I don't like the Vanguard claws...
By
Angelxman81,
Posted on: 2011-06-09 10:56 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I bugged BAB quite a bit about the misalignment of rularuu/vanguard blades. Oh well, I just don't use 'em. Matter of fact, I pretty much use nothing but the fury claws these days.
Be well, people of CoH.
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Hmm... Your Avatar still has Bill Z Bubba using the Legacy Hero claws |
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
I bugged BAB quite a bit about the misalignment of rularuu/vanguard blades. Oh well, I just don't use 'em. Matter of fact, I pretty much use nothing but the fury claws these days.
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But, yeah, I wanted to bug David Nakayama about those, until I realised there's nothing that can be done about it. The way the model is rigged, the forearm is locked to the elbow, and they'll never, ever mess with that, even if it produces really weird wrist distortions sometimes. And considering what the Vanguard Claws look like, reattaching them to the hand isn't an option.
So, yeah, I'm with you on that one, though I don't restrict myself to Fury. I've actually taken quite a liking to Legacy Hero and Legacy Villain, since they're BIG
...
It's been a while since I've talked about big weapons, though. Might be a good time to revisit the All Things Art thread.
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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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dammit Sam, now I'm going to have to go look at my Claws/Regen...
I don't know if I'll ever change that avatar. But here's BZB these days:
Be well, people of CoH.
It wouldn't surprise me if the two dimensional aspect of the Vanguard claws isn't intentional. After all, aren't the weapons supposed to be something like a single molecule wide?
The Abrams is one of the most effective war machines on the planet. - R. Lee Ermy.
Q: How do you wreck an Abrams?
A: You crash into another one.
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That's because, if recall, Vanguard claws are supposed to implement a sort of mono-molecular blade technology, it's not that they're energy weapons, just VERY VERY VERY thin conventional weapons. (Not sure how the hell this works with the bow, but that's ALWAYS been a little ridiculous to me) So the blade disappearing when you look at it from the side would probably be accurate to what our character would be viewing if the game was real.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
2. They're two-dimensional. This was kind of a shock to me, one I first discovered when using the Vanguard bow. ALL vanguard energy weapons are two-dimensional, using just one flat cutout. They're not just thin like Rularuu's Bane, they are literally two-dimensional. If you have the misfortune of having one of your basic stances position the blades parallel to your camera angle, they disappear completely, because the two-dimensional texture has no width. I highly suspect that this may be the reason why a Vanguard Mace doesn't exist - you can't have a two-dimensional mace. This is kind of a problem for me with Vanguard Claws, as the stances I enjoy the most either show the blade to me from the thin side, or even straight ahead. Now, I realise that the blade aura is supposed to give it some width, but it really doesn't, not when the texture itself disappears. With most other Vanguard weapons, even if you can't always see the blade, you can always see the metal handle, and that's three-dimensional, lending some physicality and weight to the weapon. But the Claws don't have that. They project energy directly out of the gloves and so lack physical parts, making them look almost like they aren't even there. I suspect the two-dimensional cut-out was made to save on polygon count and make the edges a little smoother, as it would take quite a few genuine polygons to make that smooth curve of a blade, plus they may end up with a faceted look like crystal models do right now. But it's just disconcerting when you spend a lot of your time looking at a texture that has no width. Even jedi lightsabres had a three-dimensional shape despite having no physical blade. Sure, they were just a mish-mash of coloured light, but any way the lightsabre turned, you still saw saw it and you still saw a brad shape. Vanguard Claws, by contrast, come off almost like paper. |
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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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I have to admit that the flatness is one of the things I actually like about the Vanguard weapons (Yes, even the bow. It's the over-all, side-on *shape* of that thing that bugs me, not the thinness. XD), but that has a lot to do with the way I color them and why.
I most often use them when I want one of the birds (My stalkers, for instance-) to have a low-key, energy-based weapon that's well-nigh invisible. I tend to make them very dark to get the side-view as subtle as I can... Having them vanish even more completely from certain angles is a just feature in that case, not a bug.
