Animations

[Herotu]

I love the huge variety of animations this game came with, but ...

 

I've been pleasantly surprised that the newdevs have been able to put their own animations into the game. I really love the "Direct Strike" animation in Storm Blast (although I have only seen it in the character creator, so I haven't heard it or used it in-game). Amazing. This is what I want my wizards to look like! None of that "holding your hands up" lazy nonsense!

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Herotu

[Saiyajinzoningen]

believe it or not there are "literally" tons of unused animation assets buried in this game. Even the used ones can be broken down and recombined into newish animations. For example the direct strike animation appears to be a combination of arrow draw from a quiver and a quick downward slash. Check out the mods section to see and learn more.

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, Herotu said:

 I really love the "Direct Strike" animation in Storm Blast (although I have only seen it in the character creator, so I haven't heard it or used it in-game). Amazing. This is what I want my wizards to look like! None of that "holding your hands up" lazy nonsense!

 

Are you referring to the characters movements or to the lightning in Storm Blast? or both? 

 

Personally, I do like that mimed slamming motion our characters use, and I find the lightning animation on Storm Blast to be IMHO some of the best this game has offered.  I did some color experimentation and found a color duo that really pairs well with the animation.  I find I really hate it when the game registers a miss because this animation just looks fantastic when  hit is registered and an NPC is toss off his feet with the resulting blast.

[BurtHutt]

I always thought it'd be cool if some of these unused animations got added - even if they were just alternate options to existing powers. 

 

I wish they would undo the 'unrooting' during an animation change. It looks so cheap when your toon is sliding across the floor as he animates the attack. Not the end of the world but it just looks...not great.

[Herotu]

11 hours ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

believe it or not there are "literally" tons of unused animation assets buried in this game. Even the used ones can be broken down and recombined into newish animations. For example the direct strike animation appears to be a combination of arrow draw from a quiver and a quick downward slash. Check out the mods section to see and learn more.

When I was rooting around the audio files, I found seven varieties of the level up sound, so yes, I believe you! 🙂

[twozerofoxtrot]

I'm not 100% cause I haven't really messed with Storm Summoning but I think the animation for Direct Strike is used by Emperor Cole/Tyrant foe his "Zeus's Lightning" power.

 

 

[TygerDarkstorm]

15 hours ago, Herotu said:

I love the huge variety of animations this game came with, but ...

 

I've been pleasantly surprised that the newdevs have been able to put their own animations into the game. I really love the "Direct Strike" animation in Storm Blast (although I have only seen it in the character creator, so I haven't heard it or used it in-game). Amazing. This is what I want my wizards to look like! None of that "holding your hands up" lazy nonsense!

 

I think others have touched on this, but I'm fairly certain the devs aren't creating new animations as I don't think they have someone able to do that in the spaghetti code. But they are able to hack and change existing animations. I think the current Direct Strike one is like the 3rdish iteration of an animation for that power (and the coolest of the ones we tried, imo). I can't recall though what @Player-1 used to create the final version of the animation.  Player-1 did an awesome job animating Storm Blast, imo; it's even super pretty with no color effects on the powers.

[Booper]

27 minutes ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

I can't recall though what @Player-1 used to create the final version of the animation.  Player-1 did an awesome job animating Storm Blast, imo; it's even super pretty with no color effects on the powers

Player-1 did a lot of the powers work, but the FX and animation of the set were done by a couple of our newer developers.

[TygerDarkstorm]

2 minutes ago, Booper said:

Player-1 did a lot of the powers work, but the FX and animation of the set were done by a couple of our newer developers.

Whoops! Thanks for the correction Booper; for some reason I thought he said he did the animations and FX when in the Discord. 😅

 

My apologies to the newer developers who worked on the set because it turned out great!

[Number Six]

1 hour ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

I think others have touched on this, but I'm fairly certain the devs aren't creating new animations as I don't think they have someone able to do that in the spaghetti code. But they are able to hack and change existing animations. I think the current Direct Strike one is like the 3rdish iteration of an animation for that power (and the coolest of the ones we tried, imo). I can't recall though what @Player-1 used to create the final version of the animation.  Player-1 did an awesome job animating Storm Blast, imo; it's even super pretty with no color effects on the powers.

 

We do -- the innertube emote for example features a completely new animation that was added.

 

However it's a lot of work and we don't have a ton of art resources who have been fully trained on all the tools necessary to do it, so it's done sparingly. Some of the other new emotes like the kneel variants and mug drinking have animations that I think are based on some existing ones, but have had the limb positions tweaked a bit to work better for different body types.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Well then, if I could go back and delete that post, I would, lol. 😅 Learn from my mistake kids 😛

[Herotu]

On 6/2/2023 at 5:39 AM, Number Six said:

 

We do -- the innertube emote for example features a completely new animation that was added.

 

However it's a lot of work and we don't have a ton of art resources who have been fully trained on all the tools necessary to do it, so it's done sparingly. Some of the other new emotes like the kneel variants and mug drinking have animations that I think are based on some existing ones, but have had the limb positions tweaked a bit to work better for different body types.

TBH I am super-happy with all the new things. After playing GW2 for ages, it's just amazing to see that something being done! 

I think recycling old animations is 100% legit. I love it! But then I loved the recycling of maps in Dragon Age 2 and it seems I'm alone in that.

 

For example, I look at the spellcasting animations in the magic pack and I think... they could be reworked for regular animations -

• a bunch of different floating pentagrams wouldn't be too difficult to generate?! They're 2D!
• you could have them under the player's feet instead of floating (like in several other games), or appearing around their wrists or of varying sizes and position in the air.
• Then combining them with a player casting animation that currently exists ... easy peasy! 
   

... and then I think.. I bet it's a tonne of work behind the scenes. 

Pathfinder

Wildstar

 

Find further inspiration on the Unreal Engine site: 

https://unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/content-cat/assets/fx?count=20&sortBy=effectiveDate&sortDir=DESC&start=0

 

 I found this one particularly interesting because we already have this graphic in the game, perhaps it, and it's ilk could be recycled.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Herotu