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By "getting rid of weapon draw entirely", you mean have all drawn weapons act like a shield and the elemental weapons? (*poof!* it's there)
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Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
Well that and the 'stabbing-head-with-shield' factor.
FYI, we have seven combat modes:
So really looking at 12-16 animations per power, counting the varients for Male, Female, and Huge for Gun combat mode and doubling everything for Flight. To put that in perspective, that's basically a powerset. That's also not counting the massive bloat that would happen to our sequencers from having 5-7 versions of every power animation. I've actually looked at getting rid of weapon draw entirely, but even that is problematic. The system is very inflexible as far as different combat modes goes. |
@Roderick
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He actually stated many times that it was a lot of work, not that it was too hard. And every time you misquote him, he facepalms harder and harder. :P
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Originally Posted by Ad Astra
Has this "technical advice" ever been proven "wrong"? Sure it has - for years we told suggesters that Power Customization was too hard - based on a post from BaBs stating such.
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Hot damn would I ever love Katana/Regen without any weapon redraws.
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Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
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Ooh! Ooh! Want! Just make it so weapons pop up in your hands if you're already in range of the attack and let the draw animation play only when you can't actually attack at the moment. Please? |
Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
I've actually looked at getting rid of weapon draw entirely, but even that is problematic. The system is very inflexible as far as different combat modes goes.
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Obviously, Standard Code Rant applies, and I'm not sure you agree with the aesthetic of this, but in an ideal world, that's what I'd want to see.
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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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No! No! Better idea! Resolve to invent a time machine and also to travel back in time to December 1st, 2009 to give your past self the time machine, so you can travel back in time to when the system was being made to make sure it's more flexible! If you do that, your future self should appear with the time machine as soon as you make the resolution!
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Ooh! Ooh! Want! Just make it so weapons pop up in your hands if you're already in range of the attack and let the draw animation play only when you can't actually attack at the moment. Please?
Obviously, Standard Code Rant applies, and I'm not sure you agree with the aesthetic of this, but in an ideal world, that's what I'd want to see. |
Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.
I've never really had much of a problem with weapon redraw as a whole. I see why it it happens both from a programming and a aestetic point of view. I could live with it with only mild annoyance now and then.
But then, recently I rolled a random toon recently for an SG "Challenge" team and the powersets chosen for my toon, though working great together so far have really annoyed me, the primary and secondary cause redraw which makes absolutely zero sence to me at all...
I refer to the blaster secondary, Mental Manipulation. My toon is an AR/MM blaster and it just looks silly to me that she has to put her rifle away to attack someone with the power of her mind! Now I know it'd probably mean a fair bit of work, but I think this set needs a whole new set of animations. There are no punches or kicks that require the use of hands and/or feet so why the need for animations that require the weapons to me "put away" to work? So rather than doing a bunch of alternate animations like has been suggested by others in this thread, hope about a set of anims that can work equally as well for both armed and elemental blaster?
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.
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Because it is STILL an alternate animation. |
Originally Posted by St_Angelius
So rather than doing a bunch of alternate animations like has been suggested by others in this thread, hope about a set of anims that can work equally as well for both armed and elemental blaster?
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You have 9 animations with the gun drawn, 9 animations with the gun not drawn.
So, 18 animations. But it's not that simple. 18x2 for standing or flying = 36. 36x3 for body types = 108.
So 108 different animations JUST for AR/MM that would be necessary.
108 MORE animations for Archery (because Archery and Assault Rifle are not the same combat mode)
108 MORE animations when Dual Pistols comes out (because Dual Pistols has a different combat mode yet.
324 animations just for Mental Manipulation paired with AR, Archery, or Dual Pistols.
324 x 6 to silence the people who will complain that MM has no redraw but everything else does = 1,944 animations.
1,944 animations that need to be done. By hand. Just to remove redraw from ONE AT. That's a ridiculous amount of work.
Then add a whole helluva lot more when people complain that blasters don't have redraw, but every other AT still does. You're looking at upwards of 20,000 animations that would need to be done by hand to remove redraw from the game.
I'm just guessing here, but if they decided to do that we wouldn't see anything new for at least a couple years.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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How so problematic? Purely asking out of curiosity here.| I've actually looked at getting rid of weapon draw entirely, but even that is problematic. The system is very inflexible as far as different combat modes goes. |
Side question related to PM I sent a while back:
If claws and lefthand are subsets of Dual Wield, what's happening with Follow Up only alternating hands while hovering?