I'm with you on the odd angle of the claws though. I still use them on Summer Moon (my Claws scrap-) and I do like the over-all look of the things, but... yeah. They're odd on our models.
@Brightfires - @Talisander
That chick what plays the bird-things...
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Just to continue the thought experiment: put on a jacket or some gloves that go past the wrists. Depending on what material and how it fits will determine what you'll see. That said, I see your point and think it'd have been simpler to attach to the hands in that case.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Here's a thought experiment: Hold your hand forward at about waist level, palm facing down, and draw a little circle just behind your wrist. Now rotate your hand so your palm faces up. Notice that the circle rotated to point all the way down. That's because when a human wrist rotates, the skin of the entire forearm twists around to follow it.
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But after reading your next point about the paper-thin blade, I wonder if it'd only make the matter worse if they were attached to the hands. I dunno, I don't have any claws characters with the vanguard claws.
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| Even jedi lightsabres had a three-dimensional shape despite having no physical blade. Sure, they were just a mish-mash of coloured light, but any way the lightsabre turned, you still saw saw it and you still saw a brad shape. |
Personally, I like the look of the vanguard weapons (specifically the Broadsword, the Katana, Dual Blades and the Shield). The paper thinness isn't a dealbreaker if you consider the feature intentional rather than some sort of bug.
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I recall BABs talking about this, yes, though I always took his explanations on the matter to be more tongue-in-cheek than straight-up canon. But even if it's explained somewhere in-game, I tend to look at things from a pragmatic standpoint: Getting the complex shape required for something like the Vanguard Claws or Vanguard Bow with a mesh is far more complex and prone to performance issues and graphical glitches than just rendering it out of what is essentially one (or two) flat polygons with a transparency mask over them, which can be about as sharp as its bitmap resolution permits, and the Vanguard weapons masks seem to be pretty high-res.|
Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
That's because, if recall, Vanguard claws are supposed to implement a sort of mono-molecular blade technology, it's not that they're energy weapons, just VERY VERY VERY thin conventional weapons. (Not sure how the hell this works with the bow, but that's ALWAYS been a little ridiculous to me) So the blade disappearing when you look at it from the side would probably be accurate to what our character would be viewing if the game was real.
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As I said before, I really can't complain about how they're done, as I do see legitimate technical reasons to make them like this. But it just bugs me too much, fiction or no fiction. It reminds me a bit too much of the limitations of 3D graphics that I've had to put up with since the days of Tomb Raider (I'm not THAT old
). I list that as number 2, though, as I could put up with the width-less texture if at least they animated well, but they just... Don't.I'll try to get a screenshot from one of the animations that bothered me, if I don't have one uploaded already.
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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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Yeah, this I think. The blades are an atom thick, they literally ARE 2D!
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Originally Posted by M_I_Abrahms
It wouldn't surprise me if the two dimensional aspect of the Vanguard claws isn't intentional. After all, aren't the weapons supposed to be something like a single molecule wide?
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You have a point, and I tried to use that to my advantage. But in this case it's less that the forearm doesn't twist right, it's that the stance Claws powers leave you in is so iconic and recognisable, even aside from Wolverine. The thing is that I tend to have a strong sense of how force is applied through a claws swipe, and I expect the claws to be on the outside of the arc, so as to send all of the energy directly into the elbow. Having the claws stick out on the side feels like they'd send the force twisting into the forearm and that's... Awkward. Even if they're energy blades or if they don't impart any force, it still looks awkward to my eye.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
Just to continue the thought experiment: put on a jacket or some gloves that go past the wrists. Depending on what material and how it fits will determine what you'll see. That said, I see your point and think it'd have been simpler to attach to the hands in that case.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
If viewed from the tip going down toward the handle, apparently the lightsaber disappears almost wholly. I suppose, a lightsaber is basically a round column of light, it's still pointedly skinny while the Vanguard blades are wide but still very skinny. In that regard, the two different weapons are similar. That said, I'd say some elemental weapons, akin to the fire swords, might be in order. Something with mass perhaps.
