Join the ongoing conversation on Discord: https://discord.gg/w6Tpkp2
Please read the current update for instructions on downloading the latest update. Players with Mac versions of the game will not be affected, but you will have a slightly longer wait for your version of the new maps. Please make a copy of your character folder before running the new update, just to make sure you don't lose any of your custom work.
It looks like we can give everyone a list of minimum specs for running City of Titans. Please keep in mind that this is 'for now' until we are able to add more graphics and other system refinements. Currently you will need :
Windows 10 or later required; no Intel integrated graphics like UHD, must have AMD or NVIDIA card or discrete chipset with 4Gb or more of VRAM
At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.
To purchase your copy of the City of Titans Launcher, visit our store at https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/ A purchase of $50 or more will give you a link to download the Launcher for Windows or Mac based machines.
We gave you a video, so be nice okay?
...please? :(
Link to Update: http://cityoftitans.com/content/proving-producer
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
Suuuuper excited!
Always happy to see some visuals of what's been achieved. I know you still have plenty of time to get things done before it nears on any deadlines, but it's just nice to see the stuff as-it-happens! :D
Not big on asymetry so that isn't a big win for me, but I know a LOT of people will be excited and that's more what matters. Thanks for taking the time to share this with us! I'll be spamming it to all of my friends for sure.
Good things come to those that wait. Looking great.
Explosions!
And did I catch him taking a breath at the end of his jog? *watches again to double-check* I think I did!
^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
While I am thrilled with both the video and the advancements it shows, I am curious as to why the figure can very smoothly go from standing to walking to jogging to running and then jumping but when he lands from a jump it seems like he stands still for a small moment before continuing to run. Is this just something that's not been smoothed yet or is there an issue with the way the legs are set during landing that makes it look like he breaks stride?
CoyoteShaman
Still needs a bit of smoothing.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Jumping posing.
One of the things that was somewhat iconic about City of Heroes was the way that leaping animations would change depending on which part of the leaping arc you were in, and which direction you were leaping. Ninja Run further modified this, of course. I always played Female characters, so I only ever paid attention to the female animation for leaping. But the way that a leap yielded a "coiled spring" body pose on the way up that changed into a "hanging cruciform" after the apex and during the fall was always something that stuck with me from the avatar animations of City of Heroes. There was also the "hopping on one foot" effect of using Hurdle repeatedly to "bunny hop" around through town.
Kind of makes me wonder if your animators would like to have a bit of fun with the ending animation when leaping in circumstances where the forward movement speed of the avatar when "landing on" or intersecting terrain is higher than the current running speed that the character could sustain. Essentially if your avatar lands with "too much" horizontal velocity for your current running speed the avatar would do a sort of planting both feet on the ground forward slide skateboard/snowboard style to shed horizontal velocity until reaching their running speed at which point the animation switches over to running. So this would be a both feet contact slide to dampen/dump excess velocity that is over the running speed limit.
1. Leap
2. Sustained leaping
3. Apex pose transition (Ninja Run flip optional)
4. Controlled falling
5. Foot slide on contact (if jumping horizontal velocity exceeds running maximum velocity limit for character)
There was also the "shot from a cannon" arms at the sides animation when rocket launching straight up (usually with the Kinetics power of Inertial Dampening) that yielded a body flip at the top and then you had the coiled spring pose with the arms flung wide and up on the way down for air resistance (to stick for a 10 point landing on contact).
You could even do things like having the "landing" from a controlled fall result in a "power squat" motion of absorbing impact, so as to really bring out the "weight" of the character on impact and give it even more of a surfing/snowboarding/skateboarding feel of impact on landing.
A different option would be to have the avatar do a tumble roll on impact (think paratrooper landing) if their horizontal velocity on impact is less than X% of the vertical velocity on impact that the avatar follows through on to complete with a tumble/roll/sommersault/pop up back onto your feet all in one move kind of like we first saw in Tabula Rasa and which can also be found, now, in Elder Scrolls Online.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Character model looks good for this stage of development. Shows some key goodies like asymmetry and fingers.
The ability to standardize and change animation time, and/or change them is great for parity when using aesthetic decoupling.
I'll be honest; the most awesome part of that video was seeing the amazing texture quality in the environment. That chrome room and the ferns and door.. all of those are really cool assets. I don't know if they're standard Unreal or MVM made but it gives me confidence that the game won't be as cartoon like as superhero games past (and present).
Crowd Control Enthusiast
It is actually a map provided by the Swedish company Quixel, free to all Unreal Engine 4 customers. It happened to be the map on this load of the UI system.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Since this was a proof demo to (among other folks) the animators, we haven't actually had the animators go through and find all the not-quite-smooth-enough spots yet, so that's probably what you're seeing. Also, this demo doesn't have any physics blended in -- once those are enabled it should help smooth over even the not-quite-perfect spots by providing momentum and "flow" to the motions.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
The standard 'jump' in UE4 (if you use the default setup) is broken into launch, rising, apex, falling, pre-impact, and impact. And can support forward/back/left/right blending with any of those if the relevant poses are defined, pretty much just as easily as it can for moving on the ground. Or free-flying.
Welcome to the land of modular logic. :)
Oh, and yes, any of the above can have their blend logic modified by things like forward (or downward) momentum on contact with the ground.
We won't get into surface physics for things like ice... yet, that is.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
As a distance runner, I have to say that model's running form is really weird. It's leaning forward WAY too much. And its arms are oddly static at the elbows.
Edit: "oddly static at the elbows" isn't quite the right way to put it, but there's definitely something wrong with the way the arms move while running. Or it could be the forward lean makes everything look off.
Edit 2: Sprinters running with chests straight up: http://wallfoy.com/usain-bolt-running-11-294225-wallpapers-HD.html Yes they start at a lean, but rapidly move out of it.
