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Discuss: Flying High - Travel Powers Preview

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Red Warlock
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Discuss: Flying High - Travel Powers Preview

read the original update and watch the new videos here: https://cityoftitans.com/content/flying-high-travel-powers-preview

Feel free to comment on the update below.

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Looking good. Always fun to

Looking good. Always fun to see progress being made.

The update briefly mentioned being able to apply points to "customize" how various travel powers will work. It would be great if you could pick one specific travel power and provide a sort of walkthough of the choices that would be available for that particular power. Obviously I'm not asking for precise values or exact details yet, but anything more than "you'll have points to spend" would be nice.

Also it goes without saying that whenever you get around to handling how a player might "respec" their characters that being able to respec these travel power points will have to be built into that system.

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I don't know if I'm

I don't know if I'm understanding it properly. We get 4 travel powers? Each of those get levels of pets or improvement in them? Or do we get a certain number of point to distribute, wether that's all in one travel power set (either deep or wide), or in up to 4 power sets MAX that can then be upgraded to let extents (again deep or wide)?

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Karnaj wrote:
Karnaj wrote:

I don't know if I'm understanding it properly. We get 4 travel powers? Each of those get levels of pets or improvement in them? Or do we get a certain number of point to distribute, wether that's all in one travel power set (either deep or wide), or in up to 4 power sets MAX that can then be upgraded to let extents (again deep or wide)?

We will have the option to have up to 4 travel powers. You don't have to HAVE 4 travel powers. You probably don't have to have any if you don't want any.

You'll be able to put points into those powers to go either "deep or wide" as you choose. So to be clear you could have just one travel power that you could max out or have several (up to 4) that will likely not be fully maxable.

It also sounds like you can define what "maxed out" is for you. For instance it sounds like you could fully optimize for flight speed OR flight power efficiency but likely not both of those at the same time.

This is why I suggested they provide a walkthough of one of the travel powers just to give us a feel for how it could be customized.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

The update briefly mentioned being able to apply points to "customize" how various travel powers will work. It would be great if you could pick one specific travel power and provide a sort of walkthough of the choices that would be available for that particular power. Obviously I'm not asking for precise values or exact details yet, but anything more than "you'll have points to spend" would be nice.

I forwarded this question to the powers tech team and they are going to get back to you on it later today...

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Red_Warlock wrote:
Red_Warlock wrote:
Lothic wrote:

The update briefly mentioned being able to apply points to "customize" how various travel powers will work. It would be great if you could pick one specific travel power and provide a sort of walkthough of the choices that would be available for that particular power. Obviously I'm not asking for precise values or exact details yet, but anything more than "you'll have points to spend" would be nice.

I forwarded this question to the powers tech team and they are going to get back to you on it later today...

Thanks. I think it would help everyone like Karnaj above.

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Red_Warlock wrote:
Red_Warlock wrote:

I forwarded this question to the powers tech team and they are going to get back to you on it later today...

Here's an example of the kind of thing that would be useful to know in the context of a Flight power.

There are two kinds of Flight that can be done ... one is the kind of Flight we had in City of Heroes, where constant thrust equals constant speed at the speed cap and at zero speed you just hover in place. The other kind of Flight is more on an "energy maneuvering" type of flying that has you gain speed in dives, lose speed in climbs and will stall out (and fall) when your speed is too low ... so it's more of an aerodynamic flight akin to fixed wing aircraft (not named Kestrel or Harrier).

Of these two options, the aerodynamic "energy maneuvering" option for Flight would be far more dynamic and interesting to play with ... but it also has the added benefit, from a game mechanics standpoint, of "permitting" a higher top speed cap at the expense of raising the minimum speed. So you'd go from a 0-70 mph "can hover" speed range to something more like a 10-80 mph speed range instead, which is still a 70 mph spread from minimum to maximum, but which allows a higher maximum due to the higher minimum.

The engine is perfectly capable of supporting this kind of aerodynamic flight at the programming level (I submitted an example video on this subject years ago now, which contained an explanation of how to do it). The only question then is whether there will be any resources thrown at the option to realize this possibility.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:
Red_Warlock wrote:

I forwarded this question to the powers tech team and they are going to get back to you on it later today...

Here's an example of the kind of thing that would be useful to know in the context of a Flight power.

There are two kinds of Flight that can be done ... one is the kind of Flight we had in City of Heroes, where constant thrust equals constant speed at the speed cap and at zero speed you just hover in place. The other kind of Flight is more on an "energy maneuvering" type of flying that has you gain speed in dives, lose speed in climbs and will stall out (and fall) when your speed is too low ... so it's more of an aerodynamic flight akin to fixed wing aircraft (not named Kestrel or Harrier).

Of these two options, the aerodynamic "energy maneuvering" option for Flight would be far more dynamic and interesting to play with ... but it also has the added benefit, from a game mechanics standpoint, of "permitting" a higher top speed cap at the expense of raising the minimum speed. So you'd go from a 0-70 mph "can hover" speed range to something more like a 10-80 mph speed range instead, which is still a 70 mph spread from minimum to maximum, but which allows a higher maximum due to the higher minimum.

The engine is perfectly capable of supporting this kind of aerodynamic flight at the programming level (I submitted an example video on this subject years ago now, which contained an explanation of how to do it). The only question then is whether there will be any resources thrown at the option to realize this possibility.

I think in a perfect game we'd have BOTH of these kinds of flight as options. You could literally name them like "heroic flight" and "aerodynamic flight" to tell them apart. But we all know the chances that MWM could do this, especially by launch day, is slim at best.

So based on the limitations you'd need to ask the question "Which of these alternatives, assuming you could only have one of them, would be better for the game and/or easier to develop?" I think the clear answer to that question is the simpler, non-aerodynamic oriented flight. It may not be as "interesting" as you put it, but it would have the big advantage of relative simplicity and (important for MMO combat) allow for hovering.

