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You don't have to accept our technical budget concerns, because you have a point, they're arbitrary and not every developer might make the same choices. On the other hand the amount of labor required to support them along with our clothing and morph options, these are not matters of opinion. The time required is [b]gigantic[/b]. Just do model and rig a single outfit is about 4 weeks of my time, and adding reasonably good bounce physics support would about double that.
And, who knows, someone might make a "super-wonderful-jiggle-physics-plugin" which does 90% of the work needed sometime in the future, at which time we'll have to revisit it.
Don't laugh, we've had similar things drop into our lap.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
This is a good suggestion and I will get back to work, thanks :)
And you claim MY desire for breast jiggle is only motivated by "mature" desires. lol
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Where did the devs say they are holding any bones in reserve for something in the future, I can't find it.
If I have to rant like an crazy idiot about a silly cosmetic detail in order to extract more hard data from the Devs I'll gladly take one for the team. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
And this is why we love you dude.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
The Doctor implied something along the lines that they have "few bones left to waste on something like breast jiggle". Sure I can see where he might consider breast jiggle a relatively unimportant detail that's not worth implementing. But the key point here was that if they don't want to waste what they have left on that they must be holding on to what few they have left for anything they'd consider more critical. From all that that it's pretty easy to read between the lines.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I realize that, which was why I was curious if there were any contact with some of the folks who had done a lot of skeletal and clothing work as a mod. If they're interested in the game and in helping, then there's a base there with experience in those things.
(insert pithy comment here)
I honestly realize that when future players like me rant about stuff that we probably only know like 10% about you would really love to tell us to go F*** ourselves.
Regardless of any disagreements we have now or in the future about this game I will always respect your ability to remain "stoically diplomatic". I only push your buttons because I know you can take it... and if by pure accident I help you to think about something you hadn't fully considered it will only be better for all of us in the long run.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Ok, I see now whats going on. You misread the post by Tyche back in #405.
We refer to that as The Before Time, the long long ago.
Wowwww. I just had to come in and see what generated 70+ posts in 24 hours. That was actually embarrassing to read. Then again this kind of thing happens all the time in game development.
em/slowclap
Hmmm. Well thats that. I wanted some jiggle. I can live with this. That said, I was getting the feeling that we might need to wait for a mod to get our jiggle fix. the mods in Skyrim don't jiggle with vanilla outfits but only with specific outfits made for the new skeletons.
frankly I think the devs could develop a skeleton with two extra jiggle bones and sell it as is. bare bones shall we say. Let the modders do the extra work, and develop outfits on their own. sure it will be client side only, but all sides will be satisfied.
what do ya think? Just a skeleton for player made bodies and outfits? $10 bucks in the pocket for MWM for every skeleton sold...It just might be worth the effort for the devs in the long run.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
You seem to be trying to be reasonable, Cyclops, and that's fine. However, you're talking as if a limited budget for 'bones' is not a real thing. Do you think the Devs picked some arbitrary number and there's no cost to add a couple more?
What are you willing to give up, to have your jiggle? Your left hand? Perhaps your cape? They might still be, cosmetically there, but your hand would be a rigid prosthetic, or your cape made of cardboard.
What's done in Skyrim is not that great a model for what can be done in CoT. Skyrim is not communal, not shared, not broadcast over the internet, it doesn't run on a server.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I am being reasonable, The Devs said that it was not the skeleton, but the massive hours of labor needed to adapt all the outfits to it.
all I said was to offer the skeleton alone, for 10 bucks and let the customers take on the hours of labor and adapt the outfits themselves.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
And for those who argue that jiggle physics are necessary for realism, know that this animation is not even close to depicting actual breast movement. Not even half of it.
The structure of the breast, the way it is attached to a cylindrical rib cage and the way human walking/running works physically leads to the breast making a roughly figure 8 shaped movement of some 6 inches in length, with every step. Note this applies only to the nipple as other parts of the breast move differently due to them being differently constrained.
Even simply jumping up and down will cause some sideways movement (because of the cylindrical rib cage)
This may be possible to overcome with the bone structure shown in the example.
However, breasts differ in size, shape and collagen content all of which significantly affect their movement.
Further, if a woman bends as little as 15 degrees away from the vertical this will considerably affect the resting position and shape of the breast, not to mention the effect on the movement (i.e. a different animation cycle is needed, this time possibly one that is not symmetrical).