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Though I HAAATE the Star Wars prequels for their shoddy storytelling, I do admire them for the lightsabre special effects. I recall that particular scene confounding me as a kid, making me wonder if Obi-Wan's lightsabre wasn't running out of batteries (I was a kid, remember ) and that maybe that's why he was losing, because his weapon seems to all but disappear in a few scenes. I'd personally expect that when a lightsabre is viewed head-on from the tip, I'd see a circle of light to the diameter of the hilt, if not slightly wider. Not much, but at least it still depicts a three-dimensional body.*edit*
And I wouldn't call their thickness a "bug." It's just something that bugs me, with that connotation of the word. You make a good point that something more like the Fire Sword would be in order. Remember - both the Fire Sword and the Greater Fire Sword have width, mass and a 3D shape to them. Energy weapons in their image or, hell, THOSE weapons without the fire sprites would be awesome-cool.
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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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I like them... I don't love them as much as I hoped I would (when I first unlocked them many moons ago), but I can say I like 'em.
I noticed there was something off about their positioning and their use, but I never actually looked into it more to pinpoint it (I don't use claws very often at all).
And...
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Although sometimes your posts come close to feeling as such!|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
...you can't have a two-dimensional mace.
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@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
I got a screenshot of what I mean:
That's the basic stance on the left and about the mid-point of the animation for Swipe on the right. You can see on the left how the claws look like they should be coming up from below as the fists are pointing up, but the actual claws are on the upper side of the arms at an odd angle. Worse still, you can see on the right that Swipe actually swipes with the flat of the blade, at least partially.
I like how the Vanguard Claws look, but I can never use them in the actual game, because they bug me far too much to use with Claws animations. They just aren't made for forearm-mounted claws.
Sorry about the complaint post. I just wanted to get that off my chest.
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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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I'm in love with the vanguard dual blades at the mo. Love them on my dual blade / elec brute.
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When I saw it as a kid, I just thought that scene basically placed the movie in the 'cheap' bin. You see, when I saw this movie, it was on the USA network. Had no idea it was a famous and prominent movie among viewers. What I saw was "Ha, you can see the prop!" but it was still cool.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Ah, that particular scene Though I HAAATE the Star Wars prequels for their shoddy storytelling, I do admire them for the lightsabre special effects. I recall that particular scene confounding me as a kid, making me wonder if Obi-Wan's lightsabre wasn't running out of batteries (I was a kid, remember ) and that maybe that's why he was losing, because his weapon seems to all but disappear in a few scenes. I'd personally expect that when a lightsabre is viewed head-on from the tip, I'd see a circle of light to the diameter of the hilt, if not slightly wider. Not much, but at least it still depicts a three-dimensional body. |
After being more a Star Wars fan, reading more about the history and technology (to this day, it's the only PnP game I think is hilariously fun to play compared to any other and the only one I ever GMed a campaign), I start to imagine how things *really* work. I believe one of the explanations for a lightsaber's blade is that it uses some sort of magnetic field or matrix that keeps the energy constrained to a certain area.
Further visualization, the way I imagine a lightsaber is, it's actually a hollow column of light. A lightsaber isn't a solid column because that'd require even more energy and heat and would constrain the energy traveling straight out of the handle.
No, the way I see it working is the energy/magnetic field constraining the energy is actually *flat* but then curved around to make a continuous loop/column shape. The field basically *spins* the energy around this loop, looser around the hilt and more tightly at the tip so all the energy is contained in the same area. This would also explain why, as described in canon, the lightsaber is difficult to handle because there's some sort of gyrating motion that has to be compensated for.
So if you lightly poke something with the tip of a lightsaber, it'll make an 'O' shape (that is, until whatever you touched burns up or melts, making the shape indistinguishable
)
I don't hate the vanguard claws. I don't particularly like them either though, and they definately do look 'odd' at times and certain angles.
