Dana Massey Asks "Why Not?": Well Animated MMOs
It's been a decade since MMOs were done in 3D, but for some odd reason, no one seems to mind that they're not animated much better today than they were in EverQuest.
It’s been a decade since the first 3D MMOs rolled into the mass market. Since EverQuest debuted, poly-counts have multiplied, particles effects have appeared every time a character waves his arm, and graphics cards can now probably solve the global energy crisis. Unfortunately, even the shiniest of characters still moves like an automaton. Animation in MMOs has not progressed in a decade and in this week’s column, I ask why not animate MMOs properly?
Now, I understand there are some obstacles. Fact is, MMOs are unpredictable, and there is some validity to the argument that if they push the graphical boundaries as far as top tier console games, the whole thing could explode in a fiery cloud of TeamSpeak cursing.
It’s about where they spend those resources. I don’t care how many invisible triangles it took or how bouncy the Lineage II females are (OK, I might care a little), but I do care if the game is pleasant to look at. Developers of MMOs need to realize that their game has to not only look good in screenshots, but also move with some element of believability.
Truth is, in most games, I see very little difference between the animation standards of EverQuest and any “next generation” game on the market.
Stabbed in chest? Your toon clutches his chest and falls over.
;)
Leeroy deserved a prettier fate
Eaten by dragon? You got it. He grabs that chest and falls over.
Shot in face by a gun totting penguin man? Grab chest and fall over.
Fall off a cliff to your fiery death in a pit of lava? Land feet first, hesitate a moment, then grab the chest and fall over.
It’s not something I was actively aware of until last weekend during Baltimore Games Day. Mythic went all out to put in arcade style content into Land of the Dead and, as I said in the preview, the content is quite fun. The problem was that with arcade content came arcade expectations. When my Witch Hunter got hit by a swinging pendulum axe, I expected to have to peel his face off the far wall.
Unfortunately, he just grabbed his chest and fell over.
MMO animation has always been largely symbolic of that spew no one reads in their “Combat” tab. No one really expects anyone to parry attacks in real-time and have full out movie-quality sword fights. But just because it cannot be perfect, doesn’t mean it cannot be better.
I mean, seriously. Imagine if the outcry if graphical standards hadn’t been raised!
;)
Decade old graphics.
And don’t give me all these lines about performance. The MMO server only needs to know where you are and what state you’re in. It doesn’t give a crap if you’re flying around with snot and brains seeping out your ears. That’s all on the client. So any game that can handle a knock back and a prone state can handle biffing my brave warrior’s face off the nearest wall.
Now, this is not to say I don’t understand why things have gone this way. Animation is hard. No way around it.
Let’s run through an MMO pipeline for a single monster.
Some crazy idiot says, “It’d be cool if we had dog men… WITH PHASERS!” and runs downstairs. There, a poor concept artist spends a few hours sketching dog men with phasers. Once the crazy idiot is happy, the artist then does some perspective front and sides (think mugshots) for the thing and hands it to a 3D modeler.
;)
As close as I could find
The modeler spends a couple days crafting the thing out of virtual putty in Maya and suddenly there is this grey blob that looks a lot like that dog man with a phaser. Once he’s set, a texture artist applies a fresh coat of paint and a rigger spends a few hours telling the poor dog man where his elbow bends.
Then it gets handed off to the poor animator. Depending on the complexity of the game, this process usually takes longer than all the other steps combined. A really efficient team can get that phaser wielding dog man to the animator inside a few days. A really good animator, though, is going to need well over a week to produce all the possible permutations of chest clutching.
So, I get it. I know how long it takes and I know how much animators get paid. There’s a good reason why that corner gets cut. But if MMOs want to truly ascend into the mainstream, “it’s hard” is no longer a valid excuse.
So next time someone is deciding where to spend my processing power on the next great MMO, please consider giving me rag doll death instead of 40,000 extra polygons in my left buttcheek.
