Realm Reborn = downgrade?

[Starlord]

..this:






thats what i think so, too.

and besides that we have seen such less video footage so far, that i dont think that people can come to the conclusion of the animations being that poor. because most anmiations seem to stay the same

PLD WS in beginning of the trailer for example.. and the hume walking animation.. the emote animations are 1:1 the exactly same. so how can you call it a downgrade? have you played it at home already secretly?
the casting animations for mages right now for example are just horrible and non existant in the recent version.

This is EXACTLY, why they didn't want to show Gameplay footage.. because of these types of "reaction" to a a Game thats not even in Alpha State yet ~.~. But if they didn't show the gameplay footage, then people will have a hissy fit, that they aren't giving information!

SE has their hands full :/.

[Gramul]

This is EXACTLY, why they didn't want to show Gameplay footage.. because of these types of "reaction" to a a Game thats not even in Alpha State yet ~.~. But if they didn't show the gameplay footage, then people will have a hissy fit, that they aren't giving information!

SE has their hands full :/.

But we know for a fact that they're removing the animations:

While the animations were nice, the development team's number one focus in A Realm Reborn is on gameplay (I have difficulty believing this) so even though they were nice animations, the team made the decision to remove them.

We don't know that they're changing it, keeping it as it is, or adding it for the release, but unfortunately no one has told us the plans so the discussion is still up in the air.

[Elexia]

SE has their hands full :/.

This excuse works for FFXIV 1.0 where they were still developing XI (WoTG+Ayssea content in 2007-2009) while building FFXIV at the same time, this however does not work for ARR which they can build off of FFXIV 1.0 even if they rebuild systems from the ground up, they still have the framework to work with.

[Pandastirfry]

As someone who's been studding game, cinematic, and traditional animation for over 4 years now, I think I'm fairly well qualified to discuss it.

As for why include it? Because it would make a difference to those of us who would want it. Like Shadows, Depth of Field, Physics, Ambient Occlusion, and to a different extent, things like Helmet, Weapon, and Meteor Mark toggle.

I don't know why that would upset you. Square's done toggles for aesthetics before, and replacing the animations and allowing them to be canceled out of shouldn't be too much of an issue at all, unless they got a really bizarre structure going.

Yet again, lighting, shadow and physics toggles have no effect on actual gameplay mechanics where as movement animation have a direct effect on them, there is a reason why in every game in the market you can turn off physics, lighting and shadows, but not a single one allows you to change basic movement and gameworld interaction animations. There is a fundamental programming aspect into HOW your character moves that goes on behind the scenes that, allowing you to "toggle" a completely different animation set would need to address

[Gramul]

Yet again, lighting, shadow and physics toggles have no effect on actual gameplay mechanics where as movement animation have a direct effect on them, there is a reason why in every game in the market you can turn off physics, lighting and shadows, but not a single one allows you to change basic movement and gameworld interaction animations. There is a fundamental programming aspect into HOW your character moves that goes on behind the scenes that, allowing you to "toggle" a completely different animation set would need to address

And it won't effect gameplay if you let it clip out. Interchanging animations shoudn't be any harder than incorporating them in the first place. Have the replacement skeleton on a standby folder, reinstate the old end cycle animations after specific movements, and allow them to be canceled with other inputs.

[IveraIvalice]

And it won't effect gameplay if you let it clip out. Interchanging animations shoudn't be any harder than incorporating them in the first place. Have the replacement skeleton on a standby folder, reinstate the old end cycle animations after specific movements, and allow them to be canceled with other inputs.

ok this i wanted to comment on it
im not quite sure what your trying to say here, i mean i get that canceling animations is possible but im not understanding how your explaining this should be done.
canceling animations is the thing that makes all this possible without any quality loss in either gameplay or animations, and does not look bad (as someone else mentioned) because what some people dont realize is that even in the current system your doing it all the time and you dont notice, its just that some animations are keeping you in place because of the code and the specific animation, again canceling fixes that.
what im confused about with what you said was that, it sounds like you saying that they should swap between the old rig from the current game when they want to use those polish animations and switch back to the new rigged character for the animations that are currently in the ARR engine.
if thats what your trying to say that is either very very hard to do, or not possible. because since your characters skin is attached to the rig and the animations are baked in to the rig, your character would litterally be swaping from old version to new version every couple seconds, which is either very very hard or impossible. but they do have the old animations that they have in the current version that they can easily apply to the new characters rigs. because its tracked in mocap that can be set to the new rig so not a problem doing it with transfering animations from current rig to new rig. but your swap characters thing = very bad lol
sorry not trying to sound rude or anything

