All Things Art - FX Edition

Just wanted to drop in quickly and let you know I’m still keeping up to date on this thread. (And not just me, but the other fulltime FX artist, too!) Thanks again for the great ideas! There are quite a few that have piqued our interest and we hope to start exploring them soon.

To answer a couple of questions:

SilverAgeFan and Mothers Love asked about our involvement with fog. If you’re talking about the fog, as in Dark Astoria fog, no, I believe these settings are determined by environment artists. But particle fog, like you see on the shores of Neutropolis, are all us. That particular zone was a great step forward in terms of environment effects, and we’re hoping to go in the same direction with future updates.

Vanden asked if FX artists implement their effects as well as create them. With powers, we need help from designers, but after they do the initial set-up, we can change the power as we please. Most other things, like environment effects, auras, and costume change emotes, we can handle ourselves (but occasionally have another artist’s help on, especially for environment). In terms of adding effects options to procs, or customizing proc-based powers like the Incarnate – Interface set, unfortunately, we do not have that capability at this time.

And thank you, Razorstrike, for the lovely mock-ups! There are some great ideas in here. We’ll see what we can do.

Thanks so much for listening to all of our crazy rambling tunnel rat!

In your replies you talk about lots of cool things you can do with auras, and especially the new trails. You even seem to imply that you have at least partially working versions already made. So what is it that shrinks all these ideas down to the slow trickle of stuff that actually comes out?

For instance if you wanted to take half a dozen simple trail auras (I'm sure there are more than enough suggestions in here) and get them into the game as soon as possible what would stop you? Would it just be too much work for effects? (I realize that you guys do much more than just auras) Or does marketing or some other group prevent it or slow it down?

If something is easy to get into the game I for one would love to have it, even if it's something silly that only a few people would ever use, like leaving a trail of letters, or having turtles swirling around you.

AURA REQUEST

It would have to be done as a "Head" Aura variant, but other than that I can think of no reason why this shouldn't be possible.

In anime (especially), when a character is Dead (or just *really* depressed), you'll often see two "ghostly" flame balls slowly burning hovering above a character's shoulders. The proper name for these is Hitodama and they're will'o'the'wisp-like and are often depicted as being either blue or green.

Would it be possible to create an anime-styled Hitodama "aura" for CoH, which could be tinted with the Bright and Dark palettes? Would be very in character for both Necromancer and Demon Summoning Masterminds, as well as some Ninja Masterminds, and plenty of other anime themed (or just plain Japanese) character concepts.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

I believe the "Wisps" aura is what you're looking for

No ... the Wisps Aura (as you cite) is quite explicitly *NOT* what I'm asking for. That's a smoky puff-ball that goes shooting around through space. I'm talking about a hovering candle flame the size of your fist that animates as a flame (without the candle) and is positioned *over* the shoulders between jawline and ear height. That is most definitely *NOT* the Wisps Aura that we already have.

And just so you know, Tunnel Rat ... Hitodama flames for dead characters in anime have been animated, on more than one occasion, with only 2 frames so as to give minimal movement (and because it's cheaper). If you have any questions about this sort of thing, I'm *SURE* that someone on staff is enough of an anime fan to supply you with clips from anime to look at as reference for what I'm talking about. It's a fairly standard anime trope used as a cue to either indicate Death State ... or Depression so deep the character wishes they were dead.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Thank you, Tunnel Rat

I have a question regarding priorities: How high of a priority do you consider the fixing of bugs with existing visual effects, such as those that exist with a few custom powers, vs. working on brand new effects?

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.

Any chance you can change the colour black on aura's.so the colour black is shown as black and not invisible almost as it currently is?

However, I DO like that black is almost invisible when it comes to coloring some powers.. unobtrusive force field bubbles, ahhh.

What we need is a color pallet revamp so we can have colors seprate from intensity, but yeah I know coding time, swamped, would like to but.. we can dream though, right?

I'll third the "intensity slider" thing. If it's doable, it'd be great!

A couple of things.

When moving forward in travel power customization and the creation of auras that trigger on certain movement type, please do not treat them as an either/or thing. In other words don't think "Movement auras are a poor man's travel pool customization, they'll be happier with just TP customization when it comes"

Say for example you give us the option to make flight activate and cause your character to fly around in a streak of fire, a concept that could, easily be represented with an aura set to legs and triggered on flight. So they are the same thing right? no, not right, maybe the player in question would want it to be "MOAR FIERY!" and would double up on their fiery flying auras or maybe they want it to trigger every time they move, or just when jumping and flying. Maybe you give us the option to be wreathed in electricity, but the player wanted electricity AND energy on flight. If/when(and I'm sure someone is working on it in someway) we get pool and travel pool customization, I'd hope auras that trigger on movement don't get neglected. All the current options would be fantastic as is, in addition to an option to set to feet, legs and lower body(please remember all the auras and attachment points for them we have+all of these when doing this). Please keep in mind these options.