Now you have to take into account that breasts are not going to be unsupported. Even assuming a sports bra you already get two fundamentally different technologies to restrict breast movement: compression (making the breast lie flat on the chest, to the point of it becoming nearly indistinguishable) and encapsulating which creates something more resembling the traditional rigid breasts of computer games.
And of course half the costumes for female superheroes are not going to be sports bras but rather leave part or even much of the breast exposed. This again fundamentally changes the animation, this time necessitating additional bones because the uncompressed to or inner half of the breast is going to behave like the lump of fat it is when it gets shaken around by vigorous movement: it will wobble. That Lynda Carter running clip that gets shown around in this discussion shows this clearly. The strapless top acts as rigid compression of the breast, but the top third that is uncontained tries to make that 6" figure 8 movement all by itself. You're not going to model that realistically with a simple two bone rig.
To top off this too detailed explanation, the animator will need to swap in a different bone and animation rig depending on the size of the breast selected (because regardless of the cup size the attachment points of breasts to not differ, they're only relative to the length of the woman's torso not her breast size). He will also need to swap in a different animation when the axis of the body changes too much from vertical, and when it turns on its side or back. And again depending on the style of top the character is dressed in as that adds compression and or compartimentalisation and you don't want to breast itself have a greater freedom of movement than the top.
Given that for increased performance modern GPUs offload the computational cost of polygons to normal (and other geometry) maps, this adds to the complexity of subtle animations like jiggle physics. This is not simply a matter of stretching a bitmap to match the UV mapping (and simple is quite an understatement here) because you also need to alter the bitmap itself to produce the altered shape. I do not know if there is any other way to do this than to swamp in a different normal map every quarter second or so during the animation cycle. If there is it is a fairly new development. If there isn't then this means either a lot of work and a risk that the game throttles on the data bus between CPU and GPU (or the CPU itself as that needs to move those bitmaps all the time from memory or disk to the GPU), or the mesh of the breast is going to be highly detailed, far more than the rest of the body needs to be where the smaller details can be handled by the normal mapping. And of course the number of polygons the target GPU can shift per second is another hard limit that has been set years ago and can not be altered once the art asset pipeline starts cranking out models.
I would wager that the vast majority would be more than satisfied with adding breathing to the idle stances of characters and call that realistic enough. And really, that is what games development is all about, balancing restrictions to arrive at a result that is convincingly good enough for all but the most detail oriented player.
Finally, for those still unconvinced, I would like to point at animated movies (not the saturday morning kind as those are done on a ridiculously low budget and cut corners everywhere), but feature movies like Frozen, Legend of Korra, Tangled or The Incredibles. Movies or series with high production values. All of those make extensive use of computer generated images and rely heavily on simulations, just like games do, but there's not a jiggle physics in sight between those movies nor in the ones similar to it (and some of the disney princesses wear pretty skimpy clothes given that their core audience is 10 year old girls ...). Those movies and series show their female leads from the front or three quarter pretty much all the time, as opposed to games where we almost never the front of our female characters, unless it is in a scripted cut scene and those rarely show up in MMOs due to the complexity of doing those conversation systems right and top of all the other systems that go into a MMO), so if jiggle physics was considered important it would first show up in animated feature movies where they would get most mileage out of the investment in the simulation system required to create it).
So, yes, I do not believe that 'realism' is going to happen anytime soon. At least not in multiplayer games and not when it comes to jiggle physics. Only when NVidia and AMD start adding fluid simulators to their GPUs in addition to their inverse kinematic (rag doll) physics simulators, is the computational cost of jiggle physics something that can be considered (this is the mythical plugin that Doctor Tyche mentioned that would take care of 90% of the work).
This thread is now academic in its discussions but if you want to discuss your issues further Nadira I would like to offer some counter points. If not, just reply with 'no, i'm done'. It might be best if we ignore others who could stir up an emotional response and just talk to each other.
I would like to start with challenging the idea of realism you put forth.
Games do not portray realism for anything the way you are expecting them to portray breast movement. It's not about seeking a perfect life analogy but to give the approximation of reality. Everything from the model to the animations are ways to trick the lazy human eye into thinking things appear natural. But when you put anything in games under the microscope you are putting breasts under they fall very short realism.
No you won't get the effect you are describing with a two bone rig, but with judicious use of animation and deform morphs in addition to the rig this type of effect becomes much less difficult to do. This of course increases the workload but it does offer a solution.
