Visceral Combat

Visceral Combat is an immersion and melee feel enhancement mod for Better Combat. It introduces features to make melee feel more responsive, weighty, movement-based, and articulated.

Attack lunge:  

Attacking propels the player forward.

Three modes: ARCADE (lunge follows movement input, with a separate reduced coefficient for lunging backwards), DUELING (always lunges toward where you’re looking, with a client-side decaying impulse tail over the next few ticks for smoothness), and HYBRID (forward lunge blended with a configurable amount of left/right input).

Lunge speed and a speed cap (scaled off the player’s movement-speed attribute) are configurable, it can be gated behind sprinting, and the strength is normalized against the weapon’s attack speed within a configurable min/max band.

Lunge charges (optional, off by default):

When enabled, each lunge consumes one of a limited pool of charges (default 4). A spent charge recovers over a configurable multiple of the weapon’s attack cooldown. The client predicts charges locally for instant response and the HUD, while the server keeps an authoritative ledger using the same recovery math and can deny lunges that exceed the budget. A HUD element shows charge state and fades out when idle; it’s hidden entirely when the system is off.

Impact physics: 

On a connecting hit, the attacker can receive recoil, and the target can be pushed directionally based on the swing, with a configurable direction coefficient. A separate impulse system with its own decay and cap governs this added momentum.

Hitstop:

Brief freeze-frames on hit, toggleable independently for the attacker and for the entity being hit.

Slash ribbons:

Replaces Better Combat’s weapon trail particles with a rendered arc ribbon that traces the weapon’s actual Better Combat damage volume (the geometry is transcribed from BC’s hitbox logic, so the visual matches where damage really lands). Swing direction is read from animation names, which makes third-party animation packs like Malfu’s work. Ribbons flash red on a connecting hit and fade back to white. Config toggles cover: drawing ribbons at all, whether they suppress BC’s own trails, and whether other players’ ribbons are visible to you.

Target assist:

Three modes: OFF (pure manual aim), SOFT (target highlight plus slight swing tracking), and RPG (all of that plus a target-aware lunge that bends toward and closes distance to the committed target). The system acquires the enemy nearest the crosshair within a configurable cone and range (weapon reach plus a bonus), keeps the current target sticky via a score advantage so the highlight doesn’t flicker between nearby enemies, and optionally draws a subtle ground ring under the acquired target. During a swing it applies bounded facing corrections. In RPG mode, the maximum approach distance and how strongly the lunge bends toward the target are configurable.

Holster mode (off by default):

 A keybind (default H) toggles a holstered stance that grants a configurable sprint speed multiplier.

Config and sync:

All of the above lives in one server-authoritative config (Cloth Config/AutoConfig, editable via Mod Menu). The server pushes it to clients on join, re-pushes it periodically, and saving the config screen on a host applies immediately to all connected players without a rejoin. On a client connected to a remote server, the server’s synced config always governs gameplay.