See also https://www.google.com/search?q=meb+keflezighi+running+form&oq=meb+keflezighi+running+form&aqs=chrome..69i57.175j0j9&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8
World class marathoner, more like what heroes are doing - running long distances very fast at constant speed. Note the straight torso.
Edit 3: It could just be a result of the resting torso leaning forward a lot. Is that a stance of some sort? At 0:19 you can see that it's got a sort of "hulking" appearance, more like a person imitating an ape, than a stalwart hero standing upright for the citizens.
----- This line indicates where my signature begins, because the forums don't do it themselves -----
No signature yet!
This was pretty cool. Looking forward to more news and possibly videos :).
Huzzah! It's coming together!
The figure does appear to be in a kind of relaxed, combat-ready stance rather than 'at rest'. The running animation has the look of something more in the vein of a ninja run than of a normal/natural run. Presumably items like different stances and running animations are still in the works.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Animation thoughts
different styles of flight, like emotes.
/superman fist out first
/rocketeer hands at sides
/airplane with your arms out from your shoulders to each side
/jet with your arms out from your elbows to each side
/ironman upright vertical flight with hands down
/canonball chin and legs tucked in a fetal position
/diver hands and arms over head forming a triangle arc
/fists both fists out first
/feet you fly around feet first horizontal
Animated Navigation
/curly you fly defensively that is to say you fly in random right/left and up/down curls to confuse your enemies and make you less of a target
/straight you just fly straight
/arc you fly in an arc through a zone much like the sun might, like a natural curved version of a straight path
/zigzag You zag right and left as you fly or travel, sometimes this causes difficulty.
/evasive you automatically avoid buildings and other objects although some things can't be avoided
/upsidedown you can fly upside down because your bored or maybe your tired of staring at streets all day
/backwards you can fly with your view to your posterior I wouldn't recommend this but if you ever wanted to film it, there it is.
/pan right you can fly right without turning your entire body
/pan left you can fly left without turning your entire body
/land you can bring yourself down to land seamlessly at your destination
/formation You can fly in formation if your group is flying with you
/formation birds you fly like a broad triangle
/formation jets you fly in a perfect triangle
/formation self you can set your own custom formation to fly in as group leader
I'm sure other people can think of nice things. :)
Imaginitive young lady looking for clients, talents are imagining the realistic possibilities of practically anything, and applying new technologies to practical applications in all types of business.
This may be one of those cases where reality loses to drama. Still, the right people will see your comment here (DeathSheep being one of the right people), so we'll see. Just be prepared for a game full of running animations that look cool to all the non-professionals but make no sense to you :D.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
For what it's worth, a video I watched earlier today showed that characters in CoH ran (mostly) upright. I think that this would be the best for a default run animation and that any variations be stance or animation set dependent. The style of 'leaning forward makes you run faster'[color=red]*[/color] is common enough that it doesn't bother me.
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[color=red]*[/color] Hey, it makes at least as much sense as painting something red to make it go faster.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
This is thrilling to me because art style and movement are important and generally not so great in MMORPG's. Though this is a very limited peek at movement, I see nothing I don't like.
I do agree with those above that, while comic book stylization is important, I'd personally rather see it layered on top of a base of realistic movement. For example, normal run- realistic human running. Super-speed run- go ahead and lean into the "wind" because you're moving super-humanly fast and that wouldn't look "normal".
It's just so exciting that CoT is based on the first and best Superhero MMORPG, and yet coming at a time when we can look at the second generation of Superhero games for lessons about what else works and, unfortunately mostly, what doesn't work.
Keep it up, guys. We NEED this game.
Badly.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Didn't notice it the first time, but certainly did the second time here, starting just after the 1:00 mark where you can see the model running in profile, although you can't actually see the feet in frame striking the floor, it looks like you were angling for more of a forefoot strike rather than a heel strike in the running movement. I say this as someone who wears [url=http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/index.htm]VFF[/url] toe shoes every time I'm not wearing thong styled flip-flops for short outdoor trips. There's a tremendous difference in the posture and form when running with a heel strike (most common in "sport" sneakers and Nike-esque shoes) and a forefoot strike (barefoot, etc.).
And yes, now that you've mentioned it the forward lean above the hips is far too pronounced.
I also agree with the critique of the elbows, particularly how that decision informs everything having to do with motion from shoulders to hands. I find that when I'm running (in VFFs) using a forefoot strike I tend to keep my hands in a relaxed clench (to keep them from flopping around) and hold them just in front of my floating ribs on each side of my torso/abdomen. It's then very economical (in energy expended terms) to run with a very small amount of metronome swinging motion to cancel out the angular momentum of running in a left/right/left/right pendulum motion. So rather than big arm swings like you're seeing in this demo I do more of a spine twist at shoulder height to counterbalance the shifting from foot to foot as I run. This keeps my hands close to my center of gravity and allows for an easy jogging trot. And yeah, upright torso for that.
The biggest difference though between a forefoot strike and a heel strike is that with a heel strike the leg is locked at the knee the entire time the foot is in contact with the ground, meaning LONG strides. With a forefoot strike, you keep your knees bent just a little bit at all times and use everything from foot arch to hips as an interconnected set of shock absorbing springs ... which also means taking shorter strides that in turn cause you to "pedal more" across the same amount of distance. So a heel striker might take 10 strides to go "this far" could take a forefoot striker 12-30 strides to cover the same distance. So yeah, the difference can "make a difference" as far as animations are concerned.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Now that the others mention it, I do admit the arms to look a bit weird when running. I find the forward lean to be fine since it kind of reminds me of hero comics and cartoons, so I think I am just kind of used to the break in reality. Though the arms though just look kind of awkward when running as it looks kind in between the way speeders run, like the Flash, and how normal people run, like Bolt. But other than that I can't really complain.