When I jump off a cliff, I want to go face first and actually feel like I died. With symbolic movement, you get symbolic reactions. Make the world move in a way that connects with people and their emotional investment in that game goes way up. It’ll take some work, but one day, I hope there will be MMOs where my character’s death scares me as much as the death penalty.
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Each Thursday, he asks the question "Why Not?" about some element of MMOs.
Euphoria ftw!
It makes you feel more in touch with the world.
Having had to animate a number of my own models (cost cutting), I can definetly say that it takes time, even with a really good rig, to keyframe and build animation files for every little sequence. Keep in mind, a lot of times those coveted "emotes" and the concentration we place on them, is the reason why death animations, and the like, look the same. You can either spend the money on 60 different emotes, most of which won't be ever used to any justifiable extent, or a few good death situations. Depending on the salaries of the animation department though, sometimes you can save time/ money with motion capture. AoC is the latest notable mmo to try this, and I am actually suprised more haven't jumped onto using it. Well, other than the equipment for it is hugely expensive...
Another option is the new Havoc engine starting to be deployed, which gives you rag doll physics. Only problem is that sometimes it's "too ragdoll". At least those are some of the most common complaints I am hearing. Requiem: Bloodymare uses this.
Whether we go motion capture, or Havoc in the future, is anyone's guess. I do however agree that we really need to get away from the claymation-esque key framing that causes bland animations.
Only game in my ten years of MMO that i realy liked the animation/death bows was AOC, shame game didnt have the content at time to keep me going back for more.
Guess these developers don't think it is a big priority for players. I know as nice as Lotro looks the animations are very mediocre. AoC has had the best I have seen so far, which of course did not help it any at all.
Sounds like MMOs could really benefit from procedural animation.
The reason is quite simple, it's same one which also caused ( among others ) WoW popularity and which brought AoC down. MMOs adress shitload of players, most of which have relatively old rigs ( seriously, how often do you upgrade? ). You can't play the game = you don't pay the montly fee ( or ) you can't set graphic settings to the max because your rig can't handle it = you don't get everything what you pay for.
All about economy, amount of players who want kickass graphic is way smaller than the number of these who just want to enjoy the game on their comp, even if it looks so 1999-ish.
I agree that games need to have sane system requirements, and that is a topic for another week.
Good animation... I don't even mean insanely great animation, just some attention to it, doesn't require a super-PC to process.
It is something that is lacking indeed.
And about the 60+ emotes: they are a must, for they can add so much more depth to a otherwise flat and boring moment (I do not remember which game it was, but one had a /teapot command, which made the character act as if he/she was one. Totally useless, perhaps, but tons of fun!). Roleplaying is another good reason to keep them.
(though Star Wars Galaxies really had a LOT of them, I once printed a manual of them. Next to tons of emotes, a lot of them with animations, there was also the difference between emoting someone else, yourself or just general. Damn I loved those things)
Anyway, back on topic: Yes, we need better animations. That does not have to go at the expense of people with lesser hardware at all, there's this thing called scalability: make the content at different resolutions. The same for the animations: either let the animator (bigger data files) or the computer (bigger calculations, I don't know which one would be the best option in this case) remove keyframes that add little details. People with weak(er) computers will still see the animations at today's quality, those with better hardware see the characters come to life.
Depending on your definition of "well animated," you are probably asking for something that rich people won't even be capable of rendering quickly. I don't think your performance would be up to par with realistic real-time animation rendering unless you dropped $10,000 on a machine. With today's technology, in order to make a game visually acceptable and performance optimized for the lowest common denominator, one has to limit animation. Either you'd need low polygon modeling, or very few models if they are to be high-polygon.
Can't really have both currently with realistic animation as well. That's really the only reason that we don't have it. If it was reasoanbly possible, they'd have done itl; because that would instantly become a best seller (assuming decent plotline, reasonable playability and good design).
