[Released] Combo Animation System

Community Showcases
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Introducing the Combo Animation System
[Asset Store] [Documentation]

VERSION 1.3.0 Released!
Please backup your project before updating! A lot changed and the old system needs to be removed before importing the update!

Check out the documentation for a full look at some of the new features and changes!

The videos and screen shots below do not fully represent the current state of the system. A new tutorial video and “product video” will be released soon

The Combo Animation System is a way to accomplish a similar combat feel to games like Dynasty Warriors, Devil May Cry, and Ninja Gaiden. Simply put, a combo of attacks based on button presses.

Ever wanted to spam X,X,X,Y on a controller and do a combo? Whether you call it a Hack and Slash, Musou, or DmC style, you can search for hours on end for tutorials to make something similar and won’t come up with much. You could spend hours trying to experiment or cut that time down significantly. I noticed these types of games normally show a flow graph of combos you’ve unlocked. So I got the idea to try and implement this design into a development space. This system eventually evolved into what you see now! Something that is nice, easy to use, and quick to set up.

Common Q&A
Any Integrations?
None at the moment. It’s made to be pretty dynamic. I have it working with ECM2 for my own personal project with nothing changed to the CAS Scripts.

What’s the roadmap like?
The roadmap has changed slightly with the additional features of involving a built in locomotion system and other improvements. I’m looking to add the following in the coming updates.

  • Directional Input (Pressing Up + X to attack instead of just X)
  • Timer Input (Waiting a certain amount of time will do a different move)
  • Ability System (something similar to what DBZ Budokai 2 uses)

Will this magically fix my animations to be seamless?
This will not magically make mismatch animations suddenly match! Your animations should follow a specific flow. You can read about it in the documentation.

Visual assets in the video are used strictly for demonstration purposes and NOT included in the package unless stated otherwise.

The full change list should be reflected in the documentation linked in the first post.

It is HIGHLY recommended you delete the previous ComboAnimationSystem folder before updating. A lot changed and conflicting errors will occur if you don’t follow this step.

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Combo Animaton System
Combo Animaton System
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I updated the post to be a little more condensed. I’m gonna be making tutorials on it soon to add to the top post as well.

Still pending review at the moment.

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Sorry for the necro-post. But what is the progress of this?

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Release was put on hold for further bug fixes and testing. I didn’t see a lot of engangement or interest so I essentially put it on the back burner for now. It’s technically in a releasable state I just have to get it up to the Asset Stores standards.

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lol trying to implement my own solution now for combos which is a pain because animation events are hugely unreliable, best of luck with your projects.

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I’ve been using it for personal projects. It’s honestly a really finicky thing. Because its so reliant on animations being form factor to each other, it’s difficult to really show off or even use unless you follow a certain type of animation standard.

I’ve been trying to make the process as painless as possible, refactoring code, taking out features, adding features, and trying to keep up with documentation. I honestly feel your pain because at one point in time I couldn’t find anyone doing animation tutorials for more than 1 attack. I even find myself not ever using more than one button at a time myself.

I’m going through the steps still to make this a proper asset and hoping to release it within the next couple of months. Day job and other life duties have taken a little precedent over hobbies like this. I’m gonna be sticking to the same price point but doing a new release promotion whenever it does come out. I’ll be updating this thread when it finally releases if you’re still interested by then.

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Update

So I’ve picked back up work on this a bit. I’ve taken a different approach to some of the features and removed some completely.

No longer is there the Speed Multiplier variable. It only made sense because I also got rid of the automated combo timer. It was causing too many issues and was very inconsistent. As much as I like automation, I had to replace it. A new script called ComboAnimationSystemAnimationEvents is now used to help determine in your animations on precise frames when you can start a combo or reset. Mouthful of a script name I know, but naming conventions are not my forte and it matched everything else.

This has already made everything 100% easier to manage. Got rid of a lot of variables in the script and fixed some like the newComboTimer, which is how long it takes before you can start a new combo after ending the last one.

Another new addition is one that made sense to me. Sometimes you don’t want a crossfade and actually want a snappy animation feeling. In the graph nodes you can now select to UseCrossfade or not. It produces some pretty fun results on both ends and I’m happy it’s now a part of the system.

