[ QUOTE ]
The powerset has a color choice box -- 'Default', 'Custom', 'Bright [power]', and 'Dark [power]' (i.e., 'Bright Fire' and 'Dark Fire'). When you pick 'Bright', you get additive color changes -- the colors you pick brighten the power (i.e., the standard Energy Blast colors are 'Bright'), and when you pick 'Dark', you get subtractive color changes -- the colors you pick darken the power (i.e., the standard Pain Domination is 'Dark').
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Could you expand on this a bit? Maybe because it's because I'm tired, but I don't fully understand what this means.
It sounds as if picking "Bright" will make the particle illuminated, and picking "Dark" will make it uh.. whatever the opposite of that is. Darkened, I guess. And Default just defaults to whatever the default setting for that particular power/set is... Default.
It sounds to me like if you wanted to make a power effect as invisible as possible, picking Dark - Black would be your best bet. If you wanted to make a power as visible and cornea-burning as possible, picking Bright - Hot Pink would be your best bet.
Or I could be completely wrong.
Wowza! The new creator sounds pretty sweet. Thanks for filling us in, keep the updates coming 
~MM
Am I correct in saying that picking a Bright [power] with Black will make the effects almost completely transparent, and that picking Dark [power] with White will do the same as well?
Would a Bright [Invulnerability] with White make the Invulnerability you see today for Heroes? Would a Dark [Invulnerability] with Black make the Invulnerability that Villains have?
I almost forgot to add:
A big THANK YOU for posting the info to us. Seriously, I mean it. Thanks a bunches!
Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
[ QUOTE ]
When you pick a specific power in the Powers section of the character creator, your character will continually repeat the animation for that power, showing both the character animation and the power effect (i.e., the Fire Imps power summons imps, etc.); the colors selection grid normally obscures a lot of this, but it can be rolled up out of the way for a better view.
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Ah, that's good to know. That seemed the sensible way to go, but I was worried that they wouldn't have as clear a way to see what the colored powers actually look like. Or worse, that we'd have to guess.
And I thank you a lot as well for taking the trouble to post this.
Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
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Am I correct in saying that picking a Bright [power] with Black will make the effects almost completely transparent, and that picking Dark [power] with White will do the same as well?
Would a Bright [Invulnerability] with White make the Invulnerability you see today for Heroes? Would a Dark [Invulnerability] with Black make the Invulnerability that Villains have?
I almost forgot to add:
A big THANK YOU for posting the info to us. Seriously, I mean it. Thanks a bunches!
[/ QUOTE ]
Ahh. I knew I left something out. The Bright color grid doesn't have black as a color choice; the Dark color grid does. Bruce Harlick said that black didn't work well as an additive color choice. The way the grids are laid out, the Bright color set takes each color from full-saturated color through a very pale tint of that color plus the two colors on the extreme right of the costume color grid, while the Dark colors have the shades that are down on the left edge of the color grid. So for Red in the Bright palette, you can go from white to a saturated red, while in the Dark palette, you can go from a dark red to an almost-black red shade.
You have it right; picking 'Bright Invulnerability' would give you color choices that would create effects like the blueside Invulnerability, and picking 'Dark Invulnerability would give you color choices that would create effects like the redside Invulnerability. But you can pick which colors you use either for the entire powerset, or power-by-power, so you can dial back your Invulnerability Tankers so they don't look like Rainbow Brite on Superadine.
Also, Bruce Harlick said that it was BAB who has been the driving force behind this, and the work on color customization has been going on since about the time NCSoft NorCal was formed; it's not something that was put together in a few months; the artwork changes and programming has been going on for some time. Make sure you thank BAB for spearheading this and keeping it going.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
Well then:
THANK YOU BAB!
Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
It's interesting, come to think of it, because digital colours have always been interesting to me. I have to wonder exactly how this works - are bright colours simply colours with the alpha setting tied to reverse brightness with dark colours simply colours with the alpha setting tied to right-way-up brightness? Or is it actually the difference between 255 of every colour making white in one option and black in the other, such as the difference between reflected light and absorbed light?
I suspect this is heavily influenced by the fact that, in this game, sprite effect transparency is directly tied to colour brightness, so in addition to picking what colour you want your effects to be, you are also picking how opaque or transparent they are indirectly. For auras, this means that any of the darker colours come out almost completely invisible, and this wouldn't do for powers, so they had to come up with a solution. "Bright" and "Dark" seems like an elegant solution. I wonder when we're going to get that option for regular costume auras. It sounds like a blast!
