RP Movement Animations - Beast Run, Ninja Run, etc

[Catmint]

The alternate movement animation modes from Beast Run, Ninja Run, etc, obviously excellent.  Love them.  Very aesthetic.

 

And, love the free mini-travel-power from the P2W vendors.  Lifesaver at low levels, possibly something that can carry you to 50 and past, depending on build.

 

Problem: There's only two mini-travel-powers and they're both tied to those animations, and also, those animations are tied to having these costly toggles that are mutex with good defensive things like Combat Jumping running.

 

Solution:  Scrap Ninja Run and Beast Run.  Add exactly one mini-travel to P2W, call it Free Running.  It's the same as Beast Run and Ninja Run in terms of movement mechanics, but with no animation changes.

 

And then, under Just For Fun powers, add the Ninja Run and Beast Run animations in both passive and toggle form.  Four powers, free, revokable, 100% mutex with each other like Return to Battle and Renewal of Light, that do literally nothing except set the animation mode on you - passive versions so you can do it all the time, toggle versions so you can flip it on and off at will.

 

Heck, ideally, you can find a way to stick the awesome floaty Seer walk cycle in there.  But for those animation sets, it'd be great if they could be something a character could just ... have, all the time, without it being tied to running a .46 end/sec travel power.

[JKPhage]

I like the idea behind this, but I don't know how feasible it is as something that could be implemented. Frankly I enjoy Ninja Run one most characters and Beast Run on the ones that it suits, because stacking them with sprint puts them on par with a travel power, freeing up a slot unless you need/want Fly/Hover. Creating a new version with no animation changes might be possible, but I have no idea how much control coders might have over power construction.

 

If not, then I would absolutely *love* to have a free version of the animation as a passive power, because I've got a toon that would absolutely move in Beast Run mode all the time, and being able to switch to Sprint without losing that would be great. Would be interesting to see Super Speed with those movements too.

[Prototelis]

I Grok this, but it should really just work like either beast or ninja run without the animations.

 

I think the RP folks would also dig it.

[Varkarrus]

I would LOVE a Seer Run power. That'd be excellent!

[roBurky]

This sounds like a great idea.

 

Every character wants the speed and jumping boost of ninja run. But the animations don't suit every character, and it leads to hordes of inappropriately ninja-posed heroes clustered around the trainers.

But when a character particularly suits the alternative animations, you have to turn off the toggle to move at a controlled pace or to conserve endurance.

[Errants]

The alternate movement animation modes from Beast Run, Ninja Run, etc, obviously excellent.  Love them.  Very aesthetic.

 

And, love the free mini-travel-power from the P2W vendors.  Lifesaver at low levels, possibly something that can carry you to 50 and past, depending on build.

 

Problem: There's only two mini-travel-powers and they're both tied to those animations, and also, those animations are tied to having these costly toggles that are mutex with good defensive things like Combat Jumping running.

 

Solution:  Scrap Ninja Run and Beast Run.  Add exactly one mini-travel to P2W, call it Free Running.  It's the same as Beast Run and Ninja Run in terms of movement mechanics, but with no animation changes.

 

And then, under Just For Fun powers, add the Ninja Run and Beast Run animations in both passive and toggle form.  Four powers, free, revokable, 100% mutex with each other like Return to Battle and Renewal of Light, that do literally nothing except set the animation mode on you - passive versions so you can do it all the time, toggle versions so you can flip it on and off at will.

 

Heck, ideally, you can find a way to stick the awesome floaty Seer walk cycle in there.  But for those animation sets, it'd be great if they could be something a character could just ... have, all the time, without it being tied to running a .46 end/sec travel power.

 

Seconding. I take Beast/Ninja on all my toons, for the build freedom. I'd love to be able to make them the default animation on some toons, either via P2W/T4V, or Null the Gull.

[OmegaX123]

/sign 100%. I have exactly one ninja and one Duke of Hell with a semi-feral style, and one 'hey, ninjas are cool' character who isn't one himself, but because of the speed boost I take one or the other (usually ninja because it's a)cooler and b)more human-like) for all of my characters, and it looks out of place. Having the animation and the speed boost separated into their own powers (or just turning ninja run, beast run, and any other cool walk cycles in the game into emotes that only fire while moving, such as rebinding W/your move forward button/key to +forward$$em <walkstyle name> the way they did with flyposes while flying) would a)better suit people with characters who aren't ninjas or beasts/were or wif/feral in some way, and b)allow for more freedom of customization of your character's personal style.

[Nanoman]

Agree with this idea 100%, but I'd like to go a step further.

Unique "temp" passive powers. Run, jump and flight options. Choice of one from each. Each power just replaces the default animation that goes with that specific element

 

Run: Default, Beast run, Ninja run (run only), any others added later.

Jump: Default, Ninja run (jump animation), Jet pack, steam jump any others added later.

Flight: Default. Someone mentioned Seer movement, that would be an awesome Hover/Flight option. Also, all the flight poses - allow the default flight/hover animation to be a specific pose without using a macro. Additional animations like meditating on a cloud, etc.

 

On a linked suggestion - Beast Run & Cloaks. When in Beast Run, cloak physics are disabled. They stick out rigidly.

 

Also, it would be nice to pick a sound effect with these that overrides the default footstep/landing/hover sounds. I'd love if my robot characters made robot noises when running.

[Wild Claw]

This reminds me of some other games, where you can set the character's general stance or idle animations as part of character creation.

 

I remember the various Flight poses that could be set, but there was something about needing to use key bindings to get them to work as they were nominally part of the emote system which didn't play nice with the normal movement animations.

 

I wonder if the movement animations could be set up as an extension of the Power Customization feature? Possibly set them us as customizations of Sprint/Flight/etc.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if there was a half-baked version of this sitting in the codebase somewhere, as I have vague memories of BABs mentioning a project to add Power Pools, Epic/Patrol Powers, and others to the Power Customization screen, but it getting shelved as there were higher-priority stuff being worked on.

[Chance Jackson]

/sign

[jack_nomind]

It wouldn't surprise me if there was a half-baked version of this sitting in the codebase somewhere, as I have vague memories of BABs mentioning a project to add Power Pools, Epic/Patrol Powers, and others to the Power Customization screen, but it getting shelved as there were higher-priority stuff being worked on.

 

Those (and Incarnate powers) are available in power customization once you unlock them.

[_NOPE_]

+1.

 

Let's work towards decoupling ALL powers and animations and let users choose which animations to go with which powers, with just a "default" for those that don't want to choose.

[SweetAnubis]

as a ninja for my main villain being able to change his stance fully to ninja run stance and use other travel and combat abilities at same time would be amazing!!! please lets get this!!!!

 

[selfunconsciousness]

I would be a huge fan of this. 

[SweetAnubis]

i think it'd be easier just to open up power customizations on all travel powers and add the diferent animations stances and auras from the diferent powers... because this applies to more than just ninja run and beast run... look at the PB flight aura or the sorcery flight aura. really cool auras but not everyone plays those power sets.

rather than do 4 or 5 diferent things itd be much easier to do just 1 thing open power customization on travel powers and insert those animations to the respective lists.