Suggestion: Wrist/Palm/Hand-based Animations for Beam Rifle

[Starhammer]

1 hour ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Let’s not forget the finger gun amidst all this talk of alternative animations. 

Real Men (1987) with John Ritter & James Belushi 🙂

[Starhammer]

4 hours ago, The Scandinavian said:

I saw ( can't remember what story arc ) an NPC  use the Beam rifle powers but as an eye beam Cyclops style, it would appear those animations are already in the game.....somewhere; it was rather cool.

I apologize if this sounds pedantic, but in my understanding of the terminology (at least from a non-professional point of view), what you're describing are the *power effects* where *animations* are the movements/poses the character's body makes during the attack. I only mention this to reduce potential confusion in the conversation.

So yes, you could, in theory, use a Beam Rifle power effect, for instance Cutting Beam, as an alternate for a different power... Energy Torrent comes to mind as they're both cones, though outside of taste and timing, there's no reason you couldn't also apply it to something like Broadsword's Slice or Force Field's Insulation Shield.

Where animation comes into play in this topic, is that even with an invisible rifle or a different power effect, if you don't change the animation to a different pose, it still looks like the character is pantomiming the firing of a rifle. Not necessarily a deal breaker, and again, much less of an issue for something like Dual Pistols, Claws, or Mace, but still suboptimal as a final outcome.

EDIT: Unless of course when you cay Cyclpos animations, you're referring to him lifting his hand to his visor to trigger the effect, in which case I apologize for being presumptuous as well.

Edited February 25, 2021 by Starhammer

[Safehouse]

On 2/22/2021 at 8:08 PM, RunoKnows said:

Hey all!

 

I have a suggestion/request that should be simple enough to incorporate. ... Well, maybe simple, at least, as I don't know the first thing about game development and the very idea might make the devs want to tear their hair out instead... but I digress!

 

I'd absolutely LOVE to see an alternate set of animations for Beam Rifle across all archetypes; I know the idea of removing the "rifle" from "beam rifle" might sound a little odd, but it would open up a lot of possibilities for different character concepts if you simply don't see your character running around with a laser gun, such as power armor pilots, spellcasters, and mutants with... uhh... laser beam hands, I guess, just to name a few possibilities. Simply put, offering the choice to change the point of origin of beam rifle blasts to the hands/palms (ala traditional Blast sets) and removing the rifle entirely from that alternate set would help cater to a lot of different hero themes and fantasies!

 

This would also provide an alternative to Energy Blast, Radiation Blast, and the likes for those who do not care to roll one of those sets for whatever reason. I know I'd love to reroll my Energy/Invuln Sentinel as Beam/Invuln so I stop accidentally trolling teams, but a big honkin' pew pew rifle just doesn't look right on that character.

 

Anyone else have any interest in seeing this kind of animation set added to beam rifle? I apologize if this has been discussed to death already but I didn't see any recent topics on the matter, so I figured I'd give it a shot!

 

~ @Runo

I am a huge advocate for this, personally. Currently Blue Bowshock, my Rad/Energy blaster, is just not quite the "thematic" fit I want him to be. I desperately long to be able to shoot laser beams from my hands and eyes. The idea of having cutting beam be an eye attack gives me chills just to contemplate. While Radiation gets closer to the "heat/plasma" power that I'm looking for, it's just not an exact fit. Energy blast, similarly, just isn't what I'm looking for. Aesthetically speaking, the "rifle" part of "beam rifle" isn't workin for me.

 

I've created a character called "Alt Bowshock" who is Beam/Energy, in the hopes that maybe one day beam will get a change like this. If we never see it, that's fine, I can stick with my "rad" Bowshock. I'll just hold out hope 🙂

 

Would love one of the devs to weigh in on their thoughts on this, but I'm sure they're busy with other priorities right now haha.

[MTeague]

I'd love wrist mounted cannons liked the PPD hard suits have, though I get that any animation needs to be able to work on any costume picks. 

[Replacement]

It would be awesome, no doubt about it. 

But to echo what others have said: animation work - even using existing animations - appears to be one of the hardest tasks in CoH development.

 

In this case, there's one additional and significant hurdle: redraw would not exist for pulling out your fists.  I don't think we have literally any power in the game with a redraw and a non-redraw version.  Maybe one of the VEAT attacks?

 

but I still want staves in beam rifle.  I don't care how weird it looks with that "pistol grip" hand.

[Naomi]

I think it's a great idea, but taking into account a lot of what has been pointed out, I think in the end it would be best served pitched as a whole new Primary powerset on its own, which I think has been asked for in the past as some kind of power glove set.

 

The way powersets are named, designed and customized in CoH makes enabling this level of customization a bit of a challenge without re-designing the powers system from the ground up.

 

Currently, if we did it the way you're asking, you would be picking a rifle weapon in the costume screen, and then presumably selecting "Beam Blast" in the power customization screen per power. This animation and FX wouldn't let you customize your glove if there was one (and I'm pretty sure people would ask for that), so you would have each glove style listed as one of the customization options per power, which would be a quirky way of doing it and not really what power customization was intended for.

