A Ranged Attack feature I'd like to see

"Blapper" (Corralker?) powers are notoriously bad for re-animating, but that idea is gold.

I'd pay for them.

In fact, out of all the choices we now have with CoH:Freedom, my guaranteed purchases remain costume pieces/sets. The only set I haven't purchased at least in part is the Animal set, just because I don't have any animal concept characters. The CoT set I have selected pieces from. All the others I'm pretty sure I've bought outright.

New power animations would absolutely fall into the realm of guaranteed purchases for me. I love choices and options for how a character looks and moves, and I'd happily pay for a set of animations that could be used across multiple powers.

Same. I have a lot of characters... heck, I've got at least half a dozen electricity characters. Give me the option to make them more different from one another and it's a guaranteed sale.

For what it's worth: I'd buy them- even if priced close to a new powerset ( animation time is a sizable chunk of development time for new sets).

Right now, many of the "magical" explanations kinda assume an innate magical element at play. I like the idea of magical power that is granted through an item. Right now, I'm kinda limited to that item being gloves/bracers/armor (we don't even have many good neck-chain "amulets" in costume creator to use) because the powers appear to come from the body. Handheld items would add a welcome change.

I've been know to use tiaras as magical diadems.

Yes. YES. VERY YES!

I also want to use the Beam Rifle 'to the shoulder' stance for Assault rifle. Seriously, you TRY firing and hitting anything with a gun held like that. I will not happen. That stance is terrible -_-

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Yeah, the beam rifle animations are....meh. They never did fix the sniper animation where when the gun recoils it pulls the laser up with it did they?


Speaking of shoulders, if we ever got a shoulder mounted gun, I'd love to fire assault rounds out of it too.

((Although really, "guns firing out of armor" could be a whole new powerset, but I'd like to have new animations first))

Yes! Exactly the way I feel too!

Wrong way around. TechBot was complaining about the "firing-from-the-hip" stance used in the AR animations not the Beam Rifle animations.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Oh, don't underestimate the appeal of the Mindripper (from Psycore Industries).

Yup. The AR and Arachnos gun animations are 'bleh', but I LOVE the Beam rifle idle and firing stance (even with the Beam Sniper animation whoopsy) because that is how you hold a gorramn gun!. I would kill to have that option on AR and VEATs =/

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

It IS slower. Used to be draw was baked into animations such that the draw and non-draw would be the same length, only the non-draw would have a pause at the end. BABs changed this by popular request, making weapon draw separate from the attack animation, thus speeding up weapon sets considerably, but introducing a "penalty" for drawing by making drawing and firing exactly as long as just firing used to be. Removing weapon draw is not a simple task. BABs tried it, but said the animation sequencer expected SOMETHING there or it would throw off animation timing. He was in the process of putting a null animation, I believe, when he ran into a snag with Shield Defence and a weapon set. He then left the company and no-one has stepped up to finish his work. Simply put, removing redraw is possible, but not simple or easy. And it seems to be low-priority in favour of game mechanic tweaks. Low enough that Titan Weapons and Assassin's Strike would occasionally miss their draw animations, causing the rest of the animation and effect timing to be thrown completely off.

As for shooting non-weapon sets out of weapons and shooting weapon sets out of bare hands or other weapon categories, this comes up very often, and it's always a good idea that I will fully support. This is pretty much the last major thing we have left when it comes to customization in this game. We have jet packs now, so this is the biggest thing we have left. Once we nail this one, we will officially be playing the best game ever made.

Trouble is that this is not trivial, nor is it in any way comparable to swapping weapons or swapping power animations. Nor is it indeed comparable to swapping weapons AND power animations together. Let me explain.

Each power in this game has its own "activation sequence," which includes altering (or not, for most powers) the base set of combat animations that a character goes uses. So much as queueing a power with an activation sequence that requires a non-standard mode will put your character in that mode. It might change your basic stance, it will make the weapon in your hand visible if you're using a weapon set and it will make you run, jump, fly and fall using animations that might not look different to use, but are entirely separate sequences to the game engine. Drawing a sword would put your right hand in a fist, and you will run with the fist closed and jump with the fist closed and fall with the fist closed. If you wanted to use a left-handed weapon, instead, even if animations for left-handed attacks existed, you'd still need to alter your state via a different activation sequence. If you wanted to use a Fire Blast attack, this would put you in a state that spawns flame pros on your hands, which persist for all movement animations, and which are tied to the power customization interface.