I'll take your word for it that implementing aerodynamic flight in CoT would be "programmatically possible". I just think if you lined up the two styles of flight side-by-side the simpler heroic flight style would have more "pros" than "cons" in the context of a MMO game like this.

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I have to say both the flying

I have to say both the flying and wall-crawling look pretty awesome, even in this unfinished state. Good work, folks!!

In the old game, in order to land flying characters I'd usually swoop down till I was close to the ground, then slightly up as I toggled off flight, so that the character would drop the last couple feet (without the arm-spinning uncontrolled fall animation), landing with an appropriate amount of knee flex to cushion a short fall. What happens in this game if you do that? I certainly wouldn't mind having the Iron Man 3-point Landingtm for that.

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Cinnder wrote:
Cinnder wrote:

In the old game, in order to land flying characters I'd usually swoop down till I was close to the ground, then slightly up as I toggled off flight, so that the character would drop the last couple feet (without the arm-spinning uncontrolled fall animation), landing with an appropriate amount of knee flex to cushion a short fall. What happens in this game if you do that? I certainly wouldn't mind having the Iron Man 3-point Landingtm for that.

I essentially asked the same question on Discord since it wasn't super obvious based on these new vids. Apparently based on Tannim's response if you slow down enough for a "soft" landing your character will animate appropriately to allow for a "soft" landing. It seems your "speed of impact" against the ground is what triggers which landing animation fires.

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Hopefully I can clear things

Hopefully I can clear things up a bit. Since Flight was used in the update I'll continue to provide that as an example. First the 4 Travel Slots. As the update says, your character will be granted 4 separate Travel Slots. These are completely optional and are unlocked at various character levels with the first being available at level 1.

You are making your brand new level 1 character and go over to the optional travel slot. From there you have a series of choices of Travel Sets to choose from. At launch we have Acrobatics, Flight, Teleportation, Super Leap, Super Speed, Swinging, and Wall Crawling. Those last two were unlocked due to the generosity of our Kickstarter supporters (THANK YOU!).

You choose the Flight Set. The first power you get in the Flight Set is Levitation. It is a toggled power, meaning you turn it on and it uses Power Cost over time. However, the Tier 1 Travel Powers need to be equitable because some of them are Permanent and don't have cost. While toggles need a cost associated, this cost is 0. Yay!

Alright so how to you get these points to improve or unlock stuff? You get them by using the power travel. Levitation offers vertical movement in a 3d space, but it is slow. As you use it, you gain Flight experience. As your Flight set "levels up" you will get points awarded with each level. You don't need to spend them right away as they will be stored in your Flight Set Points pool.

Levitation can have a couple of things improved: its Flight Speed, making Levitation faster, or its Will Power rating, which makes it more difficult to be affected by controls. Once you have enough points, you can choose to unlock a second tier power in the Flight Set. There are two options. The first being Flight. This is closer to what you have seen in the video. A faster 3D movement Flight travel power. The other is Rocket Boost.

If you unlock Flight, it is a toggle with a regular Power cost to upkeep. Rocket Boost is a bit different. It is much faster than flight, but with less control. You can fly really quickly but mostly in straight lines. Changing direction isn't really possible. Instead of a toggle, this is activated with a Click function and a recharge time. But the recharge time is immediate. You can't double up on Rocket Boots but once it wears off you can Rocket Boost again. Both powers can have their costs improved, their speed improved, and their Will Power ratings improved.

Let's say you wanted to unlock Flight as soon as possible. You saved up those Flight points and unlocked it. Now you have 2 Flight Set powers: Levitation and Flight. Using either power still counts toward your Flight experience, helping you gain Flight levels and more points. You can save those points to unlock the third tier power in Flight - Grant Flight. Or you can choose to spend them improving aspects of Levitation or Flight.

Points can be allocated as you choose. If you want to improve just flight speed or just power cost, or both, you can do that. What you won't have enough points to do is unlock everything in a Travel Set and improve each aspect of a Travel Power in a set to its maximum. There are a finite amount of levels for travel sets which means a fixed total possible points you can earn toward unlocking and / or improving the travel powers in a given set. The UI should be designed in a way to inform the player so they can make informed decisions about their choices in point usage towards that maximum.


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Cinnder wrote:
Cinnder wrote:

I have to say both the flying and wall-crawling look pretty awesome, even in this unfinished state. Good work, folks!!

In the old game, in order to land flying characters I'd usually swoop down till I was close to the ground, then slightly up as I toggled off flight, so that the character would drop the last couple feet (without the arm-spinning uncontrolled fall animation), landing with an appropriate amount of knee flex to cushion a short fall. What happens in this game if you do that? I certainly wouldn't mind having the Iron Man 3-point Landingtm for that.

The landing on the ground animation is based on your velocity at the time of landing. If pull up and stop moving dropping a short distance off the ground, you will have the normal landing animation like any brief jump / fall from a short wall.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

… ((said a bunch of really cool stuff that I love the sound of)) ...

Outstanding. I love the idea of gaining points from actually using the power.

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

The landing on the ground animation is based on your velocity at the time of landing. If pull up and stop moving dropping a short distance off the ground, you will have the normal landing animation like any brief jump / fall from a short wall.

That's perfectly fine.

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Hopefully I can clear things up a bit. Since Flight was used in the update I'll continue to provide that as an example.

Thanks for the extra detail. So to briefly summarize for the Flight set we'll have access to select from at least 4 different flight-oriented powers:

  • Tier 1: Levitate
  • Tier 2: Flight or Rocket Boost
  • Tier 3: Grant Flight

Along the way we'll earn "flight travel points" to customize/improve these powers. These improvements could be applied to all sorts of appropriate characteristics like faster speed, lower power cost, better willpower rating, quicker recharge, improved defense, etc.

