Have any games has flowing hair?
Dress/robe flowing in the wind?
Clothes wet after encountering water?
Stains?
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Actually CoH had flowing hair... assuming you count the one example of Ghost Widow.
Seriously though there are a few recent Korean MMOs which have incredible potential to allow player characters to have basically everything you asked about. Games like Archeage and Black Desert are pushing the boundaries of what games will be able to do in the next few years. Of course if anything like that will be applicable to CoT is the big question here.
At the very least character models should look better here than they did in CoH. By the time CoT goes live it'll be roughly 12-13 years since the ground work was laid for CoH so things are bound to better. I don't know if we'll get the amazing features of the Korean MMOs I mentioned, but I have to figure it'll be pretty good.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Moving Hair and many other things are possible in the Unreal Engine. The engine can track a TON of data including those small details like tracking the physics of different parts of hair..
The problem is that this is a TON of information to keep and share for EACH character of any particular instance. Most games split the hair into no more than 5 polygons and let the whole polygon move as a clump. See an example of this in the Trailer below from Marvel Heroes' Emma Frost (using Unreal 3 Engine). You can see two polygons for the hair in her front shoulder and perhaps only one for the hair in the rear.. The entire polygon moves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twEzt1IGsT4
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Yeah there's no doubt it would be hard for any game to handle say several dozen characters on the screen at the same time all with animated hair flipping around. It was hard enough for CoH to handle multiple capes and auras at once.
But remember there would be no need for the game to send information about where any given character's hair is to anyone else. Sure that might mean my hair would be moving differently on my client than it looks on yours, but who cares? Each client can apply its own graphics horsepower to its individual screen without having to coordinate that movement with the server.
Even if this new game had to do it like you said (clump up hair into a handful of polygons per character) that would still be an improvement over the "zero" animated hair polygons we had in CoH. It wouldn't be an ideal solution but it would be progress.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
It strikes me that at least thinking forward to the possibility of moving hair as an expansion project post launch, should be given thought now, in the early stages, so that it's reasonably seamless to implement.
One of the SERIOUS drawbacks to The Secret World (mmo), is that there are no serious long hair options at all. It's incredibly character-concept-limiting. They did this largely due to an almost neurotic fear of any form of character model clipping, and a misguided original concept of making everything work in large persistent maps with over a hundred players playing in pvp together (which never actually occurred given their lack of ability to produce a decent large map pvp system).
In CoX, I remember that clipping was actually used kinda artfully on the longer hair like the "Glam" model, so that the clipping itself actually gave the illusion of a little bit of hair motion, helping to soften the otherwise rigid model feel.
Moving hair was available to CoH players if you turned the bridal veil (a 'head cape') black and suspended disbelief a fair bit to ignore its laciness. Bit it did flow and get into knots with the character's head after acrobatics.
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
This is next gen. 2014. We're traveling to Mars and soon NASA will be heading to the sun to explore with a satellite. I think flowing hair is a necessity now.
To be part of your future.
Until players all can afford Fiberoptic Internet (And or NASA gets a major budget increase) there will be a lot done to the least common denominator (players who still use Dial Up, lol)
Even at the client side instead of the server side we need to make sure the game can run on .. Windows… 95? LOL
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I've seen a bit of that. The KOTOR MMO has some moving hair styles that look fairly realistic. LOTRO has horse barding/etc. that moves as you run, and when you get down to it even CoH had fairly decent cape motions considering the limitations of the engine and original graphics they were built around. Wouldn't be surprised to see it here.
Moving hair is on the list of things being looked at. In fact, it is on the list of things that we really, really, really want to see, and will *probably* manage to find some reasonable way to cope with to at least some degree.
Unfortunately, it is *also* on the list of "hardest things to accomplish well, even in modern gaming engines", which is why you haven't seen overblown promises being made about it.
We're looking at both 'classic' approaches such as the poly-strip method, and at a couple of other possibilities that may or may not pan out, but we're definitely looking at it. More detail than that is probably going to take a bit, yet, before it is forthcoming. :/
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
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Another dynamic option I would really like (for my SuperGroup) is the ability to use a holographic extension off of my character. We want to use them as "badges"
Example from Green Lantern: http://images2.alphacoders.com/800/80082.jpg
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The [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Unlockable_Costume_Pieces#Ascension_Armor_Costume_Set]Ascension Armor[/url] set in City of Heroes did this, so I see no reason why something like this couldn't be done as a variant of costume pieces in City of Titans.
[img]http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//e/e4/Ascenscionarmorset.jpg[/img]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Looking at some of the livestreams from Wildstar...
They also do that as well for SG emblems as well (holographic). You (the user) can even decide where they show up (on shoulders/back/front). Might even be an option for your mounts in Wildstar as well
I guess I want it to have dynamic lighting under it.. like a hologram... like it flickers etc. I am not worried about the option but I do want it to be able to move.
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While I also love the fancy stuff like the ascended armor, making sure that most costume pieces work well with each other would have to be a priority imo. CoH was a real clipfest. Too many good costume ideas failed due bulkier armor pieces clipping horribly with weapons, tails sticking through capes etc. It was an art in itself to tailor everything together so it would look good while running/moving/fighting ;)
And it will probably be a HELL lot of work to synchronize costume/hair/floaty stuff/capes etc. etc.
Even games as awesome looking as GW2 with fine details all around have sacrificed that goal to prioritize other stuff. My mesmer's hair looks like it's glued to my scalp ;) How often have I wished for it to bounce while running or react to wind/weather....looking different when you emerge from water etc etc.
Still, I'm looking forward to seeing what our devs can do. May Positron smile on them.
[b]Time until Zero Strykers Revival:[/b] When it's ready (tm), Beta Mid to End of 201?
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Tails and capes I KNOW can work much better in Unreal's tracking/physics system
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Hoop earrings! I need it (lol) Let them dangle
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