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Things have changed since you left, including most of the artists.
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
Paging Dr. Kruger, sounds easy to me. Just a model replacement?
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Ok, so either Ivory is as much of a genius as he/she seems to think he/she is, or Ivory is just crazy and full of it, or something in between?
Which is it?
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Pretty much
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
Or just bad at timing. Fuse shipped years after work began, after all. Cannot design around a solution that did not exist, after all.
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
If you think getting a basic human model with proper edge loops and pushing a few verts around to get a handful of morph targets for sliders is "genius"....then.....you are far too easily impressed (this stuff is very very early level stuff in learning 3d modeling).
APB has around 100 morphs, which affect every single one of the base mesh 26k tris. And we have to do a lot more than APB did. Their wings didn't have to flap.
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
Ivory is right. There are ways to shortcut game assets like character models, map design, clothing and morph targets.
But like in almost everything else, what you get out is what you put in.
Downloaded character models and BHVs to shortcut animations:
[youtube]m9jWYXZEr2c[/youtube]
Well designed and not shortcuted animations:
[youtube]w6G9Ic4PhSc[/youtube]
Mostly when you try to force the square peg of random assets through the round hole of planned game development you just make more work for yourself in the long run and the end result isn't close to what you wanted.
And there are places where we do feel shortcuts are appropriate, namely in world building. We do have a lot of world assets which are purchased. A road is a road, a window is a window, a street lamp is a street lamp. This freed up labor to focus on the area we felt is more critical, the character.
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
I didn't say that I thought what you were suggesting was genius. But I wouldn't know if it were or weren't because I'm a layman. That's what I've been trying to figure out. But these last few comments have clarified things for me.
Not to put words in their mouths, but, if I understand correctly, it seems that it's not so much that that the Devs and others think that one couldn't do the things you're suggesting or that they wouldn't work, it's rather that the they don't want to go those particular routs because, while it would result in a game, they don't feel it would result in the game that they want to produce.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I agree with this statement entirely, and so many MMOs have this issue, and its kind of sad to see how many people will always choose the socially "default" class, and will refuse to play with anything that isnt known as the best option.
As foolish as this seems,
Gotem.
From ya boy, Elios.
Oh, of course. I didn't feel the need to go into that great a detail because I was making one point I hadn't seen made yet (could have missed it).
There are many things Ivory claims as simple which don't take a lot of things into account. Like how randomized world building results in an illogical or uninspired world. Or how free character models have a generalized aesthetic and would unlikely fit the games aesthetic. The legalities involved in crowd sourcing game assets such as clothing. Or the misconceptions around morph targets/rigging and clothing assets (its not as simple as just using Fuse or parenting a prop to a model).
More importantly the arguments that Ivory makes confuse art assets with game assets which are very different animals.
It's a case of 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'.
That is why you don't just randomize it. Having a world where everything is just a jumbled mass of buildings randomized would be horrible.
For example, were I doing it....I would try to partner (or license) with Colossal Order (a small indie studio in finland).....in order to adapt their tech (and tap their superfans) for city generation to produce maps. Outside of that, it could be used as a tool to concept some city designs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQPyV7GYMo and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zXSZP1akxU ....or just take some of the underlying tech and use it for creating your city blocks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=529g5dxkOlg ).
But, a partnership with Colossal would mean the game wouldn't be limited in terms of size (and a lot of extra systems in place which could be adapted) ....suddenly instead of one city, you could have 100 giant sprawling ones. There are design reasons why such a large world would be handy (especially with different, more open, design philosophies....though CoT seems to be following the City of Heroes design philosophies from over a decade ago....which is far more restrictive).
Oh, yea, and you have a large city....but they are just boxes right? Well, they don't have to be. You could make them each hubs for potential encounters ....either like CoH and zoning to a new map (but procedural generation is far better than it was a decade ago) ....or do something like this ((though, I would store the seed with each building, so when you enter it , it would keep the same layout)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRrM941eBA4
You have to consider the gameplay loop and how content is created for players. Having the developers make every enemy faction and every mission is an immense burden.....but you could easily make this part of the game play loop (allowing the players to ultimately create the content for other players). This follows more towards modern shifts in design philosophies....the type of thing that allows games like Rust to happen with small development teams.
Create a "kingpin" system where players can manage resources....design their own minions....and launch various "crimes" to reach different goals....and suddenly you have a city that is breathing with dynamic missions and content being driven by the most engaged players. Also allow for various sub-levels of these abilities (everything from being a thug robbing people on the street or store or setting up a protection racket on some random block of town....to a lieutenant robbing a bank or helping oversee a weapons deal....to Lex Luther orchestrating 10 attacks on science labs across the city in order to create a distraction from his stealth crime at his real target to get a piece he needs for a larger puzzle....and each leaving their own events for hero players to engage with).