[Gramul]

ok this i wanted to comment on it
im not quite sure what your trying to say here, i mean i get that canceling animations is possible but im not understanding how your explaining this should be done.
canceling animations is the thing that makes all this possible without any quality loss in either gameplay or animations, and does not look bad (as someone else mentioned) because what some people dont realize is that even in the current system your doing it all the time and you dont notice, its just that some animations are keeping you in place because of the code and the specific animation, again canceling fixes that.
what im confused about with what you said was that, it sounds like you saying that they should swap between the old rig from the current game when they want to use those polish animations and switch back to the new rigged character for the animations that are currently in the ARR engine.
if thats what your trying to say that is either very very hard to do, or not possible. because since your characters skin is attached to the rig and the animations are baked in to the rig, your character would litterally be swaping from old version to new version every couple seconds, which is either very very hard or impossible. but they do have the old animations that they have in the current version that they can easily apply to the new characters rigs. because its tracked in mocap that can be set to the mocap so not a problem doing it with transfering animations from current rig to new rig. but your swap characters thing = very bad lol
sorry not trying to sound rude or anything

Not at all. First, let me start off by saying that swapping skeletons for meshes happens all the time, even for regular animation, you still need to switch between FK and IK rigs instantaneously (forward and inverse kinematics), so a skeleton swap shouldn't be out of the question. Now this is still under the concept that you would need a toggle to keep in the old animations and allow them to be canceled. Adding in the new animations by swapping skeletons really could be as simple as an immediate skeleton swap.



Honestly, if they add new animations in later, it won't be an issue. I just don't want my momentum to completely vanish when I stop. It's so jarring against the visual style.

[IveraIvalice]

Not at all. First, let me start off by saying that swapping skeletons for meshes happens all the time, even for regular animation, you still need to switch between FK and IK rigs instantaneously (forward and inverse kinematics), so a skeleton swap shouldn't be out of the question. Now this is still under the concept that you would need a toggle to keep in the old animations and allow them to be canceled. Adding in the new animations by swapping skeletons really could be as simple as an immediate skeleton swap.



Honestly, if they add new animations in later, it won't be an issue. I just don't want my momentum to completely vanish when I stop. It's so jarring against the visual style.

the rigs with the IK and FK controls are normally used only in editing the animations outside of the game engine and deleted before importing it into the engine. there are engines that can handle importing the full rig with animation controls but im not sure if this game engine is designed to do that. but i have not heard of skeleton swaping in the way that your mentioning, because switching between FK and IK in rig set ups is'nt actually a swap, like if were talking about an FK arm rig with IK rig on it also, only the FK is bound to the skin and the IK arm exhists in the same spot using contraints to switch control, from FK to IK but the skin is always bound to one joint chain.
its nice to hear someone else on the forums who knows about this stuff, i dont often have conversations about this stuff other then with fellow 3D artists i know

i agree though, these animations need to be put back into the game engine, it was a great part of 1.0 and its just not the same without them, very technical and unfinished looking

[Pandastirfry]

And it won't effect gameplay if you let it clip out. Interchanging animations shoudn't be any harder than incorporating them in the first place. Have the replacement skeleton on a standby folder, reinstate the old end cycle animations after specific movements, and allow them to be canceled with other inputs.

And yet making this "a toggle" would result in one set responding faster than the other or if they manage to crack that nut, one looking hideous and the other, not. Which brings us back to "why"

Being able to "toggle" movement would be like changing the shutter speed on an analog camera, while the end result is purely aesthetic, making that change fundamentally alters the way in which you have to use the camera. Swapping out two seperate ways in which your character interacts with the game world would require two back end programming architectures to calculate a similar end result.

[Gramul]

And yet making this "a toggle" would result in one set responding faster than the other or if they manage to crack that nut, one looking hideous and the other, not. Which brings us back to "why"

Being able to "toggle" movement would be like changing the shutter speed on an analog camera, while the end result is purely aesthetic, making that change fundamentally alters the way in which you have to use the camera. Swapping out two seperate ways in which your character interacts with the game world would require two back end programming architectures to calculate a similar end result.

It would not look hideous to me. I've played very many games with cancel animation and it works fine. And you could always use a blend to quickly meld the animation so it won't look unnatural.

One won't respond faster than another if we allow for animation to be canceled. That's the whole reason behind the suggestion. You don't have to make a completely new system to implement it, or at least you shouldn't.