You are talking about movies that, as you said have a very young core audience. But when you look at movies with a broader age for it's audience (like this game will have) things get muddy. To show a comparison, both 'Frozen' and 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' have a PG rating, which would be a fairly restrictive version of the ESRB Teen rating. Breast are handled very different in both of those movies. Here is an example
[youtube]XAnNvnViJpo[/youtube]
This doesn't take into account other countries with different rating systems such as Japan or India, two very large gaming markets.
My personal feeling is the 'magic bullet' in regards to body physics won't be on the processing side but will come from new technology that makes it easy to create animations. Advancements in soft body dynamics look promising but I think it will be something like 4D scanners that will open things up much like how motion capture changed the animation landscape.
Here is a quick article on 4D scanners.
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/modelling-body-fat-jiggle-in-4d
Jessica doesn't jiggle, she's just hydraulic. :)
Be Well!
Fireheart
Re: Brainbot.
'Because realism' has in this thread been the most common reason brought up why jiggle physics should have been included.
I pointed out that the tech demo by Flesh Forge does not come close to actual realism and his demo already required a trade off of resources the developers were not wiling to make. I went into a lot of technical detail to make clear that this was not just my opinion but informed amateur understanding of the issues involved in this kind of modelling of human bodies.
We do seem to agree that regardless of if and how this may be resolved in the future, it currently requires an amount of resources, both in the art department and in computing power available that are not practical for an MMO like City of Titans that aims at an unprecedented range of customisability (in body shapes as well as in outfits).
(p.s. Jessica Rabbit was designed with a dress and exaggerated amount of breast movement to emphasise her sexiness. This was aimed at creating the stereotype of the femme fatale, but mostly the character designers managed to make it her only defining characteristic (the being sexy that is, not the femme fatale because she never does much of anything associated with that trope). This rather confirms my concern that adding visible jiggle physics to City of Titans would send the wrong message to prospective players and draw in more of a crowd that is likely to turn the game into a less welcoming place for female players).
To be fair, when people argue realism in games they are not looking for perfection but a facsimile of it. The subtext of what they actually wanted was there and using exaggerated extremes isn't going to get your point across to anyone except the unapologetically stupid.
You did. Myself and others argued resources for this feature as a reason to not include it as well. Your arguments were sound in that area but they started to get lost when you used the hyper realism aspect.
This is starting to sound like me critiquing your arguments but that's not what I wanted to discuss. I was trying to discuss general verisimilitude of reality in games, the merits/flaws of how to achieve it and what would be acceptable. We agree on many points and it interests me to see how people arrive at their conclusions. I figured discussing it with you wouldn't result in the typical hostile arguments that we have seen here thus far.
Actually Jessica Rabbit was intended to be a red herring that appeared to be a Femme Fatale and her design reflects that. When she says 'I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.' she really means it. She cannot help how she comes across because it's in her every ounce of being to act that way. Further evidence of toons being slaves to their design is the shave and a haircut bit in the bar.
In fact everything Jessica says is truth and everything she does is to help Roger. Jessica Rabbit is a perfect example of not judging a book by it's cover. Her and Roger are pretty much the only pure characters in the film.
I honestly don't see that. In the case of Jessica Rabbit I think you have made some factual errors and as a result directed some undo mistrust at those who designed her.
I also think that respectful treatment of breasts wouldn't act as a pied piper for players who would act in the way you fear. To draw in a bunch of players who make the game unwelcome it would require a more obvious misogynistic depiction of women by the devs in general. The aforementioned DOA, early Tomb Raider games, Anime dating sims and the like are games that bring those players types in. To further clarify, I am not saying the game will be free from players who act inappropriate or that those players wouldn't use breast jiggle inappropriately. I am saying that the inclusion of breast jiggle would not measurably increase how many of those players that are drawn in.
I do agree that even respectful treatment of breasts can come across as a negative for many women. But in this case I don't think its because of how the men [b]will[/b] react but more due to the [b]fear[/b] of how men will react. It's no secret that some men behave badly, very badly. It's also no secret that every encounter a woman has with one of these asshat men will have a lasting effect on them. This is why I said earlier that some women tend to be very careful what situations they put themselves in with men, even if the man hasn't show any sign of that poor behavior, because it can turn on a dime.
Just so I am clear, women are not to be blamed for this situation nor are men who are respectful. This cause/effect situation is because of those asshat men and only them.