So much could be done through nothing more than a chain of UI elements and world triggers (especially given the size of the world). It becomes a much more organic design philosophy of action and calm (instead of city of heroes which degraded into repeatedly grinding through "missions").
IMO the goal shouldn't to be to remake City of Heroes with a new skin....it should be to make an awesome super heroes game..... but everyone has on the thickest nostalgia glasses that they aren't even considering going past it :P
There are legalities in everything, that is why you account for them to clear yourself. It is like saying "well, you can't start a business because there are legalities there and it is complicated". No...you get contracts made and get your ducks in order so you can move ahead without that "legal risk" hanging out there unattended.
You rig the armor slots to the characters for the scaling.... then swap out the armor model. Yea, it is a little more complicated than just pressing P (a little).
So, your solution to the dev's building a world is to hire or trade some shares and have someone else do it? They are not even paying themselves where does this money come from?
There are a lot more design reason to limit world size than there are to open it up. Ease of access and server resources are two pretty important ones. Unless you expect the world to have the simplistic look that the examples you provided have.
Those design philosophies result in a different game than what is being developed. Including sandbox elements is fine but this is primarily a MMO, not a sandbox game.
Yes, sandbox games are fun. But the system you are describing is a competitive sandbox game combined with RTS resource management. I don't want that and that is not the game that is being developed.
You are free to think what you want but if the devs were to adopt your design they would be in some pretty deep water. They received money through a kick starter campaign based on an traditional MMO game design not a Sandbox design.
Again, your solution is to pay, in this case for legal fees, and then have someone else design elements of the game.
So as it stands now you have suggested the devs either buy or get a free character model, license or partner with a world building company, break their design promises to investors, hire lawyers in order to crowd source almost all the games assets and do all of this with a very limited amount of available funds. I'm sorry but that insane.
This would work for uniform scaling but won't for the overlapping morphs of a fleshed out character creator.
Ivory, I honestly think you are misinformed on a lot of things and as a result the conclusions you have drawn are inherently flawed. I also think that because you are so convinced that you are right you will continue to ignore any evidence to the contrary.
You....understand that they have licensed the use of various programs right? That they didn't actually create the unreal engine? That these types of licensing agreements between companies with different toolsets is common.....right?
Or just take the open tech that they used (from 2012) and apply it to what they are doing to speed up creating the city.....
I have no idea what you are talking about. "Ease of access and server resources"? Having a larger world isn't really an issue.....this isn't 1990...........
And the "simplistic look" is far beyond what CoH was ....besides everything is operating off of pre-fabs which you can easily swap out for whatever quality level you want. Though the simple look would be fine for a launching point, having insane level detail on everything really isn't needed (and only gates out lower end systems).
Everyone seems REALLY focused on the shiny coat of paint and seems to be ignoring the actual gameplay and underlying features that keep people around.......
I don't know what this means. Yes, the goal is to create an MMO....but there is no need to be nostalgia blinded into just re-creating a cheaper version of City of Heroes (which was heavily flawed). Games have come a long way in the last 13 years................
So, you didn't play city of heroes that late into development did you? When they added the custom mission maker, did you throw your hands up and say "well, this is a sandbox game now"?
Also not exactly RTS......at all.....City of Heroes also had resource management....were you around when they added Supergroup Bases?? Was that RTS resource management too?
Did you play city of heroes? :| It wasn't "traditional MMO game design"....it was very different than something like WOW or Everquest at the time......
.....have you been asleep for the last 15 years?? Do you not know about anything happening in the games industry? Or what has been attempted in MMO content creation since City of Heroes???? Or even what has happened in MOBAs like DOTA or counterstrike????
The world has changed since the days of Everquest......community creating assets for a game (even massive multiplayer ones) is not even unusual now.......
Again, I have no idea what you are talking about. Scaling the overlaying armor to the deformation cage of the morph targets it the only way you can make arbitrary adjustments to a shape of a body and have the armor stay with it.......how do you think they do this in games (or in animation)? It really isn't a complicated concept.........this is basics of rigging and animation.......
I'll save the point-by-point breakdown and cut to the chase:
[i]You[/i] made a new account just to [i]derail a thread about the power system[/i] because you felt the burning need to [i]insult[/i] the development team's skills.
Are we clear? I think we are.
