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New Contributor Guide Martial Arts
written by Hymore246, not mlangsdorf
During the time between the release of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA) 0.D and 0.E, I did a complete rebalance of the martial arts system which included updates to every martial style, fixing numerous bugs, adding new technique, new buff properties, and lots of quality of life improvements. I learned a lot about the martial arts system in the months I spent working on the rebalance and I decided to write a guide to help others that want to contribute to the martial arts system.
This guide is accurate as of the stable version of CDDA 0.E. A lot the information here should be useful regardless of future changes but some stuff may not apply depending on what changes happen from 0.E onward.
Just like all development in CDDA, JSON and C++ are the two ways to develop in the martial arts system.
Some of the things JSON lets you do:
- Add a new martial art to the game
- Add or remove existing techniques, buffs, or special abilities (Judo's Knockdown Immunity, Ninjutsu's Silent Attacks, etc) from a style
- Change the properties of a style, buff, or technique
- Change the style weapons of a martial art
Some of the things C++ lets you do:
- Create new special abilities or change the way existing abilities work
- Add create new properties for styles, techniques or buff
- Create new buff event types (OnBlock, OnHit, etc)
- Change the way hardcoded techniques (Disarm, Grab Break, Feint) work
Here is an analogy to help you better understand the difference: JSON is a toolbox that lets you change and create martial arts. C++ lets you create new tools and expand the toolbox itself.
JSON is easier to learn and work with than C++. I recommend googling each for more information.
I will not go into detail describing these but this information can be found in:
- data/json/martialarts.json - Contains all "real world" martial arts. Both styles and buffs are found here.
- data/json/techniques.json - Contains all the techniques used by weapons and the martial art styles found in martialarts.json.
- data/json/martialarts_fictional.json - Contains the techniques, buffs, and styles of martial art styles that exist in the CDDA world but do not exist in the "real world" or other fictional works. Currently, only Bionic Combatives is in this file.
I will give a run down of some of the C++ files used with the martial arts system. I can't list everything because of how large the game is but I can talk about the most important parts. All files are located in the src directory.
These are the main files that make up the martial arts system. The definition of properties, determining if a weapon is a style weapon, technique validation, etc are located in these files.
void player::melee_attack - The melee_attack method is where a large amount of martial arts related events happen. Ninjutsu's Quiet Attacks special ability is used here. OnCrit, OnKill, OnAttack, OnHit, and OnMiss are called in this function as well. The check for a miss recovery technique (feint) is found here as well. Lastly, this is the method that calls pick_technique().
matec_id player::pick_technique - This method is what determines which style techniques are added to the "technique pool" for a random chance to be used as a melee attack. If you are looking for the logic for crit techniques, stunned_target, etc then this is the method you are looking for.
Two important things in this file. First, the OnPause buffs are called in void player::pause and the method bool character_martial_arts::pick_style is what calls the in-game martial arts selection menu.
void game::on_move_effects is where OnMove buffs are called.
Please see the player wiki page on martial arts for a breakdown of terminology and components.
When you attack an enemy while using a martial art, the game will randomly select a technique from the style to use against the enemy. Players have no direct control over which attack is selected. However, there are still factors that can affect technique selection. Some of these include:
- Meeting the skill requirements to for a technique
- Whether or not the attack is a critical hit
- "defensive" techniques (grab breaks, feints) will never be selected
- Techniques with "disarms" cannot trigger against unarmed targets
- Techniques with "knockdown_dur" cannot trigger against an enemy that is already "downed"
- Techniques with "req_buff" are ignored if the indicated buff is not active on the player
- Techniques with "stunned_target" and "downed_target" only work on stunned or downed targets respectively
- All the conditional requirements stack with each other allowing a technique to become much harder to trigger.
Style techniques are part of a martial arts style. Weapon techniques exist on a weapon and are only usable while that weapon is being used.
Style techniques have priority over weapon techniques. If a style and weapon both have techniques that can be triggered in a given situation, style techniques will always be used. However, if there are no valid style techniques that can trigger, the game will attempt to uses a weapon technique instead. If their are no valid weapon techniques either, a generic attack will be used instead.
