Dungeon Master Forum

In DSB every monster has front/back/side graphics. But, in honesty this is still reasonably limited

On this note, I suggest 3 new "areas" of monster attack graphics:
front_attack_ready/back_attack_ready/side_attack_ready so when a monster is standing right up in your face, and it's about to attack, you can have a different graphic... like pulling a sword out of somewhere, or to show the back-swing/wind-up for instance.
It was after looking at some EOB & DM2 graphics that this came to mind.

front_attack_after/back_attack_after/side_attack_after that would be the frame AFTER the monster attacks (with a 2/3 tick delay)?
This could be used to give monsters a 2-frame attack animation, and with the ready frame above, it would be 3 frames... so you could implement monsters like the underground DM2 worm a whole hell-of-a-lot easier.

front_attack_continue/back_attack_continue/side_attack_continue that would be used when I monster has attacked, and is planning on keeping up the attack (the party's still standing there, about to get bopped again)?
This could be used to create the spectre from DM2, complete with animating attack (unlike the way RTC did it).


I know that these aren't necessary features, but I believe that they will dramatically improve the player's gaming experience.

EDIT: I think I left out something critical to this... the addition of orientation based attack animations (front_attack/back_attack/side_attack) <insert facepalm here>

I agree

That said, you can fake a lot of this stuff by creating custom attacks that swap to a differently bitmapped version of the monster after a brief delay. However, that's a very RTC way of approaching it. There are probably easier ways it can already be done using some simple changes to AI code, but it's a bit beyond me to work it all out right now...

Very RTC way of doing things

But, I feel that DSB would be GREATLY improved by adding these new graphics options. It'd make actually doing a true-feel DM2 dungeon alot more possible (instead of having to fake everything... you can just set 1 line of code, and you've got yourself a DM2 style animation)