How to make combo attacks - Beginner tutorial Unreal Engine 5

In this video we will look at how you can make a system for combo attacks/animations using PaperZDS for 2D developement. This is a beginner tutorial using Unreal Engine 5 but it is a bit more advanced than normal.
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PaperZD tutorial series: • PaperZD
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00:00 Intro
00:15 Result overview
01:46 Solution determination
21:50 Combo system implementation

[@benoitgael2969]

This is amazing, thank you for taking the time to explain it to us!

[@LeafBranchGames]

My pleasure, glad to hear you like it. :)

[@geoffrey3668]

Long but very helpful! Thank you so much to take the time to do such video!

[@LeafBranchGames]

My pleasure. :)

[@alexrusu2905]

So many things I didn't know you could do! Thanks!

[@LeafBranchGames]

My pleasure, glad to hear you are learning things. :)

[@cristophercejas2709]

LeafBranchGames doing some amazing leaf and branches combos, love it! Another great tutorial my friend!, thank you for taking the time to explain everything in such a detailed way. Hope you are doing great!

[@LeafBranchGames]

Thank you. Appreciate it!

[@chaoslaser]

Love your turorials,

[@LeafBranchGames]

Thank you Chaoslaser, happy to hear that. :)

[@chaoslaser]

@@LeafBranchGames yea I’m currently trying to create a small game for me and my friends and you are helping a lot. Keep working :)

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@chaoslaser Glad to hear it is helpful. Good luck with the project!

[@Ximalao]

Thank you so much , just found this today.

[@LeafBranchGames]

My pleasure!

[@TorQueMoD]

OMG Dude! I've been working with Unreal since 2009 - never attempted to make a 2D game before now, but THIS is one of THE BEST anim graph tutorials! Holy crud, I wish I found this sooner :) I didn't even know that Jumps or Callbacks existed! Thanks so much for sharing!

[@LeafBranchGames]

That is the magic that we get when we make use of PaperZD. All credit goes to the creator of the plugin. :)

[@TorQueMoD]

@@LeafBranchGames Oh, you mean Jumps and Callbacks aren't in regular AnimBP? Oh no! So sad. lol. I just thought I missed them. We've gotta get Epic to add this. I wonder if you could still use this for 3D characters?

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@TorQueMoD We don't have animation states at all without paperZD. For 3D characters you can just use a normal animation blueprint.

[@VinoVenitas]

This was long but extremely useful. Im having issues combining this with a different method that focuses more on Override with callbacks. But this was a great intro to combos

[@LeafBranchGames]

Glad to hear it!

[@sammermusa5124]

good video, good lessons, thank you

[@LeafBranchGames]

Thank you!

[@demonpuke4954]

These tutorials are the best! Keep up the amazing work! Are you going to make videos about AI and PaperZD combined? It seems an interesting subject none has yet covered and its not 1:1 to normal AI structure.

[@LeafBranchGames]

Thank you, appreciate that greatly.:) I will be covering it to some degree yes. Not sure how in depth.

[@imaginegettingangryonline]

Your explanation is so clear and easy to follow! Which is quite rare in tutorials lately haha Are you planning on re-releasing a double jump tutorial but with PaperZDs?

[@LeafBranchGames]

Thank you, glad to hear that you find it educational. I will do more PaperZD tutorials for sure, I might do something like a double jump.

[@phildrakep2953]

Hello great video, will in your next tutorials you talk about saving and loading a game, climbing and swinging on a rope, climbing a ladder, climbing a wall, swimming

[@LeafBranchGames]

Hello Phil, I am not entirely sure I will cover all of those topics though I will be covering some.

[@jarrenpatao8742]

Great video! This has been awesome for setting up combo attack animations. However, I think I've followed all the way through and didn't see any mention of hitboxes. I noticed that my hitboxes are only open for the opening attack and was wondering if there was any recommendations for passing hitbox to second attack?

[@brandonharper3060]

Do you think you would be able to do a tutorial on using different weapons? I would like to have Dead Cells style combat where you can pick up different weapons for different play styles

[@LeafBranchGames]

Do you know of a 2D asset that has different weapons for free that could be used?