Unfortunately, the randomness is a necessary evil for the martial arts system. Melee attacks are done by moving the direction of an enemy. There isn't a good way to allow the player to quickly pick techniques to use against the enemies especially when techniques can have conditional requirements to trigger.
In theory, it might be possible to show a prompt to allow the player to pick which technique to use on the enemy after attacking. This prompt would take all conditional requirements into consideration when offer techniques to the player. But this isn't a good solution. Why? Because it SIGNIFICANTLY slows down melee combat. The game becomes very tedious due to the amount of time it takes to individually select every attack against every single enemy. Against a group, it becomes even worse. In addition, the martial arts styles were designed to be used in this random system. If the randomness is removed, every martial arts style would need to be rebalanced. This would be a massive undertaking that would take months to complete (I should know) and there is no telling if the martial arts system would be better off with after this change.
Most martial arts can be learned from a trait at character creation. All traits for martial arts (including class specific ones) are located in data/json/mutations.json
Martial Art Manuals / Books are the main way to learn styles during gameplay. It is not necessary for a martial art to have a manual associated with it. All martial books are defined in data/json/items/book/martial.json
The "book_martial" item, which all martial art books are based on, is defined in: data/json/items/classes/book.json
Brawling is learned automatically at Melee skill level 1. "autolearn" is a martial art property used in the martialarts.json file.
Bionic Combatives can only be learned through the Close Quarters Battle CBM by attacking with the style while the CBM is active. This behavior is hardcoded as part of the melee_attack method in melee.cpp.
Here is a small list of some of the limitations of the martial arts system:
- Techniques are chosen at random
- Techniques and offensive buffs cannot be triggered by reach attacks or ranged attacks
- Ranged attack do not benefit from offensive buffs
- Only one martial art can be used at a time (but changing styles takes no time)
This mod adds additional martial arts styles from other fictional works to the the game. Unlike the styles found in the base game, martial art styles in the MMA mod are more fantastic and less bound by the rules of realism. However, the martial arts in this mod must still be balanced vs all other martial arts styles.
The mod is found in the Cataclysm-DDA/data/mods directory with the name "MMA". The file structure for how the styles, techniques, buffs, etc. are roughly the same as the base game.
It doesn't matter if you are adding, removing, or editing JSON or C++, your change will affect the game. As all programmers know, even the smallest change can have a huge impact and you have to be responsible when deciding to make changes. Your change could introduce a bug into the system that makes certain martial arts unusable or you might add or remove something that upsets the delicate balance of the martial arts system. Think ahead and research before you make changes. A poorly thought out change or addition can be a huge problem for the game as a whole and no one wants to have to clean up that mess.
Typically, it isn't possible to adapt the entirety of a martial art exactly "as is" to the game. CDDA is a turned based game that has a unique combat system for martial arts with a lot of limitations and quirks. With that in mind, ask yourself this: do you feel you can adapt the your martial art to the game in a way that will be usable and true to real life / source material? You might need to get really creative or use some artistic license to get things to work. Just keep in mind that the more you drift away from the source material, the less your martial art will be like its non-game counterpart. Sometimes, it just isn't possible to adapt a martial art into the game for this reason.
There are a lot of martial art styles in CDDA and there are only so many things a style can be good at. No matter how hard people try, there is always going to be some overlap with what the styles can do. A big problem you might run into is that your style, by design, is too similar to one or more existing styles already in the game. Adding your style might either make the existing styles redundant due to your style being stronger or your style won't be worth using because its too weak. Neither of these are a good thing. If you are going to add a new style to the game, the style MUST be different enough from other styles to justify its inclusion in the game. If you can't make your style different enough from what is already exists, it shouldn't be in the game.
One the most important things you need to do when designing a style is to create a theme. A theme is a design guideline that describes the strengths, weaknesses, and how to use your style while keeping the style as realistic as possible. With a good theme it becomes a lot easier to create and modify your style without running into problems. Without a good theme, your style risks becoming a random collection of techniques and buffs that don't work together.
