Mix Power sets, guns, and other

So with the power customization and the ability to swap out animations comes the fact that if willing powers can be more customizable easier.

For example... Pistols? Why not add an animation for all the blaster powers that replaces them with a pistol animation. This can also replicate emanation points with more animations.

Pretty simple concept and if they're cheap they could do it with very little work, like one animation combined with the old ones. So in this vein I'd like to see this used to it's full ability.
Trick arrow -> Trick gun
Energy blaster set -> chest blast emanation point
ice blaster set -> Ice ray gun

again along with this i have to question why we have different sets for different weapons for a scrapper... How bout we toss out the sets being for specific weapons and convert it to sets preserving their attributes and allow us to choose what weapon we'd like to apply them to. This allows for us to have all sorts of new weapons and such without having to balance all new sets... For example dual blade sets -> Nunchakus or Broad sword -> Spear.

Of course, this would mean adding a new power set would be much harder due to lots of animations needed, but i'd prefer that rather than not being able to figure out a niche for a weapon so we don't get it.


Lastly.. Mixed Power Sets... What I mean by this is that I would like sets that mix another sets together. Especially the scrapper weapon sets and the various elements. A lot of my ideas usually consist of multiple power sets in this game, but in concept they should all be in one power set. like Hammer and Earth or Electric based attacks. They just work together. Fire and Sword attacks. This would be extremely easy to do and would vastly expand on the customization with minimal effort.

I don't think is possible without a huge revision of the character models. I'm not a techie or anything but there was something to do with costume pieces involving them being "anchored" to a certain spot.
I think the same goes for powers and this couldn't happen without the "anchors" on the character models being changed.

Considering that i16 is introducing new animations for powers and such the code is there already. It's just a amtter of animations now from what I see.

The biggest problem with power customization as I understand BAB is what is the problem with updating just about any software with new or altered features. You write a code and when you don't consider future developments you don't make parts able to work in a certain way so you end up having to rewrite several bits of code that are somewhat unrelated rather than 1. That rewriting of those codes leads to having to rewrite several more pieces of code and it ends up that you have to rewrite nearly the whole game.

The only thing that needs to be altered if it isn't already the case is constants into variables and shifting all the powers' constants to a variable set in the power. If it isn't already like this then when they said they weren't going to do it less they were going to do it right they either lied or are not looking to the future which gives them a different vision for "right" or they could just be stupid, but I assume that none of these three are the case so I assume that all of wht I said should be fairly easy with what they are about to introduce.

v.v Why are you congratulating someone that doesn't know what they're talking about?

These anchors she is talking about doesn't have to do with the power customization. They have to do with CHARACTER customization. That's obvious. Unless someone created the engine utterly stupidly.

now as far as...
"Remember it's just pictures and text ^.^ anything can be changed easily."
"Tell that to BaB and I'd bet he'd tell you differently...after taking a couple of hours to laugh at your assumption. "

It was a joke firstly, secondly it's true. Everything is a picture or text, or even more reductively, just 1s and 0s. It's not impressive to say that changing text, which what most of this comes down to, is hard. Doing any of this stuff is just busy work primarily.

And if none of this is possible with their i16 THEY DIDN'T DO IT RIGHT which is why they said they wouldn't do it. Get it? Either this is possible or they did not meat their goals.

And just one last thing. Stop saying this type of stuff can't be done or is impossible or whatever else BS you keep wanting to talk about. You're wrong about it and you are just making it less likely to be done because your incesant annoyance about how it "can't"

All right, let's say you're right. Let's assume that the tech to do this is available, and that emanation point customization is possible with the current character skeletons. Let's go for one of the simplest examples.

Say I want a sonic blast rifle, where the blasts emanate from the muzzle of the gun. The Goldbrickers and Council provide us with a couple of sonic rifle/cannon models already, so there's no need to involve SexyJay and the costume department. They even have animations for a couple of attacks already, so we only need to change the animations for, say, 7 of the 9 powers in the set.

Even with the best possible scenario, you're asking BAB and the animators to work on 7 animations so that one blast set can have one alternate animation point. This is assuming, of course, that a PBAoE attack like Dreadful Wail won't look incredibly strange coming from the barrel of a gun, and that alternate animations won't be required to make it look right.

Now, let's expand that out, but let's be even more generous. Let's say that all you're interested in is the Blast sets, and that alternate animations/emanations for the Melee, Buff/Debuff, Manipulation, Assault, Control and Defense powersets don't interest you. All you care about are the 10 blast sets used by Blasters, Defenders and Corrupters.

Let's assume, for a minute, that all of these sets are similar to Sonic Blast, in that new/alternate animations for some powers can be cribbed from other powersets and NPC attacks. Let's say that no new costume pieces will be required, that this is strictly a job for the animators. Let's even say that all the animations will look right coming from this new emination point without any tweaking at all. Using this very generous but completely made up math, you're asking BABs and company to work on 700 or so animations so that 3 ATs can have a single alternate emanation point. Do you get it now? Do you realize how comically unrealistic what you're asking for is?