And that will be as much as I'll feed the troll.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
Not really, I made an account to discuss a different direction design wise the powers could take (and it evolved into various other subjects as we discussed it). I don't think anyone is denying that there have been growing pains with development and figuring stuff out (it isn't a secret that most / all of the force on the development is volunteer....that is how they are building the game, with a communal effort....).
I wish we could go back in time where troll actually meant something more than "someone I am angry at".
I, ah, don't think the technology behind Cities: Skylines is licenseable without a lot more money than we'd be willing to spend on it, folks. It is pretty nifty, though.
Ivory, I appreciate your passion, but we've tried most of your suggestions in the past (the possible ones) and they just don't work quite as well as you think they do. (Some of them we're already doing to some degree.)
Can we re-rail this thread?
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Size and resolution limits to the tech also make it unsuitable for such a task.
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
Edit- It is based on this....4k for the license....on which you could quickly build numerous cities.... http://www.esri.com/software/cityengine/buy
Woa I'm looking into this more....and it is even better than I thought :o You can build out existing cities extremely fast !! This thing has come so far since 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD0yml8LbPY
For a game in first person, would require some rework on the building parts they are referencing ....but that isn't that difficult.
Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q-3d_u4ABc
Ohhh, it is actually all procedural ....so you would really just need to focus on some higher detail materials.....dang this tech is nice, if I ever need to make a city scene I'm using this :3
GO Dev's GOOOOO! You guys got thiiiis!
Have a nice day!
GO Dev's GOOOOO! You guys got thiiiis!
Have a nice day!
Um... who told you Skylines is based on Cityengine?
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
There are reasons you don't see the buildings in CityEngine that close up. They're basically boxes with paint on them. It'd look... bad... at mmo scale. GTA 3 level detail.
We spent time with CityEngine, and it just doesn't give you the quality you want at anything other than a god's eye view.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
My eyes? It is obviously using the same tech to generate the building blocks.....though skylines has a lot of city management systems placed on top of the city building foundation.
You think their tiny 15 person studio made everything in skylines? :P
Yes, they did, actually. Skylines was not their first city title. Their Cities in Motion series was very popular. Cities: Skylines is built using an evolved version of the engine they'd created originally for Cities in Motion.
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
Okay, and I think that's really enough about all that.
SO! Hey, guys, what kind of FX would you like for powers, now that you know they're decoupled? Mystic fire, flowing and eerie, with mystic gestures?
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
I think more alignment looks would be cool, not saying you HAVE to be good or evil to use them. But like say you want a really nasty villain or very justice thirsty hero who uses darkness, and in the darkness affect you see howling souls from past enemies (not really but like wailing faces and such) OR or or.... Fire , some burning with sharp wild whipping edges... while maybe a soft warming match glow to healing or lets uncontrolled flames :O
Have a nice day!
Some sort of eerie greenish eldritch tentacles are always good for a less-than-savory mage type, like what Mr. P.H. Cloveraft might use.
(insert pithy comment here)
.......that is generally what buildings are....the issue of looking at things up close is really just a matter of your texture resolution level.....throw in some high detail textures and it should work? I haven't messed with it, but from what I read it supports material / texture swapping....so go nuts with that....seems others are figuring it out easy enough (and it is being used in film work). ((also how the rendering is handled and lighting goes a longgg way))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR83ps7N9uU
Or, go ahead, try to build every bit by hand with this other tool you got for unreal :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlR2geuzPXI&t=34s ....at first glance, the results I'm seeing from cityengine are a lot more impressive, but -shrug- if you've looked into them and don't think the benefits are worth it, up to you really. I really haven't looked at them deep enough (though I'm really impressed by cityengine and what that would enable a small team to do....i'll be using it in the future :3 ))
The lack of H. P. Lovecraft in things like games, for effect/creatures/ and insane cultist really bums me out :o
Have a nice day!
I wonder if they were both based on the same tech somewhere earlier then? They are handling these things sooo similar....
Both utilize an approach pioneered at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Here is the paper upon which both systems were derived:
https://github.com/felix11/OpenPCG/blob/master/literature/procedural_modeling_of_cities__siggraph2001.pdf
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
Titan City is set roughly in the location of Boston.
Hm. Is one of the Paragons a fish-man? I do believe he is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRAUKhZDoZQ
Trust me, with the exception of certain themes - if you read Lovecraft, you know the ones I mean - good old HP will be well covered in the game.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Hehehe, I have no doubts since CoH had given so much to the supernatural as well as the military and scifi fantasies ! But I am curious (though you are a dev and get what you would probably want in the game) what effect are you looking most forward to or would like to see though it is too difficult to make atm?
Have a nice day!