What is your style good at? Does it have high damaging techniques? Good against groups? Reliable crowd control? The strengths of your style are what is most appealing to players and is the reason they should want to use your style over other styles. It is the most noticeable way to make your style stand out compared to the other styles. Make sure your style has good strengths. Just make sure you don't over do it or your style will be overpowered.
Weaknesses are an important part of all styles. What your style can't do is as important as what it can do. You need to make sure your style's weaknesses balance out the style's strengths. The weakness doesn't need to be something directly negative like a constant -50% damage penalty. Not having certain things such as bonus dodges or bonus damage can be good weaknesses. Ultimately, the stronger the style, the bigger the weakness has to be. If you have a style that with at theme that is "A fast and strong style that can fight groups of enemies with or without weapons" (variations of this are the most common pitch I've heard) then you need to a pretty big weakness to make up for all that power. Just make sure you don't over do it or no one will want to use your style.
No, that isn't a typo. WHAT ARE THE WEAKNESSES OF YOUR STYLE!? I cannot stress enough how important it is for your style to have flaws. Flaws help your style stand out more than it would if it was just a collect of techniques and buffs. Your style CANNOT do everything. Also, do not use excuses like "it doesn't have a miss recovery" on a style with a massive accuracy buff. You might fool yourself but you will not fool the community when it comes time to submit that PR to get the style into the game. Remember, being overpowered isn't just about one-shotting stuff. When a style does something really well and does everything else OK, that's overpowered too.
Here are some examples of balancing a style's strengths and weaknesses:
Niten Ichi Ryu has negative buffs when moving and when attacking repeatedly. But, pausing will clear these buffs while giving a powerful dodge buff. Also, all techniques have increased move cost but do greater damage.
Judo's techniques do above average damage and knock down. But you can't use knock down techniques on downed targets, you cannot use the techniques repeatedly against the same target.
Brawling is automatically learned at Melee 1 and can be used unarmed or with any weapon. However...
- All techniques are very basic
- Melee and Unarmed techniques are learned separately
- Techniques take significantly longer to learn compared to most styles
- The style has no buffs
Lets use the Boxing martial arts style to demonstrate how the buffs and techniques of style can work together to create a fun and strong style while staying true to its real life counterpart.
Boxing uses strong punches and good form to evade attacks while fighting against enemies.
- Boxing has Arm Block. This allows the player to block attacks with their arms even if they are unarmed.
- Boxing has 2 normal techniques. Jab is a Rapid tech (50% move cost, 66% damage) and Cross which gives +20% bashing damage. Cross does more damage per hit than Jab. Jab does slight more damage than Cross against unarmored enemies but is bad against high armor enemies.
- Boxing has 1 crit technique. Uppercut deals +40% bash damage and stuns for 1 turn.
- Boxing has 1 dodge counter. Cross Counter deals +25% bash damage, stuns for 1 turn, knocks down for 1 turn, and knocks back the target one tile.
- Boxing has 1 Static buff. Boxing Stance increases bash damage by +2 and reduced blocked damage by 50% of Strength.
- Boxing has 1 OnMove buff. Footwork increases Dodging skill by 1.0 for 1 turn and stacks 2 times.
- Boxing has 1 OnDodge buff. Counter Chance increases bash damage by +25% for 1 turn.
First of all, all the techniques in Boxing are very reliable:
- The player has a 50% chance to trigger either Jab or Cross when they score a normal hit.
- The player has a 100% chance to trigger Uppercut when they score a critical hit.
- Cross Counter is executed independently from the player's control and has the "crit_ok" property which allows it to trigger on both normal and critical hits.
- Cross Counter will not interfere with the other techniques because it is a dodge counter. In fact, the only competition is between Jab and Cross which isn't too bad since they are both overall damage increases.