Running
Jumping
Flying
Running/jumping/flying
Running/Flying
Jumping/Running
Jumping/flying


And now a small thing.The Steampunk Victorian aura has the option to set to lower body which includes head, chest, and arms as well as lower body. and I'd really like it to be available to the other auras as well.

Finally an odd request. Can we get toggle aura defense powers(Scrappers,Stalkers,Tankers, Brutes, certain epic powers) powers that only cover certain areas of the body? I think it'd be cool to have Plasma Sheild cover the legs and Fire Shield cover the upper body, they wouldn't overlap each other as much and could yield a neat candle effect with the lower being a brighter color than the top. The different types of electric aura powers would look fantastic arcing in different ways on different parts of the body as well.

How about a grappling powerset. IT will be the best thing ever

I was thinking: now that you seem to have found a way to change animations to powers, is it possible to change combat stances?
For example:

The Issue 20.5 auras look terrific:

The new Binary and Pixel auras look interesting. Will need to see them in action to really get an idea if I can put them to use. But they are at the very least an unexpected turn in art direction and definitely hit on a couple points currently NOT represented by any existing aura suites.

The rainbowpath looks great. Curious to see if it is in any way tintable to bias emphasis on a portion of the spectrum or at least determine alpha levels. Eager to play with this one.

On a path aura related note: Tunnel Rat, PM me with your demands for what sort of bribe it might take to get you to add a path component to the Origins Pack toxic vapor aura--thinking toxic goo globs, akin to how Shivan "flesh" is depicted in game.

I have been wanting better skin looks to do my Crystal, Metal, and Energy being concepts. I looked at DCUO and saw skin was its own catagory and went that makes sense. Separating the costume from the skin would be nice.
That way my rock monsters who are not tanker/brute based Stone AT can wear any costume they want over the rock skin.

Other things I would like to see is more tall boot options for women. Would be nice to get a tall boot for men like Capt Britain. I see NPC talk boot options that would be nice to unlock. 200 Sucubi for that tall boot let me at them. More tall boot patterns.

Lastly patterns that are available for tops and bottoms have no matching option for feet.

Some ideas:

Costume Change Emotes: I'd like to see some costume change emotes that are more tech-oriented than the ones we have now. A couple examples:

-Orbital Armor-Up: Character goes into a power activation stance (I'm thinking like the 'hands out at sides concentrating' stance), and glowing pieces of 'armor' begin to orbit around them. The pieces orbit closer, finally attaching to the character model in a bright glow or flash, effecting the costume change.

-Orbital Armor-Down: The above in reverse- Character goes into a power activation stance. Body glows, and glowing armor pieces spin or simply fly off of the character, effecting the costume change.

Some non-tech ones:

-Elemental Change: We can pretty much do this already using powers, but it'd be nice to have them as emotes- Character covers themselves with ice/fire/rock/mist/whatever, and the element breaks off/disperses, effecting the costume change.

-Phone Booth: Little nostalgia trip for some of us- Character dashes into a suddenly convienent phone booth, and dashes back with a full costume change.

Judgement Powers: I'd personally like to see more Judgement powers that fit in with existing character power options, only taken to the Nth degree. Some examples:

-Eye Beam Megablast: Basically, this would be Laser Eye Beams with a wide radius, Core branch leading to standard crit damage, Radial to a -def or resist debuff or maybe a Disorient.

-Storm of Arrows: This would be like multiple waves of Rain of Arrows in rapid succession. VERY rapid succession. *SHOOM SHOOM SHOOM*

-Rain of Shuriken: Character goes into a crouch, hands crossed and going to their belt. They stand up (I'm actually picturing something like the 'Sweeping Strike' animation for Dual Blades) and release a cone of shuriken at the target (similar to the cone from the Cryo Judgement powers, only with sharp pointy things). The secondary affects from the Shuriken powers could be anything, but I'm thinking a mag 4 Disorient, maybe. Or as an alternate...

-Bankshot Shuriken: Character throws a number of shuriken at a single target, and they richochet off to strike other enemies. The richocheting would be somewhat similar to the branching from the Ion powers.


If I think of anything else, I'll post again. Thanks to both my fellow players for inspiration, and Tunnel Rat and the 'mystery animator' for letting us give them ideas.

It would be just so cool if the Pain Domination powers World of Pain, Anguishing Cry, Painbringer, and Conduit of Pain had lasting VFX considering they are lasting buff/debuff powers.

Are you going to gate this stuff, too? And limit it to 50s?

What about repurposing the Loyalty emotes for Archetype? Scrapper Loyalty, etc.