Depending on how the Device powerset is designed (and assuming that it's going to be one of final sets for launch), I would like to see something plant-based (for this and other powers). I would love something pumpkin based, but I admit that would be a really focused.
... levelling up.
and all the systems attached to it working. But mostly... a really, really good ding effect.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Yes to those mystical FX, but also some mixed FX that could imply anything on the techno-magic spectrum. Things that make you ask "What's going on there?" because there's no obvious origin behind them. A Kirby krackle-y debuff, for instance, could just as easily involve micro black holes or soul-draining portals.
Clearly props have a lot of potential here too...
Swords that look ancient but tech-based, with weird circuitry
Robot drone that doesn't look derived from human technology, which can draw magic symbols as it projects your forcefield powers (or any buffs, really) onto you and your team
Gun with liquid cartridge combined with FX of shooting ink-word "bullets"
A good ding effect makes or breaks the 'you just leveled' feeling :D
Have a nice day!
The smoky look from the Dark set was good, and something more akin to a laser-like beam would be a good alternative. If possible (for maybe a weather themed look), the attacks coming from above the target instead of caster-to-target could be cool.
(insert pithy comment here)
Beam spam. ALL the beam spam. The whole Pink Floyd laser-planetarium show in the palms of my hands.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
Ahhh, knew the similarities were too close for them to be unrelated.
Either way, the stuff they have both made are both amazing techs for generating a city (apparently cityengine even models the power, water, and so on attributes of each building!).
The basic idea is using this amazing city tech to create a city with for a game :P And since it speeds up the dev time by so much, it expands the scope to which the game could be made (an IMMENSE amount). Brute forcing the way through each map like city of heroes did seems like a lot of extra work for less results.
But, again, if you all know about this...and looked at it...and still decided to go with the other more traditional ways....well, up to you really. When I dream of a super hero game, I use super hero comics and movies and cartoons as sources....I don't really consider CoH the height of re-creating those things (though, it was great for the time and better than anything else being offered).
EDIT- I was typing my reply when Warcabbit called for the discussion to end. I am leaving the long post I just typed but if the devs want to just wipe it feel free, most of what I have to say in it was already talked about by the devs themselves.
What part of this changes my question?
I know you don't have an idea of what I am talking about. It's because you don't consider everything when forming an opinion.
There are many ways to ease access in games. They include things like controller support, UI customization or teaming tools. In this case I am talking about location specific game play within very large to infinite sized worlds. Anyone who has played sandbox type games like DayZ, H1Z1 or even Minecraft understands that gathering separate people together in a particular location can be both frustrating and time consuming simply due to the size of the worlds. When you add in specific location instances that require players to spend a measurable amount of their playtime with just travel then you are removing ease of access.
Server resources will always be an issue regardless of the current date. No matter how a game is designed, at a certain point in world size that game will require interactions between the server and the player. Draw distances and chunk data matters even today. The more detailed a world is the more often that interaction is required, the more players a game has the more times the server is accessed and the larger the world is the more data stored and the more chances there are for this interaction to occur. There are games out there that are designed for infinite expansion in world size but at a certain point the servers cannot cope because there is too much stored data being accessed. This is a big reason why games, especially MMOs, have world size limits.
I think you need to look again. The simplistic look in your examples is due to most assets having a very small texture map (look at the illegible signs), basic lighting and shadow maps (crisp shadows seldom indicate volumetrics), simple character models/animation(look at the walk cycle on the people) and extremely low polygons in all assets (buildings that consist of 24 faces). CoH was miles ahead of this at release over 10 years ago. Swapping out does not seem to be a feasible solution. As soon as you start increasing the graphics quality of that massive city you will make server interaction a requirement and that program is not designed for seamless loading. It would require extensive programming to make a plugin to allow for that requirement. To put it simply, the reason why that program is able to make a massive cityscape and travel about it seamlessly is because they sacrifice all but the most basic graphic elements in order to load the entire world at once.
All that world building program would do is shift the work the devs are doing on world build to the devs working on making the world building program work in this games design. And yes that sentence structure was intended.
As we are discussing elements of graphics it should not come as a surprise the conversational focus is on graphics and not game play elements. Diverting attention won't work.
The game play elements you exampled in the previous post were sandbox elements. Sandbox games give you tools to make or do things and then lets you find ways to entertain yourself. MMORPG's have story and settings and you progress through them. It is ok to include elements of one in the other but core game play determines the type of game it is. You wanted to remove the MMORPG core and replace it with a Sandbox core. This has nothing to do with nostalgia and it has nothing to do with comparing games of then and now. CoT is an MMORPG at it's core, not a Sandbox game.
