanics linked to hand-scripted AI behaviors that are designed to handle those mechanics "intelligently." The one interesting thing I might say is that I think there's a big divide between "pure procedure" turn-based games and "dynamic systems-driven" turn-based games (terms in quotes but completely made up on the spot, there are probably better terms out there). Pure procedure would mean the AI agents will always do specific behaviors in specific circumstances or in a specific order -- an example of this is "Slay the Spire." Most turn-based games are systems-driven, though, and require custom AI design based on the actions available to the enemy characters. Obviously, the most refined version of this is literally just Chess and the various AI designed to try to master it.

@kevinchen8116 Ай бұрын

@@signalsandlight Hey, thanks so much for the response. That makes a lot of sense. And it looks like I need to go watch the rest of the series since you already mentioned it!

@whalics 2 ай бұрын

Some of the most informative content I have found on combat design anywhere. Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I will say that I do find myself skipping through the jokes, though… I don’t know if they’re necessary (at least as frequently) because of the informative nature of the content. I think you already do a great job conveying personality and making listening fun just through your speaking cadence, emotion/tone, and expressions! Edit: I forgot to add that it might be nice to include a brief summary at the end. I know that would help me better reflect on the amount of good info you’re giving! Either way, great video.

@vuurmos6257 2 ай бұрын

Love this series, thank you for making more!

@jeorhan1262 2 ай бұрын

Nice video! Very useful information. I would appreciate cleaner descriptions, less jokes, and pauses after important information, in order to... y'kno... have better timing... But I suppose you were trying to be obnoxious with the random timing jokes so... Well done!

@signalsandlight 2 ай бұрын

Yeah, it's hard to strike a balance with pauses between information and also not inflating a video time to the point that some people might lose interest (particularly with what tends to be successful on KZbin). If you felt like there was anything you need more time to absorb, I always include the full essay in text on Substack! (Link in the description.)

@jeorhan1262 2 ай бұрын

@@signalsandlight Right. There is much to be gained in the cadence and inflection of speech.

@signalsandlight 2 ай бұрын

@mike_wake 2 ай бұрын

love the series! really informative

@animatedanimators 2 ай бұрын

These are awesome!!! Great at helping animators understand what's going on in designers heads more, and communicate with them better.

@connor2238 2 ай бұрын

I feel like this video would have been much better without the "alter ego." That's just personal preference, but I don't know if I will watch the whole series if it continues like this, which is too bad, because I really enjoy the content of this and your framing.

@signalsandlight 2 ай бұрын

Whoever that is, they're pretty core to the creative identity of the channel (whether they're a hit in this video is debatable, though). You may find them less distracting in future installments, they're more involved in the topics rather than just doing snide asides. Otherwise, they're not in the text versions of the essay put up on Substack.

@saffankhan7254 2 ай бұрын

looking forward to more parts of this series, this type of knowledge is hard to get, so thanks a lot for making this series,Ticket system and encounter design is something i am looking forward to for more in-depth ...

@LadyEllysia 2 ай бұрын

Really cool and insightful. Looking forward to the next 5 parts!

@saffankhan7254 2 ай бұрын

woe that was something i didn't know, i was using a single ticket for each level of AI, so 5 heavy guys could attack me at the same time, thank you for this.

@jens1639 2 ай бұрын

I know, this video is not aimed at card games like hearthstone and marvel snap, but part of it kinda hits why I don't find those games engaging. I don't feel like I get enough time and overview to figure what I like or don't like, because it feels busy. Like I am the one getting played and not me playing the game.

@AshyGr33n 2 ай бұрын

My immediate thought is that attack ticket is the most critical concept here. Can't wait for the next episode.

@hsvolcom4957 2 ай бұрын

Great content and actually usefull outside video game development. Nicely broken down. No need to bring two speakers/character here, with you talking about it is great.

@vuurmos6257 2 ай бұрын

It's really difficult to find good information about this stuff, as a hobbyist solo dev, I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge.

@idounnowatuwant 2 ай бұрын

also any footage or analysis of combat in FF7: R? I think its an interesting game to analyze

@idounnowatuwant 2 ай бұрын

Amazing video. Been working on implementing "COMBAT" + AI in my game for the past 2 months. I used my own terminology for this stuff but its crazy how the ideas are all the same.

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