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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[ QUOTE ]
The powerset has a color choice box -- 'Default', 'Custom', 'Bright [power]', and 'Dark [power]' (i.e., 'Bright Fire' and 'Dark Fire'). When you pick 'Bright', you get additive color changes -- the colors you pick brighten the power (i.e., the standard Energy Blast colors are 'Bright'), and when you pick 'Dark', you get subtractive color changes -- the colors you pick darken the power (i.e., the standard Pain Domination is 'Dark').
[/ QUOTE ]
Could you expand on this a bit? Maybe because it's because I'm tired, but I don't fully understand what this means.
[/ QUOTE ]
Let's see. You see things in particular colors because the objects selectively absorb and reflect light of different colors. Leaves are green because they absorb red and blue light, reflecting the green light; a white object reflects all the light that hits it equally.
There are two color systems -- additive and subtractive. Additive color is the way light works, and its primary colors are red, green, and blue. If you have a white object and you shine a red light on it, it looks red, because even though it reflects all colors, it only has red light to reflect. If you shine a green light on it as well, it looks yellow, because that's the color of a combination of red and green light as your eyes see it.
Subtractive color is the way paints and dyes work; in subtractive color systems, the primary colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow (notice that these colors plus black are the ink colors in a color printer -- the CMYK system), more inaccurately described as red, yellow, and blue. Each color absorbs all the colors but the one it reflects, so to get green, you mix cyan and yellow.
The additive colors are like shining a colored light onto a white-colored power effect -- if all you shine on the power is a fully-saturated blue, it will never get darker than a fully-saturated blue; if you reduce the intensity of the blue by adding other colors, the light gets whiter and the blue power gets paler, turning back to white. The subtractive colors are like drawing over the white-colored power effect with a marker -- if you use a fully-saturated blue, it will never get lighter; you reduce the intensity of the blue by adding other colors, which makes it darker, making the power effect darker overall, so the color fades toward black.
Or you can just think of it as a double-wide color palette where the "Bright" colors take you from saturated color toward white, and the "Dark" colors take you from saturated color towards black, but there wasn't enough room on the screen to fit both, so you have to pick one or the other, with both the primary and secondary colors having to be from the same set.
I'll have to see about dragging my digital camera to the con and getting some screen shots of the difference.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
[ QUOTE ]
Well then:
THANK YOU BAB!
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I have to second that. I think that this post of BaBs deserves repeating :
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Fun facts:
To date, power customization for Primary and Secondary player powers has involved<ul type="square">[*]1,241 individual powers.[*]which use use 1,620 FX scripts[*]which reference 5,144 particle scripts.[/list](Yes, those 1,241 powers are from just the powersets listed in the Issue 16 overview page.)
.
I'm still trying to nail down an exact date for when we started working on this, but so far the earliest reference I can find is from a document created in March of 2008. I know there were some meetings before that document was made, but I can't find the date or meeting notes from the initial "Lets do this!" meeting, which I would consider the official start of this massive undertaking.
.
Unofficially, I've been trying to figure out ways to do it since around Issue 11, but every idea involved new tech and a tremendous amount of data parsing...two things that simply would have never happened back then with the size of our team.
Obviously, we haven't been working 100% on this since we started. A bit here, a bit there...time taken for other Issues, bug fixes, booster packs, etc. But we've been working on it pretty focused for the last 6-8 months.
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Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
[ QUOTE ]
I'll have to see about dragging my digital camera to the con and getting some screen shots of the difference.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh yes. Please do get us some pictures. Much appreciated.
Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
Thank you, srmalloy, for explaining that. I really enjoy learning something new when it is explained well I'll have to dig into the mathematics of this when time permits (and, hey, I'm at work, so I have time ), but it's nice to see it explained.
One small question. When talking about subtractive colours, you say "each colour absorbs all colours except the one it reflects." Does that mean that, say, Cyan absorbs everything BUT cyan?
Also, when you say "reduce the intensity of the blue," are we viewing intensity as a constant where, if it's only blue it's very intense, but if you mix it in with other colours as intense they have to share intensity and still fit within the constant? If you can, I'd like to hear a little bit more on how that part of both additive and subtractive colours work.
And because I forgot last time: THANK YOU BABS!
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Great info, srmalloy. Thanks for explaining it!
Can't wait to see pics... or video.
Are the new martial arts animations also in the character creator?
[ QUOTE ]
so they don't look like Rainbow Brite on Superadine.
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Thank you, I now have the in my head of her if she was built like him. Or maybe even him.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
if you have a chance, and they have a running build up, could yu see which martial arts animations were changed, and a rough desription of the changes. thats my BIG issue and im chomping at assorted bits for any info on it.
[ QUOTE ]
if you have a chance, and they have a running build up, could yu see which martial arts animations were changed, and a rough desription of the changes. thats my BIG issue and im chomping at assorted bits for any info on it.