With this I'm guessing the basic assumption is that each main travel power set will have multiple related "sub-powers". For instance maybe under the Super Speed set the first power might be "Sprint" as a sort of "junior Super Speed" the same way Levitate is the "junior Flight".

Another quick question is whether we MUST pick at least one power from each tier to advance to the next tier. For instance to have "Grant Flight" as a power would you have to have picked Levitate and (say for example Flight) or could you potentially avoid/skip lower tier powers? As a role playing example I could see where a character could theoretically be able to Grant Flight to other characters but not be able to fly themselves. That might be a weird scenario but it would be a plausible one in a chaotic superhero universe.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

With this I'm guessing the basic assumption is that each main travel power set will have multiple related "sub-powers". For instance maybe under the Super Speed set the first power might be "Sprint" as a sort of "junior Super Speed" the same way Levitate is the "junior Flight".

Safe assumption thought it may not always be the case.

Lothic wrote:

Another quick question is whether we MUST pick at least one power from each tier to advance to the next tier. For instance to have "Grant Flight" as a power would you have to have picked Levitate and (say for example Flight) or could you potentially avoid/skip lower tier powers? As a role playing example I could see where a character could theoretically be able to Grant Flight to other characters but not be able to fly themselves. That might be a weird scenario but it would be a plausible one in a chaotic superhero universe.

Each tier must be obtained as part of the prerequisite for the next tier, along with the points allocated toward the unlock. Otherwise there wouldn't be 3 tiers. Since each tier unlock requires travel xp, a character must use at least 1 of the earlier travel powers to earn enough xp and points to unlock the next tier. So in role play scenario, one would assume the player is at least using Levitation to earn their travel xp. They then spend points to unlock Flight, ignore the power (they are role playing after all), keep using Levitation, and eventually unlock Grant Flight.


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Lothic wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Another quick question is whether we MUST pick at least one power from each tier to advance to the next tier. For instance to have "Grant Flight" as a power would you have to have picked Levitate and (say for example Flight) or could you potentially avoid/skip lower tier powers? As a role playing example I could see where a character could theoretically be able to Grant Flight to other characters but not be able to fly themselves. That might be a weird scenario but it would be a plausible one in a chaotic superhero universe.

Each tier must be obtained as part of the prerequisite for the next tier, along with the points allocated toward the unlock. Otherwise there wouldn't be 3 tiers. Since each tier unlock requires travel xp, a character must use at least 1 of the earlier travel powers to earn enough xp and points to unlock the next tier. So in role play scenario, one would assume the player is at least using Levitation to earn their travel xp. They then spend points to unlock Flight, ignore the power (they are role playing after all), keep using Levitation, and eventually unlock Grant Flight.

That's fine - it looked like we were going to have to pick at least one initial power regardless to earn the points. Like you said if a player really wanted to RP a situation where they only had a higher tier travel power they could simply "pretend" they didn't have the lower ones.

I also assume that a person could pick Flight at one point then pick Rocket Boost as a later choice. These things are not mutually exclusive correct?

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

I also assume that a person could pick Flight at one point then pick Rocket Boost as a later choice. These things are not mutually exclusive correct?

That is correct. As long as you have the points you can unlock all the powers in a Travel Set.


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Nice!

Nice!

Great animations for flight, even in the testing phase.

I'm excited for the idea of using Teleportation + Wall Crawling for my main. I've been waiting years to find out how Teleportation will work in this game since it's my favorite super power, and my most used Travel in TOG.

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Those last two were unlocked due to the generosity of our Kickstarter supporters (THANK YOU!).

No, Thank you all, for being obsessed with this project. ^_^

Tannim222 wrote:

You choose the Flight Set. The first power you get in the Flight Set is Levitation. It is a toggled power, meaning you turn it on and it uses Power Cost over time. However, the Tier 1 Travel Powers need to be equitable because some of them are Permanent and don't have cost. While toggles need a cost associated, this cost is 0. Yay!

Quote:

If you unlock Flight, it is a toggle with a regular Power cost to upkeep.

So, for levitate, the cost to continue levitating is zero, Flight has non-zero cost to maintain, but it can be reduced, and presumably other toggles (like a damage aura, or a continuous attack) would have their own cost to maintain, and might have upgrades that can reduce this cost...

Tannim222 wrote:

Let's say you wanted to unlock Flight as soon as possible. You saved up those Flight points and unlocked it. Now you have 2 Flight Set powers: Levitation and Flight. Using either power still counts toward your Flight experience, helping you gain Flight levels and more points. You can save those points to unlock the third tier power in Flight - Grant Flight. Or you can choose to spend them improving aspects of Levitation or Flight.

Points can be allocated as you choose. If you want to improve just flight speed or just power cost, or both, you can do that. What you won't have enough points to do is unlock everything in a Travel Set and improve each aspect of a Travel Power in a set to its maximum. There are a finite amount of levels for travel sets which means a fixed total possible points you can earn toward unlocking and / or improving the travel powers in a given set. The UI should be designed in a way to inform the player so they can make informed decisions about their choices in point usage towards that maximum.

So, we'll have quite a bit of mechanical customization available. Yay! Add in a few nice animation choices (maybe several poses while flying, adding in carpet or rocket-platforms or brooms, elemental auras, etc...) and we'll be able to make lots of characters that look like they're flying differently and actually are! And likewise with other types of movement powers, one hopes.

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Watching the explosion of

Watching the explosion of acceleration when you start flying brought a tear to my eye. THIS is the thing you need to capture in all kinds of animations-- it makes or breaks the feeling of power. It doesn't matter if flight speed caps at 62mph or 87mph, what matters is that it FEELS fast. Just like it matters that my superstrength uppercut LOOKS cool. I'm heartened by how great the flight stuff looks-- I'm hopeful that you can match the cool factor in our other animations. Great work.