This game has no precedent for the end user being able to change a power's activation sequence. This can be changed by a developer and delivered to people in a patch, but as far as the engine is concerned, this is not a part of the power which is dynamic. It's not read from the character's personal files, it's read from the game's power database. You can no more alter a power's activation sequence than you can alter its animation time - the mechanic for this doesn't exist. For it to exist, I assume the same would need to happen as with weapon and power customization.

It used to be that weapons were just power effects, props called by the power's FX script. This was not customizable, so what BABs did when he made Dual Blades was to introduce a brand new costume item - a weapon - which was animated to alternate between being visible and being invisible. This "visibility state" was then tied to the activation sequence the weapon power called. In effect, a Broadsword Hack power doesn't call a weapon at all, it just puts you in a "broadsword mode" and relies on that mode to make the weapon costume detail you were forced to take visible. This was clever, in that you didn't need to mess with the FX script, and could actually implement complex customization of the weapon using the costume interface, such as what you see for shields.

As for powers, what they did for those was alter the FX scripts of each power read not from the animations database, but actually read from a separate database attached to each character. That's why every customizable power you could ever take without further unlocks is customizable at the start - you NEED this database to be complete for the system to work. The scripts, then, read from this database and play what's in it, and you control this database via the power customization screen.

This itself has problems, however, since not everything you control there is an FX script. Powers like Spines were never put into power customization because you could customize the spines on your body as a costume element, but could not customize the spines thrown as those were an effect summoned by the FX script which never passed through the costume system. However, Spines were still weapons with their own activation sequence and draw animation, with each type of Spines having their own activation sequence so the game will know which type to summon. What this means is that if you pick different types of Spines for different Spines power, you will induce redraw within the same powerset. If you Throw Spines with metal spines and then Spine Burst with crystal spines, you will be forced to redraw between the two attacks. If, however, you Throw Spines and Spine Burst with crystal spines on both attacks, you'd see no redraw.

You can't have them be a costume element as the power effect would need to match them and you couldn't alter colours per attack, and you can't have the power customization screen induce a costume element because the two are not connected and you'd, again, lose the ability to colour them separately.

I explain all of this to explain why this is pretty much the BIGGEST thing the art team will have ever done with the character creator, and how it would involve extraordinary amounts of work not even counting the process of creating brand new animations. First you'd need to mess with the costume creator interface, or possibly with the powerset selector interface, such that it allows you to pick a "weapon type." Once you pick a weapon type, the costume editor would have to show you only weapons of that type, which would be appropriate to the animations that this type would require to work. You'd then need to retro-fit the activation sequence required for this weapon type into the entire powerset's collection of animations to ensure that they play the right movement animations so you can carry the weapon. You'd then need to make sure that the animation sequencer always called the right version of the animation appropriate the the activation sequence from all possible situations, so you don't have Whirling Sword play the Whirlwind animation when you activate it while falling. Then you'd need to attach multiple custom power FX scripts to the same power and make sure the powers editor always showed you the list appropriate to the weapon type you've selected.

It's a huge job. I've love to see it - boy would I love to see it - but it would be a major project that will probably be the star act of its own Issue and might well tie up art resources for the two or three Issues preceding it.

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.

That is a truly great idea. I would buy alternate animations in a heartbeat for most ranged sets. Not just blasts, but a gun for Kin? A wand for Dark Control? The only issue I could foresee would be assault sets for Doms.

They could even sell them on the market as "new" power sets. All the balancing is done, just port the powers over onto new animations. sell them for more than a costume set, less than a full new powerset, maybe free for VIP. Huge downside to that.... no powerset respec... hmmm. I wonder if the system is set up to where it could access the market for new animations with weapons.