 

 

 

 

[TemporalVileTerror]

I'm not sure having the gloves as anything other than the costume pieces would be necessary in this.  It would be a matter of using either the "hand blast" animations, or the "wrist shot" animation (of which, I only know of one, so additional animations for the latter would need to be created).

I believe the "simplest" solution is adding an additional "Weapon" which is "empty."  A weapon model with a transparent texture and moves the "barrel of the gun" to the hand itself.

 

The new problem, as I understand it, would be that the way the system is presently laid out, the player could theoretically select either conditions of having a weapon model in their character's hands, but still using the hand-blast animations, OR the player selects the invisible weapon but uses the default rifle-fire animations.

Not really a problem at all in my view, but I understand that there are members of the Dev Team and community who feel that's too "janky" and unpresentable.

[Alchemystic]

I was toying with the idea of this for a potential new powerset over in my other thread, but I sorta benched it because I didn't think there was all that much demand for a powerset that mirrors Beam Rifle in so many ways (especially when it's another energy damage Blast set) 

 

As @Naomisaid, it's easier to turn a concept like this into a new powerset, and if I recall correctly, making Alt FX for powersets (like Soul Noir) is just almost as much work as making a new powerset anyway.

 

Personally I'd love the idea of character customisation where there are no 'weapon powersets', but the option to give every powerset different props and animations... like turning Fire Blast into a flamethrower, or making Assault Rifle into a War Machine style suite of munitions, but I know it's far from happening soon.

Edited March 9, 2021 by Tyrannical

[Alchemystic]

Dug up some old notes I had and got to work making it happen; 

 

 

[Replacement]

3 hours ago, Naomi said:

I think it's a great idea, but taking into account a lot of what has been pointed out, I think in the end it would be best served pitched as a whole new Primary powerset on its own, which I think has been asked for in the past as some kind of power glove set.

 

The way powersets are named, designed and customized in CoH makes enabling this level of customization a bit of a challenge without re-designing the powers system from the ground up.

 

Currently, if we did it the way you're asking, you would be picking a rifle weapon in the costume screen, and then presumably selecting "Beam Blast" in the power customization screen per power. This animation and FX wouldn't let you customize your glove if there was one (and I'm pretty sure people would ask for that), so you would have each glove style listed as one of the customization options per power, which would be a quirky way of doing it and not really what power customization was intended for.

Yeah, not that I think it makes it much easier (I still think redraw alone would be hell and back again), but I don't think there's an assumption of glove customization -- that's what your chosen outfit is for. 

 

So you choose a gun, you choose not to use it by selecting hand blast animations, you choose the color of your beams, you're good to go.

 

We'd I'd much rather have a tintable syringe in Experimentation than a slew of gloves-that-are-powers. 🙂

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by Replacement

[Safehouse]

14 hours ago, Naomi said:

I think it's a great idea, but taking into account a lot of what has been pointed out, I think in the end it would be best served pitched as a whole new Primary powerset on its own, which I think has been asked for in the past as some kind of power glove set.

 

The way powersets are named, designed and customized in CoH makes enabling this level of customization a bit of a challenge without re-designing the powers system from the ground up.

 

Currently, if we did it the way you're asking, you would be picking a rifle weapon in the costume screen, and then presumably selecting "Beam Blast" in the power customization screen per power. This animation and FX wouldn't let you customize your glove if there was one (and I'm pretty sure people would ask for that), so you would have each glove style listed as one of the customization options per power, which would be a quirky way of doing it and not really what power customization was intended for.

 

 

 

 

Really nice to get dev feedback on this idea, even if it seems like it would be more of a lift than I thought it would be. Out of curiosity, would the inverse be more feasible or would we come up with the same hurdles? That is to say, for example: what if I wanted to use radiation blast, but wanted to turn the existing blasts that I currently shoot from my hands/eyes into the beams from beam rifle instead? In this case, I'd still be shooting the blasts from the existing emanation points (hands, eyes, so forth), but the blast itself would look like beams.

 

Also count my vote in favor of a "beam blast" powerset 🙂

[Solarverse]

I could see that working. There are plenty of Comic Book characters who use beam attacks, be it from technology or straight from their body/hands. I could put this to good use. Good idea.

[dangeraaron10]

Seems like using Beam Rifle style beams for other blasts like Energy and Radiation would be more feasible than being able to swap weapon for non weapon.

 

I'd be for either or.  

[Herotu]

On 2/23/2021 at 2:17 AM, SwitchFade said:

Sure. We'd all like more customization; however, the work necessary is significant. Animations and such are a ton of work.

I was watching a stream by Statesman's Pal Jimmy where he describes one of the powers on another server as being a combination of existing powers. It didn't seem a "ton" of work, but yes, I understand that work and time don't magically appear from nowhere....  except... ye well let's keep the existentialism to a minimum, eh?

[Taboo]

Could have been hacked together. Lots of things can be hacked together.