- Unlike other styles where it's better to wait for enemies to approach, you can use Footwork to engaged enemies with an increased chance to dodge an attack. If you do dodge, Cross Counter will trigger and damage, knockback, stun an enemy. Even better, OnDodge buffs are applied before Dodge Counters trigger. This means you will AWAYS benefit from Counter Chance's +25% damage bonus with Cross Counter.
- Depending on the circumstances, you can further capitalize on Cross Counter. If the target was knocked back, you can follow them, gaining Footwork again and continue the assault with a better chance for another Cross Counter. Alternatively, if there are more enemies nearby, you can attack a different enemy with the benefits of Counter Chance while the original enemy is recovering from the Cross Counter. You might even Cross Counter again a different enemy too. Lastly, if an enemy cannot be knockbacked from Cross Counter, you can attack them freely while they are stunned.
- Finally, Boxing Stance increases bash damage which stacks with the bonus damage from every technique. The block damage reduction is minor but helps if dodging doesn't work.
- All of Boxing's damage bonuses are focused on bashing. Even with it's high damage, it might be hard to hurt certain enemies.
- The style doesn't have any support ability like Feint, Disarm, or Grab Break.
- Dodging is extremely important. If the player cannot dodge, the cannot benefit from the strongest parts of the style.
- Boxing can handle a small ground of enemies but things can quickly get out of hand without being cautious.
- It can be hard to find time to move to gain Footwork in the heat of battle.
All of Boxing's techniques and buffs behave like their real life counterparts:
- Jab is fast but does less damage
- Cross is a strong punch
- A full force Uppercut can knock the wind out of someone and hurts a lot
- A perfectly executed Cross Counter can easily knock someone out
- Boxing Stance is the proper stance a boxer takes when fighting. It is much easier to attack (do more damage) and defend (reduce block damage) with the right form.
- Footwork is the "bob-and-weave", "stick-and-move", "float like a butterfly" movement of boxing. Correct movement makes you harder to hit.
- Counter Chance represents the devastating power of a properly time counter hit. A missed attack leaves an opponent open to counterattack. Everything is more painful once you "opened up" and cannot properly defend yourself. The chance to do this damage is brief and you need to make it count.
Because the player doesn't need to select techniques to use, the player doesn't need to make a lot of choices when using a martial art. For some styles, such as Brawling or Karate, it's possible to turn on the style and forget about it while you explore and fight. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but adding a degree of complexity can keep the player engaged. Here are some styles that use complexity:
- Boxing: As mentioned above, after a Cross Counter, the choice to attack another target to benefit from Counter Chance or pursue the knocked back target to gain Footwork is a choice.
- Capoeira: Move once to gain Capoeira Momentum which unlocks the styles stronger techniques for a short time.
- Niten Ichi Ryu: Moving and attacking causes negative buffs for 1 turn. Pausing will remove these buffs and give the player a large Dodging skill bonus.
- Zui Quan: Move once in a while to gain Drunken Stumble when fighting groups to gain additional dodge attempts.
As you can see, the amount of complexity you can put in a style varies. Complexity can be used a way to offset the strength of a powerful style by requiring player input to set up something in the style. However, keep in mind that players have A LOT to think about when playing CDDA and they may not want to deal with the complexity of a martial art style when there are more important things to worry about. Ultimately, if the complexity is too much work or isn't worth the benefits, players will just ignore your style in favor of something else.
The description of the martial arts styles are shown on the martial arts selection menu has two purposes:
- A description of the martial art and its history. This is usually 1-3 sentences taken from wikipedia. No need to be super in-depth due to the limited amount of space available.
- Explanation of how the martial art works. This is a description of how the martial art is used in game. Explain the theme and any gimmicks that the style has. Use phrases such as "moving increases damage" instead of "OnMove: bash damage increase by 25%" to make it easier for more people to understand.
The initiate message is the help text shown in the combat log after selecting the martial art. This is a flavor message that reminders the player what martial art they are using. Try to generalize this message so it makes sense regardless of the condition of the player. "You balance on one leg" doesn't make sense if the player's legs are broken or they are swimming. "Your face becomes bright red with anger" doesn't make sense if the player's face is covered.