Also.. you guys have such great music (even the stuff you've already released). Silent film is a thing of the past.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Hmh. For a someone like me who doesn't know anything about the tech or coding it looks like the character builder is not very far in development yet but the description states it's nearly feature complete?
If I understood correctly the shiny background assets were recycled and actual character creation room doesn't exist yet? Also we saw animations but again if I understood correctly those were provided by the engine itself based on what sheep said? Finally I believe it was mentioned in some interview or forum post that the character model is under heavy redevelopment because of some issues with too many nodes or some such?
I'm a bit puzzled about which features were developed by the MWM and which were provided by the engine? Is that the actual character model we will see in the game or something pulled from assets? It's unclear to me what are the supposed features for the initial builder? I mean does "feature complete" from development perspective merely mean the room and its functionality, and actual fully developed character model is a separate "feature" and not part of the builder "feature package"?
For a someone like me who spends little time on the forums it would help if you updated the site to include features of different releases you are planning. Now I've very vague idea about what is going on so I've a hard time to get excited about what I see when I can't identify what has been actually done by you guys and what are the features the engine comes with out of the box.
Optimally I'd like to see some bi-weekly or monthly update where all different team leads give a brief summary on what their teams have been working on. A bit like what Star Citizen does. Currently I have zero idea for example how big is the art team and what they spend their hours on. I doubt the guys creating icons are the same working on character models or coding the engine. Yet we hardly see any in-game art. Not even icons or character builder GUI samples!
I like what I am seeing for sure so definitely keep up the awesome work!
leaning forward is something comics do to help impart speed, especially In the super speedster category. if we look at modern day sprinters, they run preety much ramrod straight backed, which to me honestly looks goofy...but in this case goofy gets results. ;) I wouldn't mind a lil bit of leaning for the speedsters to help keep that comic book feel though. :)
the only critique I have is in regards to the stance. It's looks a lil hunched in the shoulders. I am assuming that it is a combat/action stance versus just joe-hero standing around shooting the breeze. ....it also could just be me seeing things but thought I would mention it none the less. :)
again though, you all are doing an awesome job thus far and I am very much looking forward to the next tidbit you all share! :)
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
I'd love to get answers to everything you've asked here and it'd be wonderful to be able to expect scheduled bi-weekly or monthly updates from all the MWM team leads like Star Citizen does. But since you've started the comparsion between the two games I'll finish it for you: A few weeks ago Chris Roberts announced Star Citizen had surpassed $50 million in funding. Based on what we know MWM is probably operating with less than 1/50th that amount.
All I'm saying is please keep your expectations on what MWM will be able to provide in terms of "regular project updates" within reason. I don't want them to waste a penny or a minute of time giving me pointless progress reports when there's nothing incredibly significant to report. If that means we don't hear anything for a few weeks or months here or there that's perfectly fine with me. I'll worry about expecting regular info from MWM after they have the game up and running.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
It's pretty much like Lothic said. Star Citizen has full time staff - they can afford to actually hire all their people. All of our guys are volunteers using their free time - often near miraculously extracting sufficient free time from their lives while maintaining day jobs. That makes every unnecessary use of time and resources count - count for a lot. As such, those kind of reports are currently...impractical. Hopefully that will change someday soon.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
CoT gives you updates every Wednesday. A lot more than other studios have been able to do.
It is not in the games economic best interest to show more to us without the ability to capitalize it. If we were mid Kickstarter Campaign where showing updates = more interest/money then it makes sense to show your hand.
The game WILL be releasing the costume creator for you to eventually buy and use. Until such time as they are getting ready to actually SELL that product to you (and perhaps some of the costumes inside) it doesn't really behoove the company to give away what needs to be sold.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Hmmm... I wouldn't stress the GUI textures too much, since it can be modified by the Art team anytime. The bit i'm most interested in were the Sliders. As you might or might not know, I tried to make sliders in Unreal Development Kit.. and they didnt look pixel perfect. These sliders look Very Nice and Sharp.
It seems that the developers are using mostly* existing art and focusing on the movement and animation mechanics of the avatar. The limbs, and perhaps other parts, are Stitched Together, so thats something that wasnt shown.
But I'd rather see sliders for changing the different body dimensions.
Symmetrical at start, then maybe more. :)
Maybe in the next few tech updates, we might see a list of costume pieces:
- 4 different hair styles
- 4 different shirts
- 4 different pants
that can be clicked on and they would swap out on the avatar.
Plus, one or two long sleeved shirts... just to test how it will work with shorter or longer limbs.
Nice UI. Not that it's fancy, but it looks clean and usable, and I can't tell that it's Unreal just from the UI. If it's just for a demo, a hobbyist would have pulled out some hairs, yelled "How does this darn engine do UI!?", then produced something half-assed that he made out of 3D game assets. Is that a WIP from the avatar builder package or does UE4 come with much more friendly UI editing capabilities than UDK or most other game engines?
I've never seen a game character pivot on the ball of his foot. Can our avatar be animated to do that? Can the red guy already do that, but there's no control for it in the setup being demonstrated?
Upskirt shot! Wait, no skirt? Take that! BLAM BLAM BLAM!
Very smooth animation in general. CoH had remarkable smoothness. It might have been a combination of having plenty of key frames, and wise choice of start and end poses. The smooth blending you're showing off says that CoT might not just meet the standard but improve on it.
Really, most people place their feet one ahead of the other when running, not in a zigzag pattern. More nearly in a line than the red guy was doing it, anyway.
I agree that the smoothness of movement is something I miss from CoH and don't see in other games. That's one of the things that excited me about the vid.
As far as putting one foot in front of the other, you've never seen me go for a run. Like and ape with hemorrhoids.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Empyrean, reeaaalllyy didn't need that visual....thanx..........
