Spyglass Animation

[SneaksieDave]

Aside from realism or consistency considerations, people will want to use the spyglass while on a rope. I know I will at least. You climb up, and have a look around.

 

Ultimately, if it doesn't work as a game device, we'll just end up binding a zoom toggle to a key, so it might as well work.

[Springheel]

I'm sure people will want to fire their bow while on a rope as well...that's not a compelling reason to allow it IMO.

 

I don't have any strong arguments for NOT allowing it, however. Only that it's more work and inconsistent with other animated activities.

[New Horizon]

Yeah, I have to agree with Spring, it makes more sense to not use it on a rope. Especially if we do the animation.

[Baddcog]

Maybe we could release the infamous Bow Upgrade. It could have a spyglass on it so you could zoom in REAL close. Then it could have some kind of harness systm so you could hook to the rope and hang whil zooming and shooting!!!

 

LOL.

 

Umm, I can realistically see being able to use a spyglass while on rope, but not a bow. But I wouldn't mind NOT being able to use spyglass on rope either.

[sparhawk]

I don't see why it would make sense to NOT be able to use a simple spyglass on a rope. I can agree with a bow, but not with a spyglass. And after all, we are doing a game, not a realism simulator. Gameplay comes before realism.

[Crispy]

Yeah, a bow would look weird because you physically can't fire one without two hands. But you can hold a spyglass with one hand. If it's clipped to your belt and is loose enough to extend by itself (so you can let gravity extend it instead of needing to pull it apart with both hands), then you could definitely use it while on a rope.

[sparhawk]

Even if you need the second hand, you could still use it on a rope. After all, you don't need the hand to hold on. You can also wrap it around your arm to fix your position. That would be enough to extend it to be usable. It wouldn't be enough for a bow, because you need more control for that, but for small objects, where you only need your hands and not your full arm, you could manage it. That's why I say that we should flag objects with a one or two handed indicator, to allow for this.

[Springheel]

There's lots of things you could do in reality while hanging on a rope that you can't do in the game, like swing a sword or pick up a cup. We don't allow those things because they look bad or cause potential problems, and they aren't particularly important.

 

So it just comes down to how important it is to be able to look through a telescope while hanging on a rope. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a handy ability. But I can live without it if it's going to look strange and take more work to do.

[sparhawk]

What exactly do you mean by "it would look strange"? We don't have hands anyway and third person is not officially supported as well, so what would be the strange looking thing? Does this mean that we also can not frob while being on a rope? Is this the same for ladders as well?

[Springheel]

It would look strange to have an animation while on a rope. If the rope is right in front of you, then the spyglass will appear to go right through it. I don't expect you to be bothered by that, since you were ok with a two-handed lantern animation on a rope, but others will be.

 

As far as frobbing, we decided you can frob loot or inventory objects while on a rope, but not pick up junk objects which require the grabber. I can't remember if that applies to ladders as well, but it makes sense.

[sparhawk]

It would look strange to have an animation while on a rope. If the rope is right in front of you, then the spyglass will appear to go right through it. I don't expect you to be bothered by that, since you were ok with a two-handed lantern animation on a rope, but others will be.

 

Well, I'm currently playing Gothic 2, which I consider a very good game. And watching it more closely, it is surprising how much cliping they had. It's quite noticable even, much more then we have, and it is still one of the best games. So I don't really worry if one or two things may not look perfect, if the playabillity is enhanced by it instead.

 

As far as frobbing, we decided you can frob loot or inventory objects while on a rope, but not pick up junk objects which require the grabber. I can't remember if that applies to ladders as well, but it makes sense.

 

Ah, yes. I forgot about that.

[New Horizon]

Well, aesthetically, I think it would look out of place to see the hand come up with the spyglass while on a rope or ladder. If we do it without the animation I think it would be acceptable. Just play a sound, and use a quick screen transition.

[SneaksieDave]

There's a pretty big difference between using a bow (a decidedly two handed item) and a spyglass (easily one handed) while on a rope, but as always, whatever. Binded toggle hack it is, then.

 

bind z "toggle g_fov 90 30"

[New Horizon]

There's a pretty big difference between using a bow (a decidedly two handed item) and a spyglass (easily one handed) while on a rope, but as always, whatever. Binded toggle hack it is, then.

 

bind z "toggle g_fov 90 30"

 

It's not just the matter of using the spyglass on the rope though, it's also how it looks. We don't see any hands when climbing walls or ropes...but suddenly a hand is going to come out of nowhere with a spyglass. It doesn't agree with what we've decided on so far. If we 'don't' do the animation however, I think it should be allowed. Really, I think the animation would be superfluous in this case. In Thievery...I think they just did a quick blackout and fade in of the spyglass effect.

[sparhawk]

The we can skip the animation. After all, we also don't use one for all the other stuff, and it would at least be consistent.

[Ishtvan]

It would look strange to have an animation while on a rope. If the rope is right in front of you, then the spyglass will appear to go right through it.

Why is that? You can apply the same "depth hack" that's applied to weapons to make sure the spyglass stays on top the whole time and doesn't clip thru a rope. It would look just like a weapon animation (which never clip thru anything).

 

If we're voting on whether a spyglass should be used on a rope, I'd vote yes as well.

 

I also don't see why having an animation of a hand bringing up a spyglass while on a rope is so immersion-breaking either. It's not like you're showing both hands waving in the air while you're holding on with your third hand. It's pretty easy for me to imagine that the other hand is holding on to the rope out of view.

 

If it were feasible it would of course be more believable to do full body awareness, but just because we can't do body awareness on a rope doesn't mean we shouldn't show a hand bringing a glass up to your eye rather than just fade out and fade in looking thru a glass.

[New Horizon]

....we shouldn't show a hand bringing a glass up to your eye rather than just fade out and fade in looking thru a glass.

 

Seems like a lot extra hassle for such a quick function though. If we still have our animators around, it's worth looking into...but as of now, it doesn't look like there are many around.

[Springheel]

Why is that? You can apply the same "depth hack" that's applied to weapons to make sure the spyglass stays on top the whole time and doesn't clip thru a rope. It would look just like a weapon animation (which never clip thru anything).

 

Even if you do that, you'll see the rope--which is quite close to you--appear to be *behind* the hand with the telescope, which should clearly be further away from you than the rope. I just don't think that would look very good.

 

 

Anyway, the votes seem to be for allowing it, so I'll be happy to be proved wrong.

[New Horizon]

Anyway, the votes seem to be for allowing it, so I'll be happy to be proved wrong.

 

I would still prefer to do the spyglass without any animation. It's kind of like the lantern, you don't need to see it. Weapons are a different matter since they are meant to interact, but the telescope animation is just window dressing . If we just went with the simplest implementation, we could have it working in no time I would imagine.

[Springheel]

Well, I don't think we have any active animators atm, so if someone wants to get it working in 2d, and it looks good, we might never bother with an animation. If people aren't satisfied with the 2d version, then we could try an animation.

[Crispy]

Well, I don't think we have any active animators atm, so if someone wants to get it working in 2d, and it looks good, we might never bother with an animation. If people aren't satisfied with the 2d version, then we could try an animation.

Yeah, definitely. Get it working first, then worry about animations if we have time.

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, of course getting the zoom in and overlay code should come first. We can evaluate how good it looks just snapping to a zoomed in view after that.