These are the messages that are shown when the player performs a technique from a martial arts style. These are very important because they indicate which random technique was used when the player attacked. As with Initiate Messages, try to make these messages as generalized as possible. Also, try to avoid targeting specific body parts with your messages. Zombies might have knees to break but a blob and a flaming eye do not.
Each buff's description is:
- Some flavor text explaining the what the buff does
- A blank line
- A line listing all the effects of the buff
- A line for the duration and stacking number if applicable
You have given up your defenses for a moment to increase the damage of your attacks.
+10% damage, -1 Block attempts.
Lasts 1 turn.
For some games, you can never have too much of anything. Spells, attacks, money, health. More is better! But this isn't true for the martial arts system in CDDA. Too many buffs makes a martial art hard to understand and use. Too many techniques means you have a lower chance of actually getting the attack you want. A bloated style is a serious problem in a system that randomly picks techniques.
There are limitations on how martial arts can be adapted into the game. Take Judo for example. Real life Judo has 67 different throws. Should the in-game version of Judo have all these throws? No and there are multiple reasons why. Aside from technical limitations for implementing grappling and the sheer danger of accidentally putting yourself on the ground with a random sacrifice throw during a zombie apocalypse, Judo has a lot of throws which ultimately do the same thing: put the target on the ground. One could argue about how each Judo is being used a different situation but trying to implement most these nuances and situations would be very hard and I suspect that some are so niche that it would be a waste of time. So what was the solution? Using ambiguity as part of the style's design.
Ambiguity allows Judo's generic "Throw" technique to work in situations where a specific throw (like Harai Tsurikomi Ashi) wouldn't be allowed to work. In effect, "Throw" is any applicable throwing technique that could be usable at that given moment. Another example is Muay Thai's "Elbow Strike" which effectively allows any sort of elbow strike in the style to exist as a single technique.
Now does that mean Judo should just have "Throw" and nothing else? Of course not! That would be boring and not very fun for the player. While you can't implement every nuance or situation into the game, their are a few preexisting situations that Judo can use. Since Judo only has throws, we can be clever, do more with less, and add additional generic "Throw" techniques to cover those specific situations. This thought process is what was used to create Judo's Counter Throw and Disarming Throw techniques and is the normal mentality you should have when designing a style
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Trying to make your style do everything. The most common mistake new designers make is adding too much to their style. I've talked about this a lot already but remember that is important that your style has flaws and can't do everything. As long as the style is staying true to it's theme, you will have the correct foundation to make the style better without adding random stuff to it in the hopes that it will be "the best" or "competitive".
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Reusing techniques in different styles. Reusing techniques or buffs from one style in another style can cause unwanted bugs. For example, using Boxing's Jab in another style. The problem being that if Boxing's Jab needs to be modified, the other style will also be affect by the changes. The new style should have it's own version of Jab even if it is completely identical to Boxing's Jab.
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Not evaluating the power of a weapon style based on the style's weakest and strongest weapons. When it comes to weapon styles, the weapons are what determine everything. If you find yourself one-shotting zombie hulks with its strongest weapon on day one, you need to fix the style. Same goes for one-shotting normal zombies with the weakest weapon.
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Making the "good version" of an existing martial art. You used an existing martial art as a basis for a new style but ended up copying the style completely with additional improvements. It's never a good idea to create a style that completely overshadows another style. You can use another style as inspiration but it needs to be different enough so your new style doesn't invalid the original. Another version of this is trying to divide a style into two styles. In order for this to work, there has to be enough content in the style to divide it and enough of a difference between the new styles to merit them being separate. Failure to do this will result in two styles that are significantly worse than the original. Even worse, one of the new styles is probably going to be flat out better than the other meaning that no one is going to want to use "the bad one". In most of cases, it's usually better just to leave the style alone.
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Not citing your sources. You need to provide a source or explanation when you make changes to anything in CDDA. Realism is important and if you make a claim about a martial art, you should be able to provide an explanation as to why the change makes sense. In the case of fictional martial arts, you still need to remain true to source material with your changes.