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Foradain wrote:
Foradain wrote:

So, for levitate, the cost to continue levitating is zero, Flight has non-zero cost to maintain, but it can be reduced, and presumably other toggles (like a damage aura, or a continuous attack) would have their own cost to maintain, and might have upgrades that can reduce this cost...

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:
Karnaj wrote:

I don't know if I'm understanding it properly. We get 4 travel powers? Each of those get levels of pets or improvement in them? Or do we get a certain number of point to distribute, wether that's all in one travel power set (either deep or wide), or in up to 4 power sets MAX that can then be upgraded to let extents (again deep or wide)?

We will have the option to have up to 4 travel powers. You don't have to HAVE 4 travel powers. You probably don't have to have any if you don't want any.

You'll be able to put points into those powers to go either "deep or wide" as you choose. So to be clear you could have just one travel power that you could max out or have several (up to 4) that will likely not be fully maxable.

It also sounds like you can define what "maxed out" is for you. For instance it sounds like you could fully optimize for flight speed OR flight power efficiency but likely not both of those at the same time.

This is why I suggested they provide a walkthough of one of the travel powers just to give us a feel for how it could be customized.

Thank you for the clarification. I didn't mention anything about "maxed out" either, as I was thinking of the same situation you described. I mentioned 4 travels powers max, as in no more than 4. There really isn't a "maxed out" power, just options of said power.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

I'll take your word for it that implementing aerodynamic flight in CoT would be "programmatically possible".

From 2016.
I recommend watching this first controller wip video to get a "feel" for what the movement is like with an aerodynamic flight model. I remember watching this video at the time and being utterly amazed and WOW-ed by it.

And the detailed explanation of the programming.

There's even videos explaining how he did the wing rigging.

I posted all of these years ago in these forums, but the search function likes to hide them so I had to go out and hunt them down on youtube rather than searching my old posts to find the links.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:
Lothic wrote:

I'll take your word for it that implementing aerodynamic flight in CoT would be "programmatically possible".

I posted all of these years ago in these forums, but the search function likes to hide them so I had to go out and hunt them down on youtube rather than searching my old posts to find the links.

Yeah I actually remembered seeing these vids years ago almost the instant I saw these links again. I had obviously forgotten about them (and the fact that they were related to UE4) until your reminder here.

Like I said I never doubted what you were talking about was possible. Seeing these vids again only reminds me that I continue to HATE the fact that the Devs of these kinds of games are constantly having the "recreate the wheel" when it comes to things like this. Sure they always talk about having access to "game asset libraries" and such. But the fact that, for instance, there's still not some kind of "universal clothes library" that ANY game could use to make character costume generation simplistic in 2021 remains a sad commentary on the industry. The folks of MWM should be able to access built-in libraries to be able to do things like this "bird girl" example (from way back in 2016) in a game that they're making today in a microsecond. Each game shouldn't be having to "re-develop" absolutely EVERYTHING from scratch over and over again. No wonder any game of worth still takes multiple years to make.

Well anyway your "bird girl" aerodynamic flight would be nice to have in CoT. Sadly it would seem that someone at MWM would likely have to spend god knows how much time and effort to "reinvent" something like all over again. I guess we'll see.

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lothic wrote:
lothic wrote:

Well anyway your "bird girl" aerodynamic flight would be nice to have in CoT. Sadly it would seem that someone at MWM would likely have to spend god knows how much time and effort to "reinvent" something like all over again. I guess we'll see.

Firstly simply grabbing marketplace items and slapping them together will get you called out real quick in the game development circles. Often multiple marketplace items aren’t even directly comparable with other systems. Many are made in their own project without consideration for use outside of their projects.

Case in point, we can’t just grab “bird girl” flight snd hook it to our male and female model.

Since our skeleton has specific uses that the UE4 skeleton wasn’t originally intended for, we had a custom skeleton made. Animations made using the UE4 skeleton, or other skeletons can’t be easily retargeted to work with outs.

In fact, using any skeleton that doesn’t match up exactly with thee with each bone by name can cause many errors.

And then, you have to consider the entire movement system - that is all the blend spaces going from one animation to the next.

There are a ton of clothes packs in the marketplace. We can’t use them because they aren’t made with the proper UVs and morphs for our skeleton.

There are things we have purchased to help development. Some of them will have a large impact in the game - such as the procedural mission map generator which we show cased a while back. Even that had to be modified to suit our needs.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:
lothic wrote:

Well anyway your "bird girl" aerodynamic flight would be nice to have in CoT. Sadly it would seem that someone at MWM would likely have to spend god knows how much time and effort to "reinvent" something like all over again. I guess we'll see.

Firstly simply grabbing marketplace items and slapping them together will get you called out real quick in the game development circles. Often multiple marketplace items aren’t even directly comparable with other systems. Many are made in their own project without consideration for use outside of their projects.

Case in point, we can’t just grab “bird girl” flight snd hook it to our male and female model.

Since our skeleton has specific uses that the UE4 skeleton wasn’t originally intended for, we had a custom skeleton made. Animations made using the UE4 skeleton, or other skeletons can’t be easily retargeted to work with outs.

In fact, using any skeleton that doesn’t match up exactly with thee with each bone by name can cause many errors.

And then, you have to consider the entire movement system - that is all the blend spaces going from one animation to the next.

There are a ton of clothes packs in the marketplace. We can’t use them because they aren’t made with the proper UVs and morphs for our skeleton.

There are things we have purchased to help development. Some of them will have a large impact in the game - such as the procedural mission map generator which we show cased a while back. Even that had to be modified to suit our needs.

Singing to the choir Tannim. I'm not blaming MWM for the problems of the general industry. Devs like you are just as fucked by these things as we are as potential players.

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To tack on to Tannim's

To tack on to Tannim's response, you can always tell which games are "asset flips"- games where they took assets from the UE4 market, put them together, and sold as a completed package.

