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Discuss: Developer's Workshop - Hair Movement

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Shadow Elusive
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Discuss: Developer's Workshop - Hair Movement

Something to tide you over while we finish re-assembling in Plugin form in engine version 4.19. Payoff is expected to be pretty fast once that is done. The future is shiny.

Read the Workshop here

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I’ll pass on the light bulb

I’ll pass on the light bulb hairstyle LOL

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I believe Paul did that in

I believe Paul did that in response to someone saying something about metal bolts in the head instead of hair.

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I’m fine with the joint-based

I’m fine with the joint-based physics. Frankly this is way more detail than I expected back when you guys even started talking about the Kickstarter. It is another excellent level of detail!

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Can we get hair as an

Can we get hair as an emanation point and/or power aesthetic? :D

"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."

velvetsanity
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And here I was assuming it
Shadow Elusive wrote:

I believe Paul did that in response to someone saying something about metal bolts in the head instead of hair.

And here I was assuming it was inspired by Jada Smith’s character in the Matrix movies :)

It sounds like the physics technique is similar to how HDT physics for Skyrim works. (yay modding! Boo milking the game! Make TES 6 already. Sheesh!)

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Now this is just my personal

Now this is just my personal opinion, and is probably not the most popular, but i would be totally fine with hair that didn't move. Especially if this would help with computing.

I know a lot of people want realism, and it makes perfect sense in the case of capes, scarfs and the like. But hair won't make sense even with this. Example, you character just flew halfway across town to fight some big baddie that was destroying the area. And somehow, even though the flight had their hair flying everywhere, and the fight had their hair flying everywhere (plus that energy blast they took to the face) after it's all said and done, their hair looks perfect for the camera crew that was filming non-stop from before you even arrived.

Obviously that example is something that would happen in real-life (if RL had superheroes) but has a result that only makes sense in movies and video-games.

What happens is up to you. My characters all had full head masks so hair isn't an issue in the first place for me.

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I dont remember where... but

I dont remember where... but I could've sworn I heard the Devs talking about hair being used as a prop for ability animations eventually. It may have been in the recent podcast they did.

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Felpyre wrote:
Felpyre wrote:

Now this is just my personal opinion, and is probably not the most popular, but i would be totally fine with hair that didn't move. Especially if this would help with computing.

I think as with practically everything else the OPTION to have hair be animated in CoT should be just that, an option.

This way the people who have lower-end machines or simply don't want to see it (for whatever other reason) on their clients could have the option to turn it off if desired.

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Shadow Elusive wrote:
Shadow Elusive wrote:

Something to tide you over while we finish re-assembling in Plugin form in engine version 4.19. Payoff is expected to be pretty fast once that is done. The future is shiny.

I've said it before (and I'll likely say it again eventually) but I'd rather have "some" implementation of animated hair in CoT than the "none" we had in CoH. If that means avoiding the "cloth physics" idea in favor of the joint based for the foreseeable future that's fine with me.

Remember when CoH launched the Devs of that game hadn't even fully figured out capes, wings, animated tails and so on. It's always possible that some time in the next 5 to 10 years new solutions will be figured out to allow for better implementations.

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I think it sounds like an

I think it sounds like an excellent compromise, and a clever way to deal with the problem.

A couple niggly things:

1) I often struggle in these updates to determine whether inserted pictures pertain to the paragraph above or the paragraph below. I assume in this case the first set of pictures is examples of the Cloth method and the second the Joint-Based method, with no pictures illustrating the Bones method? Would it be possible in future updates to follow the style usually used in technical documents, where pictures have their own short titles immediately above or below to indicate their meaning/relevance?

2) '...could possibly even be convinced to collide with other clothes rather than clipping through it' -- I know this may seem pedantic, but 'clipping' doesn't mean to 'poke through' another object. In fact, quite the opposite. When a hat object is placed on top of a bushy hairstyle and it looks good because the hair doesn't show through the hat, clipping is the reason -- the underlying layer is 'clipped' (both literally and figuratively, in this case) to keep it from showing through the upper layer. Similarly, walls 'clip' the display of the map so that only the current room is visible. Clipping is actually a good thing. When one layer sticks through another layer, that's actually an example of bad clipping, or the lack of clipping.

Regardless of these points, that second row of pix with the springy spider-hydra-hair monster is definitely gonna give me nightmares!

Spurn all ye kindle.

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Cinnder wrote:
Cinnder wrote:

2) '...could possibly even be convinced to collide with other clothes rather than clipping through it' -- I know this may seem pedantic, but 'clipping' doesn't mean to 'poke through' another object. In fact, quite the opposite. When a hat object is placed on top of a bushy hairstyle and it looks good because the hair doesn't show through the hat, clipping is the reason -- the underlying layer is 'clipped' (both literally and figuratively, in this case) to keep it from showing through the upper layer. Similarly, walls 'clip' the display of the map so that only the current room is visible. Clipping is actually a good thing. When one layer sticks through another layer, that's actually an example of bad clipping, or the lack of clipping.

I'm guessing the cat is already out of the bag on this one. I understand what you're saying in terms of the word "clipping" being taken as a "positive" side effect instead of a "negative" one but frankly I've only ever heard anyone else use the term in the negative connotation. I think you'd be fighting an up-hill battle to get most people to flip their common usage and understanding of that word now.

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Project_Hero wrote:
Project_Hero wrote:

Can we get hair as an emanation point and/or power aesthetic? :D

If I had to guess something like your pic here will -not- be happening by launch time. ;)

In terms of simplification the Devs would probably have to consider something like that to be say 3 or 4 "whips" that are based on a character's head. So first the Devs would essentially have to implement whips (as a weapon) which would not be trivial by itself. Then they would have to attach several of these to a character's head and then have them be able to independently whip around to "attack" an enemy.