So in that regard I do think that even respectful treatment of breast movement would affect a measurable amount of women negatively.
Arguments against this that involve something along the lines of 'I never felt that way.' or 'I would never act that way' are purely selfish because they don't look at the other side at all.
I am not a programmer at all. Just how difficult would it be for a modder to come up with an alternate skeleton? if a sacrifice needs to be made then wings/cape would go. We know the engine used.
I was jonesing for a Dev to make this alt skeleton because i really think MWM ought to get a cut.
[u]Maybe I should address this question to Flesh Forge.[/u] If just an alt skeleton was made, and the players did the rest of the work adapting individual costumes etc, would the skeleton really take so long? especially if all you did was switch out wings/cape bones and charge us a fee?
PS. if y'all have to shoot me down, its OK. I'm just trying to weasel out a compromise here.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
I can only speak for myself, but I would [b][i]NOT[/b][/i] sacrifice wings or a cape for jiggle physics.
If you think MWM is going to cut wings and CAPES in a superhero MMO just to get moving breasts in the game then you are delusional.
It is certainly possible to do this. Both Doctor Tyche and Flesh Forge have said as much. They also made it clear that MWM chose not to make that particular exchange and are not going to.
A modder could make a new rig easily but it's unlikely that they could make one that players could use while playing the game. I mean not unless you wanted some nightmare fuel graphical glitches.
It's not like other games where modders messed around with bewbs. Those games had free spots for bones while CoT is saying they don't. At best, what would end up happening if modders removed capes/wing bones to make room for breasts is the game would graphically break whenever a cape or wing was near. At worst the game just would not run as it tries to tell your computer and GPU to do two different things with the same resource.
For modders to do this it would require, new engine code, new game code, new character models and likely some way to 'trick' the servers into thinking everything was normal when transfering data. And this would need to be done for most clothing as well. It's not impossible but there is a reason why there isn't a lot of MMO mods out there that deal with this.
The animation rig we're using is a rather special design. Just having the same skeleton is not sufficient. In all probability, any animation would look horrible, and the clothing simply would not work at all and you'd have clipping issues galore.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
the animation rig is special. That may have shot me down right there.
as for the clothing not working, that would not be MWM's problem, it would be up to other modders to make clothing one outfit at a time...in other words they would do the work that is so labor intensive, not the Devs. Jiggle would be limited to just a few costumes...
Alas, I'm pretty well shot down here. I can live with it. I'm a big guy. I just had to try one last time...for the Gipper.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
actually I was referring to user mods. It would be client side only, not anywhere in the open game. and the good Doctor told me, "No way, Jose."
So I must let this noble thread die a dignified and peaceful death.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
*snerk!*
But, seriously, rest in peace.
Be Well!
Fireheart
*Mei Ling Kowalski, [I]gydhja[/i] of Freya, blesses the grave to guard against the rising of a draugr.*
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Actually that's the last thing we want to tell you. It's more like having front-row seats on the Stargate Program but we can only tell you we work on deep-space astronomy.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I thought the Star Gate was a nickname pilots used the C5 galaxy. What's this talk about deep-space astronomy?
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[i]* whistles innocently.[/i]
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Even I would never say that breast jiggle is a more important feature to have in a superhero MMO than wings and/or capes.
But I continue to find it pathetically sad that even before the launch of this game the Devs have somehow mismanaged the body model resources available to the point where they are apparently forced to (hyperbolically and/or melodramatically?) claim that "we can either have jiggle or capes". It's not that jiggle physics in and of itself is the issue at this point - the issue now is that they self-admittedly won't have ANY additional room for ANYTHING they might want to add to body models after launch. Gods help us if there's ever some feature that might be even more important than jiggle they'd like to add in the future and they won't be able to because they've already left themselves no room to maneuver.
This frankly is perhaps one of the most worrisome/depressing bits of news I've learned from the Devs about this game yet. Will this one fact keep me from wanting to play CoT? Of course not. I just now have a legitimate reason to worry that whatever we get at launch in respect to body models is ALL we're ever going to get.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Trust me when I say I've sat enough years on the Dev side of the table to want to tell countless future users of our products to go F*** themselves. It's not usually personal, it just comes with the general territory of getting old and cynical.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Consolation prize. The drop down menu's at the top of the page now have a little jiggle.
Frankly I find it to be rather obscene /snark
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lol... I suppose baby steps towards utter depravity are all we can ask for at this point.
Meanwhile I can continue to daydream about what could have been...