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Creating a martial art that is too complicated. Sometimes the theme / gimmick of style isn't worth the effort to use the style. If your style requires a large amount of steps to use, needs too many rare situations to use its techniques / buffs, or requires too much of a time investment to power up, you might want to rethink your style's design. For reference, some people feel that having to move to activate Capoeira's stronger techniques is too much effort but are ok with Niten-Ichi Ryu's pause mechanic. Your mileage may vary.
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Overloading your techniques and buffs with too many properties. Players shouldn't need to do a lot number crunching to figure out if your style is worth using. Having multiple buffs and techniques that have half a dozen properties each is going to confuse and frustrate players. Worse yet, some players might go through the trouble to see how your style stacks up against the other styles and find out that the style isn't as strong or worth the trouble. The best way to handle this is to keep the bonuses consistent and possibly localizing all the similar properties into a single buff. For example, if all your techniques have the same (or close to the same) Armor Penetration, create a static buff for the Armor Penetration instead. You can still add additional Armor Penetration to techniques (a crit tech for example) if needed.
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Adding stat reliant properties without considering the impact. Adding a stat based effect to a style automatically gears the player into thinking you MUST maximize that stat to get anything of value from the style. This is true even when the effect is something minor like "Reduce blocked damage". Avoid adding a stat based effect unless you want to have the style focused towards a specific build. Also, its not recommended to use more than one stat in a style. This usually means that the style will force players to spread out their stats and make themselves weaker overall for minimal gains in your style.
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Using Intelligence or Perception to increase damage. You must realistically justify why a stat can improve something in a specific martial art. Most of the time, this isn't hard to do but using Intelligence or Perception to increase damage is the most common version that will not work.
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Perception: Most people will use "see and strike weak points" as the justification for increasing damage but this actually makes more sense for increasing Armor Penetration instead of damage.
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Intelligence: You can't outsmart your opponent to death in a way that makes your attacks hit harder. For Armor Penetration, you could say that you fool your opponents into making awkward movements that leave them open to attack but short of a psychic martial art, there isn't a good reason to justify increasing damage with Intelligence.
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Making a style that can "stun lock" enemies to death. Remember that techniques that can stun need to have sort of requirement for it to trigger (crit tech, requires a buff, downed target, etc) otherwise, players can endlessly stun an enemy to death with your style at no risk.
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Allowing the player to attack with 0 move cost. No technique and buff combination should let the player reach 0 move cost. Why? Because no time passes when something with 0 move cost is used. Enemies do not get a turn to attack and buffs do not decrease in duration. Time stands still while the player can attack endlessly! Even with the random technique selection, you often find moments where the play can attack continuously with no consequences.
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Not avoiding "Dead Levels". In Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition, character advancement is done through increasing levels in a class such as Fighter or Wizard and players can pick which class they level up freely. Because of this, players often search for ways to get the most out of their character by avoiding what they have termed "dead levels". A "dead level" is a specific level in a class which gives the bare minimum in character improvement like hit point increase, skill points, and improved saving throws but does not give any new class abilities or advance any existing class abilities such as spellcasting or sneak attack. Aside from power gaming there are other reasons why players dislike dead levels: they are boring and feel unrewarding. Leveling up is a big deal and having that level up feel pointless isn't fun. So how does this relate to the martial arts system in CDDA? Part of designing a style is figuring out when to give the player access to techniques and buffs. You need to make sure your style feels rewarding to use by making sure the player is learning new techniques and buffs at a decent rate. Avoid using too many dead levels in a style. This doesn't mean you can never have dead levels but the less you have, the better. In fact, if your style only has a small number of buffs or techniques you might end up giving the player full access before level 5. Lastly, the learning order of techniques and buffs matters too because the style needs to be usable without all its parts even if its less effective.
Martial arts in CDDA fall into one of three types: Unarmed, Weapon, and Hybrid.
- Unarmed Styles can only be used unarmed or with unarmed weapons. These styles are the most variety in techniques and buffs and will usually give some sort of damage boost, have defense bonuses, or give utility to the player.