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
In point of fact, the sliders there were done using a system in the engine so new that it isn't even considered stable / complete by the "upstream" folks (i.e. Epic) -- but it *is* the system they're aiming to develop as the primary menu-and-overlay mechanism in UE4, at least for folks who don't go with a customized vendor/3rd-party solution. So we figured we'd see whether we could get it to hook slider A to zoom, slider B to rotation, and so on, yet. As you can see, it actually turned out remarkably well, especially for something that is effectively still in alpha *for Epic*.
Which is actually both halves of why we didn't even try to make it 'fancied up' with anything like the real UI controls -- we needed a fast prototype to see if we would be wasting our time trying to work on it yet (so not useful to spend the time to apply them) plus it isn't actually at a stage where you *can* apply them, just yet. Although it has advanced leaps and bounds in the last couple of updates from Epic, so I'm not too worried about it ending up where we need it to be well ahead of when we need it to be there.
Yup. See last week's updates for those. :)
While we expect it to be solved, UE4 actually took a non-trivial step backwards in terms of how many options there are to manipulate animations in "strange" ways, from where UDK was. They did so because they had to; in order to fix the core issues with the system they basically had to make some major changes to assumptions about "how stuff works," and they haven't (yet) finished putting all of the fancier knobs back on. That said, the core functionality for limb scaling appears to be there, but we're still in the "highly experimental, figuring out how to make it work *right*" stages. For various reasons, it has taken a back burner to other costume-and-body-related work, for the past bit, but we haven't forgotten it.
From a *technical* perspective, that was actually mostly shown last week (aside from the limb scaling). Whether a mesh is the shape of an opera glove or a jacket sleeve is actually mostly not relevant to the underlying code -- it is more a matter of having the assets set up for it, and possibly some of the work involved in refining things from a 'show demo' stage to a more robust one. Basically just going through and replacing things where, say, only one of four paths was actually implemented for the first demo, and doing the other three. And so on.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Suffice to say that all of the bits that folks have noticed *weren't* as smooth as they might have been pretty much boil down to "remember, this was the techies showing the animators (among others) what the engine can do" -- which means that the animators themselves had not been let loose on it to fix the quirkier bits, when this was shot. Chicken-and-egg problem.
Also keep in mind that because it is running in place, the figure is lacking some of the 'sway' that might normally be there; if you were to look at the "ground track" of someone running, it doesn't form a straight line, but rather a zig-zag, as the weight shifts from one side to the other and back. Whereas "running in place" means that the center of the body is fixed in space (and happens to, in fact, be fixed directly above the point where a 'ground track' would be traced), so there are a few bits that are going to look slightly 'off' in that regard, and would have to, in order for things to look right when actually moving across open ground. If you try to lock it down the wrong way you get a "moonwalk" effect because the stride taken by the character doesn't match up with the movement of their 'base' (this is known as 'root motion').
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Trust me, you do *not* want to see my attempts at animation. They make baby domo-kuns cry and kittens become ravening fiends out of space and time.
However, what I *can* say is that the notion of being able to pick and combine animations is something we expect to extend to quite a bit more than just combat... after all, it would be kind of silly to build a system that could do that because it already *had* to be able to do that, and not then make use of it.
Imagine a world... where animations are pretty much just another sort of costume piece. Pants? Check. Shoulder-launched missile? Check. Leaping tall buildings in a single-bound-animation? Check. Okay, we're all set to fight (... or commit) crime today.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I'm not sure who these other studios are but I take your word for it. I also agree that the volunteer based development by default limits the options which is actually one "concern" of mine. Many larger developers with a large full-time staff working overtime still miss milestones, and the games get delayed.
It sounds outright miraculous to me that a small team of volunteer developers are planning to push out an AAA quality game similar to CoH considering that most are going to be able to dedicate only limited hours to development because of their "real" jobs and families. This is why I supported the kickstarter in the first place (even if my fancy K seems to be missing but that's not important). The guys here have guts even if I've to admit I'm somewhat doubtful about the end result. No offense. It's just that the odds seem to be stacked against the development team. Character builder is one thing. A fully developed game is another. I suppose MWM is going to be scrutinized a lot more than a "real" development house. They have a lot more to prove.
One of the things I'm wondering about is that why doesn't MWM go the Star Citizen route and provide supporter subscriptions. I wouldn't mind paying something like 10€ a month if it meant we could get for example development summaries like I mentioned or hire external developer to improve the web page and forums. Of course a single person paying 10€ a month is nothing but I bet there are at least a few hundred hardcore fans willing to participate which again is not that huge sum but should at least help to improve some neglected parts.
Honestly, we want to get something out first, the costume creator.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
MWM is working on a store and is already selling [url=http://cityoftitans.com/t-shirt-order-form]t-shirts[/url] to get some funding and answer some of the "take my money!" demands from supporters (who may or may not have missed the Kickstarter).
I think it's a safe bet to assume that MWM will do whatever they find is reasonable to raise more money. Star Citizen has the advantage that it is run by people with established names [i]and[/i] an established franchise in the industry. Their game also allows them to toss out new ships, and whatnot, and have people lining up around the block to purchase the same. I doubt there would be nearly as much enthusiasm if MWM offered to allow people to buy 'Bases Mk. II' (whatever that might be) for $120.
Star Citizen is the WoW of crowd-funded computer games, if not crowd-funded projects as a whole. Attempts to emulate or beat it will likely result in the same results as those of studios which tried to emulate or beat World of Warcraft.
I've considered propose the idea of implementing some kind of subscription for updates and/or similar goodies. The issue I have with this approach is precisely as you said: the odds seem to be stacked against the development team. In my opinion, sharing as much information as is possible about the game is important. MWM could assume that at least several people would share this information almost as soon as it became available, anyway (and probably be correct), but that'd be rather disingenuous to the subscribers. Then there are also such question as, would you rather they spend this time/money on giving you additional updates or save it for a future advertising budget? Or to put more/better stuff in the game? To put out new issues every four months rather than every six months?