So yeah I'd place this squarely in the "not any time soon" category.

You ought to be jumping onto my bandwagon as far as suggestions go: All I want is something like the following as a type of non-combat oriented animated hair:

It's basically just a length of "hair rope" with one end attached to the top of a character's head. If I had to guess my idea is probably only like 1/10 as hard to implement as your idea. ;)

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I just get ideas and say them

I just get ideas and say them. I don't have any need of hair as animations/emanation points, just thought it'd be neat if it we had it.

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Project_Hero wrote:
Project_Hero wrote:

I just get ideas and say them. I don't have any need of hair as animations/emanation points, just thought it'd be neat if it we had it.

You'll note I didn't say it was a bad idea or that I didn't like it. I just said it's not likely going to happen anytime soon.

Whenever I'm seriously suggesting something I try to see whatever it is from the Devs' point of view. The easier it'd be for a Dev to create it the more likely it would be for it to end up in the game.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Project_Hero wrote:

I just get ideas and say them. I don't have any need of hair as animations/emanation points, just thought it'd be neat if it we had it.

You'll note I didn't say it was a bad idea or that I didn't like it. I just said it's not likely going to happen anytime soon.

Whenever I'm seriously suggesting something I try to see whatever it is from the Devs' point of view. The easier it'd be for a Dev to create it the more likely it would be for it to end up in the game.

I didn't think you found it a bad idea. Just explaining that I didn't think about any of the technical aspects of it.

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Project_Hero wrote:
Project_Hero wrote:

I didn't think you found it a bad idea. Just explaining that I didn't think about any of the technical aspects of it.

That's always best, in my opinion. If the idea is great enough, then we can consider the technical aspects. But nothing should ever hamper us from thinking about impossibly great ideas.


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.
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Hair shaped like metal

Hair shaped like metal tentacles or serpents that can strike in melee would be awesome.

Or a hair gun. For a character named Pump-Action Pompadour.

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Atama wrote:
Atama wrote:

Hair shaped like metal tentacles or serpents that can strike in melee would be awesome.

Or a hair gun. For a character named Pump-Action Pompadour.

Ha that'd be funny. I got the instant mental image of a character that could make their hair do the same kinds of things Green Lantern could do with his ring. :)

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Felpyre wrote:
Felpyre wrote:

Now this is just my personal opinion, and is probably not the most popular, but i would be totally fine with hair that didn't move.

I also don't particularly care for animated hair, but I can see the appeal. More options are generally a plus, so I'm okay with the idea. Especially if they can utilize the tech for other purposes.

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Cobalt Azurean wrote:
Cobalt Azurean wrote:
Felpyre wrote:

Now this is just my personal opinion, and is probably not the most popular, but i would be totally fine with hair that didn't move.

I also don't particularly care for animated hair, but I can see the appeal. More options are generally a plus, so I'm okay with the idea. Especially if they can utilize the tech for other purposes.

Animated hair technology could work for...

Animated cape attacks (think Spawn).

Stretchy attacks like Mr. Fantastic or Elastic Man.

Maybe your shadow animates to attack people?

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Atama wrote:
Atama wrote:
Cobalt Azurean wrote:
Felpyre wrote:

Now this is just my personal opinion, and is probably not the most popular, but i would be totally fine with hair that didn't move.

I also don't particularly care for animated hair, but I can see the appeal. More options are generally a plus, so I'm okay with the idea. Especially if they can utilize the tech for other purposes.

Animated hair technology could work for...

Animated cape attacks (think Spawn).

Stretchy attacks like Mr. Fantastic or Elastic Man.

Maybe your shadow animates to attack people?

Speaking of animated shadows, would that require real-time shadows to be enabled as a GFX option? I know that was a feature that was added to CoH/V when they did their graphical upgrade, but I also know that it was fairly resource-intensive for the tech at the time.

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For the Record? I'm not sorry

For the Record? I'm not sorry

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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SpellSword wrote:
SpellSword wrote:

I dont remember where... but I could've sworn I heard the Devs talking about hair being used as a prop for ability animations eventually. It may have been in the recent podcast they did.

Yes - they said they have plans for a "Ranged Melee" or something like that down the road, and hair could be visual effect of that instead of stretchy limbs, tentacles, vines, symbiote pseudopods, etc.

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notears, challenge accepted.

notears, challenge accepted.

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warcabbit wrote:
warcabbit wrote:

notears, challenge accepted.

oh... oh my god....

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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warcabbit wrote:
warcabbit wrote:

notears, challenge accepted.

Clearly there are people on this planet who simply have too much time on their hands. At least you've proven to me that there's a way that I might be able to tolerate any music created in the last 10 or 20 years - they simply have to mix it with bits of music from back when music was worth listening to. ;)

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Animated hairs will have a

Animated hairs will have a "fun" effect much stronger than any HD textures you could use. In fact animations are the funny side of the graphics, therefore the most important visual thing in a videogame. Which is why I approve very much when you put some special effort there.

It would be great if the hairs could be moved by some sort of wind-effect when in the open/outside, in the maps where there is a wind based sound effect on the background. Of course there should be the option to turn off the hairs movement for low end PCs, but I think that's obvious.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
warcabbit wrote:

notears, challenge accepted.

Clearly there are people on this planet who simply have too much time on their hands. At least you've proven to me that there's a way that I might be able to tolerate any music created in the last 10 or 20 years - they simply have to mix it with bits of music from back when music was worth listening to. ;)

Oh? hehehe

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:
Lothic wrote:
warcabbit wrote:

notears, challenge accepted.

Clearly there are people on this planet who simply have too much time on their hands. At least you've proven to me that there's a way that I might be able to tolerate any music created in the last 10 or 20 years - they simply have to mix it with bits of music from back when music was worth listening to. ;)

Oh? hehehe

Blasphemy! I always suspected you we're at heart an evil, evil man and now I have proof! ;)

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I use my powers for good.

I use my powers for good. Most of the time.
But... no, this is blasphemy.

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This is probably my favorite

This is probably my favorite of this sort of mashups:

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So, just to be clear, there

So, just to be clear, there are still physics on capes and similar long clothing?


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Yegads. When I first saw

Yegads. When I first saw Darnstrong's hairnimation in his thread it was exactly what I was hoping might be possible - bones, bulbs, exactly all the raw materials I need for my prop! Seeing it highlighted with all of MWM supporting it got me so excited my whole day turned around.

Then the mashups. I feel so sullied. I could never post... but I can post after Lady Judas. Enjoyed that too.

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desviper wrote:
desviper wrote:

So, just to be clear, there are still physics on capes and similar long clothing?

Well we've seen plenty of capes in motion in the vids they've already released so I'd say we're safe on that front. Could you actually imagine this game trying to get away with static capes when CoH managed to get them moving back in 2004?

As far a "long clothing" goes we've at least been promised that sight unseen so far. Obviously it remains to be seen how much we're going to get but I'd imagine we'd have at least some dresses/skirts, robes and trenchcoats that'd have some physics applied to them.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Felpyre wrote:

Now this is just my personal opinion, and is probably not the most popular, but i would be totally fine with hair that didn't move. Especially if this would help with computing.

I think as with practically everything else the OPTION to have hair be animated in CoT should be just that, an option.

This way the people who have lower-end machines or simply don't want to see it (for whatever other reason) on their clients could have the option to turn it off if desired.

I know the original hope had been for all of the cloth-based physics (which would include 'cloth' hair) to properly make use of GPU-driven physics, including the ability to offload to an extra GPU if you happened to have one (folks most likely know of this as PhysX, especially since a very primitive / early version of it was in CoH). Unfortunately it sounds like that has been dropped, since otherwise there wouldn't be issues with large numbers of toons -- PhysX uses both LOD models and a "physics budget" to degrade gracefully.

Pity, since that also seems to imply that clothing may have the same issues. :(


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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Project_Hero wrote:

Can we get hair as an emanation point and/or power aesthetic? :D

If I had to guess something like your pic here will -not- be happening by launch time. ;)

In terms of simplification the Devs would probably have to consider something like that to be say 3 or 4 "whips" that are based on a character's head. So first the Devs would essentially have to implement whips (as a weapon) which would not be trivial by itself. Then they would have to attach several of these to a character's head and then have them be able to independently whip around to "attack" an enemy.

So yeah I'd place this squarely in the "not any time soon" category.

You ought to be jumping onto my bandwagon as far as suggestions go: All I want is something like the following as a type of non-combat oriented animated hair:

It's basically just a length of "hair rope" with one end attached to the top of a character's head. If I had to guess my idea is probably only like 1/10 as hard to implement as your idea. ;)

Don't know that it would be any harder than the Muttonpack to implement. Now, that said, I'm not particularly expecting the Muttonpack to be able to do all the things it "should", in an ideal world, at least not at launch...


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Well I guess each hair strand
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Pity, since that also seems to imply that clothing may have the same issues. :(

Well I guess each hair strand would count as a clothing piece or cape, therefore there is still a huge difference between those numbers in total (with hair strands supposedly being more). Anyway we just need long clothes to move, like the trench coats; we don't really need t-shirts to move too... imho

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Project_Hero wrote:

Can we get hair as an emanation point and/or power aesthetic? :D

If I had to guess something like your pic here will -not- be happening by launch time. ;)

In terms of simplification the Devs would probably have to consider something like that to be say 3 or 4 "whips" that are based on a character's head. So first the Devs would essentially have to implement whips (as a weapon) which would not be trivial by itself. Then they would have to attach several of these to a character's head and then have them be able to independently whip around to "attack" an enemy.

So yeah I'd place this squarely in the "not any time soon" category.

You ought to be jumping onto my bandwagon as far as suggestions go: All I want is something like the following as a type of non-combat oriented animated hair:

It's basically just a length of "hair rope" with one end attached to the top of a character's head. If I had to guess my idea is probably only like 1/10 as hard to implement as your idea. ;)

Actually "rope" hair might be easy. I'll look into but Unreal has a form of physics for this. Only a few "ropes" at best, mind you, but still something to look at.

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ThunderCAP wrote:
ThunderCAP wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Pity, since that also seems to imply that clothing may have the same issues. :(

Well I guess each hair strand would count as a clothing piece or cape, therefore there is still a huge difference between those numbers in total (with hair strands supposedly being more). Anyway we just need long clothes to move, like the trench coats; we don't really need t-shirts to move too... imho

You got it.

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DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Don't know that it would be any harder than the Muttonpack to implement. Now, that said, I'm not particularly expecting the Muttonpack to be able to do all the things it "should", in an ideal world, at least not at launch...

You know it's funny but no matter how long you manage to live you can always learn new things. I can honestly admit I've never heard the word "Muttonpack" before. Turns out the only remotely relevant Google reference to it was from a vid MWM itself tossed out on YouTube 3 years ago. Based on the vid I'm guessing that's some kind of nickname for a "backpack with a bunch of limbs sticking out of it".

Learning something new every day. ;)

But yeah I would think to do a "hair version of a muttonpack" would actually be much harder because the hair stands would have to fully flex like a whip unlike the relatively simple skeletal movement of the arms. Either way I'm sure it would not be trivial.

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avelworldcreator wrote:
avelworldcreator wrote:

Actually "rope" hair might be easy. I'll look into but Unreal has a form of physics for this. Only a few "ropes" at best, mind you, but still something to look at.

Yeah I would think the basic physics to implement "ropes" would be fairly fundamental to UE4. The trick of course would be to texture such a rope to look like a hair braid and then to attach one of these to the top of a character's head. Still in the grand scheme of things I doubt this would be prohibitively difficult - it'd likely just be a matter of spending the time on it.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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This looks actually better

This looks actually better than I expected. So, yay!

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Nothing has changed regarding

Nothing has changed regarding capes and clothes - it's just hair-specific. There's a lot more interactions with A: the body and B: other strands of hair, than you'd think. It essentially uses a 30+ cape budget per person.

And yes, rope physics and ponytails are still go at the moment.

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velvetsanity wrote:
velvetsanity wrote:

I’ll pass on the light bulb hairstyle LOL

Ditto!

The world shall bow down to me because I am SOOOOOO cute!

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If I'm understanding right.

If I'm understanding right. "Hair" will be animated bones, while ponytails (at this moment) will be a rope physics object?

Just sliding this in here...see bottom panel...

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I had tried to find a panel

I had tried to find a panel from an old Teen Titans comic where Wonder Girl ties her hair to a tree, but alas, I could not.

"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."

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Grimfox wrote:
Grimfox wrote:

If I'm understanding right. "Hair" will be animated bones, while ponytails (at this moment) will be a rope physics object?

Just sliding this in here...see bottom panel...

I figure as far as this hair physics thing goes we kind of need to crawl before we worry about running. I think it'd be awesome if we could get hair that could "do" things (like attack enemies or do push ups) but at this point I'd be perfectly happy with a bit of vaguely natural non-combative animation.

Maybe eventually they could figure out how (for example) to get a rope-based ponytail to whip around on purpose but if they manage to get one that'll just, well, act like a natural ponytail we'd be making great progress. Baby steps are totally fine at this point.

Project_Hero wrote:

I had tried to find a panel from an old Teen Titans comic where Wonder Girl ties her hair to a tree, but alas, I could not.

Was she using her hair to pull the tree down or something weird like that?

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Project_Hero wrote:

I had tried to find a panel from an old Teen Titans comic where Wonder Girl ties her hair to a tree, but alas, I could not.

Was she using her hair to pull the tree down or something weird like that?

Yes, that one.

"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Shadow Elusive wrote:

Something to tide you over while we finish re-assembling in Plugin form in engine version 4.19. Payoff is expected to be pretty fast once that is done. The future is shiny.

I've said it before (and I'll likely say it again eventually) but I'd rather have "some" implementation of animated hair in CoT than the "none" we had in CoH. If that means avoiding the "cloth physics" idea in favor of the joint based for the foreseeable future that's fine with me.

Remember when CoH launched the Devs of that game hadn't even fully figured out capes, wings, animated tails and so on. It's always possible that some time in the next 5 to 10 years new solutions will be figured out to allow for better implementations.

What I remember most was back when City of Heroes launched they hadn't fully figured out rag doll physics! I remember kicking joint locked mannequins all across the map!

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Taragon's hair is dangerous!

Taragon's hair is dangerous!
But not as dangerous as her sisters.

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Project_Hero wrote:
Project_Hero wrote:

Can we get hair as an emanation point and/or power aesthetic? :D

I personally would totally love to do something like this but it depends quite a lot more heavily on other people's decisions and animation technique that I don't have, myself. I'd love to say yes but more realistically, don't get your hopes up.

Cobalt Azurean wrote:
Felpyre wrote:

Now this is just my personal opinion, and is probably not the most popular, but i would be totally fine with hair that didn't move.

I also don't particularly care for animated hair, but I can see the appeal. More options are generally a plus, so I'm okay with the idea. Especially if they can utilize the tech for other purposes.

Yes this same technique can be applied to many other costume things not related to hair (e.g. tentacles, chains, ropes etc.)

Atama wrote:

Stretchy attacks like Mr. Fantastic or Elastic Man.

This is a really fun concept, but be aware it would need a radically different character skeleton from what we are working with. It's one thing to extend the skeleton with something like hair or clothing, but to allow the character's arms and legs to get stretchy is vastly more complex and would need a ton of animation support.

ThunderCAP wrote:

It would be great if the hairs could be moved by some sort of wind-effect when in the open/outside, in the maps where there is a wind based sound effect on the background. Of course there should be the option to turn off the hairs movement for low end PCs, but I think that's obvious.

Fairly sure we can do wind type interaction. Disabling hair physics entirely can certainly be done, I'll remind the rest of the team that people want that.

DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Pity, since that also seems to imply that clothing may have the same issues. :(

Not really; we can have a good-looking cape or other clothing item that is much simpler geometrically than it looks, because it's essentially a flat sheet. Something like curly hair requires a lot more polys for its size than a cape or a skirt or a robe, and the math required for cloth physics is totally dependent on the vertex count of the object. Bone-based physics only needs to calculate a very small number of points (each joint) and the deformation applied by bones/joints is super optimized, so it's way cheaper to calculate and runs much faster.

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Now I want Taragon versus

Now I want Taragon versus Medusa!

I'd bet on Taragon! :)

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Now I want Tarragon versus Medusa!

I'd bet on Tarragon! :)

Tarragon and Scissors!

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*Notices Flesh Forge sneaking

*Notices Flesh Forge sneaking onto this thread and responding to five other people, even to at least one who was just repeating what I said first*

Hi Flesh Forge! How are you doing today? I'm am keeping up with my usual "chronic terrible behavior" to your satisfaction? ;)

P.S. For what it's worth perhaps one of these days you'll forgive me all my "terrible transgressions" about wanting the body models of this game to be as excellent as humanly possible and we can get along here. At the very least we can both be adults about this and discuss serious topics related to game in a rational, unemotional manner. I'm willing to try that going forward if you are. *shrugs*

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Very interesting! It's cool

Very interesting! It's cool to see the option to have these kinds of physics. I'm sure it's just the beginning for you guys.

Curious, though, of all the assets that you have made in the past 5+ years how many of them will need to be remade now? Or are they, like, "backwards compatible" for these physics?

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MeSoSollyWan wrote:
MeSoSollyWan wrote:

Very interesting! It's cool to see the option to have these kinds of physics. I'm sure it's just the beginning for you guys.

Curious, though, of all the assets that you have made in the past 5+ years how many of them will need to be remade now? Or are they, like, "backwards compatible" for these physics?

I'm reasonably sure the Devs didn't just start working with these physics features/capabilities yesterday. Most of this is what's already fundamentally provided for with things like UE4. I would hope they're at a point where not much would have to be "re-made" - if they are then it might be years (plural) before we ever see a launch of this game.

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Are we going to get hair

Are we going to get hair physics on other body hairs?

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Not more Chest-jiggle! *grin

Not more Chest-jiggle! *grin*

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
MeSoSollyWan wrote:

Very interesting! It's cool to see the option to have these kinds of physics. I'm sure it's just the beginning for you guys.

Curious, though, of all the assets that you have made in the past 5+ years how many of them will need to be remade now? Or are they, like, "backwards compatible" for these physics?

I'm reasonably sure the Devs didn't just start working with these physics features/capabilities yesterday. Most of this is what's already fundamentally provided for with things like UE4. I would hope they're at a point where not much would have to be "re-made" - if they are then it might be years (plural) before we ever see a launch of this game.

I agree with Lothic. It sounded like this was just an application of the standard physics tools already part of UE4 for bone/joint based modells. Most likely the same one that will be used for character physics like ragdoll effects and such.

Besides, nothing say that they can't use several different physics systems for different parts like the cloth based physics system for, well, actual cloth.

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As long as you can offer more

As long as you can offer more than a couple of those big long & curly hairstyles like in the examples and they'll move in any way at all, I will love you guys forever. :3
I would really love to look more accurate to my own artwork depictions and real life hairstyle in City of Titans than I ever could in CoH, heh.

Ideally, I'd love to see something like the custom Havok physics-based Merida hair mod made for Skyrim as seen here in this video clip.
Maybe, such a level of physics movement would be too much but at least something similar to the model of that hair even if it had more restricted movement.

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I remember seeing a behind

I remember seeing a behind the scenes about Brave where they talked about rendering Merida's hair. While awesome it massively increased rendering time for each frame where it needed to be rendered. It is AMAZING that someone is trying to recreate that in real time and having decent success. I have high hopes for some of the future graphics advances that will free up GPU horsepower for increased physics processing.

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Grimfox wrote:
Grimfox wrote:

While awesome it massively increased rendering time for each frame where it needed to be rendered.

Well, the way that modder created the Skyrim version of Merida's hair is that it's just a few large single lengths of hair that start from the top of the crown and protrude outward sideways with a couple more rows of them going down the back and sides of the head and a couple short ones out the front for the bangs. Under them is a static hairpiece that blends it all in, it's the texture actually used on all of it that gives it the illusion of being huge bushy hair. It's really laid out not unlike the examples the devs showed in those gif examples, it's just that each of those big curls have very loose havok physics going on that make it bounce and flow. Now, admittedly using that hair can drag the frame rate down to varying degrees if you have a lot of other non-standard intensive graphical bells and whistles going on from other mods but the person that made it did not account for making it more resource friendly. If it was the only mod you had installed in a vanilla Skyrim game, there'd be no issues at all.

So, if we were hypothetically looking at what will constitute a vanilla CoT game as they will have it be, programming the hairstyles to act similarly might be doable but there maybe would be hiccups if you had a whole zone of people using that hair on top of whatever else is taking advantage of the physics engine to such a degree like capes or movable set pieces. It's more that I'd really love to see hair just in that style but it doesn't have to move entirely naturally if it would be a resource hog. I'd be happy if it just subtly bobbed around at the ends like they showed or was even completely static... I could just say I'm a liberal abuser of Aqua Net in that case. ;)

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great work my guy

great work my guy

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Luna Eclypse wrote:
Luna Eclypse wrote:

As long as you can offer more than a couple of those big long & curly hairstyles like in the examples and they'll move in any way at all, I will love you guys forever. :3
I would really love to look more accurate to my own artwork depictions and real life hairstyle in City of Titans than I ever could in CoH, heh.

Ideally, I'd love to see something like the custom Havok physics-based Merida hair mod made for Skyrim as seen here in this video clip.
Maybe, such a level of physics movement would be too much but at least something similar to the model of that hair even if it had more restricted movement.

Is that Oldrim or SSE?

Also, to jump in on the mashups, here’s my favorite:

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Don't know that it would be any harder than the Muttonpack to implement. Now, that said, I'm not particularly expecting the Muttonpack to be able to do all the things it "should", in an ideal world, at least not at launch...

You know it's funny but no matter how long you manage to live you can always learn new things. I can honestly admit I've never heard the word "Muttonpack" before. Turns out the only remotely relevant Google reference to it was from a vid MWM itself tossed out on YouTube 3 years ago. Based on the vid I'm guessing that's some kind of nickname for a "backpack with a bunch of limbs sticking out of it".

Learning something new every day. ;)

But yeah I would think to do a "hair version of a muttonpack" would actually be much harder because the hair stands would have to fully flex like a whip unlike the relatively simple skeletal movement of the arms. Either way I'm sure it would not be trivial.

Yes, my Devsmas gift to y'all. :)

One of the more insane ideas for it (one which is *way* out of scope for anything they're attempting right now, and may or may not ever be in scope for this era of the game) was the ability to have the various limbs be able to act as "hands", so that you could have extra attachment points.

As a point of minor interest, making a hair-whip that can attack would be pretty much exactly the same effort (in fact, probably 90% the same animation) as a muttonpack arm. As the update discussed, long ponytail/braid hair is dead simple -- it is just a tail (a chain of skeleton bones) that happens to attach to the head rather than the base of the spine. From an engine perspective there's no difference at all, you just have to create the attack animations and then use a combination of retargeting the endpoint and allowing a "physics blend" (already built into the engine) so that it looks approximately right.

After that both a tail and a hair whip are actually significantly simpler than a human arm. :)

The real limitation there, in practice, is that it would be easy to eat up a ridiculous number of bones for something that would have a relatively limited value, although I believe that for the past couple of years UE4 has had a much higher internal limit than it used to (which was already higher than most engines have at all). But it doesn't come cheap, computationally. While skeletons can use the same LOD tricks that anything else can, having your whole party head-banging in close proximity would be an excellent stress test...


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warcabbit wrote:
warcabbit wrote:

Nothing has changed regarding capes and clothes - it's just hair-specific. There's a lot more interactions with A: the body and B: other strands of hair, than you'd think. It essentially uses a 30+ cape budget per person.

And yes, rope physics and ponytails are still go at the moment.

Something you've probably already discovered: even with solid physics, these get expensive fast... among other things your PHaT asset overlays have to be fairly precise to make it work. Still cheaper than cloth-without-PhysX, though, yes.

The main thing about PhysX-driven cloth is the ability to effectively utilize GPU to drive it (much more efficient) and the "automatically managed budget". Unfortunately it does mean a non-trivial amount of extra work to apply the extra vertex data. Still, I can hope that we might see it in a later revision once the company has income to pay for such things.


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Flesh Forge wrote:
Flesh Forge wrote:
ThunderCAP wrote:

It would be great if the hairs could be moved by some sort of wind-effect when in the open/outside, in the maps where there is a wind based sound effect on the background. Of course there should be the option to turn off the hairs movement for low end PCs, but I think that's obvious.

Fairly sure we can do wind type interaction. Disabling hair physics entirely can certainly be done, I'll remind the rest of the team that people want that.

Should happen "nearly for free" as long as you actually set the relevant information in the physics assets and then use the standard tools in the engine to manage / represent the wind. For the engine it is just a single extra vector in the equation, which may well not even trigger an extra calculation.

Flesh Forge wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

Pity, since that also seems to imply that clothing may have the same issues. :(

Not really; we can have a good-looking cape or other clothing item that is much simpler geometrically than it looks, because it's essentially a flat sheet. Something like curly hair requires a lot more polys for its size than a cape or a skirt or a robe, and the math required for cloth physics is totally dependent on the vertex count of the object. Bone-based physics only needs to calculate a very small number of points (each joint) and the deformation applied by bones/joints is super optimized, so it's way cheaper to calculate and runs much faster.

I suspect that we have different standards for "looking good" here. To me, for a cape to really look *good* requires up to several dozen flex points, which puts it on a par with the simpler end of hair animation. And the deformation is highly optimized in both cases -- the main difference between bones and solid physics objects is that bones cost significantly more because you have to do the animation blending (a skeleton with 0% animation blended in just degenerates to the same handling as a standard physics object in most places in the engine).

Note that I'm not saying that capes should have that many flex points in what CoT is trying to achieve right now. I'm saying that y'all have made it clear that you had to forego the approach that would allow you to do that level of "good looking", at least for the time being, and I'm sad that it turned out that way. Such is life, everyone knew that not all of the ideas were going to be workable at launch, this one just happened to be one of "my babies".

That said, I was also the one who looked into it originally, and I have no argument whatsoever that UE4 cloth physics on that scale are completely impractical. That was clear from the start, the hope was about being able to use GPU-driven physics which scale to the "hundreds of thousands of vertices" range, rather than the "hundreds" that CPU-driven vertex physics can generally handle.


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So, I feel like someone needs

So, I feel like someone needs to ask this, so here goes... Will we have powers be able to affect the hair physics? If I theme a power like a blast of wind, I'd like it to affect the hair of anyone nearby. Or, you know, the classic Dragon Ball style powering up stance with the shouting and the updrafts. Sometimes with pebbles in it.

I mean, sure, a Shantae style ponytail whip would be fun, too, but I'm wondering more about powers that causes the hair to move, not directly, but because they cause physics that says so. It would be amazing to have a big explosion type nuke that blows everyone's hair back from the blast, for instance. It helps oversell the power of the blast.

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The answer right now is: "We

The answer right now is: "We don't know". Designing a game like this is an ongoing balancing act. We have to consistently consider players with slower connections and systems. That was part of our promise to our backers. That's why we had to cut down on the number of colors (though I think I found a workaround for that) and an sacrifice a number of other things we'd like to do.

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Yes you have to consider them

Yes you have to consider them but not everything has to be available to the minimum graphical settings crowd. I'm sure there are already a number of setting that can be completely turned off to increase performance (making min and max settings produce different experiences) so why couldn't this kind of effect be one of those?

So... I think it's not so much if you can include a certain effect at all but rather where between min and max graphical settings in can be "safely" placed. Sure that some effects would probably right out but I feel that those would be the exception, not the rule when min graphical settings can't use/utilize them.

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avelworldcreator wrote:
avelworldcreator wrote:

The answer right now is: "We don't know". Designing a game like this is an ongoing balancing act. We have to consistently consider players with slower connections and systems. That was part of our promise to our backers. That's why we had to cut down on the number of colors (though I think I found a workaround for that) and an sacrifice a number of other things we'd like to do.

I understand. Hair physics on multiple characters is always going to be expensive, especially in an MMO. I just hope that if wind becomes a thing with hair physics that you'll allow powers to create wind, too.

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I tend to agree with Black

I tend to agree with Black here. I can remember a couple times when I upgraded my hardware and discovered games had a whole level of detail I had been missing and had no idea cause I forgot I had been playing on lowered settings due to my old hardware and boom the game cams alive for meat no expense to other players that could handle those graphics.

Of course I am assuming it isn’t overly complex to develop this situation on the programming end rather than losing details on the programming end that will have to be developed later when average consumer hardware can handle it.

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avelworldcreator wrote:
avelworldcreator wrote:

That's why we had to cut down on the number of colors (though I think I found a workaround for that) ...

(my emphasis)

Am I the only one who found this really intriguing? Tell us more, avel!

blacke4dawn wrote:

Yes you have to consider them but not everything has to be available to the minimum graphical settings crowd. I'm sure there are already a number of setting that can be completely turned off to increase performance (making min and max settings produce different experiences) so why couldn't this kind of effect be one of those?

That's a really good point/question.

Spurn all ye kindle.

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velvetsanity wrote:
velvetsanity wrote:

Is that Oldrim or SSE?

It's still only for original 32-bit Skyrim. The script extender that it requires had to be remade from the ground up for SSE and is still in an early build so Havoc Physics assets still aren't very feasible for it yet.
Other people have done very simplistic physics for SSE for body assets but it's more restrictive so everyone is just waiting for the new script extender to get up to speed so they can port existing mods over more easily.

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Nice update its UnbeWEAVEable

Nice update its UnbeWEAVEable !!!

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@Cinnder,

@Cinnder,
Well, the idea I've been tossing around is have multiple palettes on the client already existing. Key each palette to the either the body section (there are 22), the material used, or both. We are limited to only 3, 8-bit, values per part for transmission, but this could give us a potential number colors of 256*22*number of materials.

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Luna Eclypse wrote:
Luna Eclypse wrote:
velvetsanity wrote:

Is that Oldrim or SSE?

It's still only for original 32-bit Skyrim. The script extender that it requires had to be remade from the ground up for SSE and is still in an early build so Havoc Physics assets still aren't very feasible for it yet.
Other people have done very simplistic physics for SSE for body assets but it's more restrictive so everyone is just waiting for the new script extender to get up to speed so they can port existing mods over more easily.

That’s what I thought, though from what I understand they might be going straight to HDT-SMP with SSE and skipping HDT-PE entirely. Though they do seem to have most things working in SSE now, although RaceMenu’s still a bit buggy because NIO can’t be ported yet. Still, a lot of people are staying with Oldrim because of the CC headache in SSE

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This should be at the

This should be at the absolute bottom of the list of your development priorities. This is something that could be added in in mid to late beta. No wonder this game is taking so long, you're focusing on this kind of pointless minutia.

No offense, it's a nice touch, but seriously, at this stage, why are you working on it?

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Kid Rad wrote:
Kid Rad wrote:

This should be at the absolute bottom of the list of your development priorities. This is something that could be added in in mid to late beta. No wonder this game is taking so long, you're focusing on this kind of pointless minutia.

No offense, it's a nice touch, but seriously, at this stage, why are you working on it?

While I personally agree with you in that moving hair is not something I'm particularly interested in, since costume and customization is one of the core features of CoT (in the spirit of CoH), it does make sense that this is a significant and highly desirable feature for the game to have. Especially for it to age well.

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avelworldcreator wrote:
avelworldcreator wrote:

We are limited to only 3, 8-bit, values per part for transmission

Wait ... are you seriously telling me that in 2018+ we're going to be playing in an 8-bit theater?


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Kid Rad wrote:
Kid Rad wrote:

This should be at the absolute bottom of the list of your development priorities. This is something that could be added in in mid to late beta. No wonder this game is taking so long, you're focusing on this kind of pointless minutia.

No offense, it's a nice touch, but seriously, at this stage, why are you working on it?

This game is built in a modular fashion. There are teams focusing on different parts of the game, and when they’re done with a feature it gets added to the whole.

It’s not like the people who should be working on combat mechanics or designing power sets or putting the mission system together are working on hair. The hair is worked on by the person who designs character aesthetics. So what other part of character aesthetics do you personally know is unfinished and holding up the development process?

If you don’t know (and I’m sure you don’t) then your criticism is unfounded and born from ignorance of the process. Or do you think the way a character looks in a superhero MMO doesn’t matter? If so, you know nothing about the genre.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:
avelworldcreator wrote:

We are limited to only 3, 8-bit, values per part for transmission

Wait ... are you seriously telling me that in 2018+ we're going to be playing in an 8-bit theater?

I was thinking the same thing, so I had to look it up. JPEG uses 8-bit color.

With an 8-bit image, each bit could be a 1 or a 0, which would be "2 to the exponent 8", or "2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2", which gives us 256 gradients of color for that register. Since there are three registers for every color: Red, Green and Blue, If you do the the math, 256 times 256 times 256 equals roughly 16.8 million. That's 16.8 million colors you get with an 8-bit image - 256 shades of red, 256 shades of green, and 256 shades of blue, giving you the millions of possible colors you usually see in a digital photo.

And that's just for costume colors. I would HOPE that MWM uses a far grander palette of colors for the environment.


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.
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Kid Rad wrote:
Kid Rad wrote:

This should be at the absolute bottom of the list of your development priorities. This is something that could be added in in mid to late beta. No wonder this game is taking so long, you're focusing on this kind of pointless minutia.

No offense, it's a nice touch, but seriously, at this stage, why are you working on it?

Kid indeed :p

Like dude said, the game is going to age poorly with static hair. That sets it before like 2009 automatically.


