The PE IE Mod Thread - Draggable UI Now Available!

[Sensuki]

well I read it was

 

That's exactly the one I was talking about. You read it was, where abouts? Rock Paper Shotgun?

 

At the moment the most glaring issues to me are

 

Pathfinding

AI/auto attack

Save/Load/Persistence (which is apparently being fixed now)

Performance

Character Art Bugs

UI Bugs

Missing Strings

Over the top VFX

 

There's also problems with some of the graphics/visual systems and a stack of gameplay related bugs as well, but those are harder to notice at a glance, they require actually playing a fair bit of the game.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Sensuki

[archangel979]

 

well I read it was

 

That's exactly the one I was talking about. You read it was, where abouts? Rock Paper Shotgun?

 

RPGCodex (among other gaming community sites).

[illathid]

I've found Bethesda games to have many more and much worse bugs than Obsidian games, but they get a pass on it for some reason.

[Dark_Ansem]

I've found Bethesda games to have many more and much worse bugs than Obsidian games, but they get a pass on it for some reason.

so true. but still no reason to take them as example

[Lord Wafflebum]

I've found Bethesda games to have many more and much worse bugs than Obsidian games, but they get a pass on it for some reason.

Because the community makes unofficial patches that pretty much everyone used and we forget about it. 

[Dark_Ansem]

 

I've found Bethesda games to have many more and much worse bugs than Obsidian games, but they get a pass on it for some reason.

Because the community makes unofficial patches that pretty much everyone used and we forget about it. 

Arthmoor is the Bug God indeed :D

Edited January 16, 2015 by Dark_Ansem

[illathid]

 

I've found Bethesda games to have many more and much worse bugs than Obsidian games, but they get a pass on it for some reason.

Because the community makes unofficial patches that pretty much everyone used and we forget about it. 

 

 I'm talking about on release. Read some reviews from the major sources, for Bethesda they almost always mention bugs but give the a pass. They don't do so with Obsidian.

 

Compare this review of skyrim with this review of the stick of truth.

Edited January 16, 2015 by illathid

[Luckmann]

 

 

I've found Bethesda games to have many more and much worse bugs than Obsidian games, but they get a pass on it for some reason.

Because the community makes unofficial patches that pretty much everyone used and we forget about it.

 

 I'm talking about on release. Read some reviews from the major sources, for Bethesda they almost always mention bugs but give the a pass. They don't do so with Obsidian.

 

Compare this review of skyrim with this review of the stick of truth.

 

Kotaku has all the journalistic integrity of a fruit fly, you can't expect them to not chew Skyrim up like pigs at the trough. The way "major sources" voice their criticism, positive or negative, has nothing to do with the game's actual qualities, as much as it's corruption bias.

 

It doesn't benefit Kotaku to be critical of Bethesda and Skyrim, so they're not. Obsidian, however, is an easy target and easy to criticize without Kotaku being reprimanded in one way or another (i.e. internal pressure or external incentives).

[illathid]

 

 

 

I've found Bethesda games to have many more and much worse bugs than Obsidian games, but they get a pass on it for some reason.

Because the community makes unofficial patches that pretty much everyone used and we forget about it.

 

 I'm talking about on release. Read some reviews from the major sources, for Bethesda they almost always mention bugs but give the a pass. They don't do so with Obsidian.

 

Compare this review of skyrim with this review of the stick of truth.

 

Kotaku has all the journalistic integrity of a fruit fly, you can't expect them to not chew Skyrim up like pigs at the trough. The way "major sources" voice their criticism, positive or negative, has nothing to do with the game's actual qualities, as much as it's corruption bias.

 

It doesn't benefit Kotaku to be critical of Bethesda and Skyrim, so they're not. Obsidian, however, is an easy target and easy to criticize without Kotaku being reprimanded in one way or another (i.e. internal pressure or external incentives).

 

 

Well yeah. That's what I'm saying. Bethesda objectively should have a worse reputation for bugs than Obsidian, but they don't. If it was just Kotaku/RPS/PCGamer, it wouldn't be a big deal, but the community as a whole adopts these stances.

[Dark_Ansem]

Bethesda doesn't... with the common folk. Real gamers know.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Question for the guys like Bester or other modders who program. Can you guys adjust the speeds of animations or attacks at all? I wonder if it would be possible to eventually be able to speed up or slow down attacks to give more weight to the attacks and magical attacks? I think that would make combat also feel more satisfying if there were pregnant pauses from time to time, and also slightly exaggerated follow throughs on swings. That might have to be done through the animations themselves, but I wasn't sure what capabilities you guys would have.

[Bester]

To be honest, animation is my weakest point, as I really truly genuinely hate everything animation-related. After a few seconds of googling, it appears that there is a simple way to control its speed. Never tried it, but it must be it according to the description, so yeah, what you're asking is probably doable.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Bester

[BrainMuncher]

It depends if they are using animation keyframes as triggers or if the animation is completely decoupled from the logic.

 

Most games will do things like apply damage on a certain frame of the animation, so altering the speed of the animation will affect the timing of things. It could potentially mess things up pretty badly, for instance it's possible that increasing the animation speed could increase the amount of attacks you get per second, or do other unpredictable stuff.

Then again it might not, it depends how they have it coded.

[Bester]

It depends if they are using animation keyframes as triggers or if the animation is completely decoupled from the logic.

 

Most games will do things like apply damage on a certain frame of the animation, so altering the speed of the animation will affect the timing of things. It could potentially mess things up pretty badly, for instance it's possible that increasing the animation speed could increase the amount of attacks you get per second, or do other unpredictable stuff.

Then again it might not, it depends how they have it coded.

No, Unity (to my knowledge) doesn't even support capsule colliders for body parts depending on the skeleton out of the box, only Unreal does (physics asset). Anyway, it's not coded the way you think and it wouldn't make any sense to do it that way - it's not Dark Souls.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Bester

[BrainMuncher]

 

It depends if they are using animation keyframes as triggers or if the animation is completely decoupled from the logic.

 

Most games will do things like apply damage on a certain frame of the animation, so altering the speed of the animation will affect the timing of things. It could potentially mess things up pretty badly, for instance it's possible that increasing the animation speed could increase the amount of attacks you get per second, or do other unpredictable stuff.

Then again it might not, it depends how they have it coded.

No, Unity (to my knowledge) doesn't even support capsule colliders for body parts depending on the skeleton out of the box, only Unreal does (physics asset). Anyway, it's not coded the way you think and it wouldn't make any sense to do it that way - it's not Dark Souls.

 

I'm talking about animation not collision detection. PoE determines hit/miss based on a die roll not physical simulation, so colliders are irrelevant.

 

Animations typically have trigger points to allow certain things to happen at particular points in the animation, like play a footstep sound at the right time. Or to trigger a "hurt" animation and apply damage on the target when the attack animation reaches its "hit" point. Otherwise you have to try to manually time everything via scripting to sync up with the visuals.

 

So if for instance the code waits for the completion of the attack animation before beginning the recovery cooldown timer, then speeding up the animation would cause you to get more attacks per time period. And potentially have other unforeseen effects if the devs did not account for that animation speed variable not always being 1.

 

But like I said it depends how they have coded everything. It might just speed up the visual animation with no side effects. But it might cause any number of glitches and/or affect game balance.

[Bester]

Animations typically have trigger points to allow certain things to happen at particular points in the animation, like play a footstep sound at the right time. Or to trigger a "hurt" animation and apply damage on the target when the attack animation reaches its "hit" point. Otherwise you have to try to manually time everything via scripting to sync up with the visuals.

 

Ok, for a perfect sound sync, there is a possibility to trigger a sound at a certain frame in the animation, but only in Unreal. Not in Unity, so it's simply synced in the code.

As for triggering a "hurt" animation or applying damage - this has nothing to do with animation in any engine, you just always call these things in the code.

 

>So if for instance the code waits for the completion of the attack animation before beginning the recovery cooldown timer, then speeding up the animation would cause you to get more attacks per time period. And potentially have other unforeseen effects if the devs did not account for that animation speed variable not always being 1.

 

No. Animationclip's length doesn't affect the game rules, the game rules dictate that the attack's length depend on other things (see image below), not on animation. Animation is entirely independent and it's simply called to be played when the attack happens as a visual representation of what's going on.

 

What most likely happens in the code when the attack is called is something like this:

attackAnimation.Play();

Invoke("DisplayRecoveryBar", attacksLengthInseconds);

 

After the attack animation has played out, it'll automatically go into combat idle animation. So doesn't matter what speed you give to the attack animation clip.

 

Edited January 29, 2015 by Bester

[Dark_Ansem]

perhaps perfect sound sync could be made by adding silence to the sfx? or there are other methods?

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I like that chart, kudos to whomever created it

[Bester]

Josh Sawyer made it, and the version I posted is not up to date. (i think)

Edited January 29, 2015 by Bester

[Falkon Swiftblade]

oh interesting, how did ya stumble upon it? Does he have a blog or something?

[BrainMuncher]

Ok, for a perfect sound sync, there is a possibility to trigger a sound at a certain frame in the animation, but only in Unreal. Not in Unity, so it's simply synced in the code.

As for triggering a "hurt" animation or applying damage - this has nothing to do with animation in any engine, you just always call these things in the code.

Yes you can do this in unity. You can call a function to do whatever arbitrary code you want. Many games do this.

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/animeditor-AnimationEvents.html

 

I don't know whether PoE does this sort of thing or not, but it sounds like you don't know either. I'm just saying that it's possible that changing the animation speed could affect things other than just the visuals.

 

What most likely happens in the code when the attack is called is something like this:

attackAnimation.Play();

Invoke("DisplayRecoveryBar", attacksLengthInseconds);

Using delayed invokes like that sounds pretty dicey. That would make interrupts pretty annoying to implement. I mean imagine casting a fireball...

 

castingAnimation.Play();

Invoke("ThrowFireball", castingLengthInseconds);

 

...and then the character gets interrupted and does not complete the casting. You would have to go and cancel the invoke. Which means you would have to keep track of everything you invoke, in order to know what to go and cancel when you get interrupted. Or have paranoid conditionals everywhere checking if you've been interrupted. Which is a lot more work than just switching to the "interrupted" animation.

[gnoemli]

so, one attack with two weapons goes 4s and one attack with a twohand 2s... so i attack twice with more damage with a two hander in the time i do one attack with two one hand weapons??? this can't be right, as there would be no advantage in using two weapons...

[Sensuki]

oh interesting, how did ya stumble upon it? Does he have a blog or something?

He posted it on twitter/Something Awful when I asked how recovery time worked back in early September. Those numbers are out of date because recovery time factor is now 1.4 or something instead, so everything is a bit slower.

[Bester]

 

Ok, for a perfect sound sync, there is a possibility to trigger a sound at a certain frame in the animation, but only in Unreal. Not in Unity, so it's simply synced in the code.

As for triggering a "hurt" animation or applying damage - this has nothing to do with animation in any engine, you just always call these things in the code.

Yes you can do this in unity. You can call a function to do whatever arbitrary code you want. Many games do this.

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/animeditor-AnimationEvents.html

 

I don't know whether PoE does this sort of thing or not, but it sounds like you don't know either. I'm just saying that it's possible that changing the animation speed could affect things other than just the visuals.

 

What most likely happens in the code when the attack is called is something like this:

attackAnimation.Play();

Invoke("DisplayRecoveryBar", attacksLengthInseconds);

Using delayed invokes like that sounds pretty dicey. That would make interrupts pretty annoying to implement. I mean imagine casting a fireball...

 

castingAnimation.Play();

Invoke("ThrowFireball", castingLengthInseconds);

 

...and then the character gets interrupted and does not complete the casting. You would have to go and cancel the invoke. Which means you would have to keep track of everything you invoke, in order to know what to go and cancel when you get interrupted. Or have paranoid conditionals everywhere checking if you've been interrupted. Which is a lot more work than just switching to the "interrupted" animation.

 

 

I just opened the code to give it a glance and if I'm not mistaken - it's the way I described, except replace invokes with Coroutines. There's simply a check for an interrupt - if (interrupted) StopAllCoroutines();.

 

Interesting thing about animation triggers, but it would probably be unwise to use it - let the animators tweak their animations as much as they want and don't force them to make the hit happen on a certain frame, all the syncing would be annoying and time consuming both for them and for you.

Edited January 30, 2015 by Bester

[Progressive_Stupidity]

Does it look like it's possible to use the console to create a kind of hybrid class? Druid suits my RP more but the chanter abilities are so darn cool.