This is an interesting subject, because it's one of these where Standard Code Rant applies only marginally. We already know what can and cannot be done to a large extent, based off both developer commentary and what's already being done.

What we know can be done is completely alternate animations for a single power, which are manually made to be exactly the same length. That is what the I16 Martial Arts and Super Strength animations are, at the end of the day. We also know that the "slots" on a character skeleton that BABs talked about back during the Weapon Customization debates have to do with costume pieces being applied to them, specifically the animated weapons pieces. As a bug back then aptly demonstrated, as well, multiple weapons could be held in the same slot, it just looked really ugly. We also know that power EFFECTS don't take up a slot on the skeleton even if they're tied to one, because they are not costume items.

Currently, changing animations and effects is possible. It is fairly easy to extrapolate that taking, say, Power Blast and switching its animation to one that fires from the chest, then switching its effect to single beam identical to what we have now, but centred on the chest is POSSIBLE. The technology to do this already exists and is being used in I16's power customization. Obviously, each new animation suggested is... Well, a new animation that BABs and his minions need to make from scratch. As such, this fits with comments he has made about power customization in general - it's not hard, it's a LOT of work. In essence, adding additional custom animations for all powersets is the veritable equivalent of almost making all of these powersets from scratch. Still, the POSSIBILITY for picking an emanation POINT for powers via what powerset customization can do now is there.

What we do NOT know, however, is whether it is possible to take one power and customize it to use a different class of weapon. Currently, powers animations and the weapons they use are completely separate. The power animates with a generic grip that fits all weapons of a class attributed to it, and the an animated costume item is scripted to appear and disappear when the animation calls for it. However, this is still a costume item, and WHAT it is is not controlled by the animation. Powers can only CALL the weapon, they cannot CHANGE it.

So this presents the question - is it possible to customize an entire powerset into using a different class weapon? It's possible to customize an entire powerset into using an entirely different set of animations (but isn't done, to give people more control), but the question is whether or not the WEAPON used for these animations can be changed from what the powerset permits. THAT is likely a problem that requires either a new technology, or at the very least still more fiddling with the powers and costumes system, so as to rig up a way for the player to pick a weapon powerset, then a weapon CLASS to use with it, and THEN have all animations thereafter be drawn from the ones assigned to that class. We have no evidence anywhere in the game or in upcoming issues that this is currently doable.

Quote:

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.

Okay. Say they decide to give us, for sake of argument, the option of a chest emanation point for every blast set it makes sense for (excluding Assault Rifle and Archery) That's 73 new animations they need to come up with, just for one more emanation point. I already subtracted Aim from all the sets that have it. Any time you add an emanation point, that's 73 animations. Just for the blast sets.

Of course there will be much gnashing of teeth and complaining if blast sets are the only ones who get this option, so control and buff sets need to get it too. That's 63 and 90 animations respectively, for just one additional emanation point. I didn't count Trick Arrow or Traps because it doesn't make sense for arrows to come out of your chest, and only makes sense for a cyborg or robot for traps to do so.

226 animations to make every time you want to add another emanation point. That is a LOT of work. Head/eye emanation would be 200 or so if you subtract the powers that already start from there (Sonic, Psychic and X Ray Eyes)

I never said it was impossible. Some of it probably IS easy. Some of it probably is NOT. Regardless of how easy or hard it is, it is still a LOT of work, for something that a large chunk of the playerbase will probably not care about. 226 animations for a chest emanation point for every power it makes sense for. How many people would actually USE that option? Probably not enough to justify the time spent on coding it.

It took what, 3-4 months for them to do Dual Blades? Dual Blades is NINE animations and it took them that long. Now imagine how long it would take to do 226. I am presuming here that the animations and power effects were coded seperately and then combined when both were finished, which is the most logical way to do it. That doesn't mean I'm correct though. How long have they been working on I16? Since, what, April or so? 4 months, doing animations for 2 sets, along with everything else they are doing. And that's with all the extra help they recently hired.

It is pretty clear that there is a significant amount of time involved in coding animations. What you're asking for is a staggering amount of work for something that would be received lukewarm by the majority of the playerbase, and it just doesn't make sense to do it right now.

It seems to me that it is silly to think that 9 animations that are only a few seconds long takes 4 months. what takes a long time is balancing and such. The animation even if the team is using no special software and manually doing every piece of animation it couldnt possilby take that long to animate 9 animations. And that is even less possible to take that long when you use more modern tech that allows for this stuff to be done super quick, like motion capture.

Also for like a chest beam type animation there is only so many ways that that can be done and the powers themselves are particle effects so using the same animation for a number of powers would happen too.

As far doing it for every power I wouldnt mind that they come out slowly and not for every power... kinda like power proliferation, just do 1 or 2 sets at a time, or do it as booster packs. Give us some new animations for powers instead of emotes that noone really uses. The animations I think would sell better in conjunction with the costume choices.

Don't forget x3 for Huge, Female, and Male.