[@windtp2292]

Great tutorial, can you make a 2D Ai tutorial with PaperZD

[@LeafBranchGames]

Thank you, wind. Sure, that will be coming as well. :)

[@obtuseman2399]

Awesome Video! I was wondering if you had three branches of animation lets say Light Light Heavy, if the player instead inputs Light Light Light the Character freezes. Would I just make it connect back to the start combo to reset it or is there a cleaner way to do it like the last combo state if the player doesn't press anything at the end of the animation. Right now I just have it connecting back to the start state.

[@LeafBranchGames]

The amount of attacks or the number of attacks in a chain does not matter, all the scenarios can be covered with the different events shown in the tutorial. It is important that you use them properly to make sure you have your animation in the correct state depending on what your attack structure looks like.

[@Venarius2k]

Hello, amazing video. I want to ask how would you go about adding slight forward momentum in the direction of the players attack - to make the combat feel less staticy and stationary? I've been trying to add movement input and use launch character nodes, however they keep overwriting the movement mode of my characters movement component and it's not really working as it should.

[@LeafBranchGames]

Probably lerp a timeline reposition I think. Something that is defined in the attack/ability so that you can have different amount of forward momentum.

[@Venarius2k]

@@LeafBranchGamesAre you suggesting to timeline lerp the player position forward? Would that require a tick event? I was also thinking of temporarily disabling or setting the movement mode to flying and then propelling the character forward and then enabling it back again, but I feel like that's extremely inefficient and hacky

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@Venarius2k In this video I setup pretty much the movement you are talking about: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j6u4hoN-jK6FkKs

[@Venarius2k]

@@LeafBranchGamesHi, thanks for the help, I've implemented the genji type of movement, realised after implementing it that my way of handling movement states was very poor so I had to redesign it ^^. Now I have to find a way to not be able to spam this movement and only have it once per input, as currently there's nothing stopping the player from spamming attack button.

[@gatfromber]

Thank god my curse is gone😍😍😍

[@LeafBranchGames]

:)

[@ipokiller2g940]

Hello, may I ask in my game while using the tutorial, I want my character to only able to do only light attack and only heavy attack. When I pressed the light attack button and pressed the heavy attack immediatly it would get stuck since theres no transition, is there a way to ignore the heavy attack input while it's playing the light attack animation? Thank you.

[@Rystaal]

Great tutorial, but i've an issue with combo anim : I have 2 light attacks States in the anim graph (as in the video), but when i trigger attack input once, instead of playing only the first anim, it plays both, LightAttack then LightLight... i've rechecked the tutorial multiple times but i still think i've missed something, can u help?

[@linztipz2226]

Heloo man, i have this problem too, Triggered no, started yes. :)

[@aquadap219]

can i make derived c++ class using paperzdcharacter or is it just for blueprint?

[@LeafBranchGames]

You can do it in C++ as well, for sure.

[@antondessov746]

Great tutorial! So many things I never knew, definitely feels more complex than the stuff I've learnt so far with the simpler Paper ZD stuff. One thing I noticed though is that maybe I got it wrong, but if I have a chain that's let's say LH and then it has only a connection to H (LHH) and nothing to Light (LHL), it still freezes. The LHH ends with a LastComboStateEntered, but the LHL doesn't exist and it freezes. Are there any simple solutions to this, or maybe I just missed something? Thanks again!

[@LeafBranchGames]

That sort of makes it so that you have a non-leaf state but with no termination at the end. I am not sure what the cleanest and best way to sort out such a setup, but maybe an empty end state with no animation for the light attack, so it gets a termination leaf.

[@antondessov746]

@@LeafBranchGames Thanks for the reply! I will try that tomorrow and see how it goes. I do have one more question and that is that I want to try to implement actual damage scaling to those combos. Where would it be best to get/put that information?

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@antondessov746 It depends heavily on how you want your systems to work. You probably want to strive towards either having it connected to your abilities or animations in some structured modular way. Both so they stay connected to the abilities and it is easy to maintain, but also so that it is modular and unlikely to affect other code parts.

[@RioFordays]

The way to implement Gameplay Tags in the Project Settings has changed in the newest version of UE. Is there any chance you would touch upon or add a note about how to set it up like you did around 27:19 for the newer version?

[@LeafBranchGames]

It is not much changed. Click manage gameplay tags and click the plus button.

[@ansvion4136]

hi there, thanks for the video. is there any way to apply this to our boss enemy?

