No thorns option for Plant Manipulation

[General Idiot]

So I had a character I was going to make using just the non-thorns powers in plant manipulation, but those powers still make you sprout thorns even though they don't use them at all. And that makes sense if you're using all the powers in the set but if you want to use just the control and self buff powers (entangle, strangler, toxins, spore cloud, wild fortress and vines) without using any of the thorn attacks, you're just stuck sprouting thorns you'll never use on three of those powers - specifically entangle, strangler and vines. So I was wondering, how feasible would it be to add a customization option for those powers to not have the thorns. Presumably something similar to what's been done to eliminate redraw from weapon sets could be applied to plant manipulation so it won't cause redraw issues if you use these options, and then just use the animations from the original versions in plant control? Might be harder than it sounds but I'd love to have the option if it could be done.

[Boas]

Yeah, "minimal" effect options, like those for stone armor, but for spines/thorns, would be great

[Psyonico]

The difference between spines/thorns and, say, stone armor, is that the game treats spines/thorns as a “weapon” that is attached to your character while stone armor is a vfx.

 

 I only know this because I remember on live that spines (and thorny assault) were included when weapon customization came out, and weapon customization was done with no intent of further power customization (ie: vfx customization).  It was done because the actual “weapon” was not baked into the animation so could more easily be changed.

 

now, all that being said, if that’s true then a minimal fx option shouldn’t be out of the question because it would just be a matter of taking one of the existing customizations and “deleting” the parts you don’t want to see.

 

I don’t know if it’s actually that easy though.

[TheMoneyMaker]

6 hours ago, Psyonico said:

The difference between spines/thorns and, say, stone armor, is that the game treats spines/thorns as a “weapon” that is attached to your character while stone armor is a vfx.

 

 I only know this because I remember on live that spines (and thorny assault) were included when weapon customization came out, and weapon customization was done with no intent of further power customization (ie: vfx customization).  It was done because the actual “weapon” was not baked into the animation so could more easily be changed.

 

now, all that being said, if that’s true then a minimal fx option shouldn’t be out of the question because it would just be a matter of taking one of the existing customizations and “deleting” the parts you don’t want to see.

 

I don’t know if it’s actually that easy though.

That's really not an issue. All they have to do is set a customization option in which the weapon is effectively invisible. It's like the headless option, you can select it, but technically you still have a head and it animates the same as a visible head woul. You can see this in action when you do the eyes workaround are on the headless option. The eyes will move as if they were attached to a head.

[General Idiot]

9 hours ago, Psyonico said:

The difference between spines/thorns and, say, stone armor, is that the game treats spines/thorns as a “weapon” that is attached to your character while stone armor is a vfx.

 

 I only know this because I remember on live that spines (and thorny assault) were included when weapon customization came out, and weapon customization was done with no intent of further power customization (ie: vfx customization).  It was done because the actual “weapon” was not baked into the animation so could more easily be changed.

I think you may be misremembering that, given that customizing spines and thorns is located in the power customisation section of the tailor rather than being a weapon option in the costume section like all the weapon based sets are. It's also not mentioned in the issue 11 patch notes (at least as preserved on the wiki) like all the other weapon sets that existed at the time are. However both Spines and Thorny Assault are mentioned by name in the list of sets for which customisation was added in the issue 16 patch notes.

 

Spines sits in a weird in between place between weapon and power customization, I think. The spines FX is technically a weapon with an associated draw animation, but the FX themselves weren't customizable until they added the full power customization in issue 16.

 

The harder part of adding a no thorns option for the various powers I originally mentioned I think is the animations used for them in the plant manipulation versions are different, they include that weapon draw animation at the start that plays conditionally if the thorns aren't already drawn. Whether an alternate animation can just remove that I'm not sure but in theory it should be doable given that Entangle, Strangler and Vines have the same animation time as their plant control counterparts and should thus be able to just use those animations. Similarly Toxins has the same animation time as other build up powers and should be able to use the generic build up animation. But that might be harder than it sounds with how spaghetti this game's code can be.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, General Idiot said:

I think you may be misremembering that, given that customizing spines and thorns is located in the power customisation section of the tailor rather than being a weapon option in the costume section like all the weapon based sets are.

I will point out that where something appears in the UI can have nothing to do with how it is implemented in the code.