Look around on Steam, especially in the Early Access area, and you'll see that phrase used often. The games are always bad, buggy messes with terrible ratings. You don't want to be that developer. At the end of the day, you have to take the time to do it right, or it's terrible.

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warlocc wrote:
warlocc wrote:

To tack on to Tannim's response, you can always tell which games are "asset flips"- games where they took assets from the UE4 market, put them together, and sold as a completed package.

Look around on Steam, especially in the Early Access area, and you'll see that phrase used often. The games are always bad, buggy messes with terrible ratings. You don't want to be that developer. At the end of the day, you have to take the time to do it right, or it's terrible.

Again those are "industry problems". It should NOT be the case that Devs must always RECREATE EVERYTHING. Do you really think it's a "good thing" that MWM is having to waste so much time and effort on things like that?

I'm obviously talking about a gaming utopia that doesn't exist yet. I suppose we'll have to wait until the AI singularity before games are finally created efficiently.

warlocc wrote:

At the end of the day, you have to take the time to do it right, or it's terrible.

Apparently at the end of the day it seems we're still collectively stuck having to waste years to do it right... and that's terrible.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Again those are "industry problems". It should NOT be the case that Devs must always RECREATE EVERYTHING. Do you really think it's a "good thing" that MWM is having to waste so much time and effort on things like that?

We aren’t CREATING EVERYTHING. If you think we are was it f time, you have zero clue.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Again those are "industry problems". It should NOT be the case that Devs must always RECREATE EVERYTHING. Do you really think it's a "good thing" that MWM is having to waste so much time and effort on things like that?

We aren’t CREATING EVERYTHING. If you think we are was it f time, you have zero clue.

Obviously I was being a bit hyperbolic for dramatic effect. But you are having to recreate huge numbers of things that have existed in countless other games for decades, just like EVERY OTHER decent Dev studio still has to. Just like warlocc pointed out it's still considered "bad" to do asset flips which is frankly ABSOLUTELY INSANE from the point of overall development efficiency.

If you think it's actually a GOOD THING that you guys are having to do ALL of your own costumes, all of your own animations, all of your own map assets, all of your own combat fundamentals manually, etc. etc. and etc. then you're a bigger masochist than I thought.

Don't worry Tannim... eventually game development will actually be something that'll be easy and won't take people like you decades to finish. Unfortunately neither of us live in that reality yet.

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I know it says that not all

I know it says that not all travel powers will be balanced around each other, and this is still a demo, but Wall Crawling looks .... margins of times slower than flight.

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Super M. wrote:
Super M. wrote:

I know it says that not all travel powers will be balanced around each other, and this is still a demo, but Wall Crawling looks .... margins of times slower than flight.

From the update:

“ But given the four slots offered for travel powers in CoT, there will be no need to ensure that all travel powers are ‘equally balanced’ for a player to get around town.”

In other words, travel sets aren’t considered “equal” to one another due to their base functionality in all respects.


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Super M. wrote:
Super M. wrote:

but Wall Crawling looks .... margins of times slower than flight.

It's like the difference in speed IRL between riding a horse and flying in an airplane. Different modes of travel are always going to be faster or slower when compared to each other. Just because things like wall crawling like Spider-Man and flying like Superman are fantastical things that can only happen in a game doesn't mean they must be made to be equally fast in that game.

I suspect that Flight will likely be one of the more popular travel powers in CoT. Pound for pound it's simply one of most universally useful modes of travel. That will have nothing to do with MWM's design preferences or any bias for or against the other travel powers. For what it's worth I think it's great that CoT will have wall crawling as a travel power. But I have never once assumed it was going to be as fast as other powers like Flight or Super Speed. It'll be relatively slow because it IS relatively slow.

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Super M. wrote:
Super M. wrote:

I know it says that not all travel powers will be balanced around each other, and this is still a demo, but Wall Crawling looks .... margins of times slower than flight.

The good news is, with 4 travel power slots, you can choose a second one to go with crawling and make up for the lost speed in other ways. Or even pick flight, fly to a wall, and stick to it!

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warlocc wrote:
warlocc wrote:
Super M. wrote:

I know it says that not all travel powers will be balanced around each other, and this is still a demo, but Wall Crawling looks .... margins of times slower than flight.

The good news is, with 4 travel power slots, you can choose a second one to go with crawling and make up for the lost speed in other ways. Or even pick flight, fly to a wall, and stick to it!

Well there was an obvious reason why TOG had "temp fly" type powers. Sometimes you just had to fly to make things easy for the purposes of playing the game. But yeah being able to easily have multiple travel powers in CoT will allow people to mix-n-match them in multiple ways.

The other thing to remember is that not everyone can be Superman. What I mean by that is that even if your character has "super powers" it doesn't mean that everyone's super powers are equally good or powerful. It also doesn't mean that if it's cool in a comic book it'll necessarily be cool as a mode of travel in a MMO game.

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Right. For my purposes, at
Tannim222 wrote:
Foradain wrote:

So, for levitate, the cost to continue levitating is zero, Flight has non-zero cost to maintain, but it can be reduced, and presumably other toggles (like a damage aura, or a continuous attack) would have their own cost to maintain, and might have upgrades that can reduce this cost...

Combat powers use Augments and Refinements for improving their functions.

Understood. But for my purposes, at this time, the name of what allows the power to be improved is less important than the fact that the power can be improved, and if the power uses a toggle and energy cost-over-time, then one of those improvements might reduce that cost-over-time.

