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Add a new melee attack

You end up with your own punch or kick: an animation a character throws the same way it throws the two attacks that ship, with a strike window you place yourself on the timeline.

Two attacks ship, both in Content/TheLastTemplate/Animations/Montages/Characters/Combat/:

Montage Length Listed on
AM_Combat_Attack_01 0.9 s player, human NPC, infected
AM_Combat_Attack_02 1.7 s player, human NPC

The work is the same whichever character gets the new one. If you have not read How melee combat works, read it first: it says what refuses an attack and what the strike sweep is allowed to hit.

Before you start

You need an animation sequence on S_HumanoidCharacter, the skeleton at Content/TheLastTemplate/Meshes/Characters/S_HumanoidCharacter. Anything retargeted onto it works. See Use your own animations if the animation is not on that skeleton yet.

The sequences behind the shipped attacks are in Content/TheLastTemplate/Animations/AnimSequences/Characters/Combat/. Open AS_Combat_Attack_01 beside yours if you want a reference for timing.

1. Make the montage

  1. Right click your animation sequence, then Create, then Create AnimMontage.
  2. Name it in the pattern of the others, AM_Combat_Attack_03, and put it in Content/TheLastTemplate/Animations/Montages/Characters/Combat/.
  3. Open it and set the slot to Combat. S_HumanoidCharacter declares Combat next to DefaultSlot and UpperBody, and both shipped attacks play on Combat.
  4. Leave the blends alone unless you have a reason. Both shipped attacks blend in over 0.1 and out over 0.25.

The shipped attack sequences have Enable Root Motion on, and ABP_HumanoidCharacter takes root motion from montages only. So whatever your animation does to the root, the character does in the level. A lunge in the animation is a lunge in the game.

2. Place the strike window

Nothing is hit because a hand moves. Damage is only possible inside the window of an ANS_MeleeStrike notify state, and where you put that window is the timing of the blow.

  1. In the montage editor, add a notify track if you want the strike on its own line.
  2. Right click the track at the frame where the fist starts to travel, then Add Notify State, then ANS_MeleeStrike.
  3. Drag the right edge of the window to the frame where the fist has gone past.
  4. Select the notify state and fill its three fields in the Details panel.
Field on the notify What it does On a fresh notify
Hand Bone the bone the sweep follows Hand_R
Hit Radius radius of the sweep, in centimetres 45
Target Region which part of the victim this animation aims at Head

Target Region is the one to think about. The animation declares what it aims at, and that is what the physical reaction on the victim starts from. A hook to the jaw is Head, a body blow is UpperTorso, a low kick is LegL or LegR. The whole list is E_HitRegion: Head, Neck, UpperTorso, LowerTorso, ArmL, ArmR, LegL, LegR.

Be generous with the window. One swing lands one hit, so a window covering the full travel of the arm does not hit twice, it only stops you missing on a frame.

Warning

A montage with no ANS_MeleeStrike on it is not an attack. It plays, the character swings, nothing is ever hit, and there is no error anywhere. AM_Combat_Dodge_Attack_01 ships in that same folder in exactly that state: an animation, not a working attack.

3. Give it to a character

  1. Open BP_PlayerCharacter, at Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/PlayerCharacter/BP_PlayerCharacter.
  2. Select BP_CombatComponent in the Components list.
  3. In the Details panel, find Attack Montages, add an element, and pick your montage.
  4. Compile and save.

Repeat on the AI that should throw it too:

  • Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/AI/NPC/BP_NPCCharacter
  • Content/TheLastTemplate/Blueprints/AI/Zombie/BP_ZombieCharacter

The array is per character. A montage added to the player only stays the player's, which is how the infected ends up with one attack while the humans have two.

The numbers around the attack

Same component, same Details panel, further down:

Field What it does Player Human NPC Infected
Strike Damage damage a landed strike deals 10 10 12
Recovery Delay pause at the end of an attack before the character can act again 0 0.8 0.5
Use Attack Hold keep a minimum delay between two attacks off on off
Attack Hold Time that delay, in seconds 1.2 1.2 1.2

Two things follow from that table.

Damage is per character, not per montage. Every attack the infected throws does 12, whichever animation was drawn. There is no field that makes one montage hit harder than another.

The pace of a fighter is Recovery Delay plus the length of the montage. A 1.7 second animation is already a slower attack than a 0.9 second one, with no field involved, so a heavy attack is something you animate long rather than something you configure. Use Attack Hold is the third lever and it ships on for the human NPC only: it is what stops a human chaining blows on you while the infected keeps coming.

How often an AI throws it

An AI never names a montage. It asks the component and the component draws from Attack Montages, so your new attack joins the pool the moment you add it, with no behavior tree edit.

How often it asks, and how many blows it strings together, live on the AI Data Asset instead: Melee Cooldown (1.25), Combo Min (2), Combo Max (3), Combo Delay (0.35) and First Attack Delay, which is 2 on the human presets and 0.3 on DA_Zombie_Roaming. See [Tune a melee AI](..

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