[youtube]YalS_A8eYJw[/youtube]
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Ha!
That reminded of a VERY old platformer. Jill of the Jungle
[youtube]t7E-P4VJbdg[/youtube]
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Try typing the following in your post:
[youtube]t7E-P4VJbdg[/youtube
and then add a "]" at the end.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Excellent!
Thank you!
I promise that with this newfound power will come *some* responsibility.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
I still would like to know what bone rigging feature devs could include later other than 'jiggle' that you are worried about?
This is not true at all. There's a budget that we're working within, and it is projective, based on our estimation of how the content will behave in the engine in a real world situation. The labor to implement extra stuff is also a very big factor. We're being conservative because of a lot of reasons. This doesn't mean features that require extra bones can never be added, although bouncing breasts/buttocks/belly/whatever with a wide variety of mix and match apparel will probably never be practical for us (again due to labor and time as much as anything else). This doesn't mean "no features can ever be added", not at all.
Feel free to ask and I'll be happy to talk about this.
I'll summarize the facts as we know them:
If they don't have spare body model bones available for jiggle physics right now (which is essentially what the Devs are currently claiming) they are either A) keeping what body resources/bones they have left "in reserve" for something else in the future which is not currently specified but at the very least is arbitrarily more important (to them) than working on jiggle right now is or B) they literally have no more bones available for ANYTHING else beyond what they are working with at launch.
This means they are either refusing to implement jiggle because they've unilaterally chosen not to (because apparently they consider jiggle to be "icky" or some other equally immature or meritless reason) OR it means that even if they actually really, really did want to give us jiggle for launch they CAN'T because they've used up all their mismanaged bones for arguably more important features (capes, wings, etc.) and have nothing left to spare.
Or most simply put this means the Devs are either being petty (they have the bones for jiggle but won't use them for that) or they were shortsighted (they don't have the bones available even if they did want to use them for jiggle). Take your pick as to which is worse.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Wow, circular rationalization for the win...
If you claim that jiggle physics may "never be practical for us" to add in the future what pray tell COULD ever be practical to add (with all those extra bones you claim you have room for) to the current body models in the future? What might be "more practical" and be as equally desired as the body physics that is quickly becoming ubiquitous in modern body modeling?
To be more direct about it I'll turn Brainbot's question to me back over to you: What bone rigging oriented feature might you add in the future (presumably after launch) that would be both "more practical" and "more universally desired" than body physics? We already know you're going to be tackling things like capes, wings, animated clothing, animated hair, animated tails, facial and hand animation, etc. and as far as we know you'll be aiming to get all of THAT in before launch. What's left after all those features that would be more practical and important than body physics?
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I notice that all of these lovely demonstrations of jiggle only have a single subject. What happens to the assets/requirements, when a super sentai-force of jigglers appear? Carnies show up, in their skimpy outfits and your GPU melts?
At any reasonable distance from the model, a reasonable amount of jiggle is invisible. This is a MMO, not a machinimation platform!
Be Well!
Fireheart
Then you'll also have to ask that question about all their animated hair and animated clothing that'll be added by CoT that didn't exist in CoH as well. You do recall we're living in 2017 now right?
Frankly the simple answer to that is as it's always been - if you have a computer that's not capable of running a game full bore in [current calendar year X] then you don't/can't run it full bore. That's not going to be MWM's fault regardless. Seriously, the "extra graphics will melt my machine" excuse is getting very tired and if it had any validity we'd all still be playing Pong because any game more graphically intense than that would melt EVERYONE'S machine.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Lothic. I think you missed the part where he tried to explain that adding in jiggle would cost them a lot of time per costume item. It was stated that it would double the amount of time it would take for them to produce each single costume item. It becomes an opportunity cost. Do they add this one feature or do they double the size of their launch wardrobe? That's even assuming that adding in and rigging jiggle takes 0 time. I think to the player base at large the choice is going to be for doubling the size of the wardrobe (Poll below). Given that this poll is posted at the tail end of a 500post thread about jiggle I expect somewhat biased results. Obviously not very scientific.
Vote here:
https://strawpoll.com/b2zw96a
One more thing. I would like to see Ivory volunteer. He talks a big game, like he has a lot of experience, and even if some of that is ego, it seems like there is a solid base understanding that would allow him to jump in and get to work quickly. Potentially allowing MWM to pursue some more ambitious character design items.
