All Things Art - FX Edition
By
AkuTenshiiZero,
Posted on: 2011-05-11 15:59 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Not sure if it's the correct place but as it's to do with power effects I'll post my request here.
I would really like to see an Icicle option for Spines and Thorny Assault. The Crystals option is ok as a work-around but it doesn't have the pastel palette that the Ice sets use which makes it really difficult to match up. It won't do part cold damage but that doesn't really matter considering you can get elemental shields for Shield Defence.
On a safeguard mission last night got to thinking:
Any way we could get a trail aura equivalent of the $$$ particle effect that surrounds the fleeing bank robbers? Seems like it'd be a funny aura for characters. Especially when set to movement only.
Not sure if this was mentioned already but here goes.
Fire blast would be extra awesome if we could get the FX option to shoot pumpkin heads like the Fir Blog do. That is all.
Fire and ice shields have been commented on as effects that block character outfits. There's actually two options already available for alternate effects that are more subtle. It's surprising that one of the most obnoxious powersets in the game, Demon Summoning, has one of these. The aura from the Ember Demon has a variant of the Ember Shield that's small and rather nicely done. The effect for ice shields could be pulled from the small crystal effect of Frostwork.
The original effects should be kept by those who want them but the more subtle effects would probably be best as default for newly created characters.
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I like that idea!|
Originally Posted by SilverAgeFan
On a safeguard mission last night got to thinking:
Any way we could get a trail aura equivalent of the $$$ particle effect that surrounds the fleeing bank robbers? Seems like it'd be a funny aura for characters. Especially when set to movement only. |
And it would be great combined with the backpack-full-of-money costume piece that they'll make for us as well, right right?
Seriously though, that is a nice idea to include as an aura!
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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I would seriously kill for more subtle effect on both those powersets. A nice, sparkly snowflake aura would be fine and not turn other people's characters into rock candy!
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Originally Posted by Zamuel
Fire and ice shields have been commented on as effects that block character outfits. There's actually two options already available for alternate effects that are more subtle. It's surprising that one of the most obnoxious powersets in the game, Demon Summoning, has one of these. The aura from the Ember Demon has a variant of the Ember Shield that's small and rather nicely done. The effect for ice shields could be pulled from the small crystal effect of Frostwork.
The original effects should be kept by those who want them but the more subtle effects would probably be best as default for newly created characters. |
TR thanks for taking my question on today's USTREAM.
Alot of us Granite form Stone Tankers have wanted customization of Granite for a long time.
You mentioned that it is now possible to customize Granite with the caveat that it may change the look. Can you discuss this?
My vote is for the customization! I'm tired of the same old form I've had for years.
"It is that balance, the ground between EB and AV, where the PvP struggle should exist. Where a 1v1 becomes a struggle of equals, and 1vMany gives the benefit to the 1."
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It'd be cool to have flight auras. They're like combat auras only they turn on when you fly. As part of this you could just remove the FX for the current flight powers, as far as is appropriate.
Atomic Aura when flying would be pretty boss, you gotta admit.
I got home from work like 10-15 minutes after Colin and Tunnel Rat got done with their "Wiggle the Granite!" show, but I just finished watching the recording of their timeslot this afternoon.
And yes, it must be said ... Tunnel Rat has way more CUTE power, in person, than anyone should ever be allowed to have on their own! I just hope she didn't marry someone named MARTy (although the "Honey Badger" stuff implies she didn't). So ... Tunnel Rat and Synapse get my votes for Best UStream Guests.
Oh and that guy with Tunnel Rat who did animations was really cool too. Invite him back another time to talk about stuff. I just wish I could have gotten home earlier to ask him some questions about VEAT animations for Crab Soldiers and how their backpack legs move/aim when doing things like Ninja Run.
Anyway ...
Tunnel Rat, as far as replacing Granite's costume animation and stuff ... it's hard to think of how NOT looking like you've just joined the Devouring Earth would be a "bad thing" for the power. The best thing that you could do though is to give people some "rough" ideas of what you're thinking of doing (preferably in picture form) so as to let people make comparison judgements and be able to work with you on the same "page" for any sort of discussion of an Evolved Granite Look.
So "yay!" for wanting to open up a dialogue on this subject! 
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
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lol! ^_^
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Originally Posted by McNum
Like this? Power Xtreme!
