I seem to recall reading on the CoH forums that the animator originally assigned the dance emotes didn't know how to dance himself. That's why feet didn't move. (At least until I7 with drumdance.) Maybe we could start with legacy dances and be able to buy other emotes (including dances) with In Game Currency (IGC)?

Star Lord showed us how important they are to winning the battle against the super-villain in Guardians of the Galaxy.

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You know, my problem with most of those 'dances' and others I've run into in other games, is that they're nearly devoid of meaning. Hell, Red, your signature is more compelling! Worse is how they're 'racially' assigned. At least the dances in CoH were available to anyone..

Most MMO's that include races (or to a lesser geographical location) as a defined part of character creation tend to use the dances as a kind of window into that culture. The Elin for example are flighty and cutesy...so the dance reflects that...The male Aman is a big brutish sort with a more aggressive dance style... the Baraka are constructs hence the robot style dance. Offering a variety of dances like this can help to define your characters general outlook. Offer a sexy dance or a pop star one...a tough guy one and a cute one...an alien type one... heck eventually a few of each would be good.

In regards to making the dance fit the music...that's a bit tough...it would require the dance being very basic, all the music to have the same musical beats (for lack of a better term) or worse yet ... require a lot of extra work in putting keyframes into all the music and then linking it to the actual dance emote keyframes. I thinks its probably better to just let the player pick which dance they want and decide if it fits in the music or not. That or assigning a music to each dance and making sync that way.

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But one of the keys to animations in this game, at least, if I recall right, is being able to speed or slow them. So, as you say, the music and animations would just need to be keyed and linked. Heck, most of the music will probably be in 4/4 time, regardless of the complexity of the beats, so time-signature can be linked to the 'beats' of the dance, or vice-versa..

This is in relation to more complex dances (based on the OP's post and video)

Any animation can be slowed down or sped up. I think (would need confirmation) when the devs talked about this aspect of their animation they meant in terms of powers being influenced by another source....an enhancement/slow effect/ect or Adjusting the speed to fit within a specific activation time. Those apply a universal speed change to the animation at its activation.... much like setting a video on x2 speed or 1/2 speed. I'm not sure the devs have even set up animations with a fluctuating speed change. Its not as simple as just saying this animation key frame corresponds to this music key frame.

While this single speed change application could just as easily be applied to an emote it won't have the effect you are looking for. Each dance would need to be looked at individually and certain movement beats would have to be assigned keyframes(foot kicks, arm pumps ect) then each piece of music would need a musical beat to be assigned a key frame (like a bass thump sorry don't know technical terms for music) Then each section of the dance would need to be given a way to recognize the length of time before the next beat and adjust its speed accordingly. Its a bit more involved than just linking A to B. Couple this with the fact thatmusic can have tempo (hope I used that word right) changes in it and you increase the effort required even more.

About the 4/4 time music. I had said that one way to ensure all the dances fit the music was to make the music similar. Its kinda limiting to me.

Another thing I said was a basic dance animation....effectively a single move that is looped a few times. I would personally prefer a more ....if you will excuse the term....animated dance.

This doesn't take into account that certain dance styles do not easily translate to certain music types. Hard to waltz to dubstep. Hard to mosh to Mozart.

Again I think its probably best to just leave it up to the player to decide if the dance fits the music when they use the emote. I will agree that it would be cool if it did fit though.

Now tying the dance speed to the *beats* is one thing, tying it into different time signatures is another. So you could end up with one dance for one time signature, and then speed up/slow that down according to the beats per minute.,

However if the music was in a different time signature (3/4 for example), then the dance might not work with that. So you would have to change it to fit to *that* beat.

And then there is the fact that some types of dance just don't work with a style of music.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwvzP2JcFtg] German Goths rave to Thomas the Tank engine[/url]

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc9Xhy5Gucc] Same video, Guile Theme tune[/url]

Maybe the Guile theme doesn't go with everything.....

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6203oIRC0I]Original video[/url]

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Now tying the dance speed to the *beats* is one thing, tying it into different time signatures is another. So you could end up with one dance for one time signature, and then speed up/slow that down according to the beats per minute.,.

Yeah...my use of 'beats' was probably the wrong way to explain what I was talking about...sadly I just don't know music terms at all. I'm not even sure if I used tempo right.

I was just trying to say that while you can make a dance fit the music a bit better easily...it would require a lot more work to make it fit properly. Neither is prohibitive....just the results will be vastly different and there isn't much of a middle ground so its a bit more 'go big or go small'.

Of course the devs are actually working on things so they may very well have a nice solution I haven't thought about...after all I am an amateur modeller and animator.