Old weapons..for new powers?

Kind of been tossed around the forums alot, but I have yet to see anything said about this in-depth:

What are the chances of weaponless sets having the ability to swap animations to other methods of using the powers?

the classic example is Energy blast going to a gun I believe for a Sci-fi shooter concept, or from a wand/sword for a more magical concept.

Is there anything specifically preventing this/any words from devs (babs?) about this?

Yes. It can't be done with the way animations work, and that can't be changed without completely recoding the entire animations part of the game engine.

It CAN be done with the current engine, but it would probably require a whole new set of animations to match the weaponless effect to a weapon stance.

Which, according to BAB, is one heckuva lot of work, so it's probably quite unlikely.

OTOH, that is exactly why they didn't do power color customization for so long -- the amount of work necessary to implement it was prohibitive with the staff they had. And we did (eventually) get that, once they had the staff to do it. So maybe it's not as unlikely as one would think.

OTTT (On The Third Hand), some people would want a one-handed weapon, like a raygun, some would want a two-handed rifle version, and others want it from a wand, and others want it from a staff. And while you'd probably point a wand directly at the target, do you point the staff, too, or just raise it and it comes from the head of the staff? So now we're talking about 4, maybe even 5 complete new sets of animations. And we're back in the unlikely camp.

And what "weaponless" animations would you use? The Energy Blast ones have the "gathering force" at the start, which wouldn't make much sense with a weapon. Fire and Electric are only suitable for those sets. I think you'd actually need a new set of "beam" effects for the attacks.

But if it ever happened, I've got a couple of character concepts that would fit it perfectly.

Edit: Heh. Overlapped with Pork.

Look at Energy Assault again. All the blasts come from a closed horizontal fist. You'd have to change that to a hand holding a gun. And at least one has both fists side by side. Another change. And then Pork's better description of mine for the Wand/Staff conflicts.

I think that energy-type blast fired from an item is doable as an entirely new set.

I'd set it as fired from a ray-gun pistol and have multiple pistol weapons as options. Firing point a few inches above and in front of the clenched right hand. ("But I'm left handed!" Tough.)
Have one option be a wand held forward at a 45 degree angle, interesecting the tip of the wand with approximately the start point of the blast.
Have another option be a staff, held at the same angle, but held at about a third of the way from the top or at the middle.

This got me thinking since you guys were saying these blast come from one point and it would require all new animations for them what about an arm cannon for something like energy blast.



like this keep one arm normal for the sweep attacks like Energy Torrent and then for the other blast the 2 hands alreadys come together so it would just look like it's coming from the arm cannon.

@tripp: see the picture of samus for how the "building up of energy" would work XD

also, I know it would be easier to make just new sets for these options, but what would be the draw?

It would essentially be the same as it's base (energy blast) with a weapon, which raises two problems:

1) what if said new set played different than energy blast?

This would effect the more seasoned crowd a bit more, as they would look at old energy blast, and the new pew-pew gun version, and realize the pew-pew's animations give it better DPS or such...and then you start to see less old-school EB's running around


2) what if a player wanted to have some powers shot from their weapon, but others kept the same, or even to another weapon?

This is common for many famous characters, where some weak attacks they can do without their items, but rely on their mainstay for better attacks, and even a special item for the special attacks like Nova, etc.

I'd like to see the DB/ animations on claws/

The last word we had on this was from BaB a few weeks back.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler Quote: Originally Posted by LordSquigie The problem with that is new code, not new animations. You are talking about adding a weapon to non-weapon powers, which will also require drawing that weapon. Adding that option may or may not be easily doable. I believe it could be done, but it would have ramifications on balance. Adding customizeable weapons to power customization is another story.

Or you could just find temp powers that work and use those. Of course, if you try to build a character concept around the 'Crey Cryo Pistol' it's going to get very old Oro'ing that mission all the time...