Is there a specific Claws-Followup-Fly animation that includes the alternating hand that doesn't exist as Claws-Followup-Normal?
Be well, people of CoH.
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Thanks for the information, it is very much appreciated.|
Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
Well that and the 'stabbing-head-with-shield' factor.
FYI, we have seven combat modes:
So really looking at 12-16 animations per power, counting the varients for Male, Female, and Huge for Gun combat mode and doubling everything for Flight. To put that in perspective, that's basically a powerset. That's also not counting the massive bloat that would happen to our sequencers from having 5-7 versions of every power animation. I've actually looked at getting rid of weapon draw entirely, but even that is problematic. The system is very inflexible as far as different combat modes goes. |
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Originally Posted by Vanden
No! No! Better idea! Resolve to invent a time machine and also to travel back in time to December 1st, 2009 to give your past self the time machine, so you can travel back in time to when the system was being made to make sure it's more flexible! If you do that, your future self should appear with the time machine as soon as you make the resolution!
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If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.
~Mary Engelbreit
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And your future self will have this sage advice: "Be excellent to each other!" |
Originally Posted by Vanden
No! No! Better idea! Resolve to invent a time machine and also to travel back in time to December 1st, 2009 to give your past self the time machine, so you can travel back in time to when the system was being made to make sure it's more flexible! If you do that, your future self should appear with the time machine as soon as you make the resolution!
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>
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"Durability is the quintessential super-power. " -- Sailboat
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And..."Party on, dudes!"
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Originally Posted by McBoo
And your future self will have this sage advice: "Be excellent to each other!"
> |
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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And when you facepalm with those gloves, it REALLY hurts. |
Originally Posted by CaptainMoodswing
He actually stated many times that it was a lot of work, not that it was too hard. And every time you misquote him, he facepalms harder and harder. :P
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The Mentor Project
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Until the NCSoft buyout, that technical advice *was* correct; it was the buyout and the additional resources injected into the dev team that changed that. And for the record, to the best of my knowledge BaB *stopped* saying anything about the feasibility of power customization shortly after that, and I starting advising people to back away from prior statements about feasibility (I had no knowledge at the time that the animation resources became available to do power customization, but I *did* know that resources seemed to become suddenly available to do other "impossible" things. Like Real Numbers, which is also why I terminated my participation in any thread regarding the lack of documentation in this game in November of 2007.)|
Originally Posted by Ad Astra
Has this "technical advice" ever been proven "wrong"? Sure it has - for years we told suggesters that Power Customization was too hard - based on a post from BaBs stating such. But that didn't mean that the answer about the difficulty of Powers Customization was incorrect at that time.
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As to what "we" know and don't know, what *I* know** is that it used to be a simple case of lack of resources that made eliminating things like weapon draw basically impossible. Today, its not a literal lack of resources but a matter of priority: it would take about as much work to eliminate weapon draw from all the sets as it would take to make several new powersets (I think BaB is underestimating above).
And it should now be common knowledge (because I did my best to explain this several times and BaB I think has done so a couple times as well) that there's no "special brawl technique." Brawl is basically just a case of using brute force to make animations for every possible special case and adjusting the bits and sequencers to line up correctly. As BaB references above, that's possible to do for every weapon power but would make the animation sequencers extremely unwieldy. I'm honestly not sure how BaB keeps it all working correctly as it is: it would drive me batty (and every once in a while he makes a mistake, and Elude starts playing the whirlwind animation when you're falling - which is an example of the massive number of corner cases the animation system has, and why its not a good idea to make even more of them without some method of managing them).
** I kid BaB a lot (and not planning on stopping now) but he's graciously helped me understand the animation system and what goes into it to a sufficiently high degree that I could probably rewrite most of it. Probably not the best tactical move for him because he can no longer dump the standard code rant on me anymore. In fact I've done it a couple times on him
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So what you're essentially saying is that they are probably not going to add more workload to the sequencers by changing something that is working acceptably at the moment?
And even with the additional resources they have, it will probably still be very time consuming to eliminate redraw in every existing instance of it in the game.
That's basically what I was getting at, but your post explained it better (probably because you have vastly more knowledge on the subject than I do)
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Well, A, in case BAB doesn't have a chance to answer it, what problems do you think he and the team will run into attempting to remove redraw completely?