Unfortunately, they are the only 'energy' or 'non-physical' options available.
6000+ levels gained and 8 level 50's
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So you play a villain, then? Or are you a hero that actually intends to kill the villains he stops?
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Worse still, you can see on the right that Swipe actually swipes with the flat of the blade, at least partially. |
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<--- Blueside. How else am I supposed to fill Hell's ranks? I make sure that there isn't enough left to for the hospitals to put back together when the bodies port out. |
Originally Posted by Stone Daemon
So you play a villain, then? Or are you a hero that actually intends to kill the villains he stops?
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Be well, people of CoH.
Cant put my finger on it but im REALLY liking the costume Sam posted.
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That is correct.|
Originally Posted by M_I_Abrahms
It wouldn't surprise me if the two dimensional aspect of the Vanguard claws isn't intentional. After all, aren't the weapons supposed to be something like a single molecule wide?
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The game originally called them "Talsorian," rumored to be an attribution to R. Talsorian Games-- a company whose "Cyberpunk 2020" game introduced many gamers to the idea of monomolecular wire used in weapons. In theory, the nothing-can-get-thinner wire would be the sharpest possible edge, cutting through virtually any defense. The wire appeared previously - used as a whip and a garrote- in Gibson's "Virtual Light" and "Johnny Mnemonic" but Talsorian's C2020 was the first that had the molecule-thin wire stretched into a rigid line, serving as an edge to an axe or sword, IIRC. (Shadowrun later had gear that claimed to be much the same)
The idea of an "edge that cuts through anything" probably fit nicely into the Vanguard 'damage resist debuff' power mechanic for CoH and caused some dev-gamer to go onto a nostalgia kick. The ultra-strong single-molecule wire is somehow stretched into its shape by a conductive energy field, possibly of magical aura, resulting in its glow. This combination had the benefit of letting them offerglowy-translucent weapons without making "light swords" that would have alerted dreaded destroyers of fun that are known as the Lawyers of Lucas.
No, this doesn't explain the bow one bit. The bow falls strictly in the "but it looks neat" category that supersedes all other reason throughout the superhero genre.
EDIT: It also doesn't justify how the weapons would be used when animated, but this goes much the same for claws. Again, another case where "looking neat" and "fitting the superhero genre" trump actual functional design. If you gotta deal with ridiculously-heavy operationally-useless and godawful-gawdy uberswords and guns, you gotta be ready for weapons and poses that look neat but have absolutely no operational sense whatsoever.
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You clearly haven't wandered into a Sam thread before.
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Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
you gotta be ready for weapons and poses that look neat but have absolutely no operational sense whatsoever.
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"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
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Heh. I'm usually the one railing against the horrendous use of weapons, explosives, and tactical operations in video games with friends in real life, but I just don't see the point here. The genre's so cram packed with the ridiculous that its virtually become a requirement. It'd be like protesting the lack of realistic physics in a Loony-Toons game....
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Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
You clearly haven't wandered into a Sam thread before.
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I'm convinced you can find the smallest, least noticeable thing in this game and and blow it way out of proportion, turning it into a massive issue, Sam.
Oh, is it time to poke fun of Sam already?
I didn't want to start too early this time
This has been on my mind pretty much since the Vanguard pack came out, and I just really want to get it off my chest. If you do like the Vanguard claws a lot, then more power to you, guys. I don't want to take anything away from you. But I just need to talk about this because it bugs me so much!
I actually have a couple of reasons to dislike Vanguard claws:
1. They're mounted to the forearm. Almost all claws in the entire game are mounted to the back of the hand, the two exceptions being Vanguard Claws and Rularuu Claws. Normally, you can't tell the different when editing them as part of the costume, but that's for one very simple reason - all poses the costume editor offers have the hand aligned with the forearm. The problem comes once you start actually using the powers and see the basic stance that Claws powers leave you in, that being the classic "Wolverine squat" with the arms slightly to the side, wrists rotated with palms facing up and claws up and towards the inside of the stance.
