All Things Art - FX Edition

Now with the new trail auras added to the game with I20.5...
We really need an option to turn off some FX like:

Power pools: Hasten, superspeed, maneuvers, etc...
I want to use superspeed with the new electric trail aura, but without the golden cloud of fire of course...
Same for fly and, lets say rainbow aura. Just turn off FX for pools or give us an option to do so. That way we can handle our character design much better.
Teammates buffs: Sometimes is just to much stuff VFX happening. An option to turn off teammates buffs would increase graphical performance and would be better for visuals, sometimes it doesnt make sense to have an Ice armor tanker surrounded by flames from thermal radiation.

I'm not sure if this is the thread for this suggestion but perhaps a costume change emote where the palyer grabs his chest like he is dieing, the player then falls to his knees, and he then explodes into a huge ball of fire/dark/ice/etc and the player then returns standing upright.

And for an aura idea how about a small angel and a small devil circling your chest. And maybe spinning ducks around your head like you've just been hit as a diffrent aura...Some of these may have been mentioned, if so I'm sorry.

Okay, finally had time to go do a bit of Search Fu and came up with the following pictures (courtesy of Sankaku Complex) that show Hitodama like what I was talking about before. Note that there's a lot of ... latitude ... in what can be done with these in terms of styling, and movement, even just in the anime/manga source art. They can either be "tethered" to characters (in which case there's often just two hanging around the shoulders), or can be free ranging (in which case, they're very will-o-the-wispy). They are however always shown as "fire" ... albeit a "ghostly flame" in appearance (ie. a dead person's soul).

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

The four new auras shown during the uStream look great. Love the boils option. My toxic villain will too!

Here's a new aura suggestion for y'all: arcane tomes. The players head or chest is circled by one to three books, open but levitating, pages fluttering as they circle. As an option, every so often, a wispy tendril wanders up from the book and into the players head. Think a reverse of how one of the Potter films depicted the extraction of memories from various wizard's heads.

Playing around with the Ascension Radiance pieces on the Beta server now, and I LOVE them! one thing I want to put out there though for a future release: the inclusion of a 'combat aura' version of the Ascension glowing pieces, one that activates once you go into your combat stance, and disappears when you come out of it. Like how the Alpha aura, for instance, now has an 'always on' option and a 'combat' option. I think that would really seal the Deal on these parts for a lot of people. Dont know how feasible it is but I think it would be perfect!

Not sure if this has been asked for, but I would like a super-subtle eye glow aura. I mean, so subtle that you can barely tell it's there. I have alot of characters that are 'super normals' or whose powers shouldn't really affect their appearance that much. It might also be nice for the RPers or others who have 'secret identity' costumes, to give a subtle hint that the character is more than they seem to be.

Didn't read the whole thread, so I don't know if it's been addressed already.

Please let us recolor the power effects for Focus and Shockwave in the Claws set.

I use the Vanguard Claws and it would be nice to be able to color my power effects to match the blades.

Regarding Dual Auras...

A couple of nice options that this could have would be:

Omega Eye Aura + Omega Full Body Combat Aura
(So glowing eyes normally and full body w/glowing eyes in combat.)

Thunderhead Body W/Eyes + 'Incarnate' Thundercloud Trail Aura
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May I offer a (complex) suggestion to get around excessive auras:

Duplicate the auras into two lists...

If the auras were provisioned 'Primary' and 'Secondary' then have any active 'Primary' override an active 'Secondary' on the same area.
Thus each body area in the secondary aura could be overridden by it's primary counterpart.

Head, Eyes, Breath, Body, Chest, Wings, Fists, Legs, Trail. (And maybe Tail?)
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Blue Aura Eye Secondary + Red Eye Combat Aura Primary

On a robotic character (for example) giving them blue glowing eyes until they enter combat at which point their eyes would go red (not purple) as the primary aura would take priority for the eyes for the duration of combat, in other words whilst the primary combat aura was active, outside combat the primary being a combat aura is inactive, thus allowing the secondary to take back over and restoring the blue eye aura.

The new auras on the Ascension armor makes me thing that the Combat Auras could be expanded, and well. I would like to see an options added for Combat auras that animates like the H.U.D. except is for the whole body. It would give a great energy armor feel, versions could be done that have about ever origin theme.