Player created content in CoH did not replace dev created content. What you were describing is replacing dev created content with player created content. You specifically said 'allowing the players to ultimately create [b]the[/b] content for other players'. The implication being that content comes from players not the devs. If what you meant, as you are now saying, is that the game should have some form of player created content then you can drop this because it is already a planned feature.
And I already answered your question before when I said 'Including sandbox elements is fine but this is primarily a MMO, not a sandbox game.'.
Base building would be a sandbox element. The RTS elements I was talking about was your Kingpin system that includes troop creation and management which, from your description of it, go far beyond a normal pet class capabilities. It is a separate system that requires a lot more than just a few UI elements as you try to claim.
Not this again. WoW and EQ had the same core combat design, same focus on story elements and same level advancement progress system. All of those games were traditional MMORPGs that offered different degrees of emphasis on core design elements.
It is still very rare for a game to sanction mods as official content. And I can't think of a single game that has a majority of official assets given to it for free from its player community. No I haven't been asleep, I have been paying attention to the reality of gaming which is why I understand the difference between Mods and official content.
Again I am not surprised you don't know what I am talking about. I think the problem lies with you thinking in terms of a simple mesh and rig. I'm not sure where to begin to explain your mistake. I mean you keep talking about a deformation cage and morph target. Mesh cages are not a real time solution to dealing with morphs. It takes time for a cage to calculate a deformation every time a morph dial is changed.
In my experience, how advanced animations and games deal with this issue is by applying the same morphs from the base character to the clothing prop then manually adjusting the prop so that the morphs of the character work properly in conjunction with the prop. This doesn't even touch on the work involved in aligning the bones of the clothing with the bones of the character through all the possible morph settings/animations.
What you are talking about is for simple three dimensional transformation(x y z manipulation) and not the morphs of a complex character creator.
@Brainbot @Ivory The dev's are too nice to say but I will, both of you shut the hell up or take it some where else. No one cares. No one. Stop Arguing. Stop back seat developing. This isn't the place. Now can it or join in the topic that this thread is for.
Have a nice day!
I'd like tracer paths that are completely non-ballistic, like the attack wants to go anywhere but inevitably where was aimed.
Like the missile barrages from Robotech:
Or the way the lightning left the Emperor's hands when he tried to kill Luke Skywalker:
But old-school lightning would be pretty nifty, especially in the Orbit Room:
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Is that kind of hostility allowed on these forums? Think maybe something should be done about that?
Guys, be nice.
Wheaton's law applies
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
It is annoying when people on the dev team lie to my face and make up obviously false issues with basic game dev stuff :P
But, you are right, there is no point in arguing....nothing I say or do is going to stop this train from getting to wherever it is headed.
It's too bad, I would really like to see a good hero game get made. But at least all of this has been productive for me (discovering cityengine has been a great find!).
Serenity....
[youtube]Ow_9MglZrhs[/youtube]
(insert pithy comment here)
You mean some kind of Itano Circus?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzXfVgYCxWI
Doable. (video not by us)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTy-q2frB0U
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
OMG I had no idea it had a name! Thank you, Doctor Tyche. I see in you a spiritual brother.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Excellent! I hate it when other MMO's hardly bother to inform you that you've levelled, such that you often don't even notice. Then again, their power structure is often such that the levelling doesn't really offer you anything interesting anyway. Maybe they don't want to draw attention to the meh-ness. :-)
Spurn all ye kindle.
I'd love something like an updated Water Blast. I didn't get to fully level my character with that power set before the lights went out, but I remember enjoying the effects.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I wonder if you could make [b]tattoos[/b] into an FX... I suppose that would fit better as an aesthetic theme because it would probably include activation animations.
Rather than having a different tattoo on a different part of the body, which would be all kinds of complicated. I suppose just some sort of glowing, quickly expanding flash of an image on/around your character that obviously looks like it came form a tattoo, and then a corresponding effect on the target. From the animation side, I suppose your character could be putting his hands together like a jutsu, or maybe balled fists at the side or something else that otherwise shows a certain amount of focused intent.
As an example, say there is a hold ability in a powerset and the player chose to use the tattoos theme. When the hold abilitiy is activated, we see the flash of a tribal tattoo expand from the upper arm of the character and a mass of thorny briars with the same look as the tattoo appears at the target to hold it.
Another example: You have a healing powerset and the tattoo aesthetic. Your heals look like hearts with various other items. A heart with a single dagger through it and a drop of blood is a single target heal over time. A heart with three daggers in it and drops of blood is a multiple target heal over time. A heart wrapped in barbed wire is a heal with a defense buff. A heart torn in two is a damage-sharing spell. And so on.