- Weapon Styles can be used with certain weapons but cannot be used unarmed. Weapons styles do more damage than unarmed styles (due to the weapons) but without the appropriate weapon, the player might as well not have the style. Weapons have much less variety in techniques and buffs and will usually never have damage boosts unless they require setup or the style has a significant downside to compensate.
- Hybrid Styles can be used unarmed and with certain weapons. Hybrid styles maintain balance by restricting which techniques and buffs can be used with and without a weapon. Having to choose which way to use a Hybrid is an important part of its balance since neither "side" can do everything at once.
While it isn't a hard rule to follow the above suggestions, you probably should unless you can find a different way to balance your style.
The sad truth is this: there is a very thin line between a style being underpowered and being overpowered. Sometimes it only takes a buff giving too much damage or a technique stunning for too long to push a style from worthless to all-powerful. Balancing a style can take a lot of trial and error but I found that sticking to a theme and using other styles as a reference for power levels goes a long way. With a good theme, you will end up just tweaking number instead of adding or removing entire buffs or techniques.
"Which style is best?" is going to be a questions players ask a lot. The answer can vary depending on what the player wants. Weapons? Control? Raw Damage? Defense? Usually, a player is going to pick a single style and stick with it. Because of this, all the styles are in competition with each other to get the player's attention. There are a lot of styles and there are only so many things that a style can be good at so competition is fierce.
When styles fill a similar niche, they will end up directly competing with each other. Fast styles (has a fast tech as its main attack) are an example of a niche. So, Eskrima, Leopard Kung Fu, and Snake Kung Fu, (also Centipede Kung Fu with the MMA mod) all compete with each other. Thus, it is important that each one offers something different:
- Eskrima - weapons, varying fast attacks, control, damage
- Leopard - dexterity focused, defense, dodge counter, control, damage
- Snake - perception focused, miss recovery, grab break, armor penetration
- Centipede - Fastest (constant speed boost), disarm, grab break
As you can see, even though they fill the same niche and may have some overlap, each style offers something different to the player.
Be wary of using the same special ability across multiple styles. In most cases, special abilities are powerful, style defining effects. Taekwondo is completely defined by it's ability to hold any item without interfering with its attacks. Creating a new style with the same ability immediately puts the two styles in direct competition with each other.
All this said, there should never be a situation in which one style completely trumps another style. There must always be SOMETHING each style offers that is different. Strive to never add or change something in the game that makes a style redundant. If that happens, it means that style is pointless and should be completely redone or worse, removed from the game.
Like all parts of CDDA, the martial arts system is set up to be as realistic as possible. As a rule, a martial art should be as close to its real life counter part as possible. For fictional martial arts, there is more wiggle room with realism but it must still be as close to the source material as possible. However, keep the following in mind:
Using martial arts in CDDA are not the same as using martial arts in real life because its not possible to adapt a martial art to the game with 100% accuracy. Adding everything from a real martial art is pretty much impossible due to the limitations of the game. Unfortunately, sometimes exceptions are needed because of this.
Martial art styles in real life are not balanced. This should not be added to the game for the sake of realism. Introducing this concept into the game would mean that a lot of styles would be overshadowed by a select few. That would mean that those "bad" styles should be removed since there would be no good reason to use them. The end result is that their would only be a handful of martial arts styles left in the game.
A possible in-game reason for the martial arts styles are a brief as they were "refined" after the Cataclysm struck. Because every battle is life or death, practitioners would quickly figured out what worked and what didn't worked and "trim the fat" from their styles. This is my opinion on why styles setup the way they are in CDDA. I'm not sure if this is cannon but it could be. As a quick aside, this "refinement" isn't an excuse to make ridiculous changes to a martial art. Judo didn't magically learn how to use Katanas because of the Cataclysm.
I hope this guide helps steer people in the right direction for the development of any martial arts related changes. I wish I could write more but I am near the character limit for this reddit post. While the system and even the game can change dramatically, I still hope this guide will still be useful in the future of CDDA's development.
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