New Additions: Dual Wielding
The latest updates include a revamped weapon sprite system and the ability to properly dual wield weapons.
When a unit equips a weapon, you’ll actually see it on the character sprite. This goes for both weapons and shields. Each weapon type has a default sprite, which some weapons having their own unique sprite. The update makes it a lot easier to add new sprites to the system and behind the scenes it requires much less memory/overhead.
Dual Attack
When a unit decides to Dual Wield, their Action menu changes and they get a new Dual Attack option. You can read more about combat flow and the Action menu here.
You can perform a normal attack with either the main hand or offhand weapon, or you can use them both in the new Dual Attack!
As seen in the gif below, where we show a Dual Attack using a Pistol and Sabre, the unit attacks twice: once which each weapon. It gets a bit tricky when you start mixing melee and ranged weapons, so the general rule is we limit the attack to the smallest range. So if you are wielding at least one melee weapon, the Dual Attack will require you to be at melee range.
This isn’t a problem if you decide to Dual Wield two ranged weapons, but we’ll still use the Main Hand weapon range for the attack. This is still being worked on, so there may be some changes, but this opens up an entire world of variations.
The only downside is that while Dual Wielding you won’t be able to use the Defend action. Also, the offhand weapon will attack at 50% damage.
The actual attack will use animations, sounds, and visual effects from both weapons, with the main hand weapon attacking first and the offhand second.
At this point, only 1 Handed weapon types can be Dual Wielded, since you need a hand for each one. I did have plans for a passive that allows you to hold 2 Handed weapons in 1 Hand, but I need to see how that’s going to work visually. It may just allow units to equip Shields in the offhand, but if I can, I’d like to maybe add Dual Wielding for even those weapons. That’ll be a long term goal, though.