Other examples could include snakes, hula dancers, anchors, webs, skulls, even USMC bulldogs. Anything really.
But I definitely think you could make it so that there would be tattoo options in the avatar creator that actually do correspond to the origin and design of the tattoos in the aesthetic. So that someone who wanted to play it that authentically could do so.
[b][u]IF[/u][/b] you put things like aesthetic themes in the cash shop, I think this could be a good candidate for it, since it would probably be a niche aesthetic.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I would love to see organic body alterations be used in attack animations like this:
[img]http://i314.photobucket.com/albums/ll429/JC_Armstrong/Spasm.jpg[/img]
You mean like this?
[youtube]Z6j04OGUpRI[/youtube]
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
An early NPC group I designed that did not make it into game was a tattoo based pet-power gang. I want to say they were also football hooligans but I may be misremembering. I based them roughly on the old GL baddie, The Tattooed Man.
It didn't go anywhere, other plans were more coherent, but I understand what you mean and it's on my list of things I want too.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Organic body elements: Technically, they're just another prop. Fairly complex, art-wise, but once we get into optional stuff, it's on the list, along with hands that turn into guns and suchlike.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
I'd like to see different kinds of 'fog' effects, clinging mists, tornadic fountains, creeping dooms, a localized storm-cloud system. Even better if we could apply different 'elemental' effects to the basic fog-structure.
I absolutely want to see different-colored glow effects and auras that shift about the body-model depending on movement and intent. It could concentrate brightly on a striking limb, or a blocking maneuver, or travel-power.
I want to see attack and defense animations that mimic both hard and soft martial arts. I especially want to see a 'speedy boxer' style. I don't want to see the inherent speed of attack animations limited by either Archetype, or character Size. Not all Tankers are slow. Not even the 'Super Strength' ones.
I like 'Darkness' powers, but I don't feel that they should inherently look 'creepy'. Not all Darkness is Death related.
I would like to see ranged-attack animations that adapt into melee-attack animations, depending on the range to target. I'd love to do 'Human-form Peacebringer' with fewer powers/buttons.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I know it's not a specific FX, but how certain ones are implemented can make a huge difference to me. One thing that impressed me in CoH was the feeling of impact from two earth control powers, one being Stalagmites. The combination of the heavy footstomp, ground cracks, the rapidly-appearing spikes beneath the enemy, and the perfectly-timed sound made it a joy to use.
Another was Stone Cages. The handclap followed by the rumbling sounds and huge rings of stone clamping everything in place. I'd have been ok with the rings subsiding closer to the ground after the initial hit, to reduce clutter...and certainly some way for us to tone down the effects generated by other players would be nice for a variety of reasons.
For an example from another set, Headsplitter from Broadsword or Golden Dragonfly from Katana - the *crunch* sounds matched so well with the obvious momentum-buildup within each one's animation.
All of them. I have a lot of characters who want to come out and play. ^_^
So, assuming you meant which ones first? Magic and guns and martial arts. Traditional weapons styles like fencing, kendo, quarterstaff/bayonet. Skiffy weapons like blasters and electrolasers and force field blades...
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]
I'll second the Tattoos as power aesthetic idea.
Along that line of thinking... "Star fields" or Space/Cosmic inspired fx. One of my favorite costumes with my old Warshade was just Shadow Cloak + the Heavy Sparkles aura. He was like an amorphous, human sized bit of purple-black space twinkling with starlight. It was great.
I want a sound effect that queues up on an emote. If anything like this gets implemented, I realize it will more than likely be client side only. But I dare to dream the dream that it would be audible to others (with whatever restrictions and vetting you stipulate).
I am thinking about something along the lines of Batmanuel (from the live action Tick) when he does his cape flourish as he makes an entrance.
(essentially the first 10 sec of this video)
[youtube]OzkGLTkNPSM[/youtube]
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
This sort of thing has actually been done once before - i would love to see some "tentacle combat" animations ala the Parasite of Kos from Bloodborne.
[youtube=720x405]jYpInbEtQWo[/youtube]
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
I loved the missiles from Robotech and that is how my mind sees missile fight dancing. My heart wants missiles that act like the Itano video, but most of that happens at speed and in wide open spaces. I don't know how any of that would be achieved indoors without a lot of terrain clipping or obscured lines of sight.
If something like this made its way into game you can bet I would make an armored suit character that functioned somewhat like Cyclone armor.
