Report #33

The regular 33rd report is out!

Regardless of planned vacations during the last month of summer, the work goes on at a reasonable rate.

Today we'll show more content than usual. By the way, there are questions to readers in the text, so your opinion will help us decide various issues.

I IK animations

While the programmers are messing with the SpatialOS, the rest of the team continue working on game quality, visual part of the project and its liveliness. Let's look at new animations based on Inverse Kinematics.

The main purpose of these animations is a more realistic movement over rough surfaces. The most beloved crash, in this case, is walking over a semi-sphere.

There is still work to be done, but the main problem has already been solved that is server replication. The GIF was recorded from the POV of another character.

In the works:

A more detailed set up of all lower limbs to decrease the number of artifacts to a reasonable minimum;
Deployment in the Public Test Realm (PTR)

II Hitreact: VFX on characters and animations

The liveliness and dynamics of the combat system are very important. Long long ago, we were asked whether there would be hitreact on characters? At that time, our answer was negative. Now, it's got clear that we can't do without it.

When an item is dealing damage whether be it melee or long-range weapon, pinpoint magic or AOE - all of these will cause a character to shake based on the impulse which is related to the attack.

A character will bleed and receive bloody scars.

Questions to readers:

Shall we leave blood spots/trail on the ground or walls where the damage was dealt?

At the same time, the Hitreact will not cause the interruption of your action, i.e. if a character began strike animation while he/she got damaged, then the character would still finish it even with the shakings.

In the works:

Implement the dependence of the impulse value ( and the shaking strength) from the weapon type ( dagger/ 1P/2P and etc) and the attack power;
Deployment in PTR;
Polish the dependence of the impulse direction based on animation and the direction of the target and attacker's movement;
Deployment in PTR.

III Jumps (physics)

The works on the Physics of the fast jump have been completed.

Many of you remember that in CS one has to squat right after the jump to get on higher ground.

We use the same principle but it's done automatically. In ROG the collision of a character is grouped with the character’s model, also it follows his legs when the character brings his knees to the chest.

This allows one to reach higher grounds (before 84 cm, now 102 cm) when using lower and slower jump (in 1.5 times).

In the works:

deployment in PTR.

IV New animations of jumps

Since we are talking about such delicate things as IK animations, then it's not reasonable to leave only one direction of the jump for all movement directions.

This is why now there will be four jump directions for each stance: jump when sprinting, fast jump at standstill, high jump at standstill. We have described the concept of the high jump previously in one of the earlier reports (link). Now let’s just watch the new animations.

Don't pay attention to feet sliding. It is present in the current animation player only.

Animation of jumps for non-combat:

1H + an empty hand:

In the works:

Deployment of the jump classification logic in PTR;
Deployment of animations for non-combat and 1P + an empty hand in PTR;
Animation 1P + a shield;
Animation 2P;
Deployment in PTR of points 3 and 4;
Add the rest of stances

V Cloaks

When we needed to adjust the Cloth Physics for big, we decided to make them simpler because it was impossible to avoid artifacts otherwise.

This is why we quickly simplified the geometry in the most troublesome locations.

Before:

After:

In the works:

Deployment of all cloaks in PTR.

VI Menu

We’ve made it to the most important part that is the settings menu.

We'll work on its looks later, but right away it became way more functional:

finally, we separated in-game sounds from voice and music;
the graphical settings got way more options already now, which will increase FPS for a basic level PC;
Long-awaited control scheme with the visualization of the keyboard.

In the works:

add all current controls in the settings;
add hotbar in the settings;
deployment in PTR.

Questions to readers:

What did you like or didn't like the most in the control settings menus in other MMORPGs?

Your opinion will allow us to make our menu of better quality.

VII Materials

In the course of the work on the transition of already created armor to a new more functional material, we create an extra “ragged” texture for each armor and each cape just like it was done for the Necromancer.

Now the items will also age visually.

The leftmost version is the initial or the former armor type;
The second on the left is a remaster of the material with the conditions close to ideal;
This third and the fourth ones show the aging of the item.

Questions to readers:

Do you like the idea of visual aging of items? Or, rather, it would be better if an object looks the same over its lifetime and its visuals would be randomized when the object appears in the world?