I started thinking about ways to play more with the ragdolls, since this has been a theme with prototypes I made in the past, maybe I could actually make something more this time.

I already had the slide implemented – the idea initially was to throw your head as a bowling ball, but I figured 1) it will be a returning ball instead of a returning axe, that’s not variety and 2) sliding was fun.

Bowling Ball Jack was born:

This was really easy to implement, the only tricky thing was making sure the character didn’t snag on the ragdolls while performing the action, but being able to walk over them once it has been performed. In Unity this was just a matter of switching a Physics layer interaction bool on/off, which is controlled by animation events, just like the collider that pushes them out of the way.

Now this is fun of course, but you can basically spam it and take out a horde of zombies no sweat, I destroyed my game.

What to do, what to do…

Let’s add a stamina bar, so you have to switch up, right? And why would you not spam the axe instead? Well because that works with magic, duh… So I decided to try out what has basically become the classic: Health Stamina Mana trio of health bars.