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Can you point to any game done on a sub-million dollar budget that has both mix and match clothing and bounce physics? If you seriously think I'm speaking in bad faith and lying to you about how much work this requires to support, I don't see how I can help you. I am very familiar with this task and the work it requires to implement. It's not a simple "requires one hour of extra work per piece", it's multiplicative (or maybe factorial, I'm not a mathematician) because the costume pieces can be mixed and matched, and must be made to work in all combinations.
I wish you well!
Oh no, that is only the time required to implement each set individually. Since they're allowed to be mixed and matched it's actually much more than that - impossible to estimate really but "a lot more" is pretty safe to say.
I have never claimed that "adding" a feature like jiggle would be possible without also "adding" more time and effort for the Devs. Now I could easily quibble with the estimates of how much "extra" effort it might take because as a software engineer myself I can guarantee you that my profession collectively fudges estimates like this to our potential users all the time. Jiggle might ultimately add more time per costume item to create but "double" the time is laughably hyperbolic.
As far as your poll goes I would take the results with a Mt. Everest sized grain of salt. This survey might as well be asking, "Would you either like to put a bullet in your head or pet a cute fuzzy kitten"? A poll like this couldn't be more biased in this stilted context if you tried.
OK at least I will admit that you continue to make me laugh in light of these otherwise depressing circumstances. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
If you really can't add anything more to this conversation than condescension towards your playerbase then you better get back to work so that you guys might be able to have something launchable within the next decade or so. *shrugs*
I have never said what you're trying to do is simple. But on the other hand if it's really that "hard" for you then I can only speculate something, somewhere is being done wrong.
I wish you well as well!
Well at least you can also make me laugh on your way out...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Lothic perhaps with your obviously superior skills and talents you should connect with other talented game makers and make your own game with jiggle. Problem solved. *shrugs*
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/2.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
Thanks for the backhanded vote of confidence. Turns out there are in fact so many other people out there who are already working on it now (either directly in other games or via mods for those games) that it's only a matter of time for ALL of us. As I've said in this thread some time ago I'd be perfectly fine if CoT ends up being one of the last games I play that DOESN'T account for it. No game is 100% perfect after all and even I recognize that if this is one of the few things MWM drops the ball on then we'll probably still be doing pretty good. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I wasn't asking about the facts right now. I know what they are, including the contradictory explanations different devs have stated. One says they used all bones, another says there are still bones in reserve, another says MWM wants jiggle but can't give it and another says MWM doesn't want it. I chalk that type of confusion to their separated development staff and not having a single representative to co-ordinate their message.
I am pretty sure the facts lay somewhere in the middle of the disparate information we have. Something along the lines of current model designs do not allow for jiggle but with a lot of work it could be done and that if it was easy they would do it but they don't consider it an important feature.
None of which is important to the question I am actually asking.
What 'specific' future bone reliant features are you, Lothic, concerned about besides jiggle?
I am asking not because I am looking to pick a fight or to be educated on the overall situation but because I cannot think of examples myself. I am smart enough to know that just because I can't think of something does not mean it doesn't exist and something tells me that you have examples. So I am asking you to give an example other than jiggle in order to have an informed opinion.
Thanks Flesh, I appreciate you being open but in this case I am trying to understand Lothic's position and so need her to answer this question.
Or nobody but a VERY tiny minority of people give a flying F about moving cartoon breasts in a rated T for teen game, so the devs decided to direct their limited resources to MUCH more important issues. We get it - it's your kink - but you're just going to have to turn down the drama and accept that it probably won't be in the game at launch, or maybe even ever.
It's scaled factorial time. O(n!). Pretty much as bad as it gets.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Thank you for joining the discussion, Flesh Forge. For me, you and the others have sufficiently explained the issues that make this feature infeasible before launch. Let me try a summary, and feel free to correct any errors I've made.
1) The playerbase has never highly prioritized this feature. MWM is already working to a tough schedule with very limited money and volunteers, and has only recently shown major progress on the highly prioritized features, such as combat and costume materials. It was on an original list as a possible feature, but was abandoned for launch due to the various difficulties (in general with the project, and specifically with this feature) encountered over the years.
2) Bones have been reserved for a variety of player model features with higher priority to the expected playerbase, and the number of unreserved bones is too low to safely budget any for this feature prior to launch. Fault may lie with a hard limit in a specific software package that MWM selected years ago, which would cause schedule delays, a financial hit, and some rework if replaced now. The safest time to replace it (if at all) would be after launch, even though doing so would involve more rework, to avoid impacting the launch schedule.
