Sword Fighting References?

[Domarius]

I'm going to animate combat moves, starting with the sword guards, and I don't want them poking it around like a stick.

 

I'm doing my own internet searching but if any of you are historical re-enactors or something, and can point me to some good references for sword moves, please do. It will save me time sifting through the irrelavant stuff.

[Domarius]

Can someone move this to the "Dark Mod" public forum? My bad for putting it here.

 

Cool! Actual sword fighting videos!

http://www.aemma.org/training/tests/freeSc...2003/murphy.htm

This is teh r0x0rz!

[Ishtvan]

IMO we should ideally look at old sword fighting manuals for a source; the modern re-enactment stuff is a bit hit or miss. There is good stuff but there's a lot of BS out there too.

 

I posted something on sabre parries a while ago in the dev forum. The stance will probably be different, but the hand motions could be used as a base for parries.

 

Here it is: http://www.totheescrime.org/ifc/BEAUMONT/Sabre/

 

1 and 2 block a low / leg cut on either side, 3 and 4 block mid-high horizontal slashes on either side, 5 blocks a cut to the head. 6 is pretty useless in application (its awkward to riposte from 6). Those parries are for the modern sabre sport though. We probably want to look at old Rapier or Broadsword fencing manulas for authentic stuff. Rapier might be a bit complex to animate for our purposes. We should probably go for broad sword fencing.

 

Here's a great list of "renaissance martial arts" manuals online, with a lot of links to PDFs with scanned authentic pictures, including a lot of renaissance period broad sword / long sword manuals loaded with pictures! They're a tad slow to load, but worth it. We can ignore all the "infighting" grabbing the opponent and stuff, since that won't be happening ingame.

 

http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm

 

I've been looking at them a bit. This one is really good for showing the hand positions of what they call "broad sword," although it looks like sabre to me. Even though they're fighting on horses, the hand positions are the same, although some parries have less application when on the ground.http://www.thehaca.com/pdf/HungarianHighlandBroadsword.pdf . It looks pretty similar to sabre.

 

[EDIT: Also this one has a lot of images: http://www.thearma.org/arttalk/ArtTalk.htm ]

[sparhawk]

Instead of doing the sword anims I would prefer it if you would start with more urgently needed animations, like searching, fleeing and such. Combat will be rather late in the development and ist not needed at this point.

[Domarius]

Yes but when I'm ready to do combat anims I want to jump straight into it. Makes sense to collect the reference material earlier on.

 

Thanks Ish - this all looks incredibly useful! My 56k modem is gonna be put to the test.

 

I dont' pretend to be an expert swordsman - which sections (in the link below) would you say is most pertinant to the characters we have in the game? (I say characters, because we don't just have broadswords, we have guys fighting with hammers! If we can't find any references for that then I will make them up)

 

http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm

 

(Cool hammerite speak (olde english) on this page! http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/pallas.htm)

[woah]

Will this mod use the same form of sword-play dynamics present in Thief 1 and 2? For instance, when swinging a sword within the game, the sword would accurately impact and come to halt when colliding with another hard object, be that object a metal torch holster or a contending guard's sword. Of course many games have done this, but in Thief it was very accurate and it gave the game extra depth; you didn't have to "guess" where the sword would strike by utilizing previous knowledge of unrealistic game mechanics (like most games), but rather you could apply realistic gaugings to estimate where the strike would hit.

[Domarius]

Yeah the programmers are pretty adamant about putting in detailed collision for combat.

 

Just last night on T2X, a hammerite cornered me in the doorway of a biulding, and I thought I got the jump on him as he was creeping toward me, but not quite, and before I knew it he took an overhead swing at me - *CLANG* my god, I was saved by the sign hanging above the doorway. I was running before the sound effect even finished.

[Ishtvan]

@Domarius: I'm not an expert on historical fighting myself, just did some modern sport fencing. I'd say look at the Medieval English and German stuff, broad sword, long sword, maybe the two handed sword postions could be adapted for hammers (although a lot of the 2 handed illustrations involved weird situations where their swords were already locked together which isn't really helpful for us).

 

I think the Renaissance rapier and rapier / dagger styles would be a bit too complicated to code a combat system for.

[Domarius]

I'm not an expert on historical fighting myself, just did some modern sport fencing.

That's still more experience than me! Just watched a few historical re-enactments, so I've got a feel for some things, I could make up some believable looking things if it comes to it.

 

I think I'll be making up the hammer ones. Proabbly won't be too different than what is already in T2.