I’m working on cleaning the scripts up a bit and possibly trying to implement a better event system for it. At the moment, it uses subscribe-able events for ComboStarted, ComboContinued, and ComboEnded. It’s pretty useful but I’m trying to decide between this and just making public UnityEvents. I’ve also thought about implementing a more useful and less hard coded ScriptableObject event system.

All in all, I now have to really rewrite the manual for this thing. It’s not super different but all the pictures of the graph and script are going to look old.

I’m hoping to look forward to a mid September release :slight_smile:

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Yoooooooo defs gonna purchased and check it out, it sounds super promising!!!

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Made an update to the first post with a new video. It’s short and to the point. I find it infinitely better than the last one and I think will serve well as a cover video. Just going to get a tutorial video done and it’ll be off to the asset store review process again!

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sounds awesome! defs gonna tell all the people on the action development discord when it drops

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Package has officially been submitted and waiting in queue!

We’ll see how it goes from here.

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Combo Animation System is now live!

Took a long while! Tutorials are a bit lacking at the moment but I’m working on getting videos up soon that’ll hopefully be helpful. Until then, please go ahead and ask any questions here. I’ll try to answer the best I can!

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Very nice combo system, I purchased it right away!!!

Questions for ya:

  1. Root motion support? Non Root motion support?
  2. Can your character react based on a hit direction?
  3. Hitbox detection? or Raycast hit detection?
  4. How easy to hook a Particle event to your combo system or any usual event, at a specific animation-frame?

Thanks :slight_smile:

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Happy to answer!

  • This does support root motion! Since it uses the animator it supports anything the animator can.
  • Hit direction is in the works along with delay inputs.
  • No hit detection systems are built in. I stayed bare bones and only provided the animation playing system itself. I could work on a hit detection system but I’m not sure how in depth it would be or should be.
  • To reference question one, it’s easy as can be! It uses the animator so animation events, state machines, all supported! Combo Animation System uses the information from the graph container and essentially feeds it into the animator. This will be more easily explained when I get the first tutorial up :sweat_smile:
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8494457--1130414--Capture CAS graph.PNG
8494457--1130414--Capture CAS graph.PNG715×370 16.7 KB

Not working for me.
When using the graph the start box is too small to link from the start node to the combo node. It doesn’t seem to be resizable. It might show up at a higher resolution but 1080p is as high as my monitor gets.
Hopefully this can be addressed in a future update unless you know a work around.

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Seems I can actually connect the node if grab a certain part of the box.

8494487--1130426--Capture CAS graph 1.PNG
8494487--1130426--Capture CAS graph 1.PNG1063×453 41 KB
Strange tho, maybe its a unity version issue.

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I’ve tested from 2019 to 2022 and never had this issue. Have you installed in a fresh project first to see if anything is conflicting with it? I’m trying to figure out how to recreate the issue so I can fix it.

Anymore details you could provide me would be great!

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I just tried a fresh project on 2 different Unity versions.
1st version was the one I tried earlier
2022.1.16f1. I had the same problem.
2nd version was 2021.2.17f1 and it worked like it should.
I’ll try to find a different 2022 version later to try it on.

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Ok, I tested on 2022.1.19f1 and had the same problem.
Then I tried 2022.1.0f1 and it worked like it should.

I guess the problem is with some of the more recent 2022 builds, if you have one of the more recent versions installed try seeing if you get the same problem with the combo graph, if not maybe it’s on my end. Anyways, I hope this helps. Good luck with the asset, it has great potential.

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That helps a ton!
The latest version I have for testing is 2022.1.17f1 and its also showing this same kind of error. I’ll have to look and see what changes happened to 2022.1.0f and beyond. CAS uses an inbuilt unity graph system for its graphing components. I’m thinking something changed internally. I’m hoping an easy fix will be to implement sizing options for the nodes.

Looking a little more, I found its only on the branches that’s causing issues. Something is resizing them wrong.

I’m not sure how quickly a fix can be implemented but its definitely being worked on.

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