This is not how it works with Vanguard Claws, however, and it's an artefact of how our character models are rigged. Hands in City of Heroes rotate cleanly around the wrist joint as though you have robot hands. Here's a thought experiment: Hold your hand forward at about waist level, palm facing down, and draw a little circle just behind your wrist. Now rotate your hand so your palm faces up. Notice that the circle rotated to point all the way down. That's because when a human wrist rotates, the skin of the entire forearm twists around to follow it. This isn't how it happens in-game. In-game, only the hand rotates and the entire forearm remains aligned with wherever the elbow is pointing. An easy example of what I mean is to use something like Vanguard or Enforcer gloves. Go ahead, use them, and note how the glove does not twist to follow the hand. That's what I mean.
The problem with the Claws stance, then, is that for the Vanguard claws to point up as the wrists are suggesting, the elbows would need to point up, and they don't. Because of how the squat has the elbows to the sides, you end up with Vanguard Claws that seem to stick out on the side of the hand, almost in line with your thumb. Because so many of the Claws attacks do an uppercut slash from that stance, you end up slashing with the flat of the Vanguard blades a lot of the time, or at the very least it looks like you do.
To a very large extent, the Vanguard Claws work almost like Blood Rayne's elbow blades, but weapons like those don't really fit the existing animations very well. They might have at one point, but after BABs went around redoing Claws animations to use a closed fist, the animations just don't match claws that don't follow the orientation of the fist.
2. They're two-dimensional. This was kind of a shock to me, one I first discovered when using the Vanguard bow. ALL vanguard energy weapons are two-dimensional, using just one flat cutout. They're not just thin like Rularuu's Bane, they are literally two-dimensional. If you have the misfortune of having one of your basic stances position the blades parallel to your camera angle, they disappear completely, because the two-dimensional texture has no width. I highly suspect that this may be the reason why a Vanguard Mace doesn't exist - you can't have a two-dimensional mace.
This is kind of a problem for me with Vanguard Claws, as the stances I enjoy the most either show the blade to me from the thin side, or even straight ahead. Now, I realise that the blade aura is supposed to give it some width, but it really doesn't, not when the texture itself disappears. With most other Vanguard weapons, even if you can't always see the blade, you can always see the metal handle, and that's three-dimensional, lending some physicality and weight to the weapon. But the Claws don't have that. They project energy directly out of the gloves and so lack physical parts, making them look almost like they aren't even there.
I suspect the two-dimensional cut-out was made to save on polygon count and make the edges a little smoother, as it would take quite a few genuine polygons to make that smooth curve of a blade, plus they may end up with a faceted look like crystal models do right now. But it's just disconcerting when you spend a lot of your time looking at a texture that has no width. Even jedi lightsabres had a three-dimensional shape despite having no physical blade. Sure, they were just a mish-mash of coloured light, but any way the lightsabre turned, you still saw saw it and you still saw a brad shape. Vanguard Claws, by contrast, come off almost like paper.
I may be biassed ever so slightly after my HORRIBLE experience with the Vanguard Bow, which just so happens to turn thin-side towards the camera when you hover forward with it out, but the two-dimensional nature of the energy field just bugs me to no end. I really hate seeing supposedly large objects turn thin-side and just about disappear, and that's exactly what Vanguard claws do a lot of the time.
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I'm sorry if this comes off like a rant. I don't want to hate the claws. Hell, I was amazingly excited about them more than most things when I unlocked the Vanguard pack. I even did all of those lovely mock-ups in the Architect even before the pack came out, and it all looked fine. It wasn't until I got them in the actual character editor and saw what powers do with the claws that I got really disappointed. I've tried and tried to use them since, putting them on Vanguard gloves, Enforcer gloves, Large Robotic gloves, all in the hopes that I won't see the rotated fists, but at the end of the day, I see a combat stance which should have claws under the fists pointing up that instead has claws on the sides. And it bugs me too much to use.