Animation Feedback

this is what i was looking for, an official animation thread :).

Most animations (running, idling, etc) are fine, but some seem a bit chunky, .. stiff.

For starters, imo, the melee attacks on the marauder seem to be half finished. In the sense that the character doesn't really swing his sword completely but seems to stop mid air. That makes it look as if he's hitting with the haft of the sword. Takes away from the feeling you're wielding a powerfull mace f.e.

The dual wielding animation suffers from the same thing. The character doesn't swing either weapon completely through, also making it look as if he's butting with the sword rather than slashing.

I can make a video with fraps and upload it as private to youtube and post it here, if that's allowed. Just to give a better idea of what i mean

Crab shell throw animation - noted, this will be sped up.

Extra awesome critical hit animations might be something to consider - perhaps for the purchasable animations later.

Camera shaking - we probably have to be careful about this one as it very easily can be annoying to play with. On the other hand, adding will definitely be done!

Another thing to note is that we likely will implement something that cuts away the last and first few animations between consecutive attacks. This will hopefully make combat both better looking and faster in general.

Asukhama: The thing you are talking about with the weapon stiopping as it hits is actually something that is intentionally made on some animations to help make the contact felt more. The attack sweeping through is in many some cases preferrable, but its harder to get that visceral impact feeling using that, especially for attacks that are supposed to be rather simple and basic.

The "Claw" type weapons. I think it should act more like a Boxer when you have two of them probably just my preference but the animation for attacking with claws doesn't feel natural like you would throw a punch it feels too strenuous in nature rather than "I have to survive I can't leave myself open."

The wand is a strange one but I think it should act like a gun rather than what it does. Rather than drawing it back to fire I think it should be reversed and more like a recoil from a powerful blast and the magic dissipates as the wand moves over your shoulder. Take a jet for instance the force of the burner pushes against the jet to move forward so if the burner were on the front the jet would naturally move backwards the release of energy would feel more realistic if it acted like a gun.

[Edit] I don't want to use Harry Potter as an example for obvious reasons but they did put thought into the movies. When Harry and Mr. V. are in "wand to wand" combat, there is energy streaming between them and there is a blast back, forcing the wands back after the energy stream was over strained, I believe the only reason they thrust the wands forward is so they can cast at their opponent before they are hit with the enemy spell not as a form of conjuring per say.

More varaitions of death animation please, maybe you can cut some monster head or arms or body =))

would be cool if the monster fall down in the water if i hit strong , when i staying on a small bridge =)..

Would be cool if the skeletons bones flying around if you hit fast or strong =)..

The only animation I complaint is the select character screen. I think All five character animations need re-work.

Some ghosts have rapier-style weapons but are doing an overhead slashing attack.

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Starzon29 wrote:

More varaitions of death animation please, maybe you can cut some monster head or arms or body =))

would be cool if the monster fall down in the water if i hit strong , when i staying on a small bridge =)..

Would be cool if the skeletons bones flying around if you hit fast or strong =)..

The bodies falling off of bridges/ledges when they die I believe is a Physics effect, correct m e if Im wrong


I do agree with the first and last point. When a skeleton dies he should fall apart.

More blood and gore would be nice. Hacking limbs/heads off would be really satisfying!

My gripe with animation is mostly the movements; I am used to how Diablo II feels so PoE movements feel much less reactive (i.e. whenever I make the character start running / change running direction, the reaction time of the character relative to my mouse click is always too slow).

If those movement input reaction times can be tweaked to be much tighter, the game would feel much better in my opinion.

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jerg wrote:

My gripe with animation is mostly the movements; I am used to how Diablo II feels so PoE movements feel much less reactive (i.e. whenever I make the character start running / change running direction, the reaction time of the character relative to my mouse click is always too slow).

If those movement input reaction times can be tweaked to be much tighter, the game would feel much better in my opinion.

This is something i thought about as well.

Sometimes it feels like I am dragging my character around with my mouse. He feels a bit slow in turns specially.

One of the animation improvements I have thought about is the upper body movement of the characters.

The upper body feels stale when running around. I'm not an expert on human movement but i think it's the torso that is stale. Almost like only legs and arms move.

Anyway, this is something I think an animator definetely can express better in words than me but I hope you understand what I mean.