Walk

in this game you can't move your character when attacking nor does the stance have any influence on your attack animations, the only reason why not would be "just because"

It is all about in-between animations, not the rest of the animations themselves.
All of the powers' animations BEGIN from the already supported character stances within the game.
The WALK stance has the character in a different pose and, therefore, there would be an awkward visible jump (like a couple of frames clipped out of a movie) if a character were to go from WALKing to Fighting.

So, there were two options (discounting both simply not implementing any kid of WALKing and doing all of the animation work that would be necessary to make it look right):

Grey out all powers and such
Or
Allow the choppy disconnected character animations going from WALK to using powers


As a player, I could live with having the choppiness, considering the absolutely rare happenstances that this would ever come up with...
However, the artists viewed it more as something that would be unacceptable and I can certainly understand that.
I'd love to see what it would actually look like. Actually, I suppose I could Demo Edit that in order to see.


Adding this tidbit... For all I know, there could be even more problems (within the coding of the powers) than just the actual animations hurdle. There may not be, but it is possible and I just figured I'd state that I understand this before someone else throws it at me, hehe!

I believe the problem has to do with activation sequences. BABs explained long ago that each weapon came with its own activation sequence because each weapon came with its own subtly unique animations. When you pull out a sword, you run much the same as you did before (for guys, anyway), but you do so with a closed fist. And because City of Heroes has no capacity for animation blending, this is an entire separate full-body animation. The activation sequence, therefore, is designed to dictate which animations the model plays for basic actions like running and jumping.

This was pretty evident when Shield Defence was first being introduced, as its activation sequence wasn't very complete and would leave out certain actions. Jumping forward in water with a shield and sword out, for instance, would play the empty-handed animation, causing the sword to be "held" in an open hand and go through the head. A while later, the "with shield" jumping animation was eradicated entirely, so jumping forward with a shield caused you to run in mid air.

The problem with activation sequences is that if you use a power, this power has to either have an animation appropriate to this activation sequence, or it would have to force its own activation sequence, overriding the previous one. BABs made Walk in his spare time, which more than likely means he didn't integrate it into the basic "left foot forward" combat stance activation sequence. What this means is that if you allow powers to be used with Walk, they'd try to override its stance so they can fire and stop you from walking, but the toggle would try to force it back on and I don't even know how that would end up working. I don't think it's a question of redoing every animation to work with walk so much as it's a question of hooking Walk up with an duplicate activation sequence for every one that exists in the game so that you can be in a combat stance but still play the proper animation.

And, really, there are quite a few of these. There is basic, basic + shield, right-hand weapon, right-hand weapon + shield, right-hand rifle, left-hand weapon (katana), left-hand weapon (Archery), dual weapons (Claws, Dual Pistols), dual weapons (Dual Blades) and probably a few I'm forgetting. I doubt it would require actual animation work to do, since all the existing animations are applicable, but it might require a lot of fiddly technical work that BABs didn't have the time or inclination to do in his lunch breaks. If this is ever made official, it might change, but I doubt it.

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As to why Walk suppresses all powers, I believe this is so as to enforce a strictly defined walkingspeed. I recall there were players who moved I think twice as slow with Walk on thanks to some kind of inventions-related speed debuff... Or were there some who moved faster? I think the simplest way to rig this was to just disable ALL powers, rather than just fish out specific movement-affecting powers and end up invariably missing some. I'm not sure why BABs couldn't just suppress all buffs currently affecting the player, though I guess there may not be an easily-accessible system for doing this. I do know that ALL player powers are disabled when the player is put in the mode "Disable All" and I'm pretty sure that's just what Walk does. I haven't checked, though...

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.

I really don't understand the problem some people are having over this. We are SUPER HEROES. We are supposed to be better, stronger, and faster than civilians/NPC's. If they were Super Civilians they wouldn't need us to rescue them.

So what if you have to stop frequently so they can keep up. That's called realism. The hostages are exhausted mentally and physically from being captured, beaten, and terrorized.

If your redside then the people your kidnapping don't want to go with you. Duh! You have to force them.

I guess I get too immersed in the game for this to bother me.

o_O

That's the only reaction I can have to this thread. Have fun with walk. *toggles on super speed and zips off*

"With great moustache comes great responsibility" - Zee Captain

IIRC, Walk puts you into "Walk Mode." Which is similar to Shield Mode, Hide Mode, etc., and for which there would be necessary coding to allow other powers to activate. I can't imagine it being TERRIBLY much coding, unless their "Modes" are coded kind of hacked-in.........

................OH WAIT. They're coding a seven year old game, EVERYTHING has to be hacked-in. Thus any change to ANYTHING requires more coding and testing than anything written as a game is being developed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

brb, rolling up the toon Captain McStrollsalot

Next request is that I want another walk travel power but this one is more of a swagger, I also want giant purple hats with feathers stuck in them.

"With great moustache comes great responsibility" - Zee Captain

I'm kinda confused myself...

Did the devs re-animate every single attack in the game to work with Ninja Run's new idle and running animations, then re-re-animate them again so they'd work with Beast Run's new idle and running animations?