I wonder how many people would pay money for additional development updates versus, say, getting a mastermind AT six months after launch rather than a year after launch?
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Heh, want us to put up a donate for pet class for launch?
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Dude. You do "donate toward features" and you'll see some cash. My son would get a second job to have a pet class at launch.
I guess you'd have to set markers to reach so people would understand if we didn't get there. Or it could be each marker shaves a month off the wait so people get a little something no matter what. And pull a Scottie and be conservative with your promises, because, y'know, Murphy.
MWM obviously wants to GIVE us something for our money--tee shirts, a costume designer, etc.--which shows integrity and I respect. But lots of us just want to support the effort accepting that the outcome is never certain.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Fair enough. However please consider rolling out a new website along with the creator release. From the publicity perspective that costume creator is going to draw in a lot of new people if it's sufficiently impressive. It needs to be found easily and there should be a nice amount of easily accessible information to go along with it.
I really like the MWM company site theme by the way. It's clean and feels modern. The CoT site and forums on the other hand have very rough patchwork feel but here's where the actual community resides. Not the MWM site... but I'm getting sidetracked here.
Sorry if I sound rough on you guys but this from someone who is more a generic gamer and potentially interested rather than a hardcore fan. As said I'm here more out of curiousity than for fandom reasons.
I agree. If people could put money toward specific ATs (and/or flavors of AT), power sets, zones (or even just additional zones), costume/animation sets, etc. they may very willingly do so. Obviously some would require more of a lead-in (artwork, etc.) than others.
Such things could very well prove to be CoT's equivalent to Star Citizen's ships.
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Ah see. Here is the thing. I can't speak for others but I've actually zero interest in physical goods myself. I would never really get a t-shirt, a mousepad or similar. I've also quite little interest in concept art books (virtual or otherwise), team backgrounds or some "how we got here" stories.
Here are a few things that would make me shell out money in no particular order. Especially as a subscription:
Development updates (especially functional dev tracker, status updates)
Peristent in-game prestige goods (emotes, limited edition skins, titles etc)
New features as funding goals
Development milestone goalposts
The last one is of great interest to me. It's basically timesavers though donations. Essentially if some feature has a high development cost and it could be reached faster if they could outsource some parts through extra funding then I might be willing to assist in that. It's essentially a "pay us this much and we can speed up development of feature X". Not necessarily a game asset either. It could be "if we get this much money we will do something about the website or forums" (dev tracker please!). It differs from a new feature in that it's already planned and in development but the money is spent to speed the development up.
It's much better than an open donation run because you have a clear cut goal. Provide this much money as a comunity and you get feature X faster and in better quality.
However if I dish out money for that feature I also expect reports on how it's proceeding. Also keep in mind that a lot of folks are more likely part from relatively small sums of money like $10/10€ as opposed to spending hundreds so the goals might not be reachable immediatelly. I've also noticed that there's a certain "gotta spend more" effect when you see an actual donation bar filling up.
I presume obtaining licenses for something like [url=http://quixel.se/]Quixel[/url], which would help MWM to do the work quicker and better, would also makes your list. I know I'd find some extra money to put toward that. I believe it was warcabbit who mentioned Quixel somewhere, and raised the idea of additional funding toward that end.
Also, as DocT has pointed out, the background in the video is from Quixel.
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I just want to throw out there that I think Northie's perspective is particularly valuable because he's not "one of us" (YET!!!).
We hear plenty of what the "community" wants, but the real hope for CoT is to both give the community a new home AND reach out to the larger gaming world.
PLUS I like all the stuff he and Darth are pitching :). I really think they're on to something.
Set it up and I'm in!
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Yeah but keep in mind that if you spend money on something you generally want to see that the money was put into use and something was achieved with it. That's why I mentioned website, dev trackers and development updates. Those are the stuff immediatelly visible to us as a community. The money spent on backend* stuff is usually invisible and not very exciting. You will eventually start doubting if the money is actully spent on anything. I'd put "flashy" things as goals. Stuff that they can show to us in a feature ready state and say "Lookit. Your money was spent to create this, cool, huh?"
Let's face it. There are few things more boring to look at than code. It's mandatory but it's not shiny or captivating.
I'd say results of the Quixel would definitely be in the shiny category. However you would need to show progress on those results. Shiny updates.
*Note: I don't really know what backend means. I've merely heard people use it when they mean "something that makes stuff work but that you don't really see" aka "Uh. What I'm looking at?" stuff.
It's certainly true that it's an advantage to have shinies to show. I think a lot of us are happy to wait because we finally have a prospective date (December 2014) for the ultimate shiny: the avatar builder. That's practically half the game, right there![color=red]*[/color]
Quixel definitely falls into the back end category. I'd be thrilled to learn that it saves them X hours of work every week, or whatever, but that's of decidedly less interest to the ephemeral "Ooh! Aah! Pretty!" crowd.
[br]
[color=red]*[/color] Where some people are concerned, I'm not exaggerating by much.
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I find december dates pretty scary. It's the holiday season so people with limited time are going to be even more busy then. Slightly less than 3 months (about 12 weeks) to go. Then again I've no idea how far the progress on character and related assets actually is. Of course all props to MWM guys if they can hit that goal but since there's no business incentive I'm content to set my expectations to "when it's ready" date in my own head.
Has there been any word about what we can expect from the december release? As I understand it they are planning to provide "basic functionality" and expand on it with the caveat that I don't think it has been specified what that basic functionality entails.
I've seen no information on what the avatar builder (presumably a beta release) will entail. I'd expect such information would make for a fairly major Wednesday update, so I feel safe in saying that no such information has been shared. I also expect that the AB will have enough costumes to start putting character/costume creation through its paces, but that it will by no means be exhaustive.
