Dev Chat Highlights, July 23: Tunnel Rat and the Visual Effects of New Powersets

Day 3 of Comicon begins with dead voiced Zwill and him trying to get Ustream to record, but it not working.

Tunnel Rat joins us.



Black Pebble booed.

We have lots of VFX to talk about. Zwill doesn't have any Beam Rifle effects, but Massively does.

TR has seen two Slave Leias, Zwill has seen about a dozen and some plus-sized Klingons. Beastyle is lamenting not being able to go in chat. He's going to go cry.

Harry Potter kids, Captain Americas, and a VERY accuracy Leeloo Dallas. "Kind of gravity defying, actually."

Zwill has also seen several Sailor Bubbas.

Crowd shots! Which did not screencap for some reason.

Tunnel Rat offered to buy Black Pebble lunch, but every time she asks he's already dug through the dumpster.

Beastyle: Black Pebble actually has two maverick nerf guns taped under the table.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i...r_H_4_logo.jpg

She worked on the Energy Wings. They are not an aura, but actually a back piece.

They close when you land.

Single color tint to them.

Black Pebble keeps hitting the table.

"People have been requesting elemental wings for awhile, so I made something with a firey/electric feel to it. I looked at videos on youtube of electrical current, but slowed way down. Also some of David's costume art, though they didn't end up looking too much like them."

Long term player being put on camera.



Kviri (Sp?) from the forums.

"I've been loving everything I've been seeing for I21 and Freedom, I21 especially cause I'm going to keep paying."

Spongebob Squarepants walks by.

Costume code giveaway!



Zwill shows his Hero ID, they have the Olympian Guard costume code. (Which activates on Tuesday)

Zwill isn't giving his away since he wants his on his personal account.

Tunnel Rat's is a 30 day game code.

Praetorian Guard costume code! Not yet active!

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i..._path_aura.jpg

Streak trail aura.

"It's a little dimmer now, because from behind it obscured a portion of the screen."

Tunnel Rat and her husband, Leo, are both VFX artists for CoH.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i...0aura_logo.jpg

Crack/Seismic aura was made by her husband.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i..._path_aura.jpg

Fire trail aura, another Leo effect. Tunnel Rat is giggling and trying not to snort on Ustream. Apparently Flaming Trail and Fits the Bill are enough to make TR giggle. Referencing Black Scorpion making the pun while introducing Null the Gull.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/images/i...rono_shift.jpg

Time Manipulation screenie.

Zwill gives shout outs to the team in Seattle that did the teaser trailer.

"When I thought of time control I was thinking of the 50 shows with the clocks and the nifty swirl in the background. Twilight Zone, Doctor Who. It's kind of corny looking now, but I took the swirl and modernize and make it more smokey and existing in the real world. For your debuffs the swirl is swirling very slowly counter clockwise, and for buffs it goes clockwise very very quickly."

"Especially for a buff set you should be able to tell your good and bad buff and debuff effects apart."

Guild Wars 2's Leah Rivera, content designer, crashes the Ustream. And my screencap does not catch her. I got a bit of t-shirt and nose.

"We tried to rule out clock imagery very quickly, as it was dependent on iconography, not very abstract, unlike other sets. Like we don't have apples falling on people for gravity."

"We should add apples and Isaac Newton to Propel!" (from the chat)

Beam rifle set, still no images.

Leo worked on Beam Rifle, not TR. She can guess at his inspiration.

Zwill is distracted by a Mr. Incredible costume.

"We wanted it to look unique, Leo took inspiration from lightning and thunderbolts and not the straight nondescript laser. Kind of like Ghostbusters. The don't cross the streams lightning bolt."

Zwill takes offense to calling the Ghostbusters blast a lightning bolt.

"Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!"

"More like plasma than a laser, has a really violent motion to it."

Zwill is dying and summons Second Measure and leaves the camera.

TR has not seen the Ghostbusters movie all the way through. Just pieces.

The rest of the booth is shocked and horrified. TR hides under the desk in shame. The players are looking at her and pointing.

Second Measure's wife had not seen Princess Bride until recently.

SO! BEAM RIFLE!

Leo HAS seen Ghostbusters. TR is not a big dork, but she did marry one.

"They get a lot more dramatic and cooler as you get to the tier 9, like most of our effects."

"Cutting beam, the cone attack ,is fantastic. It sends out this array of beams connected at the end, it's a really long cone, not the longest in the game, but it feels like it. It's largely a single target powerset, so it's nice to have a big cone in the middle of it."

Both the beam and the weapon are customizable.

It can be called a FREEM! Rifle.

"Leo's almost as good as you these days."

Adam West Batman tangent.

Ghostbusters is as old as Tunnel Rat.

COSTUME CODE! Blast. I typed a G as a C and missed it.

"Street Justice has fantastic animations but the visual and audio effects really make the set."

It was a TR set.

"They're very hard hitting. Instead of Kinetic Melee that’s a beautiful flowing animation. I wanted these to look like they'd take your head off. Street Fighter was one of the games I took inspiration from. There's a lot of camera shake in there too, it makes it feel like you've hit them really hard."

"One of the secondary effects on a Street Justice attack is making your opponents cower in fear. IT has to look like a brutal, terrifying attack."

