(I was stuck between "General Discussion" and this thread, well this one gets more traffic :p )
So, it's been confirmed that aesthetics (fireballs, energy blasts, bullets?) can emerge from a number of "sockets" on a toon: hands, forehead, shoulder, etc.
A few examples of abnormal sockets and aesthetics:
Fire blasts from a flaming sword
A wrist gun
A staff to shoot dark blasts from.
Throwing knives coming from a tail.
I hope all of these are possible soon in the game, if not, they should be ;)
But my question is, how will this work on the UI side of things? How would the player -- in a user-friendly way -- select from a number of aesthetics, animations, and sockets to have the perfect toon?
Another example, a martial artist that can also throw fireballs from punches and kicks. From the oft-exampled Burning Theme, one would select "fireball" for a given ranged burning attack, then the player chooses the foot as a socket, and then a dropdown for every animation in the game to choose a roundhouse kick? Is that how one would get a fireball roundhouse kick :p
Maybe I'm uncreative, but I picture this being very unintuitive.
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Avatar by MikeNovember
We don't really know exactly how specific animations will be "assigned" to given powers yet. If they do it how ''power customization" worked in CoH then it'll be a sort of "out-of-combat" thing that you set up like you do when you change costume items and/or auras. If it's done this way you could effectively swap your animations dynamically by changing costume slots that have different animations assigned to them. I used to do this back in CoH and it worked well to make it appear my characters were pseudo-randomly changing how they were using their powers.
But if they somehow make it so that you could link up powers to animations via keybind commands then you could practically change the animation you use for a given power every time you use the power. Yes there still needs to be GUI menus that will allow players to set these things up without keybinds as desired. But if the keybind approach is offered it would make things incredibly flexible.
As far as getting "abnormal" firing points I imagine that as the game evolves the Devs will be able to add more and more options. They'll start with the basics and work towards the weirder ones later on.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
So yeah, you're thinking it'll be a series of dropdowns?
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Avatar by MikeNovember
Rather than dropdowns, I would like to see my avatar standing, maybe in a combat stance and have circles like aiming reticles around the hook points at which we can attach the power effects. I expect that different abilities and powersets will use different hook points, so as you cycle through your abilities you will see the reticles change depending on which ability you want to attach.
So you see you avatar standing there in his or her full costumed glory, and when you click on a reticled hookpoint the game animates your power from that location. Change the hookpoint and you get a new animation.
Lather rinse repeat for each ability.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Eh not really... Or to be totally clear the "dropdown menu" idea is probably the "least acceptable" way to do it - it might work but it'd be clumsy at best.
I personally still like the idea of the animations being assignable via keybinds but even if that happened I wouldn't expect that to be the only way to do it if for no other reason than not everybody likes to mess with keybinds.
In the long run it'll probably be done in a way similar to the way "power customization" was handled in CoH. The GUI in CoT might be more like what Huckleberry was talking about, but ultimately even that would just be an "extra fancy" version of the way CoH did it.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Tbh, I'd almost prefer a dropdown for sockets, I imagine mousing over a spot would be frustrating: e.g. trying to pick forehead or eyes or mouth.
And for the animations? Still can't think of a better way than a dropdown or big screen of every applicable animation.
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Avatar by MikeNovember
I'd expect the power-emitter sockets to be part of the costume and character customization interface.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I think you and I wildly misunderstood each other. Lothic got me. I was referring to character customization and how to pick origin points for powers. From your response, were you attempting to choose where the origin point would be on-the-fly?
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Well I got misread.
Imagine the CoH power customization, zooming in on the face, and mousing over a socket to choose it. I don't mean on-the-fly.
So you suggest while in power-selection in a similar screen, picking from a list of radicals?
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Avatar by MikeNovember
No problems, mate. Without knowing which assumptions and mental models we are each using, when we place ourselves into these hypothetical situations where we are imagining a finished game before us, we will always be subject to misunderstandings like this.
I'm very visually oriented. I usually can't discuss anything without going to the whiteboard and drawing it. So when I picture potential UI elements in the game, I picture graphical ones. I understand that other people feel more comfortable with list style UI elements. That's cool too. I hope MWM ends up creating a UI that appeals to both of us.
So in the spirit of cooperation, how about this:
When the time comes to customize power origin, you get a menu of the possible locations that apply to the specific powerset, theme, and ability on one side. On the other side you see your avatar with all those possible locations displayed like I described above.
At his point you can select the location from the list by clicking on the name or scrolling down through the list with the arrow keys or mousewheel. When you do so the various locations highlight somehow on the avatar. Maybe the target reticles flash and get brighter or something like that. And the animation of the power from that location plays out when you press 'preview'.
Or you could just select the location directly on the avatar like how I described it in my previous post. When you click on the reticle on the avatar, it automatically highlights the location name in the list. It could either animate the power then and there or it would wait for you to animate the power when you press 'preview' in order to stay consistent with the list style option.
Somoeone in another thread in the last couple of days mentioned accessibility options, and that's been on my mind since. So not only would this proposal appeal to both of our interface preferences, it would also accommodate the widest range of accessibility needs. Win-win, right?
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
One could scroll down the list of emission-points and they could highlight on the character display. Or one could click on the character model and the emission-point 'name' could highlight on the pop-out list.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I getcha now, we confused ourselves even though we're on the same page :p Yeah that sounds good to me. Especially the "preview" button: CoH just constantly cycled through the animation, which is nice for quickly switching between layouts, but annoying once you've mostly settled on one. I might suggest preview be toggleable.
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Avatar by MikeNovember