Making use of the game level in a melee game

Hi everyone

What are some ways you can use the environment a little more in a melee action game? In first person shooters, or shooting games in general, the range at which you can engage/affect your enemy is reletively far, moving in and out of cover, flanking and etc, all of which makes you traverse the level.

But in a melee action game, the distance at which you engage in is much smaller. You get up to your enemy, and start swinging/strafing and etc. Im ok with this. But during combat, there really isnt too much reason to move around alot, get behind pillars, go to a certain spot.

What kind of game modes/gameplay ideas can you do to get your players and AI moving around the level? I was thinking of a conquest/domination mode. AI and players move to different flags, stay there to capture it, and if there is an enemy on the same flag, the flag wont be captured.

Angle / Position you attack from.
Higher places > lower places or jump attacks

Having cool blood effects, animations and hit sounds will make hitting someone a great feeling. If you feel the weapon the game is fun

Honestly, it takes a bunch of work. But I'd love to feel AI that uses the cheap ideas players do.
For example, I played a game where I could climb on top of a pillar and shoot down on AI like pot-shots. The AI on the other hand never did this. It's a very uneven idea. The idea that players can creatively use the level or even exploit the level.
Here is the basic idea. You can track player-AI kills. Then track player/environment interaction.
In the case above if we pass 3 cycle of the player climbing the pillar and totally wiping out AI, we allow the AI to see, understand and copy. So each terrain exploit by the player creates a greater change of the AI learning to use the same exploit.

There is also some simple math facts. Like - a ranged weapon travels farther when fired from a height. It does more damage also. I.e. Archers on the ridge.

Furthermore, interaction makes environments fun. -- Was it super smash bro's that I could swim around poles? When we talk environment the question becomes - How can I make both player and AI use everything in the scene like this was a Jacky Chan movie ( But avoid the mechanical issues from other games.)

If?! - I have a group of enemies down hill, and I have a collection of "Red barrels" up hill next to my, why can't I kick them down for a boom?

Here is a real fun one - So the enemy is in a bar - 2 front window - 1 front door - 1 overhanging porch cover/ with 2 v-beams holding it up. So I sneak up to the 2 windows and drop trigger bombs below them. Then I go across the street to the building roof( bar == city). --- Action!-- Through the window I shoot one. Others begin to come outside knowing I shoot from the roof. A few shots to the v-beams and the porch overhang falls and kills them. Now the leftovers try jumping out the windows -- but BOOM and BOOM. I run down street level and jump in one of the windows --- The last are covered behind the bar. I shoot a few bottles then throw a match. Bad-guy barn-fire.

Explore outside of games - every cool game idea was ported from books, tv, and movies.

, this is something I am trying to implement in my game but indeed takes alot of work especially with the not-so-good physics system in acknex/gs3d. But its slowly getting there, atleast faster than gs3d updates.

Another idea jumpman is to let obstacles stagger attacks from actors/players so timing gets essential too and e.g. stuff like parrying (might wanna take a peak at mount&blade's combat system).