I very much see such dates as moving targets. I'm thrilled at the December announcement but I will by no means be surprised if it is pushed back. Undoubtedly other people will view any such dates as something akin to one of the Ten Commandments.
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Asking them to take more money to reach development goals is just unfeasible.
The only thing at this point that would greatly increase production is $ for 3rd Party production.. and paying someone else whiteout having the ability to pay the volunteer effort is something I think people would see as off-putting.
There is a development schedule, and there are defined milestones; asking to update or accelerate that schedule without a direct line as to how is something people should think about before asking for.
Asking to see the development as it is created instead of as its ready is also not going to help the studio OR help get the game created faster. If your fear is about vaporware (which is a fear I can understand) then the best thing that you can do for the game is increase the visibility profile. Share posts on social media, talk to your friends about the game.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I'm going to do some more general commenting here, so I'm not picking on you Fez, aside from the December comment. Can you provide a source on that as I may need to have a conversation behind the woodshed with someone.
We're working rather hard to not to commit to that specific of dates right now. I expect we should have another solid vertical slice to how by then but at this point suggesting we'll have someting to put in folks hands then might be a tad premature. As Sheep noted above, many things are dependant on work from Epic that is either very Alpha or not even commited yet. Previous UE3 features that have been ripped out and not rebuilt in the new model. Etc.
The CoT site and forums refresh is on the horizon, but there's a good deal more infrastructure work in the way betwen long term dependencies and general prioritization. Unless you'd rather we concentrate solely on the sizzle...
By now you've noticed most of our updates are from department heads who frankly, are a bit busy just keeping track of assignments and getting new ones out. Particularly as we're mid transition into doing things with proper asset tracking. There are a few areas organizationally where we are behind our own targets and that causes cascade delays. The plus side is we are digging out of that backlog and I'm largley happy wth the rate of recovery - but there's still a ways to go.
And on the subject of more funding. It's not just a double edged sword, it is an N-Dimensional razor edged snowflake. Here are just some of the issues on both sides
* We haven't gotten all of the KS rewards out yet. ( And in many cases won't for a while )
* We haven't launched any kind fo Alpha or other code release that is susbtstaional enough that all but the Negative for Negatives sake crowd would see as movement.
* There is a nontrivail category of players (completists largely) that are very angry and vocal about exclusive rewards they never had an opportunity to get and cannot get going forward. Appeasing that crowd angerrs the "Hey we sponsored you early, that was supposed to be our reward only. Largely a lose-lose
As such, we're doing this slow and cautious. We have a lot of things considered and weighed and waiting for what we feel is the best timing. Waspinator haz plans.
Lastly "Background Stuff"
Background stuff is a largely infrastructure. It procedures, policies, APIs and planning. It's not very sexy except to people who enjoy the logistics of deploying hardware and software licenses across a VPN to the license servers and on in to the asset management systems. They're also often difficult or unwise to demonstrate.
Unless someone really wants to know about why we're using SVN vs git or mercurial and how that ties into Jira and Alien Brain. I'm sure those people exist - but it's a limited audience. We'd like to be more general purpose there.
Perhaps but it could pull in new people but then again so will release of the avatar builder. I certainly won't be spreading word quite yet. Based on the posts here it is not the time for that yet because there's very little to show that would appeal to anyone but a hardcore fan. Somewhat borrowing Doctor Tyche's words: it's better to wait until there's something out first. Namely the costume creator.
I know I'll check the site for updates a few times a week or at least a few times a month like I've been doing since registering here. I'm sure I won't miss the release and then it's time to spread the word. Anyhow. I honestly hope the developers succeed because I would like to play a high quality superhero MMO with extensive customization.
Judging by my post [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/67715#comment-67715]here[/url], that comment was made on Facebook on, or shortly before, August 1. It appears some posts have been hidden or removed, unless there really was more than a month of inactivity on the FB page.
Short answer: I can't provide a source.
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The date we have been quoting has been 'late 2014'. Seeing as December is as late 2014 as it gets, I'm neither surprised nor bothered it has morphed into that somehow. That said, don't spread it, just because we didn't mean to say it that way. I know I always talk in quarter year estimates unless expressly told otherwise by high ranking individuals. Said individuals, in turn, usually only hand down dates in quarter years, hence my policy.
I do know some people ended up (incorrectly) nailing December as release day for CoH if the deal succeeded. Of course such a date is completely impossible to back up, anymore than anyone can promise the date will succeed in the first place. But if someone didn't convert our 'late 2014' to 'December 2014' directly, that might have been the source of the mix-up.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
I think a big part of all of this is that we are really excited and wish we could do something to help hurry things up, when the truth is that the main thing we can do right now to help the effort is... wait.
Which is the last thing we really want to hear. But, it's the right answer for now.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
We're keeping you as up to date as we can, without disturbing the actual building of the game. Every update really needs a lead's touch, and those leads are, well, busy people.
So, you know, trying to maintain an even strain. Your reactions to them really help morale, by the way.
I do like the idea of adding money to pay for goals. If we managed to get enough money, we could hire some people full time, and that would help.
Hm. I don't know. I really, really, believe in giving people something when I ask for money.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Hey, War, do what you know is right. You have our full faith and trust. We'll hang in there.
We really, really want the game NAOWUH! But that doesn't mean that's possible, realistic, or what should happen.
Build it and we'll come (I've never even watched that movie), just build it right.
But, I will say this. Lots of people giving a little money can add up to a lot. And lots of people have a little money they can give without doing themselves any harm.
And I personally am perfectly fine contributing to the EFFORT, regardless of the outcome.
Here's what you can give us for our money--your best effort. That's enough for me, personally.
Where do I sub?