My assumptions:
Each set has its own redraw animation, one each for each body type and fly vs normal
Dumping that animation means dumping every call to the animation
Example: Claws wielder using Air Superiority
Currently:
Mode: Claws; Attack: Swipe
Mode: Claws; Attack: Focus
Mode: Combat; Attack: Air Superiority
Slash gets queued, code recognizes change in combat mode, calls redraw animation for new mode
Mode: Claws; Redraw
Mode: Claws; Attack: Slash
That sound right? If so, what gets changed besides yanking the code that does the *mode change, weapon set in use, play redraw animation*? What problems might arise due to that?
Be well, people of CoH.
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| Has this "technical advice" ever been proven "wrong"? Sure it has - for years we told suggesters that Power Customization was too hard - based on a post from BaBs stating such. But that didn't mean that the answer about the difficulty of Powers Customization was incorrect at that time. |
Ya know, I've been chided a couple of times here for misquoting BaBs - but what I was really trying to say was that regular posters who quote "common knowledge" aren't just making stuff up to be mean to the poor innocent suggesters, trying to crush their dreams.
The "too hard" was regurgitated a lot as a paraphrase of what was actually said. The difference between "too hard" and "lots of work" basically comes down to the same thing when trying to evaluate the likelihood of a suggested change being implemented in the near term.
But as history has shown us, it did not eliminate it from happening ever at all.
Altoholic - but a Blaster at Heart!
Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
"You gave us a world where we could fly. I can't thank you enough for that."
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There are a lot of potential problems. I'll give BaB a clean shot at a smack-down by suggesting what I think is the critical issue, and letting him correct me with a big fat FAIL if I get it wrong.|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Well, A, in case BAB doesn't have a chance to answer it, what problems do you think he and the team will run into attempting to remove redraw completely?If so, what gets changed besides yanking the code that does the *mode change, weapon set in use, play redraw animation*? What problems might arise due to that?
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The reason weapon draw animations are played in the first place is to provide a relatively "neutral" starting point for all the other attack animations. Theoretically speaking, they could simply forgo the weapon draw animation and jump straight from the end of one attack to suddenly materializing the weapon *and* instantly relocating your limbs and body to the correct position. But BaB, as an animator, would probably rather smother you in your sleep to prevent you from ever suggesting it again than actually do that.
The problem isn't how easy or difficult it is to remove the animations themselves: the game would run along just fine with *no* animations and our characters just translocating around like static figurines while power effects randomly go off around us. So the literal answer to the question "how easy is it to remove weapon draw" is "easy: just cut the weapon draw animation to zero frames, and you're done." But to make it actually animation-sane would require massive work to figure out how to, in essence, replace what weapon draw does with something that doesn't require burning rooted frames.
I believe this is what BaB is referencing in his post: every attack (well, most of them) would have to have alternate "quickdraw" versions of their animations that was specific to each possible mode you could be in.
(The way this works now, every power has an "activate" sequence and an "initial" sequence. If the power requires a mode that you aren't in yet, the game executes "initial." If you are already in that mode, the game executes "activate." Its "initial" that plays the weapon draw animation, then transitions to playing the actual attack animation. In this way, BaB can make one weapon draw animation and nine attack animations for dual blades, and have the game figure out what to do under all eighteen possibilities for draw, or rather all 49 possible combinations of mode transition. Even *this* is somewhat of a hack, really, at least in my opinion).
Now, separate from all of that, there's the issue that modes are somewhat "hard-coded" into the game engine. They do things beyond what the "data" of the game instructs the game to do. Without switching modes in the normal way you'd get cases where you'd try to do Air Superiority while the Claws are still drawn, which might stab you in the face. Or you might come out of Air Superiority and attempt to slash someone with nothing but your fingernails.
So, keeping modes exactly as they are, you'd have an animation nightmare. Mess with the modes to try to simplify the animation headache, and you might be performing complex mode-surgery on the game engine. Either way, my guess is that the animations sequencers get either a little bit more complex or a lot more complex.
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I read an amusing theory once. It posited that a time travel machine would never exist because if it was invented, eventually someone somewhere would use it to go back and interfere with the creation of the machine. So it would essentially never stay invented.
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Originally Posted by SpecialDelivery
According to current popular theory, a time machine would not be able to travel back before the time machine had been invented. This is most unfortunate I know. Hopefully it will one day be proven wrong.
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Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.
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I think you missed the point of what I was saying. MM is a mental power, arms and legs, or any other part of the body need not move. Just do 1 set of animations that can be used reguardless of wether a weapon is in the hand or not. Not one for each weapon, because thematically, all you need to do is look at your target to "Think" your power to work.|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Because it is STILL an alternate animation.
