The "Weather" thread was turning into a Day/Night cycle discussion, so I'm starting something a little new and different, driven somewhat by the UE4 demo. Here goes:
So it appears we'll have the capability for lovely wavy effects on our hair and clothing. All physically driven and responsive to our movement with little to no clipping issues. Yay.
What I wonder about is whether those things will be affected by ambient things like rain and wind. Will our flappy bits flap MORE if we're out doors in the wind? Could some zones/instances be "windier" than others?
If it's raining, (will it ever rain?) or say we dive into a fountain, etc, will our hair and clothes become sodden and hang limply? Will our suits become darker/shinier and drip moisture for a little while?
(( if so, I want a 'shake like a dog' and a 'wring out cape' emote (: ))
Another aspect of this question is how much of this do we want, and would we care to have any control over it personally. That is, could I have a slider that effectively says "when I'm standing still I want my cape to be motionless even in a gale" or "I want my hair to constantly flip languidly even in sealed room"?
I personally consider all of these extras and very much in the Neat to Have, not Necessary at Launch category. But it looks so easy to do with the UE4 that it made think about it.
+1
I'm all for it.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'd love to see this also, if it stayed purely in the graphics/emotes arena and did not affect any powers.
Spurn all ye kindle.
As I recall most games now-a-days have graphics settings for just how "pretty" you want water to appear in the game. Clearly the idea is that it takes a good deal of processing power to render water properly which might impact lower-end systems. So likewise I could see having graphics options to control things like how much we want wind and water to affect our character models for the same reasons.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
True enough. But such a setting, if I'm not mistaken, would affect how everybody (including ourselves) looked to us, not how we prefer to present ourselves to the world. I'm asking how, and whether or not, the engine might 'allow' our costumes to be affected by such things as a specific zone's weather. Y'know, as a general default thing. Say, if I had my "effects" setting all the way up. And, if the system will allow it, could we choose to turn it up or down for our character in particular? So that Capt. Stupendous' hair and cape are ALWAYS waving, GrimShadow's cloak of darkness ALWAYS drapes sinisterly(is that even a word?) no matter what the environment is telling it to do.
I thought of some examples where this could come in. If a zone, (like a desert) or building is dusty could we come out all splotchy and have a minute of raising a small cloud when we moved around? Like the opposite of the dripping water. Or will we get misty breath and snow piling up on our shoulders in wintry settings?
here another question. Could you play with the effects. Could the Flyers Buzz the clouds? Would you be able to jump in the water and splash the boardwalk. Will you leave foot prints in the snow... So many options...
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
I've seen misty breath in Northrend. Kept moving enough to keep the snow off, though. ^_^
I've got no problem with the suggestion of being able to decide how much local conditions affect our character's appearance. Maybe even (assuming that it won't cause problems) separate sliders for different effects: AIko gets dusty normally, but maybe her artificial hair sheds water too well to get wet unless she is completely immersed. But I would assume that when someone else turns down their effects slider so their system doesn't hang up, Capt. Stupendous' hair and cape will stop waving for that person.
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I'm not entirely sure we could ever have any "graphics controls" on our clients that would affect how other players see our characters' ambient animations on their screens. Just think of capes for example: The game would have to transmit the exact position of every fold of your cape to every other player within range to see it. That would require an absolutely nightmareishly huge amount of message traffic to be flying around the server, even if it was feasible with current technology.
Remember that when your character's hair or cape moves around on your screeen that's NOT how anyone else sees it at any given time. There's no "syncing" of ambient movement going on. If two people with capes are standing next to each other in the game how both capes look on your screen is depedent on whatever your client is doing to randomly animate them and will be completely different from how the two capes look on the other person's screen.
I think at best you'll be able to control how all the capes on your screen (yours or other peoples') are reacting to the elements but you're never going to be able to "transmit" how you want other people to see your cape at any given time.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I think what WarBird is suggesting is not so much synching exact effects, but to have some control over some effects on a per-character basis, so you could have a magical cape that never got dirty, a biosuit that always looked wet, etc. How good the dirt or dampness looked would be up to the individual clients' grfx settings, but the player would have control over whether certain elements of the avatar were eligible for such effects, as part of building that character.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I love this suggestion, and I like the slider option too. In another thread, someone asked, would we take visible battle damage on our costumes, even walking with a limp if our hit points were down. All cool stuff. I have read quite a few awesome suggestions that should be in the game if possible, but I think we all acknowledge many won't be At-Launch. I think the weather-related emotes could make a nice category for potential monetization. No one needs to wring out their cape to-win, but I think many players might be willing to shill out a handful of bucks toward an emote pack that lets you do just that.
So instead of trying to influence another person's "grpahics settings" directly you're just talking more like giving costume items new descriptive "qualities" similar to color or shape.
I suppose this kind of thing would only be limited to how much data about costume items can easily be "transmitted" to every other player in range. We already knew it was relatively hard enough for CoH to send all the costume data it accounted for. The more data you want to send (like "wetlook" versus "not wetlook", "dirty" versus "clean", "static cape" versus "moving cape" and so on) about each item could easily multiply the message sizes by huge amounts and be a huge new source of system lag.
Basically the amount of "extra" costume data we'd want CoT to deal with would have to be balanced by how much more potential bandwidth overhead it would require.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]