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I certainly understand and respect that outlook, and I'd almost certainly share it if I were in the same position. On the other hand, it ties into the argument/perception of whether virtual/digital goods count as 'something'. I certainly understand Shard's point about getting promised items, especially from the Kickstarter, out to people first.
For my part, as I've stated, if additional funding means the game launches with more zones, or ATs, or power sets, or costume/animation sets, etc., I'd definitely be inclined to put some money toward it. Ditto for Quixel licenses, if it does help to create costumes or maps (or whatever) that much faster/easier/better. To me, that has value, even if I can't put it on my desk, or hang it on my wall, or point to it and say, "Yeah, I bought that. That belongs to me."
All of that can certainly wait until the avatar builder is out of the door.
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Ok, how about I take this week and figure out actual cost needed for various things?
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
[img=640x480]http://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co.nz/attachments/f15/17221d1386320440-new-thumbhole-ar15-stock-charles-montgomery-burns-excellent.jpg[/img]
/ Burns tongue.
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Doesn't that hurt, Burnsing your tongue? You should remember to blow on the hot cocoa when it's brought out to you...
But the [I]EXCELLENT![/I] is seconded!
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Just remember that we have a window into a game's development that most people do not have. In other studios their prospective game at a similar level of development might not even be announced yet.
For example - Fallout 4 - pretty certain that it's being worked on (due to a number of "leaks") but no official announcement and no shinies to show off yet.
CoT on the other hand, due to the nature of the project (crowdfunded, fan-created) we have a certain amount of insight into the game even at this early stage of development.
So, really, we all have to understand this and have patience - the goodies will be forthcoming - and then we can start showing stuff off.
Add me to the list of people who would pay an amount every month even if it didn't apply to any tangible thing or even to any advance subscription months. I'd pay a monthly "subscription" for the simple knowledge that it could help bring the game to launch a little bit faster or with more of what is planned for the future.
I doubt I could give much without expecting to get some subscription months as being paid in advance (spend money now to save money later), but I could certainly do $15/month even without any expectations. I can't really afford it yet, but shhhhhh... It'll be our little secret.
CoyoteShaman
Really enjoyed the proportions and motion of the avatar. Could almost feel the tension in the musculature. If I had to suggest any improvement it would be in the jump animations, which, as you say, have yet to be sorted. Keep up the good work!
I, too, would be likely to contribute towards progress goals. Aside from a clean copy of the cityscape from the MWM web site, there's not much I want in return other than the game itself.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Just seeing the video is making me excited. It looks very good. I hope we get to vote and suggest on how the models are going to look like.
Glad my running comment sparked a bit of discussion. I am all in favor of different body poses / stances / styles, or whatever you call them. I was just concerned that at this early stage, something like the odd-looking run would be locked in as the "normal" or default run style. Obviously any body movement tends to be stylized for the cool factor in any media, and particularly comic books.
As for the elbows, I think if you look at the sprinter pic I linked above, you can see that sprinters, on the down arm, have a wider than 90 degree bend, and on the up arm, less than 90. As for distance runners, keeping the arms relaxed tends to keep the forearms much more parallel to the ground, which obviously affects the elbow angle as the arm moves back and forth. There was also a guy on my little league team who sprinted with his forearms pretty much straight down, which looked goofy as all heck - but why not put that in as an option? Anyways, I think the "oddly static at the elbows" comment I made is more or less the right way to describe what was off-putting. Arms are rarely (if ever) locked in a 90 degree angle.
I think this quote exactly describes what i would want to see.
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2nd this sentiment. i'm happy to contribute regularly if it helps advance the game's development - as long as the dev team is able to maintain a basic level of transparency regarding progress and communicate regularly.
Yes. Yes I do. I personally would throw more money at you for that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Gonna just throw another idea out there since pet class at launch has some bites. Others join in as desired.
Let us donate or sub to help sponsor time from a professional coder/artist/writer/etc. or whatever you need most. No added pressure or hassle for MWM, but a very tangible and meaningful thing to donate towards.
Doesn't create deadlines or product delivery hassles, but knowing you are sponsoring a coder or writer or whatever is very relatable. Again, this is for people who want to DONATE, not pre-selling ingame things like Star Citizen.
We can of course do that type of pre-selling also to raise capital, but I'm focusing on hassle-free ways to motivate donations from those who might be willing.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
That's probably as close to a working definition as anything else, actually. "The stuff you don't see directly but that has to be there for it all to work." And it is, in fact, almost universally boring, which is why Tech updates tend to focus on "hey look what we can do with the front end!" rather than "now dogfooding a single-sign-on core" -- even if the latter underpins everything from the patcher to the future cash shop to the self-service account management stuff to... yeah, you get the idea.
The really hazy one is "middleware", which is as much a marketing term as anything more concrete, but basically means "something that exists more or less entirely to make it simpler to hook two or more systems together without having to write every piece of that yourself." It tends to be expensive, and while the best of it can in fact bring some dramatic reductions in development time, especially "core" development (what we're doing right now), anything *but* the best of it can end up leading you down a rat-hole into places you very much do not want to ever be, and it almost universally has scaling issues at *some* point (... admittedly, so do most non-middleware solutions, but usually of a different sort that, if they were built well, is easier to fix).
Back-end stuff is mostly only helped by having more time to dedicate to it, and in many cases that is "high end" time -- admins and developers who legitimately have "senior " or "lead " titles in most companies. You also can't throw too many of them at a problem before they start stepping on each other's toes, even when they're trying not to.
Front-end stuff is helped primarily by having a clear design focus and structure to work from, and then using "expert time" to address problems as they come up. This is one of the spots where the fact that our agreement with Epic gets us access to their private support forums can make a profound difference (and in fact, has already done so multiple times). Often it boils down to a question that is simple to work through once someone can tell you "oh, yeah, we've seen that before, you probably want to take a look at and use the same basic approach" but which could have taken weeks or months to find without that pointer simply due to the size and complexity of the engine. Though to be fair to them, to date we've only run into that much when we're "pushing the envelope" of what they have gotten stable enough that it was reasonable to document it; their documentation is pretty darn good, overall.