I'd love to get a Centurions style costume change, even if I have very few characters that'd use it. I used to watch that cartoon all the time as a kid, so cheesy, so blatantly a toy commercial, so awesome. |
Can we get Poison (for corruptors) noxious gas to be color tintable? It seems so pointless to have the entire set be one color, except for the one that's likely to always be on. Further, Poison without color tint is just plain ugly to me.
This sole thing drives me away from the Poison set for a corruptor, knowing I'm going to hate how I look later on.
Is the new "black paperdoll" effect for dual pistols/dimensional shift intentional?
If so, allow me to register my dislike 
I really liked the pale/blur effect. The black plastic person echo is super creeeeepy.
Hi guys! First off, thanks for all the fantastic footage and information on Dr. Who! Looks like I have another TV show to get into (maybe after I see Ghostbusters 2). :P And as always, it was great fun to talk to many of you during our last impromptu Ustream!
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You can have this RITE NAO! With I21's launch, Boils has a Head and Head and Arms option. (The Feathers aura should also have a light version.) I omitted it initially because I couldn't imagine anyone wanting boils on just their heads. Then I saw your awesome character concept and I was enlightened. |
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
Also... I have to ask... Slime and Boils auras for Heads and/or Eyes, pretty please???
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Sorry about the wait on this one. Unfortunately I checked it in too late to make the I20.5 patches. I can understand your request for a Slime head aura, but unfortunately with the very vertical shape and movement of the sprites involved, they would either be obscured by or clip noticeably with the head.
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Originally Posted by SilverAgeFan
What about some dragon ink tattoos thrown into that holographic/form-fitting aura category as well? Threw the Victorian decor chest aura on a character with a jacket and just love watching it roll across the back, like some strange magic biker jacket. Makes me think the Tsoo inkmen if they get targeted for a revamp could use a combat-chest dragon ink aura to great effect.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Long before he left, Christopher Bruce, AKA Back Alley Brawler spoke at length about weapon auras and essentially discarded that particular idea as unworkable. The way he explained it, adding auras to weapons would require that every weapon-and-aura pairing to have its own copy of said weapon, producing both humongous weapon lists that become cluttered and constituting a maintenance nightmare. Do you have a solution to this problem via new tech, or are you just considering rolling with it anyway?
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I wouldn't call it new tech, though maybe a new technique. I believe the solution would be similar to what we did for Path Auras, which activate with an indicated animation state. If each weapon has its own animation state, the need to add an unwieldy number of options in the menu may be eliminated.
I agree with BaBs that having to implement all those menu options would be a deal-breaker. I'll spend some time on this and see what's possible.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If I had the choice, I would make all of my sprites non-transparent in their interiors as I simply prefer monolithic uniform dense single colours.
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Unfortunately, I don't think an opacity slider is going to help you with this. The reason many fully saturated hues are transparent is that they are mid or low value colors. This basically means that if you were to convert them to grayscale, they would appear to be gray or dark gray. With additive particles (particles that add light to the scene), the only truly opaque value is white. Anything less bright than white will have some degree of transparency. So an additive blue, for example, cannot be opaque, and will always be influenced by colors in the background.
There are ways around this, such as setting additive particles in front of nonadditive particles. Pyronic does this, which makes the colors brighter and less influenced by the background. However, most of the older effects use purely additive colors. If I get the opportunity to make alternate effects for some of these additive sets, I'll take an approach closer to what we did with Pyronic.
On the more broad subject of the possibility of an opacity slider, if the time involved is anywhere near the time we needed for color customization, I'm afraid the answer will be no. I don't feel it adds enough to the game to justify that scale of time commitment, especially with the growing possibility of implementing a way to suppress other players' effects. If you're having trouble changing the opacity of your powers with the current system, I'll leave you with a good rule of thumb. For bright sets, choose colors from the left side of the palette for increased transparency, and for dark sets, choose whitish colors.
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Originally Posted by Redlynne
The best possible "replacement" of FX for Hasten would be to snag Synapse's signature movement blur effect and simply apply that to characters.
Trouble is, I don't know how "deeply hardcoded" Synapse's signature movement blur aura effect is. Maybe Tunnel Rat could tell us? |
Something like the Synapse aura is simple enough to implement for players. It can't be custom-tailored to the pattern of your costume like Synapse's is, but it can certainly be color customizable with one color as an aura, or with two colors as a theoretical alternative to Speed pool power effects.
Feycat - Just saw your post before I posted. The dark, opaque afterimages in the Dual Pistols attacks and Dimension Shift emote are the result of a bug. This will be fixed and reverted to the original look in an upcoming patch.