Later, when I actually have a character using those hypothetical powers, knowing that it's Augments and Refinements that will improve the power will make it easier to plan what improvements I want to apply. Unless that power is a Travel Power. ^_^

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Rule of thumb: The Big 4 -

Rule of thumb: The Big 4 - Flight, Superleap, Superspeed, Teleport, will be roughly balanced and comparable.
But there's no way we're getting, say, Parkour or Skateboarding over 400 mph
So we make note of the big four, and then let players choose. Grappling hooks or Motorcycles may be slower or less use inside buildings, but more fun.
And don't forget that we're adding travel power skins... so your flight may look different. (Early prototype - literally last night AmiIEvil is awesome)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54I1r0P9UiA

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warcabbit wrote:
warcabbit wrote:

But there's no way we're getting, say, Parkour or Skateboarding over 400 mph
So we make note of the big four, and then let players choose. Grappling hooks or Motorcycles may be slower or less use inside buildings, but more fun.

Skateboard + Grappling Hook = Tow Rope
So if you grapple a vehicle moving faster than your "skateboard" max speed, the speed of the vehicle towing you allows you to exceed the (ordinary) skateboard max speed limit.

Remember, grappling hooks ought to be usable horizontally as well as vertically, allowing them to be used as tow ropes. This can then be a backdoor way into using grappling hooks as a "rescue tool" where you can use the grappling hook to pull friendlies to your location and thus out of danger. They can also be used as a kind of (poor man's) "group travel" to tow allies when used in combination with other movement powers by "tethering" your movement to theirs (or theirs to yours).

Think of a slung load underneath a helicopter.
That's Flight + Grappling Hook as far as a combination of powers is concerned.

So Grappling Hook might not be the "fastest" way to get around town ... but I can easily envision it becoming the most versatile when used in combination with other travel powers.


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Redlynne wrote: This can then

Redlynne wrote:
This can then be a backdoor way into using grappling hooks as a "rescue tool" where you can use the grappling hook to pull friendlies to your location and thus out of danger. They can also be used as a kind of (poor man's) "group travel" to tow allies when used in combination with other movement powers by "tethering" your movement to theirs (or theirs to yours).[/quite]

That is purely aesthetic for a group member summon ability.


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psst. https://www.youtube.com

psst. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tk4Sk5gc5Y

Yeah, the hook just needs range to throw or swing, so in a lawyer's office mission, you're not going to find it too useful. 90 degree corners are a pain for motorcycles unless you got a scooter and not a hawg.

Specifically re: thwip hook. We have 4 prototypes. One completely fakes it but works where there are no buildings - it just hooks on offscreen. One is completely physics and might actually do the helicopter hummer trick. Depends on what works best.

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After finally having time to

After finally having time to view the videos (which is a story not worth telling) I have some feedback on what I'm seeing presented in the videos.

With respect to flying ... as much as it pains me to say it, I think that League of Maidens does a better job of handling flight transitions than I'm seeing here. Fortunately, League of Maidens is free to play on Steam and there are plenty of youtube videos to look at for the game.
My biggest objection is the instantaneous shift in camera perspective when transitioning into (fast) forward flight. There is no "easing the camera" into a different field of view, no transition for pulling the camera back from the avatar position ... there's just a sudden "pop" and now the camera is trailing far behind. If there were a "slide" of the camera location rather than a "teleport" of the camera location, this transition would work better.

One of the things which the controls of City of Heroes permitted was use of Autorun while flying so as to set your course forwards while still permitting use of other movement modifiers to adjust your angle of motion while in flight. Spacebar would move you UP. I would set Shift+Spacebar to move DOWN. You could Strafe Left/Right while moving forwards (either on the ground or in the air). This combination allowed you to maintain your course while looking around beyond the direction of travel. Lin actually demonstrated (first) the habit of angling the point of view downwards by about 30º or so while combining FORWARD+UP so as to hover/fly more or less level while looking down at street level so as to be able to search for $Targets (attack helicopter style). Also, being able to ascend/descend in altitude while in flight via use of Spacebar is very important as a flight control feature. League of Maidens requires you to point the camera up in order to move forwards in the up direction ... and I hate the loss of control functionality offered by Spacebar for ascent and descent in that game.

I would often do something similar on the ground so as to maintain situational awareness through peripheral scanning (which was really helpful in World of Warcraft). I could hold down FORWARD+STRAFE (left or right) so as to move on a diagonal line forwards, while turning my camera to the opposite direction to see more to that side while still moving in the direction I wanted to go. I could then swap left/right/left/right so as to "keep my head on a swivel" to see what was on the periphery while marching more or less forwards down the road. So instead of being limited to about a 60º forward only view, I had a pair of complementary 60º to each side angled views (seen one at a time) that gave me a better sense of spatial positioning of everything in front and to the sides of where I was going. This gave me a broader side to side "view" of the terrain that I was moving through that was quite valuable for positional awareness in hostile territory.

As far as the Wall Crawling demo is concerned ... that's definitely Wall CRAWLING. The speed is so slow that it looks like it ought to be coded as the Walk+Wall Crawling option. It's slow enough to allow for fine control of positioning, but it's too slow to be useful in most circumstances where mobility on the surface is desired. So what I'm seeing in this demo would work just fine as a "slowed" type of Walk+Wall Crawling option, but not as an ordinary "standard movement speed" option.

Ideally speaking, you would want to make Wall Crawling something that is vertical direction dependent for max speed determinations ... so it's faster in the descent than it is in ascent (because it's easier to go down than up). Eliminating the "same speed in every direction" aspect of Wall Crawling would me the movement type far more interesting to play, in addition to leading to the all too natural "Death From Above" strategies and tactics for how to use it.


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Also mentioned that there

Also mentioned that there will be synergies between different travel powers. Possible example: Wall Crawling + Super Speed = Running on walls.
Or W.C + Super Leap will look like those leaping spider videos, imagine jumping from building to building from the sides instead of the rooftops.
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The camera hasn’t been set up

The camera hasn’t been set up for how we intend to use it for game play yet. It’s not a major thing so it’s a low priority.