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Best way to describe it.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
Thanks very much for posting this. So, does the colour thing mean we can make black looking fire? Or rather, make any of the other powers look close to the current dark powers?
Always remember, we were Heroes.
um. Looking for confirmation.
He wants to know if he can FINALLY fix his Brute to look like he did when we met 
Can his brute have the DiscoBall Invul effects like before?
QR: This is a quality thread. And if they let you take photos...yeah.
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
[ QUOTE ]
QR: This is a quality thread. And if they let you take photos...yeah.
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Agreed, great work offering this info to us in the community not lucky enough to be at Comic-con. I'm not going to ask any specific queries, considering you've already answered the biggest one I had (re: Colour tinting for Architect critters), but I'll definitely be waiting with bated breath for more posts in this thread.
Many thanks srmalloy, and also many complements to all the devs who've been busy on Spectrum for all this time!
Justice Hunter, 50 Inv/SS Tank
Slenszic, 50 Sword/Energy Stalker
MA Arc IDs: 1355, 2341, 2350
This is now my favorite thread. Thanks for giving us the scoop.
I also echo the thanks to BaB, this will be an amazing addition to the game. I've wanted this since day one.
Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
[ QUOTE ]
Ahh. I knew I left something out. The Bright color grid doesn't have black as a color choice; the Dark color grid does. Bruce Harlick said that black didn't work well as an additive color choice. The way the grids are laid out, the Bright color set takes each color from full-saturated color through a very pale tint of that color plus the two colors on the extreme right of the costume color grid, while the Dark colors have the shades that are down on the left edge of the color grid. So for Red in the Bright palette, you can go from white to a saturated red, while in the Dark palette, you can go from a dark red to an almost-black red shade.
[/ QUOTE ]
It sounds like the bright colors might be designed to range from maximum color intensity to zero intensity with transparent alpha, and the dark colors might be designed to range from maximum color intensity to opaque black. It'll certainly be interesting to play with once it goes live (or goes test as the case may be).
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Is it true the colors you have to chooce from on each power is limited? As ice will move from white to blue. Fire from red to yellow. So no brown ice? No green fire?
//Jack
The Kickers base.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
-Groucho Marx
Having had a chance to look at the (still under development) I16 changes at the NCSoft booth at the San Diego Comic-Con, I am looking forward even more eagerly to its release. What they are showing is the character-creation part of I16 -- it doesn't have any game connectivity.
The character design process looks exactly the same as it was, with two exceptions. After your costume design, the 'Next' button takes you to the Powers screen, where you can alter the colors of your powers. In addition, across the top of the screen are text labels for the segments of character creation -- Archetype, Origin, Primary, Secondary, Body Type, Costume, Powers, Name; clicking on one takes you to that section without losing progress, so you can jump around through character creation in any order.
The powers section has drop-down sections for Primary and Secondary powers -- I didn't see an entry for Epic or Patron powers, or for pool powers, and I'm going to have to ask them about that tomorrow -- similar to the Upper Body / Lower Body / Head sections for the costume creator. These open up into a list of all the powers for that powerset. The powerset has a color choice box -- 'Default', 'Custom', 'Bright [power]', and 'Dark [power]' (i.e., 'Bright Fire' and 'Dark Fire'). When you pick 'Bright', you get additive color changes -- the colors you pick brighten the power (i.e., the standard Energy Blast colors are 'Bright'), and when you pick 'Dark', you get subtractive color changes -- the colors you pick darken the power (i.e., the standard Pain Domination is 'Dark'). You have an "Apply colors over entire character' button that works for powers the same way the similar button does for costumes, and each power has the same options individually (except 'Custom', which appears for the powerset when you set colors individually for the powers).
Power customization will not be available for the MA when I16 goes live; they are still looking at the problem of the additional space that it would take up reducing what you can build due to the size limitation of an arc.
In the process of rebuilding the way powers are colored, they have managed to address one of the problems that was described as a major stumbling block -- with a very few exceptions, the customized power colors change, not only the color of the power as your character uses it, but the effect of the power on the target. If you change your Fire Control powers to blue or green, for example, the Fire Cages around mobs will be blue or green just like the animation visuals around your character. When you pick a specific power in the Powers section of the character creator, your character will continually repeat the animation for that power, showing both the character animation and the power effect (i.e., the Fire Imps power summons imps, etc.); the colors selection grid normally obscures a lot of this, but it can be rolled up out of the way for a better view. The powers that don't completely change colors are all ones that have 'fixed' visuals -- Smoke will animate with the colors you pick for the power, but the cloud of smoke around your target will still be black. I need to go back tomorrow and see how many powers are like this; I need to find out how many of the summoning powers (i.e., Controller and Mastermind powers) have customization, and to what degree.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers