Missing Impact Animations?

[Gribbel86]

Just watched the latest gameplay footage from the Trailer and im shocked nobody seem to notice this:

 

Attack Spells direct targeting an npc look like they go through characters without any noticeable "impact" animation, it looks like the "projectile" just vanishes inside or even under the target. End. Horrible. Really horrible... Please fix that.

 

In the moment the "projectile" hits the target there needs to be an impact animation. BG2 at least had it.

 

Same concern about physical hits, not every taken hit needs to have a shaking impact reaction on the character, but sometimes there should be, like in BG2, at the very least i would wish you add some "bloodspill" when a character gets hit by a physical attack like...something happened.

 

Thanks for reading, suggesting or planning.

[Gyges]

Still pre-alpha. They probably know it, proper animations are apparently one of the more difficult things to make in games.

[Blarghagh]

Animation tend to be very late on the to-do list because it requires finished assets to animate. It'll be fine.

[Pipyui]

There was some big discussion about it in the update thread, and the devs have confirmed that the animations are still pre-alpha.  I confess though, to the uninformed the gameplay video doesn't portray any hint that the game's still pre-alpha.  I'm sure there are many out there who think that it's a trailer representative of the final product, and are turning their attention away from PoE because the animations (so far) make it look unprofessional.  It makes me sad to consider.

[Gribbel86]

Still pre-alpha. They probably know it, proper animations are apparently one of the more difficult things to make in games.

They know "proabably", i just want to be sure. I remember some dev. diary about making things right from the beginning and in terms of animation they seem to left this completely out...iam just concerned.

[PrimeJunta]

If someone cares about animations so much that a video like we saw is enough to turn them off the game, PoE is probably not the game for them to start with. Personally I didn't even notice.

[rjshae]

There was some big discussion about it in the update thread, and the devs have confirmed that the animations are still pre-alpha.  I confess though, to the uninformed the gameplay video doesn't portray any hint that the game's still pre-alpha.  I'm sure there are many out there who think that it's a trailer representative of the final product, and are turning their attention away from PoE because the animations (so far) make it look unprofessional.  It makes me sad to consider.

 

I very much doubt it. People out there seem to be just as interested. For example, I've seen it on a number of "most anticipated games of 2014" lists. The main doubt seems to be whether it makes it out before the end of the year.

[Pipyui]

True enough I suppose, but I fear that anybody investigating into the game who finds that video and thinks that it's a trailer representative of the complete game may deem to judge it immediately for a lack of quality.  Judging the trailer from this perspective, it looks unprofessional, unpolished, and generic, like any other crappy "Look!  It's CraftMines for mobile!  Microtransactions everywhere!!" game thrown together by nincompoops.  (I'm not saying it looks bad, just that it looks bad as a finished product.  I think it looks just as awesome as the rest of you blokes as a first look into the game )  Of course, it's got the Obsidian name, and we all know that it's pre-alpha, but I fear that the uninitiatted might not understand the hype.

 

I mean, I know this game wasn't made to target the shallow ("NO 3Ds!! SHENANIGANS!1!  cRPG??  Crappy Role Playing Game?  LOLZ!"), but I feel that this video could have had a simple disclaimer so as not to alienate some with high expectations for modern games right off.

 

I could just be typing out of my @$$.

[Adhin]

Nah your not Pipyui, I actually thought that when I saw it too. Its inevitable sadly, even with a disclaimer. In the end it wont matter to much as if/when they get to actual advertising it'll have more awareness due to ads and more polished animations in the trailers. Which im looking forward to. Heh, I mean a lot of those animations where really stilted, like they weren't adding there own frames in between the movement points. Old school quake (Q1 that is) stuff there.

 

Anyway, I just try to think of it as something else for us to look forward to seeing, other people are the internets, and the internets are... yeah.

[Metabot]

This has been talked about many times. Sawyer said that animations are in pre-alpha. That is, not even implemented in the FIRST gameplay trailer that they've released.

[Quadrone]

 

Still pre-alpha. They probably know it, proper animations are apparently one of the more difficult things to make in games.

They know "proabably", i just want to be sure. I remember some dev. diary about making things right from the beginning and in terms of animation they seem to left this completely out...iam just concerned.

 

I usually try not to be an ass to people new to the forum but come on....

 

Yes, Obsidian totally forgott to make hit-animations for all the characters/creatures in the game, good catch there pal.

If only they had some kind of feature list to work from or at least some more experience in making games so they wouldn't overlook obvious stuff like that, but alas...

.

.

.

I really can't roll my eyes hard enough at this post.

[Jarmo]

It's not completely unfounded fear.

Obsidian also forgot to add hit animations and a lot of attack animations in NWN2,

and then also forgot to add them in any of the patches or extensions.

[Sabotin]

I don't think you can expect animations for every attack though, that would not work well with the mechanics. Since the characters are doing stuff at the same time it would look weird to begin for example some casting animation, then get hit and play that one and then return to the middle of casting. I guess they could do something like the slight twitch in IE, but not sure how that would look in more detail. I think the sound and the attack animations themselves could bring a lot of "weight" to the combat though, so the animations of the receiver wouldn't be that important.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Not to beat a dead horse, but it's funny how that game telephone works. The guy who starts the message quickly get's his message twisted until when it gets back to him the message has completely changed. Josh never said those animations were pre alpha. That's what the internet does. His exact quote was, "Yeah, all of the character animations are alpha and will be receiving more polish later in development." Not the same thing at all. An Alpha pass means it's pretty much done and in place. It may get tweaked a little bit later on, but a pre alpha would be things that are still going through many iterations and could really change from the final pass. Once Beta pass is in, it's just a matter of balancing behind the scenes. They've recently stated they've almost completed all the primary animations and asset creation. So more or less what ya see is what ya get. I still would like at least 3-5x more animations and fx too, unless each battle is designed to last 1.5-3 seconds, then I guess it won't matter. I did have high hopes for a game with a lot of combat coming out 15 yrs later the quality of animations would be like 20x better than back then. I voiced my opinion already several times that they needed more help with the animation budget even from the very beginning. It's only one guy doing the whole game. Granted, with the latest Unity patch, his work flow should greatly increase though.

[Quadrone]

It's not completely unfounded fear.

Obsidian also forgot to add hit animations and a lot of attack animations in NWN2,

and then also forgot to add them in any of the patches or extensions.

 

Did they say outright that they forgot them? Otherwise that rather sound like something done knowingly.

I.e. it was because of time or money constrains or even a problem with the engine making them tricky to implement.

Wasn't NWN2 one of those games that had a lot of problems during development anyway or am I mixing something up here.

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but it's funny how that game telephone works. The guy who starts the message quickly get's his message twisted until when it gets back to him the message has completely changed. Josh never said those animations were pre alpha. That's what the internet does. His exact quote was, "Yeah, all of the character animations are alpha and will be receiving more polish later in development." Not the same thing at all. An Alpha pass means it's pretty much done and in place. It may get tweaked a little bit later on, but a pre alpha would be things that are still going through many iterations and could really change from the final pass. Once Beta pass is in, it's just a matter of balancing behind the scenes. They've recently stated they've almost completed all the primary animations and asset creation. So more or less what ya see is what ya get. ...

 

Eh, not neccesarily true. If you look at Wasteland 2 they supposedly are in Beta now, but the last update confirmed that they still will implement completly new features such as combat stances, special attacks and more. So I think for Kickstarter games noticable changes are a possibility even much later on than usual. Though that is already assuming that these  animations aren't placeholders in the first place.

[JFSOCC]

If you have a large databse of animations, you can use them for all kinds of story telling purposes. I hope that if it's not in Pillars of Eternity, at least it will be easy to mod-implement them.

[Gribbel86]

I don't think you can expect animations for every attack though, that would not work well with the mechanics. Since the characters are doing stuff at the same time it would look weird to begin for example some casting animation, then get hit and play that one and then return to the middle of casting. I guess they could do something like the slight twitch in IE, but not sure how that would look in more detail. I think the sound and the attack animations themselves could bring a lot of "weight" to the combat though, so the animations of the receiver wouldn't be that important.

Nah you got me wrong, Visual example: imagine you shoot a rocket launcher and when the rocket hits theres no explosion. Thats how it looks right now. There is no need to stop any ongoing animation, it would be animated as an overlayer.

 

If i animate something like magic missile for example i would create the impact right at the beginning with the missile, they did obviously not.

 

Now that i think about it, how many impact animations had BG2? Not many...but it looked still better...in my opinion.

[Metabot]

 

 

Would have preferred to see a few more weapon swing animations. The lack of those may have been deliberate as everything's probably using placeholder animations still.

Yeah, all of the character animations are alpha and will be receiving more polish later in development.

Ok he didn't say "pre alpha" but this gives the impression that they are still working on the animations.

[Pipyui]

Indeed.  We already know that they haven't even finished all the creatures and wilderness areas yet, and are still tweaking the mechanics and stuff.  I think it's safe to say that they are still in pre-alpha, and I doubt polished animations were higher on their priority list than the aformentioned bits - just placeholders for now.

[Gyges]

To be fair, that fireball explosion was bad ass. It looked like a small nuke went off.

[Lephys]

They just keep showing-and-telling with us, basically, and people just continue to arbitrarily assume they're somehow claiming to be more finished than they are. Rather than just saying "Here's what we've got so far."

 

I'm sorry, but if a friend shows me his sketch book and says "check out this portrait I've been working on," I'm not going to say "OMG, YOU FORGOT TO DRAW IN HER OTHER EYE! ALSO, IT'S NOT EVEN COLORED!"

 

I'd probably say "that's pretty cool. I guess you've still got a little ways to go there, what with that other eye not being there. Also, are you planning on coloring it? Because I think it would look quite nice if colored."

 

That being said, it would probably be prudent of them to tack on some blatant "this is alpha footage" notice onto that trailer, because, yeah, random people seeing it aren't going to think it isn't just a "Hey, our game's coming out pretty soon, and here's some footage from it!" trailer. Unless... did the trailer actually have an "alpha footage" notice in it? I can't recall...

[J.E. Sawyer]

Attacks will result in impact animations using our Interrupt/Concentration system, which means that sometimes they will play and sometimes they won't depending on the attack being used and the stats of the attacker/defender.  However, every time a character gets hit it will always play a particle effect (blood, flames, sparks, etc.).

[AGX-17]

It's not completely unfounded fear.

Obsidian also forgot to add hit animations and a lot of attack animations in NWN2,

and then also forgot to add them in any of the patches or extensions.

"Fear" is an awfully strong word. I mean, it's not like you're going to lose sleep when your hand-painted Warhammer figures fail to flinch and ragdoll when killed, right?

 

...right?

Edited January 21, 2014 by AGX-17

[neo6874]

 

It's not completely unfounded fear.

Obsidian also forgot to add hit animations and a lot of attack animations in NWN2,

and then also forgot to add them in any of the patches or extensions.

"Fear" is an awfully strong word. I mean, it's not like you're going to lose sleep when your hand-painted Warhammer figures fail to flinch and ragdoll when killed, right?

 

...right?

 

I'd lose sleep if they did that.