We will have an auto-run feature. What isn’t shown is that the island movement is updated to have a back pedal and strafing .

As for wall crawl speed - none of the speeds shown - even flight - is representative of the actual movement speed we will have in the game. Keep in mind that speed is something that can also be improved in the travel power system.

The directional movement isn’t likely to consider up or down fir wall crawling. Using Z-axis would be a pain to set up capturing the z-axis at the point you stated wall crawling then applying an algorithm for when you are moving down the z-axis from that point.

Simply using directional arrows won’t work. What if you were crawling along a ceiling and were backing up? KISS is appropriate here.


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I agree wholeheartedly with

I agree wholeheartedly with Redlynne's suggestion about using up/down/strafe to move in one direction while looking to the periphery.

I also agree with Tannim about wall crawling being directionally agnostic. If you want to fall on someone from above, just let go of the wall. Playing as a wallcrawler in DCUO has shown me how confusing it can be on surfaces with angles. Transitioning from a vertical surface to an inverted horizontal surface such as a ceiling is one of the least intuitive maneuvers out there. In fact, I'm still not sure how DCUO does it. Sometimes I feel like I can press through it and force a move in one direction by will alone. In my opinion up, left and right should always be relative to the camera, not the world. Doing so makes flying, swimming, wall crawling, ziplining and teleporting intuitive. In the case of wall crawling that still doesn't address the issue of confusion.

Let me illustrate:

The above image is four camera angles of the same character on a vertical wall. If one makes a comparison to a person walking on a horizontal surface, then 1 is always forward, 2 is always backwards, 3 is always left and 4 is always right. So far so good. But what about jumping? Should we consider a jump away from the wall? I say yes. Remember that a person standing on the ground jumps up, away from the ground when they jump. Directional jumping should also still be possible, but in the case of wall crawling, a directional jump removes the wall crawling attribute (you stop sticking) and no matter which direction you jump, you're going to fall in the direction gravity pulls you after you reach the apex of your leap. Now, this can still be used by wall crawlers to jump from one surface to another, at which point they begin sticking to a new surface with the directions associated with it.

So far, I think that's the most intuitive control scheme.

But what happens when we are crawling on a vertical wall, looking at our character with camera angle A and then reach the ceiling and the character goes horizintal but the camera angle stays horizontal too, so we end up with something more similar to camera angle D? Moving forward actually brings the character closer to the camera. Let me tell you, that gets confusing. If you move the camera to one side or another, all of a suddon forward moves your character across the screen!? (see camera angle E. Say What? I still think its the best alternative, but it is enough to cause wall crawlers to lose all spacial awareness and end up moving the camera and losing the picture. You don't have to trust my word for it, just go make a wall crawler over in DCUO and give it a try for a while.

Some other questions to think about: Do we auto-rotate the character to align with the camera when we press the forward directional button while physically keeping the camera under positive control? Should the game align our camera with the direction of travel when we press the forward directional button without positively controlling the camera? Should the game take control of the camera and change which way it faces when we transition from one surface to another? Should the game take control of the camera and shift how we view Up and Down based on the surface we are on? In other words, if we are on the ceiling should the entire world look upside down to us? This might actually be the best solution, because the control scheme would ALWAYS be like crawling on the ground, no matter which way we're oriented. Gravity doesn't change, but our concept of up does. I think that would be kick a$$. ... but it also might unduce motion sickness in players...hmm?

If anyone has ideas on this, I think this is the best place to voice them.


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Just throwing this out as a
Huckleberry wrote:

If anyone has ideas on this, I think this is the best place to voice them.

Just throwing this out as a point for discussion: I would think that wall crawlers would want to have a movement scheme centered on their own body, not the "world" or the "camera".

So using your number scheme for directions:

  • The 1 would move you in the direction your head is pointing relative to the center of your body
  • The 2 would move you in the direction your feet is pointing relative to the center of your body
  • The 3 would move you in the direction your left hand is pointing relative to the center of your body
  • The 4 would move you in the direction your right hand is pointing relative to the center of your body

It would seem that if you got used to this scheme then the orientation of the camera (or your orientation relative to the world around you) wouldn't matter.

Obviously something like this would need to be tested to see if it's desirable and ought to be an option assuming some significant number of people want it.

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With hearing all this talk

With hearing all this talk about combining travel powers, the one thing I am thinking of is combining levitate's ability to reduce the effects of gravity against your character with pretty much any other travel power to help you keep momentum at the price of less control.

Just speculating that could be done with levitate, just thought it would be a fun idea.

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Jumping away from the wall is

Jumping away from the wall is how one 'disconnects'. It also allows one to 'switch' surfaces. Or hop into 'Glide-mode'. Wall-crawling in DCUO was occasionally annoying, but Speed was nuts, when you accidentally bump into a door frame and the next thing you know, you're a Fan-Blade, whirring around and around.

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so I'm guessing that

so I'm guessing that spiderman would have 2 slots in acrobatics, one slot for web-slinging and 1 slot for wall-crawling?

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

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also, can we change how we

also, can we change how we fall and fly? Maybe one that like superman's and one that like iron man's? Can I stretch out my cape and glide like batman? When we swing can we swing from a grappling hook shot from a gun? can I throw a grappling hook and swing from that? I know you can't make something where you put your fingers down on your wrist like spiderman due to copyright,but can I raise up my hand and shoot a sticky substance out of my hand or wrist and use? What if I fall during flying, like I can see someone with natural flight doing the superhero landing but my nerdy mad scientist shouldn't do that when he accidently turns off his jetpack in midflight

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

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There’re will be custom

There’re will be custom flight poses. We can also look to customize impact landings. But keep in mind the super hero landing is based on velocity. If you slow down your landing is much different than if you slam full speed into the ground.

You can’t grab your cape to glide. Capes aren’t set up that way. But we did test a glide mechanic. Just won’t be something for launch.

