New Idle Animation

[greebo]

Thanks squill, I'll take care of mine too.

[Domarius]

It's a fair call spring, the proguard is very thin, too bad we didn't realise earlier.

 

There's no getting around the fact that "fat" characters will need seperate animations though.

[Springheel]

The new "Nosewipe" animation is very well-done, but it's awfully close to crossing the line into too comical for TDM. We want to avoid the cartoon-like comedy of TDS and keep our characters more realistic and gritty.

 

It's also very distinctive--once you see two or three characters do it in the same mission, it starts to feel a bit forced. That animation might be better for use at path_animations, rather than a generic idle, so mappers can choose which characters do it, and when.

[Domarius]

Yeah as good as it is, the idle anims need to be very banal and short. The more expressive it is, the more it'll stand out and get on your nerves the 20th time you've seen it.

 

I feel like it should end after the very first wipe of the nose. It goes on for way too long after that for an idle anim.

[squill]

i made it a bit on the long side, it's 8,5 seconds while most idles are no longer then 3 or 4 seconds. As a result if you load up the idle_animation test map it gets cuts off in the middle because the intervals are set to 6.

 

This nose wipe action may be a bit comical but i don't think some humor would hurt our characters. I'm more for stylized character animation which reads clearly then fully realistic moving humans.

 

I agree you don't want to see the same idle over and over again. But is there an option to determine the random factor of the idles? Like you can set a value of 20 or 30% that an idle animation will play while other generic idles which are shorter or less expressive will get a higher percentage.

[Springheel]

This nose wipe action may be a bit comical but i don't think some humor would hurt our characters.

 

There's nothing wrong with humour per se, but our design philosophy is specifically against the kind of comical, cartoonish humour of TDS. "The Dark Mod is set in a world that is dark, gritty and adult. It is a setting that strives to be immersive, and to feel as believable to the player as possible."

 

The "when are they going to bring me my dinner" line of T1 is funny, but also believable and realistic. The humour of TDS was often the "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" kind, or comical slapstick (like the animation of guards slipping on oil). We want to avoid that.

[Flanders]

There's nothing wrong with humour per se, but our design philosophy is specifically against the kind of comical, cartoonish humour of TDS. The "when are they going to bring me my dinner" line of T1 is funny, but also believable and realistic. The humour of TDS was often the "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" kind, or comical slapstick (like the animation of guards slipping on oil). We want to avoid that.

One that I did like was 'Propably my own echo... Propably my own echo huhuhu.'

[Springheel]

Different tastes, I suppose. When I heard lines like that--specifically designed to be punchlines--it just made me think that the developers did not take the game world seriously. It was most obvious with what they did to the pagans, which were believable and creepy in T1, but became silly and comical in TDS.

 

The vocals and the animations are especially important in setting the tone of a game, so it's important that they stick to the overall design philosophy.

 

That said, I don't think the animation in question is so comical that it crosses the line...but I hope the rest of the animations stay further back from it.

[Noisycricket]

I just saw the nose_wipe animation, I love it personally, great timing and movements, looks very professional, but i guess i wouldn't like it in a normal rotation either, same goes for my sneeze anim. Squill, i think i saw some of your work on the Discovery Channel the other day or somebody stealing your work. It was a commercial for something, i forget, which had the 2D animtion of the invisible mass making its way through the grass. Congrats if that was you.

 

 

Just talking out loud here, but would giving the animations a numerical range to determine their likelihood of occurring solve the problem? For example, getting a random number between 1 and 1000, and giving the sneeze or nosewipe between between 1 and 10 and a less distinctive animation like idle_cough between 11 and 100, 10 units vs. 85. I havn't put much thought into that, but something like that? Another idea would be to arrange a pool of "special" animations that could be given a chance to play every so often? Im not sure what would be the least costly perfomance wise.

 

One thought about guard conversations, i wondered if it would be a good idea to create a thread asking for Thief fans to come up with good ideas for quick or long guard conversations withing a set of guidelines. Be it either funny or serious, or something to build up mystery or tension or fear or curiosity or immersion, etc. Things that would be universal to the Thief universe. Things that make the player want to explore and dig deeper.... I don't know, i but thought i couldn't hurt, asking for some brain power. The reward for helping would i guess be using it in the game.

 

EDIT: I meant that last sentence to include, IF an idea is good enough.

 

I liked the conversation with the one guard saying "We should have more guards posted outside", guard 2 responds with " Then there wouldn't be enough to guard inside!", guard 1 concluding angrily with "Well thats the point, to prevent people from getting IN YOU TAFFER!!!!"...something like that

[squill]

Different tastes, I suppose. When I heard lines like that--specifically designed to be punchlines--it just made me think that the developers did not take the game world seriously. It was most obvious with what they did to the pagans, which were believable and creepy in T1, but became silly and comical in TDS.

 

That said, I don't think the animation in question is so comical that it crosses the line...but I hope the rest of the animations stay further back from it. :

 

i'm not suggesting we should create cartoony animation or slipstick humor, that wouldn't fit our characters. I can't recall the guards in TDS but i don't think we'll see the guards goofing around or making jokes all the time. Although some drunken guards would be fun

[squill]

i've updated the idle animation:

 

 

ok seriously, the updated version on SVN is around 6 seconds which has some more variety to the previous idle animation. Although i still don't like the random idle head movements which looks very mechanical.