What is the best way to script third person real-time action melee combat in C#?

Questions & Answers
1

So for our game we want to have third person, real-time, action melee combat, using a sword, with a crosshair. What would be the best way to script this?

A collider on the end of the sword maybe? Or a raycast/spherecast?

Game examples with this combat system would be: Darkfall Online, Risk Your Life, TERA Online, etc etc.

2

It depends on how precise you want your swordplay to be. If precision control of the sword is part of the game's design, then you definitely want a collider on the sword.

However, if your melee attacks are more simple than that, and are more 'point and shoot,' then I'd probably use Physics.OverlapSphere() or Physics.SphereCast() in the 'hittable region' just in front of the player. Use an animation event at the right place within the melee animation to trigger the actual check and knockback.