Swinging is set up to work from a prop but we can customize many aspect of swinging .

If you turn off your character’s flight they will fall and falling is different than landing on the ground when flying.


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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

I would think that wall crawlers would want to have a movement scheme centered on their own body, not the "world" or the "camera".

So using your number scheme for directions:

  • The 1 would move you in the direction your head is pointing relative to the center of your body
  • The 2 would move you in the direction your feet is pointing relative to the center of your body
  • The 3 would move you in the direction your left hand is pointing relative to the center of your body
  • The 4 would move you in the direction your right hand is pointing relative to the center of your body

It would seem that if you got used to this scheme then the orientation of the camera (or your orientation relative to the world around you) wouldn't matter.

This is the most reasonable control scheme.
The challenge, when changing orientations of what you're "sticking" to would be to maintain the camera behind the back of the avatar.

So while climbing a vertical wall, the camera is naturally positioned behind the back of the avatar, just like when running on the ground.
When transitioning from a vertical wall to a horizontal ceiling, the avatar would rotate or otherwise transition from a vertical orientation (with the camera behind them horizontally) into a horizontal orientation (with the camera behind them vertically). The key is to maintain a camera orientation that keeps the feet towards the bottom of the screen at all times and the controls work as specified.

Forward is direction of head along surface.
Backward is direction of feet along surface.
Strafe Left is direction of left hand along surface.
Strafe Right is direction of right hand along surface.

After that, it's just a matter of keeping the camera "behind the avatar" no matter which orientation the avatar takes along surfaces.
Note that such a scheme means that it becomes perfectly possible to "turn around" on a surface so as to crawl with head sideways or pointing down simply by turning (as opposed to strafing side to side). However, as you spin/turn the avatar on the surface, the camera orientation spins with the avatar's turns so as to keep head up and feet down on the Player's screen.

This then leaves open the option to use Spacebar to "jump" away from the surface as an easy means to "unstick" from it, in addition to simply turning off wall crawling.
Note that with some possible geometries, it might be necessary to "jump" as a wall crawler to get past an obstacle of geometry that you can't get past while continuing to "stick" to the surface.


Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.
SavageFist
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warcabbit wrote:
warcabbit wrote:

Grappling hooks or Motorcycles may be slower or less use inside buildings, but more fun.
And don't forget that we're adding travel power skins...

Thank you for mentioning more fun. Looking forward to motorcycles as I really miss travelling as Ghost Rider back when Marvel Heroes was still around.

Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.

ThunderCAP
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I like everything I saw in

I like everything I saw in the videos and related info too (apart from the textures of the water in the sea which I'm completely certain that will get changed/unified in some ways in the next years since it's a very evident issue, so it didn't bother me at all and cannot compare to how amazing the flight animations feel in the videos).

I must admit that I had lost some faith in your ability to put together animations/body positions in general, cause I did dislike the basic avatar builder's body position (the legs in particular, but also the hands). I didn't insist on that (apart from an old post probably) cause I know that animations and visuals in general are the last part of the development, so everything related to those gets changed more and more till release and while it's useful to immediately report problems I think it's useless to insist in a solution now, before time. However, I had still lost some faith in the skill of the artists.
Now with these videos I suddenly feel like my faith in that regard (animations) has been restored, more so cause the care you put into the various details is evident (like the air-effects when you fly close the ground or the landing or the explosion when you start flying and "dashing" when you begin to accelerate etc.), and not just the effort but the results are great too.

One thing instead that I never stopped to like is your decisions in regard of the various systems and maths behind the visuals, and still like it very much. For example, combining super jump with climbing would make it so you can travel the city by jumping and yet be certain that no palace will be too tall (since in that case you would simply start climbing it), and that eliminates some of the reasons to get flight instead at all costs (more then "perfect balance among all travel powers" ever would). Just by adding climbing to a character you could finally imitate Spiderman, Batman, Hulk and yet be certain that you get everywhere a flyer can, there won't be a place too tall for you cause in that case you would simply climb it. With a superstrong character for example, or a human, I would surely get climbing even if I'd use it very rarely, just in case I need it (which is exactly what Batman or Hulk do, they pretty much never climb since Batman uses vehicles to travel the world and Hulk jumps around, yet in a few occasions they're forced to climb). This will impact the players and I'm certain will diversify them more then ever, less supermen (a choice often taken for fear to lose parts of the game simply cause you can't reach those) and more grounded characters (which many of my friends liked more in rp and concepts).

Suggestion: You could change animations and skills available based on some combos among unlocked travel powers, for example, if you have got superspeed and climbing, you get the "running to walls" animation of Flash and a faster way to go up (without climbing you run on the ground, like a slower speedster). Superspeed + flight would make you break the sound barrier while flying, or superspeed+jump would make you start with more momentum, superjump+climb would make you dash on walls (jumping vertically to climb faster) or vehicle + superspeed could unlock something similar to Ghost Rider's speed (super vehicles) etc.

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You may have missed it but we

You may have missed it but we have another travel set being worked on for launch: Acrobatics. This is our “parkour” set which can include things like limited wall run.


I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
Tech Team.
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Regarding the procc'ing of

Regarding the procc'ing of certain abilities in proximity to walls. There is a recent gameplay video for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen that has a good example of this, and how they dealt with it. MWM might want to take a look:

https://youtu.be/sD5-PxulcBo?t=874


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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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

Regarding the procc'ing of certain abilities in proximity to walls. There is a recent gameplay video for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen that has a good example of this, and how they dealt with it. MWM might want to take a look:

https://youtu.be/sD5-PxulcBo?t=874

Spider-Cohh! Spider-Cohh!

I highly recommend, when CoT is in a playable state, inviting Mr. Carnage to take a look. But be prepared for him to take a while in Avatar Creation.

Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
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