>> The modeling software, engine, and player computers all have their own limitations which would still lead to some safe upper bound for number of bones, which would normally be a judgement call made by MWM even in the absence of a hard limit imposed on you.
>> How best to use any unreserved bones or re-purpose the reserved bones (and any other limited resource) is also a judgement call by MWM based on their expected audience and the fact that they must also consider the work required to implement all aspects of a feature that consumes the bones. The combination of those two factors sets priority of any feature. Effort spent right now to only partially implement a feature with limited appeal, or to attempt something that fails, is a huge negative before launch...but might be acceptable after launch.
3) The work to implement this feature body-wide or to even one aspect of the body models requires a minimum of [N] bones per model per physics-affected region - and an equal or larger number in each costume layer "template" to carry the movement correctly throughout the costume. Then someone must perform all associated crosschecks between the bodies and several layers of clothing of various types, fix errors, retest, etc to avoid distortions during movement. That workload is a significant problem, enough to convince the existing team that making the attempt before launch is not wise, even if all limits in point 2 were removed.
4) It's not impossible forever, it's just not possible before launch without a priority change from us and more volunteers with experience specific to this type of feature. We would also need to accept further schedule delays as those volunteers get integrated and rework is done. Donations toward software to remove bone limitations or licenses for the new volunteers could be needed.
To be honest you probably shouldn't hold your breath for this kind of thing after launch either. The labor required to implement bounce would grow faster than the rate new costume content is added, because each new piece has to be made to work with all the previous pieces in every allowable combination. There is no magic bullet solution for this.
Right... The only solution I could imagine would be a two-parter, involving some sort of reliable "layering conflict resolution" quality control software (very tough to develop in-house) plus a means of standardizing and categorizing costume parts to limit the eternal growth problem. For example, if all costume parts could be grouped based on known, non-conflicting bone parameters into 18 core types. Then if a new costume is developed based on the core type "3", the already-proven bone settings for that type could be applied with reasonable confidence, and run through that QC software for good measure...
Very unlikely anyone in the industry would develop it; perhaps MWM's modeling standards/software are too specialized, but regardless it's my impression that the industry is evolving too quickly to make it worthwhile to develop such an add-on, even for the big-name modeling/engine software of the current cycle. I'm nowhere close to an expert in what you do, but I've seen enough product features get pushed to the next generation to understand when and why it has to happen.
So according to my "not very scientific poll" Jiggle physics and even double sized wardrobes are not what people are looking for at all.
This...
[img]https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51AoANEBkfL._SY355_.jpg[/img]
is what the people want. (as of 2pm est 5/5/17)
Second Chance: https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/CityOfTitans/SecondChance/
Dev Tracker: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/fixing-dev-digest
Dev Comments: https://cityoftitans.com/forum/dev-comments
If I can't have jiggle, I do want a consolation prize for playing...Cleavage Costumes. Thank you in advance.
(Modders need inspiration to make their own skeletons)
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
Verisimilitudinous jiggle would be good. Don't want badonkadonk jiggle--up top or down low. Don't need jiggle at all to be happy with the game.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I am completely down with this, I got you fam
Hey Flesh, are you a modeler, animator, art or some combination? What hats do you wear because I may have a few questions for you if you are available.
I believe he was brought forward to explain why the models won't jiggle, so I suspect he's a modeler. Not that he couldn't wear multiple hats.
Be Well!
Fireheart
These forums require 1.21 Jiggly-watts of power to keep running. (or was that giggle-watts?)
(insert pithy comment here)
Modeling and rigging, and technical support for animation (I'm not a specialized animator but I help when it's needed). I do characters, clothing and props, as well as some environmental/architectural pieces - I'm not the only one but I do a lot of our in-house modeling work.
So you do some animating then. I am curious how the animators are designing the animations. Obvious questions like if you are scratch building them, purchasing bhv files, using motion capture or some combination?
What I am most curious about is technique.
When I create an animation I use music to create a sort of consistency for a specific character. I find a song that, to me, encompasses the character then I use that song for any solitary animations that character engages in. You know for key frame animation. Then I take the mood or tone of the character in that moment and change the tempo of the music to match. To me this give each character a unique animation flow. I'm not sure I am explaining it well because my boss usually does the animating.