You have 9 animations with the gun drawn, 9 animations with the gun not drawn. So, 18 animations. But it's not that simple. 18x2 for standing or flying = 36. 36x3 for body types = 108. So 108 different animations JUST for AR/MM that would be necessary. 108 MORE animations for Archery (because Archery and Assault Rifle are not the same combat mode) 108 MORE animations when Dual Pistols comes out (because Dual Pistols has a different combat mode yet. 324 animations just for Mental Manipulation paired with AR, Archery, or Dual Pistols. 324 x 6 to silence the people who will complain that MM has no redraw but everything else does = 1,944 animations. 1,944 animations that need to be done. By hand. Just to remove redraw from ONE AT. That's a ridiculous amount of work. Then add a whole helluva lot more when people complain that blasters don't have redraw, but every other AT still does. You're looking at upwards of 20,000 animations that would need to be done by hand to remove redraw from the game. I'm just guessing here, but if they decided to do that we wouldn't see anything new for at least a couple years. |
So a power anim that is more VFX than animation could be used across all combat modes rather than one for each!
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.
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Personally, I'd just settle for boxing and kick to get new animations. I'd love to see boxing get a glowless barrage one-two punch animation instead of the standard Jab-to-the-guy look.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.
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Are you actually suggesting that one way to eliminate the weapon redraw problem is to ask BaB to make all of the psionic powers that could be paired with a weapon set have animations that do nothing but make you glare at the target?|
Originally Posted by St_Angelius
I think you missed the point of what I was saying. MM is a mental power, arms and legs, or any other part of the body need not move. Just do 1 set of animations that can be used reguardless of wether a weapon is in the hand or not. Not one for each weapon, because thematically, all you need to do is look at your target to "Think" your power to work.
So a power anim that is more VFX than animation could be used across all combat modes rather than one for each! |
You're on your own on that one: I'm definitely not asking BaB to do that, whether he's on his meds or not.
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Wow! I check back to the thread to find BaBs and Arcanaville posted on it. I must have mentioned a doozy of a suggestion!
So official confirmation from BaBs states that removing redraw from one powerset is a powerset unto itself. That is a lot of work to do just to shave off a couple of seconds from an attack chain. I'm not sure what a sequencer does exactly but bloat is never a good sign anyway.
Isn't it always the way? An irritating niché problem that ends up requiring the same amount as a whole new powerset to fix even a little bit? I can very well understand why devs won't go back revamping zones left and right. If I had to choose new powersets and removing redraw from previous powersets, I would lean towards the new. BUT I would want those new sets to have minimal to no redraw issues, the best way to stop redraw issues is Prevention!
It's a very half n' half problem too. Most powerset combinations work perfectly with one another, and others, horribly. But those horrible combos aren't horrible enough to warrant the priority to fix them right away. We just have to either deal with it or have a large dry spell of no new content to get it done in a reasonable time-frame.
It's a big job, but I'm fairly certain a slow-release might still be feasible. Since we already have to workaround redraw issues, removing one instance of unnecessary redraws every patch would be a nice compromise. But if the sequencer bloat is a big issue, then perhaps redraw issues need to be put on the backburner until there's a really BIG dip in the development schedule. Which I doubt would happen considering the game has to have new stuff to play with to keep the attention of the audience.
But you never know, since most of the staff have been focused on the Going Rogue expansion this past year. Even if they wanted to eradicate redraw issue, most of the resources are pooled towards the expansion and it's just not sensible to divert any of it away until it's completed and released.
But regardless of the details, it's nice to hear that the issue is being thought about. Thanks for the heads-up BaBs, and your input Arcana!
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@Oneirohero
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On the one hand, that seems to hold true for everything in the game. It's rare I've seen a game which accounts for every odd, unexpected transition the player could imagine as much as this one does. A lot just snap between certain animations that aren't likely to be executed one after the other. That's GOOD. It makes the game look more polished and more professional.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The reason weapon draw animations are played in the first place is to provide a relatively "neutral" starting point for all the other attack animations. Theoretically speaking, they could simply forgo the weapon draw animation and jump straight from the end of one attack to suddenly materializing the weapon *and* instantly relocating your limbs and body to the correct position. But BaB, as an animator, would probably rather smother you in your sleep to prevent you from ever suggesting it again than actually do that.
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On the other hand, precedent to the contrary already exists. The Ninja Run stance allows you to fight, and does so with no animations or transitions of its own. If you attack while in it, you just morph into the start of your attack and end up in your respective combat mode until you move, at which point you return to Ninja Run mode. It's already in the game.
