Behind the Scenes - BTS#5 - Combat's Action and Adrenaline Bar

Behind the Scenes The Evolution of Combat: Action and Adrenaline
Welcome to RuneScape Behind The Scenes.
This week, it's all about action and adrenaline as Mod Chris L and Hunter
continue showing off The Evolution of Combat's action and adrenaline bars.
Okay, so this is the Action Bar. It's attached to the top of the chat box, as you can see.
You can minimize the chat box and you can also minimize the Action Bar.
So if you want to chat, or do combat, or visa-versa - that is a possibility.
You can minimize both together if you really just don't want to see that whatsoever!
Okay, and then obviously you need something to put on your Action Bar.
So let's take a look at the new Ability Book, which is taking up what was the Magic ability tab.
You can see you've got abilities for each skill there.
Yeah. You just showed some Ranged, Magic and Defence I think,
but we're going on to some of the Attack abilities.
Yeah, so you take it out,providing you've unlocked the ability.
You can take it out of the book and drag it onto the bar as we are doing here.
You might notice that - on there for example - it's not coloured in.
This shows that you don't have a requirement to use that ability.
I think in this case, that's actually a two-handed ability, and in that case there -
the one I just dragged onto number six - it's what we call a "Threshold Ability"
which requires adrenaline, which we'll touch on in a second about how that unlocks.
But basically you can see that as you change your gear or as combat changes,
different abilities become available or locked to you, to use in that bit of combat.
So we're dragging on some defensive abilities, mixed with the Attack abilities now.
I've seen some people on the forum worrying that it will all just be pre-sets,
so that'll dispel those disbeliefs!
I think we're just about to start on the actual combat now.
I was just showing the two-handed one there.
You can see that some of them turned off, some of them turned back on.
Those two at the end required a shield and obviously,
with a Dragon two-hander, you can't have a shield.
And likewise there, I've got a weapon but not a shield,
and then there's the shield again, and the shield abilities turn back on.
So you can keep up-to-date with what's going-on on your bar
just by looking at if it's coloured-in or not.
Yep, so the main thing that you'll notice now is
we've got the green section above the abilities on the hot-bar now.
This is your Adrenaline Bar which will slowly go up as you do auto-attacks,
but when you use a basic ability, you'll get a nice extra jump
- just like that -
There you go!
You'll get an extra jump soon you'll be able to see,
and then we'll be able to show you some Threshold Abilities.
Threshold Abilities are unlocked at 50%, so you'll notice that in a second
the bar's just glowed and ability number six (that one),
that one's just become available because it's a Threshold Ability.
Seven is also available, but it's actually greyed-out because we don't have a two-hander,
so there we go - I've changed it to a two-hander
and now I can do that ability because I have all of the requirements.
And there you go - I've "spun", and that is actually an "AoE" attack,
but there's only one guy, as ever.
Yeah, but we might as well show that a bit later on actually doing some AoE.
Ok so we're nearly at ultimate level here but, I think I got a bit too "into it"
and, yeah, he died in this video!
So we'll show you what happens when combat stops.
When combat stops...
you've got about 15 seconds to carry it on,
or this happens and you've come out of combat stance and your adrenaline starts going down.
Yeah so with NPCs you can jump onto another NPC as you wish,
but in PvP that's going to be a bit different, so you can't jump in with an "Ultimate".
But as it goes down, you see you've just gone past half there,
so you can no longer use "Haemorrhage" as it requires 50%,
and you've not got that any more.
And then we'll just go back to square one, which means... there you go - business as usual!
So as promised, we'll be showing off "Whirlwind" in just AoE at this point.
We'll build up a bit of adrenaline first and show off a few more abilities.
Ok, so we'll generate the adrenaline again.
The normal combat system that's currently in-game is click-and-wait, and that is still an option here.
If you do nothing, then you still generate a bit of adrenaline.
We just encourage you to click it now and again if you're not interacting too much.
Then, as you get to the Ultimates...
I think you're about to unlock one if it's gone past 50%...
Yeah, and that's some of our defensive abilities.
Whilst you don't see anything immediate, if these guys weren't "punch-bags",
and they dealt you any damage, you'd hit them.
But now we're getting towards Ultimate levels, so we focus on this,
where we're going to go "spinny" with Whirlwind and then show you an Ultimate.
So you can see the bar's full - it's really, really bright now, ready to be used,
and I think we're about to fire off an ability we call "Meteor Strike".
Here it comes... Boom!
And Ultimates drain all of the adrenaline down to zero.
As you can see, the bar's emptied again.
Think of it like your Special Attack bar at the moment. I died obviously.
Ultimates have really powerful effects, but we'll be disclosing that in due time, I'm sure.
So this one is customising the key-binds.
If you don't like what the presets are at the moment
then you can customise them to what you want to.
This is only for a single key, so you can use anything that's on your keyboard.
That's pretty much all alpha-numeric, but there's a few code keys that work as well.
Yeah and if you're not happy with your layout, as we just showed there,
you can drag your abilities to the bin and it gets rid of them.
Similarly, we can also swap abilities if we dragged it to another point.
That also shows us being able to drag the Quick Prayer icon down and similarly, with the Run icon.
There's no reason in-game that I can think of that needs it,
but we thought we'd let you do it anyway!
Just in case you're lazy! You can see we've locked the action bar there,
so if you were clicking it in combat (because you don't have to press the keys - you can still click it),
but if you weren't happy with accidentally dragging it in combat, that locks it
so you don't accidentally click and drag rather than doing an ability.
And you can see here, we're showing the multiple bars off.
So, "shift" 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 will instantly change it, so you can have Melee, Ranged, Magic.
Or even a "skilled" setup for hot-bars, with teleports or High Alchemy.
You're also able to click the arrows on the right of the hot-bar to switch which tab you're on.
If you prefer to do it via clicking, that's also an option.
Alright, and to end we didn't want to leave out anyone because we're focussing on mage and range as well!
So here's a Magic ability, an Ultimate, and there it is - Tsunami.
And Mods Chris L and Hunter will be back next week
for their final reveal of what's in store for The Evolution of Combat.
And be warned, it's a biggy!