This brings up another question: Are the character models flexible enough to support something like the Zentradi battlepods or the Invid shocktrooper? (essentially long legs, short or missing arms, weapon mount(s) and a 'head' that is located in the torso)
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
It's a really long shot, but I hope you might have environment textures for area effects. Anything that might otherwise produce a bubble. Textures could vary from fractures (like the cracks caused by a CoH movement aura) to sparkles (areal Twampires!) to pixelation, gloom, oversaturation, undersaturation, grainy... actually whatever exists off the shelf, if these exist at all I would be very easily pleased. Not ever expecting it to also affect mobs but while I'm being unrealistic, why not?
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
For magic-y FX I would like to see runes.
(1) Runes floating in the air around my character as the power is being cast.
(2) Or runes lighting up on the ground (if the character is standing on the ground) where I started the cast and have them remain there for a few seconds afterwards.
(3) Or have runes light up on your body (similar to the tattoo suggestions) or on your weapon (sword, gun, staff, etc). Or maybe have runes animate across your body starting from your chest (or feet, like you are drawing power) to your emanation point.
The runes for (1) & (2) would need a pattern for the pathing. Would we be able to choose the shapes/icons used for runes/tattoos?
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
Where do you draw the line between a Prop and power FX?
Will we be able to customize emanation points per power or per powerset?
Let's say I want to make something like Iron Man that uses multiple gadgets at multiple emanation points. Energy attacks from palms, rocket attacks from shoulders/wrists/legs, detachable fist rocket powered punch, etc, etc.
What about a cartoony power where you reached into a pocket and pulled out a fist full of guns to unleash a giant barrage? Would that be classified as FX or a Prop?
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
Will we be able to customize that, too? I mean, sure it's a rare effect compared to most, but a thematic level up explosion would be fun.
When I hold aloft my sword and say, "By the power of XP.....I level up!"
(insert pithy comment here)
Oh boy, talking about FX for powers? This will be fun...
I would love to be able to create characters from my book(s), especially my main characters. Let me see... I would love an energy based blasting skill, but with the color split. The energy would have this release effect that looks like dust, sometimes black, sometimes white, and then the dust would coalesce into one (or more) orbs that float around the caster before shooting off. In an ideal, the black dust would take more "solid" shapes, like stones, or spikes, or spears, that shoot at the enemy, while the white dust would be more ethereal - classic energy blasts. But I think that would be asking too much, haha
Name: Safehouse
Ranger: Gunner
Primary: Force Blast
Secondary: Atrophic Aura
Tertiary: Kinetic Melee
Travel Power: Parkour
Status: Traveling. Following rumors of a huge city in Massachusetts that is teeming with supers.
Good requests, everyone.
Okay. I hesitate to say 'yes' and I hesitate to say 'no' here, cause you're running into the 'we got this working but how are we going to present it to the players' situation.
Power armor, multiple emanation points: That is actually one of our trickiest challenges. Right now, we've got 'body parts' working and 'weapons, body parts when it's inappropriate' working. We would probably have to do a specific Power Armor theme that had each power preset to a specific varied emanation point and it might not be that customizable - so if our theme says 'shoulder Gatling' then you get one popping up. But that might improve over time (and I'm not talking postlaunch). It's a delicate balance between 'max powers customization' and 'there are 50 people firing attacks next to you and your network has to download all their custom powers at once oh look slideshow'
(yes, that's not exactly how it works, I'm simplifying to show the conflicting issue)
Also there's UI challenges and RAM use to consider - our max customization attempt used 800 megs of ram. Per PC in short range.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Sound Effect/Emote. Well, I mean, there's the boombox. We gotta have them. But beyond that, do anything, and someone will spam it to annoy others. So maybe. QoL issue there for everyone other than you.
Cartoony Power: That'd be an FX, really. Something you do for that specific power attack.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Is it possible to use "props" as a travel power? I had this vision of a character who flew around on playing cards, and of course used them for battle.
As foolish as this seems,
Gotem.
From ya boy, Elios.
If you had the 'fly on something while standing' power, yes, we intend to have a selection of, er, call them vehicle props. Playing cards are a classic and fairly easy to do - actually simpler than a carpet - no fringe.
Note: Ice Slide is actually a different power and we're not quite sure how to do it yet for various reasons. It's on 'the list' somewhere but not high priority. I mean, it's _a_ priority, but it requires more effort than a number of 'low hanging fruit'.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
For power FX I would love seeing a variant of magi-tech where you still use magic circles for "casting" but instead of arcane runes they display mathematical formulas. And being able to "fire" them from a gun or similar would just be a bonus.