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avelworldcreator
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We are transmitting 8-bit

We are transmitting 8-bit color indexes. Each maps to an fRGB value. That's floating point values, not integers. At least 12 bytes per color. After that those colors are manipulated into gradients and the like by the materials used so the total number of colors resulting can be quite large. Consider what you've seen with the recent costume videos with only 9 colors! I was shocked when I first heard this too but my later experience led me to think otherwise. Would I like a larger range? Yes. But it's an issue of bandwidth. The equipment on the client end can handle it but our modern data pipes are still too narrow yet. The environment has as much of a range as we like.
What we are doing is storing our colors on the client in advance and just transmitting a reference to them so we don't have to send all of that data every time.

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avelworldcreator wrote:
avelworldcreator wrote:

We are transmitting 8-bit color indexes. Each maps to an fRGB value. That's floating point values, not integers. At least 12 bytes per color. After that those colors are manipulated into gradients and the like by the materials used so the total number of colors resulting can be quite large. Consider what you've seen with the recent costume videos with only 9 colors! I was shocked when I first heard this too but my later experience led me to think otherwise. Would I like a larger range? Yes. But it's an issue of bandwidth. The equipment on the client end can handle it but our modern data pipes are still too narrow yet. The environment has as much of a range as we like.
What we are doing is storing our colors on the client in advance and just transmitting a reference to them so we don't have to send all of that data every time.

That makes sense. I hadn't thought about the effect materials have. So our client knows the 8-bit color as "blue #256" but that same exact "blue #256" can appear as hundreds of different shades more, generated by the Unreal Engine on our client depending on the lighting effects and the material selection, right?


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.
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desviper wrote:
desviper wrote:
Kid Rad wrote:

This should be at the absolute bottom of the list of your development priorities. This is something that could be added in in mid to late beta. No wonder this game is taking so long, you're focusing on this kind of pointless minutia.

No offense, it's a nice touch, but seriously, at this stage, why are you working on it?

Kid indeed :p

Like dude said, the game is going to age poorly with static hair. That sets it before like 2009 automatically.

I'm not saying this should not be implemented eventually. It is definitely a good thing to include in the final game. However, right now we're waiting for the chargen alpha. That is, the first basic incomplete vesion of it. Is it really worth the continued delay for this minute detail? What other small details is the chargen alpha being delayed for?

Again, not saying this stuff should not be in the final game. However, this project suffers from chronic delays and a snail's pace of development. This kind of over ambitious perfectionism is why. This is not meant as a personal insult to anyone in any way, just some constructive criticism.

I play games that have open alphas (not even in the super hero mmo category), that are clearly far from done, but over the years have added in small details, making the game better and better all the time. There's nothing wrong with that, and in fact, it's a great way to build up a loyal fan base and allow people to feel like they are a part of the development process. I wish MWM would consider taking that approach. We don't need a totally complete game at alpha, or even beta. That's what alphas and betas are for after all. Just focus on getting the bones of the game worked out, which from what I can tell, are already quite comprehensive and ambitious, and then add in these kind of smaller details later on, once you've got the basics down.

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I'd be okay with NPCs having

I'd be okay with NPCs having low-tech non-moving hair, especially the ones that just stand there. Also, minions might not need ultra-realistic hair, given how many of them you might have. I'd even be okay with giving the good hair to the subscribers as a costume option and making everyone else live with static hair. But that;s just me.

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Kid Rad wrote:
Kid Rad wrote:

I'm not saying this should not be implemented eventually. It is definitely a good thing to include in the final game. However, right now we're waiting for the chargen alpha. That is, the first basic incomplete vesion of it. Is it really worth the continued delay for this minute detail? What other small details is the chargen alpha being delayed for?

Again, not saying this stuff should not be in the final game. However, this project suffers from chronic delays and a snail's pace of development. This kind of over ambitious perfectionism is why. This is not meant as a personal insult to anyone in any way, just some constructive criticism.

I play games that have open alphas (not even in the super hero mmo category), that are clearly far from done, but over the years have added in small details, making the game better and better all the time. There's nothing wrong with that, and in fact, it's a great way to build up a loyal fan base and allow people to feel like they are a part of the development process. I wish MWM would consider taking that approach. We don't need a totally complete game at alpha, or even beta. That's what alphas and betas are for after all. Just focus on getting the bones of the game worked out, which from what I can tell, are already quite comprehensive and ambitious, and then add in these kind of smaller details later on, once you've got the basics down.

How do you know it’s going to be in-place before chargen, or that it’s delaying development? Seriously, do you work at MWM? How do you know these things you’re complaining about?

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Atama wrote:
Atama wrote:
Kid Rad wrote:

I'm not saying this should not be implemented eventually. It is definitely a good thing to include in the final game. However, right now we're waiting for the chargen alpha. That is, the first basic incomplete vesion of it. Is it really worth the continued delay for this minute detail? What other small details is the chargen alpha being delayed for?

Again, not saying this stuff should not be in the final game. However, this project suffers from chronic delays and a snail's pace of development. This kind of over ambitious perfectionism is why. This is not meant as a personal insult to anyone in any way, just some constructive criticism.

I play games that have open alphas (not even in the super hero mmo category), that are clearly far from done, but over the years have added in small details, making the game better and better all the time. There's nothing wrong with that, and in fact, it's a great way to build up a loyal fan base and allow people to feel like they are a part of the development process. I wish MWM would consider taking that approach. We don't need a totally complete game at alpha, or even beta. That's what alphas and betas are for after all. Just focus on getting the bones of the game worked out, which from what I can tell, are already quite comprehensive and ambitious, and then add in these kind of smaller details later on, once you've got the basics down.

How do you know it’s going to be in-place before chargen, or that it’s delaying development? Seriously, do you work at MWM? How do you know these things you’re complaining about?

Because they have repeatedly said very specifically that they don't have time for superfluous updates and that they are wholly consumed with getting the preliminary release done. So basic logic from anyone who's been following the project would deduce that their release of this as an update means that they view it as important and something that will be included in the earliest release.

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