[@LeafBranchGames]

The code doesn't not care if the execution of the code is called from input from a player or called from any other code, like that from an AI. So yes, it can be made to be used by an AI.

[@retroid416]

Hi, sorry for bothering, but can you recommend some way to stop character movement while doing combo or single attack?

[@LeafBranchGames]

Depends on how you want it to work. You could just ignore input while an animation is playing for example if that is what you want to do. If movement isall you want to disable you can always just check when you get movement input if it is allowed to move currently, which can be handled either by checking for if you are currently attacking, or have a tag, gameplay tag or similar that you can add when you want to disable that type of input.

[@gil6970]

I started using Anim Graph for my combat and I saw people online saying that is wrong and you"re suppose to use the ThirdPersonBP graph. Do you think it just depends on how complex or how you are setting up your combat? I felt it was easier for me to implement my combat through animgraph and i can blend animations and sync them. Just making sure im not doing it wrong. Should we use AnimGraph or ThirdPersonBP for combat. You are the first person i see using anim graph on youtube. Please help, thank you.

[@LeafBranchGames]

Are you talking for 2D combat combos like the tutorial or some other scenario?

[@gil6970]

@@LeafBranchGames for 3rd person game. Not 2d game

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@gil6970 Then I would say that both are likely the wrong place and you probably want to put the combat in a component.

[@gil6970]

@@LeafBranchGames oh I see. Thank you mate. I’m gonna implement the combat into a component for my game.

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@gil6970 Good luck!

[@Anirudhji2001]

Really good tutorial. I decided to add another part to my tree by making it LLH as the end of the combo, so I didn't keep LL as my last chain, and put the exit state on the H part of the chain. However, because of this, my chain for LL is going through without requiring a second input for L. Any idea on how to solve this issue?

[@LeafBranchGames]

You need to maintain the logic for the branches of combos and which are leaf combos like explained in the tutorial, they have to have their behavior and called functions to have the state that is expected. If you deviate from that structure then you may have to adapt the approach to accommodate the changes you want to have.

[@Anirudhji2001]

@@LeafBranchGames Even if I leave it as LL as my last chain, exactly as you did in the tutorial, my character does both light attacks one after the other without requiring the second input. I redid everything as shown in the video and tried it again but it didn't change anything.

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@Anirudhji2001 There are a lot of different parts interacting to get it to work. If you miss a detail somewhere in the explanation or in the implementation of the system then it could break down and not work. I just tested my system and it waits for the second light attack input before continuing.

[@Anirudhji2001]

@@LeafBranchGames I really appreciate the reply; I checked some things and as I feared, the issue was within enhanced input. It's imperative to select the trigger for enhanced input to be "pressed" unless you want otherwise. Making this change has solved the problem entirely. Thank you for your help :).

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@Anirudhji2001 Glad you managed to figure it out. :)

[@deralufe9094]

Right now if the player is pressing lightattack and then, after the attack-anim is finished, the player presses it again, the combo would be already resetted, so it would start with the first light-attack anim again. Do I need to include more Jump-Nodes, if your example, I want to give the player 0.4sec to still continue his combo even the animation is already finished?

[@LeafBranchGames]

Well it depends. If you are fine with freezing on the last frame of the animation for those 0.4 seconds, you could have that as your finished animation event and not actually transition to the idle state. If you want to go to idle and still be able to resume the combo, then you may have to approach the logic differently. Since you could theoretically have many combos, with very deep chains. This means you would have to get to a specific state at a moments notice. There are many ways to approach solving these, but none that can easily be explained in text unfortunately.

[@deralufe9094]

@@LeafBranchGames Okay it seems I found an approach! So, instead of extra jumpnodes I just am using a new transition from start to lightlight for example. Start now checks for the enum-value and a new boolean, depending if its true or not, it goes into lightlight or not. This bolean is set true in the player, if its false, but only after 0.1 sec, since 0.0 sec is still too short apperently. Anyway I may even now walk a tiny bit and then doing the second light attack, as I want, without any freezing or bugs...right now at least :P !

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@deralufe9094 Glad to hear it.

[@vulture5879]

So I have a question. If I want to change animation set base on weapon select. Do you have solution?