I know there has been discussion of Carp Melee but we recently had our annual Mullet Toss on the beach at Gulf Shores and have been thinking it could be adapted to a ranged set as well.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Couldn't you do ice sliding by having the tail 'melt' quickly as the user moves? To give the illusion of a longer ice tail on the created skate path have slowly falling particle effects to represent the melted ice.
[youtube]_p4eZVYAwu4[/youtube]
Similar effects could be used for fire, stone, magic trails or anything really. It's really just a more advanced version of the effects from the 'Jingle Jet' in CoH.
Warcabbit, you do know there is a whole thread about animation effects people would like to see? But since you are replying here. I'd like to see a glyph and ring styled animation set for magic users. Sorta similar to what Dr Strange uses in the movie. Wave your hand in a circle to create a ring of glyphs and symbols and from there "Things" happen. Being able to mix that set with fire or dark tentacles or even laser/pulse beams could be really cool. I had a emp/dark that I never truly got into because the power animations weren't quite what I was hoping for. Particularly the T9 blackstar. Bonus points if I can use a prop like a staff or wand to "draw" the glyphs and sigils.
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[img]http://www.otakupt.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/157we268-300x225.jpg[/img]
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
You got me. Although my character was more of a Raven than a Winter.
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I would like to see an FX set based on...how can I say this.
[u]"Pistols are just pointed fingers, we still get the bang and muzzle flash...you can blow the smoke off your finger after shooting."[/u]
Finger guns? I think this would be cool even for machine gun bursts...from you finger
[u]I would like to see a gazetteer set of FX.[/u] This might be expensive to animate, so it will be purchasable in the company store.
Firing points are from articulated appendages, batarangs, explosive batarangs. neat little stuff for powers
[u]Whips.[/u] nuff said.
[u]Ablative Faerie Shield.[/u] force field FX. every time you are hit a faerie dies.
This comes with a sound effect. a little voice goes, "Ahhhh! (thunk)". don't run outa faries...
Magic effects, [u]Hold a book/arcane tome in one hand and cast spells from it.[/u] Your free hand looks to be grabbing magic from the pages and hurling it at the villains.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
That is the fall-back solution as a theme for super jump, with a branch of movement in the set that allowed for strafe-jumping (slide right / left / backwards in mid-jump).
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I too would like to see indexing attacks. Perhaps a dewey decimal system flourish where a the character pulls out an index card, runs to an aisle and grabs an Atlas then smacks a thug over the head with a map of Istanbul... or is it Constantinople?
That all sounds good to me, but I'd say make the tail 'melt' very slowly rather than quickly to give the impression of really building an ice/earth bridge, and ideally have some sort of interaction animation when you interact with a surface and a 'melt/crumble' animation as it fades.
Of course, easy for me to say, possibly hard for you to pull off :).
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Really? Super Jump?
I would think ice sliding would be more suited as an aesthetic choice for 'Flight' or at least 'Super speed'.
[youtube]73CyVIOeNOs[/youtube]
The reason I suggested quick melting is because sustained ice trails would cause issues with interaction. If they are solid and players can interact with it then it could be used for all sorts of unintended purposes, some of which could be nefarious. If it is intangible an people could just pass through it then it will make for a lot of awful clipping.
Plus, extended effects are a cpu/gpu drain.
Superjump makes sense, and I think you made a good point for superspeed. But flight is probably out of the question. High altitudes and hovering become problems with ice slide that would require significant modifications of the flight mechanics to allow for ice bridges to remain on the map long enough to support such actions. I think we will get the look and feel of ice bridges with superjump without having to change any travel mechanics.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Yes! advanced mathemagics FTW! Al Gibber! Jom Tree! Furry Ear Transforms! https://www.amazon.com/Mathemagics-Margaret-Ball/dp/B000W0OG5I
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]
I would like to see props that animate when using power, like maybe the lights on your gun light up, or the turbines of your jetpack spin when you're flying, OOH or having F-14-esque swing wings a la Buzz Lightyear that deploy and stow when you take off and land. Retracting claws, wrist blasters a la Deadshot, Man-At-Arms, etc that pop up and then fold back down when in/out of combat, etc.
Come to think of it, it would be good to have the game AI or whatever know when my toon is officially entering "combat mode" and also when we're exiting said mode. In GW2 you heal REALLY fast out of combat, because the assumption is that you don't want to have to use a "Rest" power that roots you. So when you're "safe", by the game's definition (no aggro on you, etc) you just heal and recharge powers very quickly and rapidly come to a sort of reset. So that "en garde!" moment when you enter a fight should be demarked with an emote, which emote has your toon deploying their props for battle, and then when you go back to "dormant" mode, you stow your props in their usual places.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
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