In other news, I expressed on the last Ustream marathon that I believed Granite Armor could be made customizable. I'll be devoting some of my free time to exploring this possibility. The trade-off would be that the Devouring Earth model is done away with, and replaced with a more generic-looking model that is placed over the character's body, similar to the rest of the Stone Armor powers.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this trade-off. Thanks to those who have already posted their opinions!
Tunnel Rat, this is a crazy idea, and may take a huge amount of work, but....
For Illusion Control, would it be possible to add customization for Phantom Army and Decoy that made the pets (based on your selection) Doppelgangers, semi-transparent Doppelgangers, or Dark Doppelgangers (the all-black ones, like in the Posi TF)?
@Roderick
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That would make the set even more playable (im shallow I know). Plus this option would add more depth to characters with tech, magic, and ninja themes.
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Originally Posted by Roderick
Tunnel Rat, this is a crazy idea, and may take a huge amount of work, but....
For Illusion Control, would it be possible to add customization for Phantom Army and Decoy that made the pets (based on your selection) Doppelgangers, semi-transparent Doppelgangers, or Dark Doppelgangers (the all-black ones, like in the Posi TF)? |
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Clever solution |
Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
I wouldn't call it new tech, though maybe a new technique. I believe the solution would be similar to what we did for Path Auras, which activate with an indicated animation state. If each weapon has its own animation state, the need to add an unwieldy number of options in the menu may be eliminated.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that pretty much what Build Up does for weapons sets already?This does raise a counter-question, however: Does that mean that these auras would be universal between all weapons? I ask this for the same reason as above - Build Up. The powers "aura-like" effect takes on the shape and size of the Legacy weapons. These are both oversized and somewhat specific. It's rarely telling for swords, but I have a recent example with Battle Axe: When using the Vanguard Axe, the Build Up aura shows up very off-model. The reason is because the Battle Axe Build Up aura shares the shape of the Legacy Battle Axe, which is a double-headed axe. The Vanguard axe, however, is a single-headed axe, yet the aura appears to describe a second head on the reverse side.
If you make auras separate from weapons, doesn't that run the risk of having those auras be very off-model for the weapons they're supposed to be used with? For sowrds, some are broaders, some curved and some are small. For axes, not all have two heads and some of them are curved, as ell. For War Mace, some maces are very short and some are actually hammers with large heads not consistent with the Legacy War Mace morning star ball.
I don't mean to shoot down my own suggestion (wouldn't that be ironic
), but the actually is a concern of mine. I wonder if it's not possible to rig weapons like Shields. In fact, they already are rigged like shields in the new editor when they weren't in the old one. As such, I wonder if it's possible to add auras as a weapon detail like the spikes on the Targe, the skull head on the Tribal Shield and the emblem on most others. Or would creating one aura per weapon be considered too much work even without the UI bloat?Finally, if the decision is made to go with a single aura for every weapon class, will be you be trying to make it big enough to fit most weapons and trusting us to just not use it with weapons it doesn't fit or simply disabling it on off-model weapons?
I apologise if these are all technical questions that we really shouldn't worry about.
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Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
Unfortunately, I don't think an opacity slider is going to help you with this. The reason many fully saturated hues are transparent is that they are mid or low value colors. This basically means that if you were to convert them to grayscale, they would appear to be gray or dark gray. With additive particles (particles that add light to the scene), the only truly opaque value is white. Anything less bright than white will have some degree of transparency. So an additive blue, for example, cannot be opaque, and will always be influenced by colors in the background.
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Speaking of which, would it be possible for you or one of your colleagues to one day make a guide to colour transparency in City of Heroes? I have some vague idea of how to predict which colours will be transparent on what backgrounds, but I spent days reading up on it and I still get my additive colours wrong as often as I get them right. Questions like "Does the game calculate everything in greyscale or does it use RGB or CYM?" and "When are primary colours more transparent and when are they less?" come to mind, among others. Considering this is not part of the game's combat and reward balancing, having us know the ins and outs shouldn't give anyone a real advantage (unless we count wisdom and skill
) to know this.Obviously, it's a question of time and inclination and not at all something we have any right to demand or expect, but I still feel it would be VERY helpful. I, myself, have had to explain additive and subtractive colours to people before, and considering how little I know about the subject, it's been the blind leading the blind a lot of the time.
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Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
There are ways around this, such as setting additive particles in front of nonadditive particles. Pyronic does this, which makes the colors brighter and less influenced by the background. However, most of the older effects use purely additive colors. If I get the opportunity to make alternate effects for some of these additive sets, I'll take an approach closer to what we did with Pyronic.