Quixel is more of a "productivity tool", which makes it kind-of-but-not-really like middle-ware; it speeds things up, and in some cases makes things possible to do sanely that just aren't reasonable without such a tool, but *unlike* middle-ware most good productivity tools continue to be useful as you scale up. And yes, we're looking at it. There is at least one "big thing" that needs to be examined to make sure what we need and what it can do actually line up, still, but we've definitely been putting the tool through its paces.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
And just to be clear, since I wrote this without having read the rest of the thread yet (silly sheep!) -- things like the pet classes are actually "interestingly broad", in that they require some effort on the front end (control GUIs, readouts, figuring out summoning UI behavior, and so on), a fundamental-but-required-otherwise chunk of the back-end / core (AI handling, specifically making sure that our conceptual framework for AI in general has a clear and sane way of tying into the things that UE4 provides for controlling behavior of mobs, in the 'mobile' sense of the word), gameplay (dealing with game balance issues; I'll just point out that MIDS never *did* figure out how to usefully calculate several of its numbers for MMs and leave it at that), art (by launch, anyway, even if we can prototype it with inverted trash cans and plungers, or even just cubes)... I'm probably forgetting one or two as well.
All of the above is said not as a "oh no, this is huge" thing, but rather in the interest of giving folks some rough notion of the actual / practical reasons why pets are a more advanced goal than, say, more costume pieces or more patterns. Or for that matter even wings or tails, which are mostly a matter of content creation and limited code support, rather than requiring things from pretty much every department except *maybe* Lore.
[ I had some further details here, originally, but I'm not sure they're really for public consumption; if they are, they're definitely something for Nate or Cabbit to discuss. ]
Off to bed now so that I can be awake and work on answers for some of Nate's technical questions tomorrow. It helps when you can count yourself...
[hr]
[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
You heard it here first, folks! Animated Hardware power set with Weighted Companion Cube as the top level pet.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Okay, so we have the Tim Allen power set for masterminds confirmed.
I can't wait to see what's next!
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More Power!!
Be Well!
Fireheart
you forgot the monkey grunt...always gotta do the monkey grunt when you say that. it's a law!
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
Hm. A young Pam Anderson as a henchman.
That might be enough to make me change my mind about the whole jiggle physics thing...
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
*looks for Nate and/or Cabbit with hopefull eyes* :)
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
Tell me what you want, what you really really want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fuEl03xBUM Jiggle Physics benchmark.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
I'm loving that we have more female lead characters the men have been in charge all this time and has it really gotten any safer ??!?! Let the women stomp on
After you have done that poll it on the website. You must have some sort of idea how many individual visits the website gets. Not all of them may visit the forums. Could have a simple poll like: Would you be willing to donate to CoT development if it meant faster development?
Preferably what form the donations should take (i.e. options monthly subscription, one time donations, mixed, "i don't want to donate", "i want to donate only if (clarify in forums)" etc...)
If you get the donations running put a nice donation meter on the website with goals. Donation meters make everything better even if it's a subscription donation and not only because it allows people to follow progress but also because of the psychological effect of seeing the bar go up.
Also don't try putting up too many things or too large sums at once (keep it in thousands rather than tens of thousands). If you have a hugely expensive feature split it into smaller parts. It's also okay and actually preferable to *overprice* something. Basically leave some empty room on the top so part of the money could be used in surprise costs. If you know feature X costs $5350 put it directly to 6000 at least.
Note: I'm being conservative in the cost numbers here since I suspect the community base is rather small. Of course if you know you have 1000 users all willing to donate $10 a month you can go for larger goals but having those 1000 donating users pretty much mandates a user base at least 10 times larger. We are talking about donations after all and it has heavy diminishing returns (that is in small numbers you got the hardcore fans willing to support which skews the results but when you go to larger numbers measured in tens or hundreds of thousands the amount of donators quickly drops). Of course it's another thing if you start to add donation incentives and got something to show...
Reminded me of these salvage storage lockers that appeared briefly in CoH beta:
[IMG]http://i555.photobucket.com/albums/jj477/fuzzygnome01/Exterminate_zps7ea78427.jpg[/IMG]
I am very sad nobody noticed what I actually linked a video of. Very, very sad.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
I saw it. I didn't see how it related to jiggle-physics, since it was all live-action. So I didn't comment.
Be Well!
Fireheart
The pecs, man! The pecs!
/ Gettin' jiggy with it.
// I've been wanting to use that all week.
/// Don't judge me.
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I saw it, and it made me want to watch Captain America. I didn't in fact watch it, but next time I rent something...
[url=https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-45-released]Unreal Engine 4.5[/url] has been released, which includes this little tidbit:
"ANIMATION RETARGETING SYSTEM
The new Animation Retargeting System allows you to convert animations between different skeletons using the humanoid rig! Once you have set this up, you’ll be able to convert animations between any skeleton that uses the same rig."
Is this awesome news for developing different animation sets or does this retargeting system not help in that manner?
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Just wanted to drop in and say how much I appreciate the idea of being able to move the camera up and down, among other options, during character generation. No more zooming in for better detail and losing sight of everything below the belt, or having the head cut off because the character is taller than the creator's field of view :)
Hopefully some flight animations can work it's way into the creator as well. Can't tell you how many times I thought I had a costume "finished" only to take flight and realize the soles of the footwear had some goofy pattern that looked really awful with everything else. (wouldn't it be great if sole patterns were their own costume piece?)
Start at about 34 seconds in. Watch the pecs coming towards you.
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