"I think we've killed Black Pebble. He just died."

"He's just fainted. A Slave Leia carrying a McRib walked by."

Black Pebble smites TR with a water bottle.

"I've always been interested in having something less formal martial artsy, something more fist fighting without taking Box on every character. So I was very passionate about this. We were looking through the forums and gathering common requests for power sets. A lot of people wanted a down and dirty Street Justice kind of feel. Clockwork 01 started giving me a lot of hassle about how it was Nate's Abuse of Power Powerset."

Zwill mentions yesterday that Posi referred to it as the Knee to the Junk power and dismisses Tunnel Rat to go watch Ghostbusters.

FINAL COSTUME CODE! Missed it!

Second Measure speaks from the diaphragm so Zwill won't have to adjust the mic.

Doing one more just in case that one was already used.

It looks like two people somehow got the code.

Talking about the Mercy and Atlas revamps.

"I logged in at the City Hall and went "Huh, I've seen that before." And then turned and was just awestruck."

Mercy has a unique look and character, they just wanted to do a few tweaks and add some symmetry between the zones.

"Kind of one of the hidden gems of the Rogue Isles."

"We wanted to make Mercy Island more accessible to people, and have people start in Mercy the town and then head out to Fort Darwin. Longbow have taken over Fort Darwin, so the ultimate end in the story is to take over Fort Darwin."

"Contrary to popular belief Devs love redside."

They're reworking the story of Arachnos, knowing you're a big bad guy and them wanting you on their side. Less a lackey and more of a proper supervillain.

Different division phases, you fight some longbow, then come back and interrogate someone right where you fought earlier.

"I think the Mercy storyline is a lot more epic than the Atlas storyline. There is something about just taking it to longbow."

Zwill thinks the story makes a lot more sense and far fewer snakes. There are a few snakes around but they wanted to tell a more powerful story.

More long term players!

Liquid and Fatare/Iris Fatare from Virtue. His second Comicon, her third or fourth.

Tangent! Talking about the meet and greet. Zwill raves about the Cheeseburger egg rolls. As does Second Measure. The two players didn't get any of those.

Zwill: "Congratulations, you've been caught in a tangent!"

Iris:" No nerf guns, though."

Zwill: "Back at the office."

They saw First Ward yesterday, though not for very long.

She's excited about the Praetorian Hamidon.

The Seed of Hamidon looked small in screenshots, but as seen in the trailer it's SO BIG.

Iris: "Time manipulation is really cool, it's a good compliment to the existing powersets."

Liquid: "Gravity works with the whole time and space thing."

They all thing we're going to get a flood of Time Lords.

Everyone loves the 10 costume slots.

Tunnel Rat left her Hero ID and was adamant that we not be shown her picture. So Zwill shows us. I missed it to screencap it. So Tunnel Rat will not kill me.

Reminder that everything in the store is not finalized, items, prices, even stuff in the game.

Q: What happens to references to breaking out of Break Out redside? Q: What happens to the Destined Ones arc?

"We've gone though the writing and I think we've got most of the references in there and changed them."

Destined one arc: "We'll talk about that in more detail later."

The new zones do not have neutral yellow reticule mods. It was concept for Praetoria.

Zwill will get me a Vicky code when he gets back to the office due to my diligent and tireless community service by summarizing these.

Tunnel Rat has found out of Zwill's showing of her ID photo.

Titan Weapons will be a powerset that needs to be purchased.

Beastyle is banned from describing one of the animations.

VIPS do not get automatically get all powersets. They will get some. They've had powersets in the expansions exclusive.

"Sometimes we'll have something small in the market every week, sometimes they'll be medium like a whole costume set, sometimes it will be big like a powerset."

Discussion of the Paragon Rewards stuff that we've covered before.

It looks like the subscribers there at the start will be in Tier 9.

From the way Nate phrases things, Tier 9 VIP will be costume sets that are rotated in and out. HE said costume sets, plural.

"What we're planning for the second one is amazing, but I wouldn't call it beautiful."

New archetypes: "We've had meetings, but never come up with anything that could not be covered by the basic archetypes. IT amazes me of how the CoH team has made it so that almost all superheroes can be encompassed by the archetypes we have. We're always looking for something new though."

"We took the archetypes in character creation and placed them into different playstyles to help out new players as the number of AT's can be overwhelming."

"We wanted it to be absolutely clear to new players to see what they're getting in to."

"People have been looking at the Ghost Widow picture and going "Oooooooh!""

Talk about the Desdemona picture really exemplifying the pet classes.

They do have things in mind for SG bases, but they can't talk about it. It's not Issue 21.

Tier 1 Paragon Rewards is for free, since you get a token for free to show you what it's like.

Quote:

Originally Posted by reiella Until I see something that states to the contrary, going to assume VK is right .

I'm am really sorry I missed this, I am gonna go cry especially since I found out they could not record it. So what did Black Pebble get booed for? Thanks for posting this Von Krieger.

Bah!

How do you get to see this? I just got a the first 51 seconds!

Reading between the lines, I think she has actually seen the entire movie, just never one sitting from start to finish.

I was busy with other things, so I couldn't catch this broadcast