https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP9ZIAfq2X8
Barbaric, a cooperative roguelike set in a grimdark fantasy realm, will arrive on Windows PC via Steam. Developed by a team of industry veterans helmed by a former Vice President at Activision Blizzard and Executive Producer at Sega,Barbaric will deliver endlessly-replayable dungeon-crawling.
In a world shrouded in eternal night, a group of champions band together to repel the demonic scourge plaguing their land. To fulfill the prophecy of a new dawn, the heroes must depend on one another, relying on specialized skills to navigate the harsh landscapes of Aldderas.
Select one of eight powerful adventurers and enlist the aid of friends online to survive procedurally-generated dungeons and the ancient evils within. Each race and hero possesses distinct talents with the ability to augment their powers and strengthen the party.
With combat inspired by competitive fighting games, Barbaric requires thoughtfulness on the battlefield. Deep, highly-customizable actions, coupled with ever-present friendly fire, necessitates warriors to ensure their blows find the correct targets.
That is, until a mission draws to a close. Then teammates can backstab each other and fight for the right to bring home the boss token, which one hero can exchange for powerful loot.
A little about us: We’re a small team in SF and have been working on the game for a year. Our core team is 8 people. We’re looking forward to releasing this year. If y’all have any questions about our development process or anything please feel free to ask. There’s more information here
Cheers!
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Do you guys ‘feel’ there is something wrong with the player character animations?
At first I thought it was because the player characters are all using the same mocap library or something like that, or possibly the animation controller is not using root motion - which just looks better compared to code movement, but after watching the trailer longer, I think the main thing that feels off with all the player character animations is the skating feet during attacks - when the feet should be solidly planted to the ground, and the strafe looks really kind of wrong to me on the player characters. Especially the two larger characters. There legs are too big and big things just don’t strafe like that. Strafing is a stealth ‘type’ movement for medium or smaller characters, or tactical characters. Not for demons, devils, and orger like characters.
I think replacing the strafe animations with instead, ‘that’ direction forward walk/runs (like diablo) it would not look and feel wrong and out of place - like it does right now.
To answer your first question, no not necessarily. This is a twin stick controlled game. So the movement is based on the cardinal directions and blending might seem weird because you’re not playing? I’m not sure but definitely noted because you haven’t been the only one to say something about the animation. We heavily utilize mecanim. We have 8 directional movement blend trees. That utilize masks/layers based on what weapon and equipment you have equipped.
We are using all custom animations done in house and we are using root motion to control the characters. The animator controller is an integral part of our game. In fact our game is so heavily tied to the animator that we’ve designed our actor state system around it.
I’m not much of an artist/animator myself so I’m not the best one to judge what looks natural, but I appreciate all of the useful critique you have given us! Cheers man!
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Thanks for the explanation about your animation system.
Yes - after further watching I discarded the reason I thought the animations looked a little off because of mocap or code driven movement. I really do believe the strafing is what makes the movement look odd and the feet skating during moments when feet should be firmly planted to the ground.
I’d really like to play a segment when you have a chance to release a demo/alpha to see if the feeling goes away when playing.
To be honest - I think the best control scheme for this type of game is Diablo style movement tied to the animation system. I can’t imagine how a twin stick ‘shooter’ setup is good for melee combat since half of the melee attacks can not be performed - convincingly - even if using stylized animations, if the character is moving in a particular direction and swinging with one of his arms in the other direction. This is an acceptable movement set up with shooting games because we can imagine twisting bodies in an opposite direction and still be able to shoot semi-accurately. But melee combat requires more accuracy and dexterity than spraying bullets in a field of fire.
I’m sure you’ve already researched Diablo - but if not - I urge you to check it out and give it an honest critique against the movement/animation set up you are currently using in your game.
I hope you’ll continue to get quality feedback from others, even if it is feedback that asks for changing up certain aspects of a game to improve it’s appeal.
BTW - cool character art on your site! 
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Hi! Game looks great so far and I also like the animation a lot.
Can you elaborate a little on how you are combining animation driven movement (root motion) with online multiplayer? This is something I am very interested in personally. How you are able to keep the position data synchronized and valid, even though you are using motion from animation?
