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[gabbo]

I'm always down for an ACE team game, and this looks like a lot of fun.
Trine with fighting game combat mechanics a bit.

 

[Messofanego]

Know your enemy: Judith

Me likey.

 

[Messofanego]

BTW, that was an enemy, not one of the 3 playable protagonists.

Bit more details from their blog:

I wanted to briefly comment about some stuff relevant to this combo video and Abyss Odyssey in general. As mentioned in the reveal trailer, the game is an action platformer with a heavy emphasis on the combat - to the point where we can refer at the enemies as fighters from a roster of a fighting game. In this video I focused on 'Judith', which is an enemy from within the abyss, and I explore most of her moveset and apply it to create a combo video.

A first thing that can be noticed is that the combat system resembles Smash Bros more than Street Fighter, where you have directional attacks and simple command specials. Though the game does carry similar elements seen in traditional fighters (like cancelling attacks into specials or the SF3 type parry), we opted for a smash type offensive design since it matches much better a game that would be happening in an action / platforming environment. Fans of Smash competitive play will notice immediately the naming convention for attacks such as Fair, Bair, Dair, etc... (Forward Air, Back Air, etc...)

All these combos were created on the fly by me (co-lead designer Carlos Bordeu). My objective was to demonstrate as much as possible the variety of attacks and how they can be linked to produce impressive and entertaining combos and juggles within the training room of the game (the training room allows you to pick any character you have captured and to practice with him, just like in the training rooms of regular fighting games). Some of you might be wondering if the system wouldn't allow me to do infinite combos by just simply repeating the same attack over and over again (Example: Stand below the enemy and use the up attack repeatedly to juggle the enemy infinitely). This cannot be accomplished because of a simple rule of the game's combo system: Every time you repeat a same attack within a combo, the attack carries a decreased upwards momentum. In other words: The more you repeat an attack in your combo, the less it pushes upwards, making it more and more difficult to continue the combo. We feel this was an excellent way of balancing juggles and making a system that forces people to use a diversity of attacks creatively in order to get the most impressive combos.

I hope you enjoyed this first combo demonstration. We will be releasing new videos showing different characters and their potential as we lead up to the release of the game.

 

[MaLDo]

Know your enemy: Judith

Me likey.

I love Zeno Clash and ZC2 but... awful animation is awful.

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

I really like all of their ideas for this, great concepts, just need the execution to match. Gonna keep an eye on it. Makes me think Mega Man brawler.

 

[Dragoon En Regalia]

Been playing one of the old mods the Bordeu bros made (ZanZan) and I can already tell these guys are on to something. Very unique visual sense, for example!

 

[Salsa]

might go to Chile next month to meet my new nephew. Ace Team are friends of friends and i've already been there once, might try to sneak in again and hopefully play this in some form

 

[gabbo]

might go to Chile next month to meet my new nephew. Ace Team are friends of friends and i've already been there once, might try to sneak in again and hopefully play this in some form

Smuggle out any info you can.

 

[Messofanego]

Know your enemy - Bauta

These combos were performed by Atlus' lead QA tester who's a fighting game enthusiast. The result is quite impressive and revealed that we did not anticipate the full potential of the fighting engine during the design process.​

Man, stringing the combos looks like fun.
Dev blog

Some of the most iconic fighting games have had some of their central game mechanics born out of unintentional design decisions, or "bugs" which players were able to use as exploits to enhance their fighting capabilities, and take the game to a new level of competitiveness. Two good examples that come to mind are cancelling from a normal into a special in the original Street Fighter 2, or wave dashing in Super Smash Brothers Melee. In both these cases, people found out how to do things that were not originally designed by the game designers, and which were intentionally left in the game after their discovery.

Just some weeks ago I had the experience of executing our first demonstration of our fighting engine for Abyss Odyssey by doing a combo video in our series 'Know your Enemy', using the character Judith. This was basically me (a game designer) using my best efforts to show off the potential of the game's fighting system. But just recently we decided to ask the lead tester of Atlus to do the second entry of the video series using a different character: the Bauta.

When Rob sent us back the resulting combos he was pulling off, the jaws of everyone here at ACE dropped to the ground and we were amazed by the huge combos he was pulling off. But it wasn't only that... it was the speed at which he was making the character move. It almost felt a bit as if he was using a turbo version of our game.

While composing the combo video I decided to go frame by frame and see what exactly was going on - analyzing the video to see what Rob was doing at each moment within his combos. What I discovered was that Rob had essentially found out how to combine specific design features to increase his speed and movement in a way we had not anticipated originally. Our fighting system was designed to support cancelling from an attack into a special just like in Street Fighter 2, only that in Abyss Odyssey you don't need to connect the hit to cancel into a special.

When we played Street Fighter 4 we were charmed by the combos you could pull off by cancelling a special into a dash (using two bars of your special meter) so we also decided that you could cancel specials into secondary specials and also into a dash (our dashes are more like evade rolls which have invincibility frames like in Smash Bros). At the same time we had originally designed a feature that allows the player to jump out of a dash. What Rob discovered was that he could attack, cancel into a dash and immediately jump out of the dash in to an airborne attack. Since in our game you can also cancel an air attack into an air dash, this essentially meant you could get a huge amount of momentum by combining all the previous techniques.

The "dash-cancel-to-jump" can be done in just a few milliseconds by linking these commands

Rob's combos also take advantage of a "bug" - something we are evaluating whether we change or not. Our game has 'cancel points', which is basically a registry of how many times you can cancel within a combo. This was necessary because since we can cancel specials into specials near infinite loops would be possible without this restriction. The "bug" we discovered in the Bauta combo video is that cancelling anything into a dash isn't consuming any cancel points. This obviously allows for a much increased gameplay speed, and is something we need to evaluate if we want to limit more.

Details such as this discovery and our continuous efforts to improve the game's fighting engine are what is calling us to develop a special player-vs-player game mode. While this won't be available at launch, I'm pretty sure many people will get into the title to fight their friends in the neutral areas of the game. Playing against a buddy in the middle of the Abyss is very fun. We think that there might be a lot interest for PvP post release, and everybody should know that we have a great track record of updating our titles to include new game modes and features. Abyss is the game we've thought of most as evolving over time, so we'll certainly consider expanding the design to support new ideas like this.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Oh.

Oh shit.

OH SHIZZNITZ that sounds wonderful.

Begone, sludgy, turgid combat! In with the quickness!

 

[naib]

Forgive late bump. Just saw this on RPS.

I want this, now.

 

[Messofanego]

Features trailer

Shows off what they deem standout features of the game.

1080p 60fps Gamersyde version

Release is possibly summer, PC/PS3/360.

Behind the Scenes on the Music (Patricio Meneses is the composer)

 

[Q8D3vil]

Man, zeno clash 2 is one of the worst games i ever played on pc (even though i liked the first one). Lets hope this one is better.

 

[Maybesew]

Atlus is streaming this right now on Twitch

http://www.twitch.tv/atlususa

 

[wanders]

I hope this is 4 player local

 

[Basketball]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtKd6paqhEg

 

[Messofanego]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtKd6paqhEg

Looking cooler and cooler the more they show it, and release date is very soon!

 

[Brerlappin]

Put down my pre order, only cost me 6 euro thanks to selling some cards. Anything from ACE team is an insta buy for me

Man, zeno clash 2 is one of the worst games i ever played on pc (even though i liked the first one). Lets hope this one is better.

wut...ZC & ZC2 are both fantastic

 

[Radix]

ACE has posted a Steam guide on advanced combat mechanics.

It seems to have much more depth than I thought. It's looking great.