[@LeafBranchGames]

If all the weapons are using the same combo variations, then you could play an animation based on the weapon in each node. If all weapons are to have different animations combos, then this would not be a feasible approach and you should probably go for some other way of structuring the combos.

[@vulture5879]

@@LeafBranchGames thank you I’m learning and try mimicking to your video for now hope for next amazing video. 😃😃

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@vulture5879 Thank you, good luck!

[@virtuosite]

@LeafBranchGames PaperZD added Anim Montages as Animation Overrides, will you/can you update this for us please?

[@LeafBranchGames]

Yes, it is coming.

[@dingchavez9267]

Can the charge attack be implemented with this somehow? I would want the ability to start a charge attack at any time before, during, or after a light/heavy combo. Not sure how you would connect it all though without making a completely different key for the charge attack.

[@LeafBranchGames]

They are not compaptible straight up, no. The charge attack was made as a stand alone ability, not a combo ability. But you can of course solve anything. Either the combo system would have to be enhanced a bit to handle charge attacks as well, or you would approach the requirement with a different system. Because the requirement I started with this system was to have light and heavy attacks, with ability to expand to other yet similar attack commands.

[@dingchavez9267]

@@LeafBranchGames I thought so, thank you for the reply. Do you think you would ever do a tutorial for a system like that? I feel most people set things up similar to how you did here, which is great btw, but there is a distinct lack of help setting up a system where you can control all of your attacks using just the left mouse button (light attacks on click, heavy attacks on hold, swing animation based on direction of mouse movement) while allowing you're right mouse button to be a guard or shield block. A game that I played that had a system like that was Warhammer:Vermintide as an example

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@dingchavez9267 I mean technically there is no difference. Let us say that you have light attack on 1 and heavy on 2 like in this tutorial. What I do is I say "we have a light or heavy attack input", right? But you can equally just listen for left clicks instead of 1, a click is light attack. To get a heavy attack is the same input, but after a while, so you can just say on left click release, what was the time between the down click and release. If it was a short or long duration, pass a light or heavy attack input. It is just a translation layered in between the user input and the system that is supposed to process the input.

[@dingchavez9267]

@@LeafBranchGames I see what you mean I think. I'll have to tinker around with it and see if I can set it up!

[@Derpwigglies]

@@dingchavez9267 did you ever figure this out? I'm shooting for a combo attack system that I can do single clicks for a combat change that changes animations on 1x click, 2x click, or 3x click, but can be interrupted at any point with a charged attack with press & hold then go back to the beginning of the combat chain. Exe: light attack, light attack light attack, heavy -> back to idle. | Or, light attack, heavy attack, light attack, light attack -> Back to idle.

[@asdasdaf2]

Hey,man love your videos but i stuck on some point , i also wanted to disable character movement when pressing attack button ,how can i do it ,i couldnt find an answer

[@LeafBranchGames]

You can disable movement on your movement component.

[@asdasdaf2]

i'm able to disable movement but problem is I have a button that when I press it, I want it to attack, stop moving, and then allow movement again. However, when I press this button continuously, it will create unwanted slides so basicaly I don't want the character to attack while walking because it looks like its sliding with attack animation@@LeafBranchGames Edit=Finally, I solve the solution with adding disable /enable input with delay to attack event! :)

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@asdasdaf2 Thanks for updating me about your progress, but based on the edit I think you may want to watch this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j4e6aGeAiLebq6M

[@GamesandBacon]

oh boy, this is a lot of work for a 5 min anim notify. idk why you wouldnt just make a custom notify. have it wait for an input and then just handle the anim change there. this seems very static with the weird combo stuff in the anim transitions ? also, anim graph for ability anims ? seems very 2005. id recommend just using montages directly and calling the one you want, it can even be a variable so at runtime you could change it based on distance or velocity and stuff. if you do need the nice stuff from anim graph in terms of transitions it should probably be super specific not just have all your abilities in there. turns it into a huge unnecessary mess. still better than most combo videos ive seen. and ofc you explain it all very well :) just seems a bit much for something so simple :P

[@LeafBranchGames]

Montages don't really exist in 2D or in PaperZD but I am open for a discussion how it could be done better. Hit me up on discord for a talk and let's see if we can do a better solution.

[@sergey8229]

awesome tutorials, but why not use gameplay tags instead of "Enumeration light heavy"?

[@LeafBranchGames]

Really no need for it.