I mentioned this briefly in the "Incarnate Grind Incentives" Feedback thread, but I thought I'd add this here as well since it's more a suggestion for something new, based on something just revealed:

Bubbles Aura. The bubble part of the Bubble path aura looks friggin' awesome, but the steamy "mud pots" ground effect... not so much. It would be great to have Bubbles not only as a path, but also as full aura set with all the options that entails (combat, body, hands, head, etc). I don't need the steamy mud pots with it, just the bubbles floating everywhere. And if it had options for many bubbles or few bubbles... gravy!

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After going back and playing through Praetoria; I'll reiterate that Paragon and the Isles need some revamping on the FX side as well as the overall structure.

Building (and other structural) lighting, street lighting, day/night conversion, etc.


Trees and other foliage are too rigid; loosen them up a bit.

Thanks for the continuing ideas and suggestions, guys! I've addressed a couple below, but don't panic if I haven't mentioned your specific request - we are reading and noting all of them.

(And while I can't comment on specifics for new systems like dual-auras/ dual-color auras, and a way to turn off certain power effects, I want to at least acknowledge that I've seen them and know you want them. Generally, they'd require a significant chunk of programming time, and our programmers are absolutely swamped for the time being. We won't forget about these requests, though.)

On a sidenote, a couple posters are asking for things like character textures, stances and animation-driven emotes. They're great ideas, but not something the FX department is involved in. But we don't want good ideas to go to waste! Please post them in one of Noble Savage's "All Things Art" threads so the right people can see them.

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Originally Posted by Nieromaru 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?

Great question, Nieromaru! We typically release our auras and other FX goodies with new issues, or half issues like 20.5, and booster packs. There are lots of reasons for this, but one of the more important ones is that it makes the QA and publishing schedules much more manageable. New auras have to be viewed, evaluated and tested by these departments, and it's much more orderly to do this when a lot of other new stuff is going into the game, rather than trying to schedule according to the whims of a rogue FX artist.

Another factor is that FX time is shared by a lot of other tasks besides auras. We are constantly working on effects for new powers, villain groups, zones, cutscenes, storyarcs, etc. An issue full of new powers and content, like I20, doesn't always leave a lot of time to devote to auras. Still, we realize how important character customization is to our players, and we do schedule time for that. We just can't focus all our time on auras and nothing else!

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Originally Posted by Zyphoid The new auras on the Ascension armor makes me thing that the Combat Auras could be expanded, and well. I would like to see an options added for Combat auras that animates like the H.U.D. except is for the whole body. It would give a great energy armor feel, versions could be done that have about ever origin theme.

The Ascension Armor and Victorian Decor auras are the first auras to demonstrate some very exciting tech - FX geo that scales with physique to avoid clipping issues. We can do a lot with this new tech, and a decent energy armor aura is definitely on our wishlist.

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Originally Posted by ModernMyth Not sure if this has been asked for, but I would like a super-subtle eye glow aura. I mean, so subtle that you can barely tell it's there. I have alot of characters that are 'super normals' or whose powers shouldn't really affect their appearance that much. It might also be nice for the RPers or others who have 'secret identity' costumes, to give a subtle hint that the character is more than they seem to be.

Have you tried tinting one of the existing eye glows to black, or another dark color? Since the particles for most of the auras are additive, darker colors actually increase their transparency.

On the subject of eye auras, Goblin Queen (sorry, I can't find your post, but I've read it) has asked for eye glows that don't clip with hats. This can be a little tricky, since the tech that would usually push the glows in front of a hat's brim also pushes them behind the back of the head, when the character is viewed from the back.

Creating a very small eye aura may be the answer to both of your dilemmas, however. I'll keep it in mind for future auras.

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Originally Posted by SilverAgeFan 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.

Hahaha, no bribes necessary. I'd be curious to hear your feedback on the new Bubbles path aura, and whether this gets the job done.

For that matter, I'd love to hear everyone's feedback on the 20.5 auras, especially the path auras. It's the first time we've released a big batch of these, so I'd like to know your reaction to them.