Shielding is a prominent game mechanic in GREEN KNIGHT.

Late in the game, there’s a shield you gain access to that I just recently finished and tested in combat. It’s called the “Quad Demon”, due to the fact that it has, not one, but four ‘over-shields’ that are emitted outwards as further protection.

My vision was for shield that was exceptionally useful due to having a robust series of over-shields acting as additional buffers against attacks. Visually, each would be supported by a small mechanical arm covered by a thin plate of armor. The imp-ish looking creature carved onto the shield itself would be animated by a series of very basic morph targets.

Boasting four over-shields would make it pretty resilient, obviously, which was my intent. So, having finished the model itself, I dropped it in the asset directory, added the corresponding C++ code for the new shield, fired the game up, then launched a quick match which I’ve structured specifically as a test bed for new assets.

The test bed itself loads up a default stage, which is a modest twenty by twenty tiles wide map, then drops in a single player character, as well as three low level minions equipped with the newly added asset (in this case the shield). When the game starts, I’ll have control of the player character, and will have my choice of staple attacks I can make against one or more of the three enemies facing me.

Simple.

The enemies, in turn, will be using the aforementioned shield, allowing me to test it’s effectiveness quickly and easily with a minimum of fuss and setup.

Keep in mind, the shields they’re equipped with each have four over-shields. A sufficiently powerful enough attack from my character will break a single layer of over-shielding, but no more. Thus, if there are three enemies, and they each have this shield, then I’ll need to make at least 12 strikes in order to break all their over-shields, and a further four strikes to break the shield themselves. With all those layers of shielding stripped away, I’ll then by attacking the enemies frames themselves and depleting their actual health points. So, obviously, I’m looking at quite a few attacks to defeat all three enemies, and my estimation is probably about thirty strikes minimum to clear the stage, but likely much more, perhaps as many as fifty.

Fuck though.

I found on the backfoot almost immediately.

In my haste, I’d forgotten something important.

Over-shields regenerate. Not very quickly, mind you, but they do regenerate. Normally, that isn’t that much of a factor, when you’re facing off against an enemy with one over-shield.

But when they have four over-shields, when one gets popped, the other is raised… and the one that was just popped beguns regenerating under cover of the newly raised shield.

Fuck

Fuck.

I lost.

They wiped the floor with me.

I was stunned.

“You little… tramp.”

I wasn’t supposed to be losing.

I simply couldn’t make enough attacks, and they began chipping away at my lone unit as I struggled to understand where things had gone wrong.

So.

Yeah.

Now over-shields have a much smaller regen rate than they did before today.

Lesson motherfucking learned.

And also.

The Quad Demon is aptly named.

If anyone has a better one… then let me know!