[@danielmartin5336]

Hey, Leaf! I followed this vid and made a successful combo system, so HUGE thanks for that. There is only one bug. When I press the input to do a light attack, it automatically performs the first attack of the LightLight combo and then the next attack of the LightLight combo. One keystroke performs the whole combo. I went back and re-watched the whole video twice, but I just can't seem to find the issue. Any thoughts?

[@LeafBranchGames]

Sounds like you not consuming the input, like the assigned event functions are supposed to do. So I would start looking in that area.

[@restcure9787]

I have the same problem. Have you solved it?

[@danielmartin5336]

@@restcure9787 not yet, no

[@restcure9787]

@@danielmartin5336 if you are using Enhanced Input too, i solved it by changing the Triggers of the Input Action of lightattack/heavyattack to TAP, and it works normally now, hope it is helpful

[@piotrpiencioszko7144]

@@restcure9787 Thanks man, that solved the issue

[@sergey8229]

when I attack and take damage at the same time, at some point the current attack gets stuck in the last frame and not a single animation is played, I set the animation to StartState the same, no matter what keys I press next (the capsule moves), I think this is a flaw in the rules transitions between combinations "LL" > "LL" maybe you need to add another condition to the transition to the next when the animation is over and NextCombo==LL, because the animation is over and the attack =!? or Reset Combo does not happen or did I make a mistake somewhere?

[@LeafBranchGames]

If you take damage during an animation you likely want to go back to a reset state since you likely got interrupted.

[@sergey8229]

yes, the interrupt works and the damage animation is played, but if I still spam the attack at this time, then at some point the entire animation freezes and no other animation works, there is no reaction to damage, and the attack or even jump animation does not work

[@sergey8229]

@@LeafBranchGames I'm sorry if I'm a little bad at expressing myself, I'm using google translate

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@sergey8229 I just tested my project, and my animations do not break when I spam attacks during damaged animation. So it seems like you have missed or changed something.

[@sergey8229]

@@LeafBranchGames yes, I thought it was a mistake on my part, so I double-checked and tested almost everything)) Helped Delay 0.2 seconds before pressing the button ... no, this is not a solution, now the combo uses only the first hit

[@Ace_aacer]

I followed every step there is, yet when I press Light Attack it freezes, Why is that?

[@LeafBranchGames]

I don't know how far in you are experiencing this issue. But if your combo behavior is behaving differently than at that point in the tutorial then you have missed some detail along the way.

[@burgerlord7530]

Hey I'm having the same issue as you, did you ever get this solved? I've rewatched the tutorial several times now and I think I followed the tutorial beat by beat EDIT: Wait nevermind I really did miss a part, I forgot to add LastComboStateEntered to light attack

[@GATXShinGundam]

Can you explain how to add tags in the latest versions? They added a new buttons "Manage Gameplay Tags" and " Add new Gameplay Tag source" without explaining anything about it. Edit: Bruh, well that was quick already figure it out lol

[@LeafBranchGames]

:)

[@RioFordays]

Having the same problem using 5.4 and I was glad to find your comment, only to realize there's nothing here. Kinda wish you would have shared the solution. Currently stuck at the beginning of the vid because I just can't seem to find how to create the combo tag :/ Can somebody please shed some light on how to do it with the new Project Setting options?

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@RioFordays It is not much changed. Click manage gameplay tags and click the plus button.

[@shimenawa3931]

is it gonna work in 3D?

[@LeafBranchGames]

You mean 2D characters moving around in a 3D world or full 3d?

[@excellpepple]

i was wondering if it does work in full 3d? @@LeafBranchGames

[@LeafBranchGames]

@@excellpeppleIf what works in 3d? The combo system or 2D characters?

[@TorQueMoD]

Yes, this will work in 3D games as well. It's all AnimBP logic.

[@voltavegas5897]

Great video, but I've an issue with combo anim : I have 2 light attacks States in the anim graph (as in the video), but when i trigger attack input once, instead of playing only the first anim, it plays both, LightAttack then LightLight... I've rechecked the tutorial multiple times but i still think I've missed something, can u help?

[@LeafBranchGames]

You probably want to debug the code to find the root issue to your problem. Debugging is an essential software development skill, if you are not familiar with how to do it, I have this video over the basics: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sH-aiYKJod10gKM