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In the word of the poet: WANT!!!
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Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
In other news, I expressed on the last Ustream marathon that I believed Granite Armor could be made customizable. I'll be devoting some of my free time to exploring this possibility. The trade-off would be that the Devouring Earth model is done away with, and replaced with a more generic-looking model that is placed over the character's body, similar to the rest of the Stone Armor powers.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this trade-off. Thanks to those who have already posted their opinions! |
I don't know if that makes me biassed and my opinion less valid (a point I wouldn't contest), but what you suggest sounds like a huge improvement.
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And, wow... That's all I have for now
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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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It wouldn't necessarily have to fit over your current costume, would it? Just have the player become transparent like with Power Surge.
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Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
In other news, I expressed on the last Ustream marathon that I believed Granite Armor could be made customizable. I'll be devoting some of my free time to exploring this possibility. The trade-off would be that the Devouring Earth model is done away with, and replaced with a more generic-looking model that is placed over the character's body, similar to the rest of the Stone Armor powers.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this trade-off. Thanks to those who have already posted their opinions! |
Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.
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Would it be possible to implement the non-DE version of Granite as an alternate animation/effect, or does it have to be one or the other?|
Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
In other news, I expressed on the last Ustream marathon that I believed Granite Armor could be made customizable. I'll be devoting some of my free time to exploring this possibility. The trade-off would be that the Devouring Earth model is done away with, and replaced with a more generic-looking model that is placed over the character's body, similar to the rest of the Stone Armor powers.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this trade-off. Thanks to those who have already posted their opinions! |
i'd prefer a more generic version that doesn't completely replace the costume, but i can understand the point of view of the players who like the current version. i've known several players who used the current version of Granite Armor to make characters who would transform from a petite character into hulking masses of rock and i can understand them not wanting to lose that ability.
Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
Could we get an Aura, which looks like the Rocket Boots, just that it would work with fly and jump/superjump?
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Whereas, I, on the other hand find Granite Armor to be the -only- armor in the entire set I don't hate the look of. I would be very disappointed to see it go.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
My thoughts: Go for it. I've always, always, ALWAYS hated the Quarry model swap, with its gimp toe and funny head and perpetually extended middle finger. Even without power customization, I'd still want to see the Granite Armour model go away. On the downside, transforming my character into a giant monster of solid rock was fun, and it was the cornerstone - if you'll pardon the pun - of one of my signature characters. On the upside, the existing model is terribad and I would not be sad to see it go for a moment.
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(Unless the new Granite was super-duper, blindingly awesome.)
@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
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BaBs suggested this a while ago and dropped it for discussion. That became a HUGE thread with opinions and suggestions all over the place. |
Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
In other news, I expressed on the last Ustream marathon that I believed Granite Armor could be made customizable. I'll be devoting some of my free time to exploring this possibility. The trade-off would be that the Devouring Earth model is done away with, and replaced with a more generic-looking model that is placed over the character's body, similar to the rest of the Stone Armor powers.
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It was not pretty.
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This thread? http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=190820|
Originally Posted by Tormentoso
BaBs suggested this a while ago and dropped it for discussion. That became a HUGE thread with opinions and suggestions all over the place.
It was not pretty. |
My opinion is still the same as it was then, I much prefer the current Granite, especially since it is one of the few transformations in the game. Being able to go from normal sized person to living monolith is a big part of my stone brute.
If you do decide to change it, please make it completely cover the character, including the head. The current stone armors make me feel like I slapped play-doh on an action figure
There are three flowers in a vase, the third flower is green.
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Pretty much this. Not being able to use granite armor the way it currently is would break the concept for my stone tank. Which would basicly turn my tank into a small cottage >.>
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Originally Posted by Strigadi
I much prefer the current Granite, especially since it is one of the few transformations in the game. Being able to go from normal sized person to living monolith is a big part of my stone brute.
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That's not a trade-off, that's a bonus |
Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
In other news, I expressed on the last Ustream marathon that I believed Granite Armor could be made customizable. I'll be devoting some of my free time to exploring this possibility. The trade-off would be that the Devouring Earth model is done away with, and replaced with a more generic-looking model that is placed over the character's body, similar to the rest of the Stone Armor powers. |
Trouble is, I don't know how "deeply hardcoded" Synapse's signature movement blur aura effect is. Maybe Tunnel Rat could tell us?
/em puppy dog eyes