Thats my trick to animating, badly mind you, and I was wondering if you have any tricks or techniques to creating animations?
I'm not a specialist animator at all, my involvement with creating animations is usually supportive with problems like "how do I set up IK in application X" or "why did my animation retarget come out bad". Any keyframed animations I do tend to be purely technical, just to demonstrate stuff.
Alright man no problem. I was looking to get pointers is all cause I know how to animate but I am bad at it.
The Disney principles of animation is a very good go-to with decades of historical examples.
https://ohmy.disney.com/movies/2016/07/20/twelve-principles-animation-disney/
That was awesome. Exciting that is being taken into consideration in CoT animation.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Thanks Flesh.
...so, does that mean no natural jiggle and no nipple on/off option?
Oh, well. I guess most folks prefer personal ideology to reality. I suppose I'm really not surprised.
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it's not ideology, it's ESRB/PEGI/CB/CERO/OFLC/GRB/BBFC
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Plus, dude, have you SEEN Batman and Robin? We are not Joel Schumachering our game!
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Ah, but Doc, that very much IS ideology. It is an ideology imposed by a very vocal segment of the American population, most of whom can't even be bothered to vote.
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A segment which will allow us to even sell the game to begin with, and to whom we can.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Dude, at least research these things.
ESRB = United States of America
PEGI = European Union
CERO = Japan
OFLC = New Zealand
GRB = South Korea
BBFC = United Kingdom
Looks like most of the market, not just "a very vocal segment of the American population".
And regardless of how you feel entitled to belittle them, they write the rules we have to follow if we want to stay open. It's not just some arbitrary thing we made up and can easily wish away.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
My first impulse was to write a blistering history lesson.
But in the end, it would not make a difference.
It is ideology. It is not even market ideology. It is 14,000+ pages of regulations written by bureaucrats that was neither approved nor reviewed by political representatives of the people. It is the worst form of tyranny, a tyranny of elitist, self-righteous bureaucrats.
And it all began right here in the good old US of A. CERO, for example, was only put in place because American Customs Enforcement demanded a Japanese version of ESRB. I know. I was here, in Japan, when it all went down. At the time, I thought it was a good idea. I did not realize the monster it would become.
Yes, here in the US and here in Japan. I live in both countries. One does what they must do for the sake of family.
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My novelty shirts: https://amzn.to/31Sld32
Which would be interesting from an academic standpoint, but does us no actual good, because...
Exactly.
Yep.
But we lack the power to overturn that, so we're painted into their confines. Which is why arguing the origins is not helpful: the box is still there either way and we have to fit in it. It's an ideology put on us, and not one we can voluntarily ignore.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
And now that I've read [url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/how-i-wound-here]your post in another thread[/url], this makes more sense. I personally didn't consider you a bigot, and the only reason it looked like you needed correction is because you omitted your assertion that all these standards bodies are just puppets of the ESRB, sharing a common, American-driven ideology.
With this, you lump MWM in with the alphabet soup. I don't speak for MWM, but I can say I don't prefer personal ideology to reality. My lack of concern for jiggle and visible nipples is borne of a belief that it is not a necessary feature, not blind acceptance of someone else's ideology. Limiting the game to a T rating was not my call, though I agree with it on purely marketing and "that's how CoH worked" grounds.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
The T rating is also an access issue. A rating higher than T limits where we can advertise, market, or sell CoT. We are already behind the 8 ball for access, by virtue of being independent of a traditional publisher. Adding the extra restriction found in a higher rating is a bridge too far.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I'd add that what would be considered a T rating these days is closer to the actual content of most classic gold/silver/bronze age comic books anyway--the genre CoH and CoT are mainly (though not solely, of course) based on.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
[url=https://www.facebook.com/1545972845647417/videos/1926587504252614/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED]Jiggle Physician[/url] explains. Or Jiggle Physicist. But a little bit Jiggle Pharma.
[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]
alas this is what we will never have in COT...But we could have the outfit...its just like reverse cleavage, right?
and the dance emotes will be just like this with our new engine...I kinda like Japanese pop.
[youtube]FhpaJ_iFYlU[/youtube]
and more pop songs
[youtube]Zw03poN_sN0[/youtube]
OK you independent modders...get to work! the inspiration is here!
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
That is the single best argument I've ever seen against jiggle physics in The City of Titans.
I'm not even saying that I don't want a realistic level of jiggle. Actually, I'd prefer it.
But I'd much, much rather have none than that.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
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