Lastly, and this is probably a stylistic argument, but I'm not actually against the slightly abstract act of weapons appearing in our hands AS we're swinging. This is a technique originally pioneered by Devil May Cry, which allowed Dante to switch between his guns and his sword with NO holster/draw animation in-between. One moment he's slashing like crazy, the very next his sword is gone and he's shooting guns. He didn't reach back to put the sword away, he didn't reach down to grab his guns, he's just switching them on the fly. Now, you'd think that would look bad, but it doesn't. It helps keep the action fast and combat smooth, so it's not actually all that obvious in the long run.
Personally, if it were up to me, I'd just put a simple transition between combat stances over the span of a few milliseconds and just key the weapon attack from there with the weapon quick-spawning right at the start. In fact, I have precedent for this - the Undead Slaying Axe on the Male model used to do just that when you were flying. I had a Broadsword Scrapper who could mix the axe like it were a regular attack because it played no draw. He just went from, say, Hack directly into Undead Slaying Axe like he were using the same weapon, only the weapon morphed in his hands. If we had that, I would not complain ever for a minute.
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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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Someone check me on this - but didn't BaBs already rework a bunch of animations to remove that "couple of seconds" OP is talking about here? I mean, even with zero Redraw, the time the attack takes is the time the attack takes.|
Originally Posted by Oneirohero
Wow! I check back to the thread to find BaBs and Arcanaville posted on it. I must have mentioned a doozy of a suggestion!
So official confirmation from BaBs states that removing redraw from one powerset is a powerset unto itself. That is a lot of work to do just to shave off a couple of seconds from an attack chain. I'm not sure what a sequencer does exactly but bloat is never a good sign anyway. Isn't it always the way? An irritating niché problem that ends up requiring the same amount as a whole new powerset to fix even a little bit? I can very well understand why devs won't go back revamping zones left and right. If I had to choose new powersets and removing redraw from previous powersets, I would lean towards the new. BUT I would want those new sets to have minimal to no redraw issues, the best way to stop redraw issues is Prevention! It's a very half n' half problem too. Most powerset combinations work perfectly with one another, and others, horribly. But those horrible combos aren't horrible enough to warrant the priority to fix them right away. We just have to either deal with it or have a large dry spell of no new content to get it done in a reasonable time-frame. It's a big job, but I'm fairly certain a slow-release might still be feasible. Since we already have to workaround redraw issues, removing one instance of unnecessary redraws every patch would be a nice compromise. But if the sequencer bloat is a big issue, then perhaps redraw issues need to be put on the backburner until there's a really BIG dip in the development schedule. Which I doubt would happen considering the game has to have new stuff to play with to keep the attention of the audience. But you never know, since most of the staff have been focused on the Going Rogue expansion this past year. Even if they wanted to eradicate redraw issue, most of the resources are pooled towards the expansion and it's just not sensible to divert any of it away until it's completed and released. But regardless of the details, it's nice to hear that the issue is being thought about. Thanks for the heads-up BaBs, and your input Arcana! |
The main issue with Redraw is the annoyance factor - it seems like the attacks are taking more time because of the visuals of Redrawing.
Or I could be totally misremembering that change.
As far as a gradual replacement/reworking of animations with just a few done in each release - I doubt that would go over very well. Can you just imagine the clamor on the boards and in Broadcast - "Waaah! DB got new animations and War Mace didn't! No Fair!"
And we all know it would happen, and so does BaBs.
Altoholic - but a Blaster at Heart!
Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
"You gave us a world where we could fly. I can't thank you enough for that."
It's also why there are very few working emotes with the shield out.
FYI, we have seven combat modes:
- Combat - unarmed combat mode, used by most powers
- Weapon - weapon in right hand. Broadsword, Mace, Axe, Arachnos Mace, etc.
- Dual Wield - Dual Blades, Dual Pistols
- *Lefthand - used by lefthand weapons. Archery and Katana
- *Claws - used by...hang on a sec...oh right, Claws.
- Shield - Shield and Shield Weapon combat mode
- Gun - two handed rifles. Assault Rifle and Robotics Mastermind
*Lefthand and Claws are a subset of Dual Wield. They generally share animations with Dual combat mode.So really looking at 12-16 animations per power, counting the varients for Male, Female, and Huge for Gun combat mode and doubling everything for Flight. To put that in perspective, that's basically a powerset. That's also not counting the massive bloat that would happen to our sequencers from having 5-7 versions of every power animation.
I've actually looked at getting rid of weapon draw entirely, but even that is problematic. The system is very inflexible as far as different combat modes goes.