I think if you believe it's a reasonable idea this day in age, you have a gross understimation of the calculating power required to animate textures onto high-polygon frames that animate quickly and smoothly, while keeping high performance. Then multiply that on the number of models animating currently in your view-field, on top of world textures/animations, pretty soon you are over-loaded on even a top of the line gaming rig today. If you think it's a simple as having a computer that can run two instances Crysis on maxed settings you're vastly mistaken.
I say play more games...Age of Conan really has the animation, and more recently the content to back it up.
But, your asking for a game with 3-4 times as much content as a single player game (if not more) and then animations to match? That seems a litle out of hand.
Time is what it will take, unless this genre dies first thanks to stale gameplay mechanics we keep getting, and not keeping up with graphics engines...
Interesting and entertaining piece. I agree.
If this OnLive system thing pans out, it could help with some of the problems posed by devlopers creating games at demand high end systems.
I'm not talking about insane animation. I'm talking about decent animation. There will always be some lag between AAA games and MMOs, visually speaking.
However, a lot more could be done on MMOs than is being done and, honestly, I don't believe that a lot of it would overload an average PC. Most computers can handle rag doll death, for example, but few (or no?) MMOs use it.
Dana,
Have you ever played Requiem:Bloodymare? It uses the same Havok Engine, designed by Valve that is used in the Half-life series. It has some of the almost realistic rag-doll affects you were looking for, so when I die I literally go flying like a used piece of meat. Blood splattering all over ever and send monsters flying too! Actually a different effect each death becuase sometimes body parts roll down a hill, than what I'm used to. I never realized that no matter what I did, I just did the old chest clutching, Black and white, Silent-movie death motion and keeled over.
It's a F2P and not too NEED TO USE CASH SHOPPY, but they do offer a subscription package that is worth my 15 bucks a month. And you guys know what a cheapo I am with game, you do don't you?
Play safe,
Ink
I know of at least one MMO that uses it, and its handled fairly well, just needs some fine tuning.
I know of at least one MMO that uses it, and its handled fairly well, just needs some fine tuning.
Fury used ragdoll effects. Damn, I had fun in that game. Too bad it died.
What I find odd is that LOTRO has some of the worst combat animations I've ever seen, yet it has dozens of animated emotes.
I'll cast a 3rd vote for Age of Conan. Best animation in a MMORPG yet.
I think one of the other problems is it may not be practical. Aside from all the time and effort to develop the animations, I have to wonder how much space/processing it takes up on the individual user's system. Not only would it have to animate for you, it would have to animate for everyone else in the area.
Also, you may be killed by the same attack that's been hitting you for a while now. Sure you could have a death animation where the Minotaur's axe lops your head right off, but what happens when he hits you with the same axe animation 20 times before you actually die? Or if you can stand in lava 20 seconds before dying and suddenly bursting into flame etc. It may look a little silly.
I don't know honestly, it's a very good question, why not? I guess the problem is in order to get such an in depth and vast mmo through development, you have to pick your battles. Let's also not forget that nobody actually wants to get killed in the first place, lol.
City of heroes has ragdoll physics. Anyone who ever planted an enemy into a blue mission wall knows how fun it is.
www.youtube.com/watch short super nova vid.
And after watching that it's made in 2004 before they added the ragdoll physics and they all get up the same. Man I can't find a good video showing it.
Seriously just give me Ragdol or full psychics in new mmo and il be happy like a little kid ;)
Played game Called Requiem, as one of very very few games uses Ragdol system, and unpredictable body death etc animations.
Its just so fun that i played the game for 2 months even if its total crap :P It was just fun to kill things! It was never the same and always felt right in a very wrong way.
Small thing but how much fun you had out of it ;D
Anyway about animation, Aion got realy good ones tho no ragdoll or full psychics still :(
Oh, I had forgotten about that one, was in the beta for that game, wasnt really my style. I do agree that AoC has good animations as well though. So my new count for Ragdoll physics games is 3. I'm sure there are at least a couple more.
Aion does have some nice animation going for it. The way they do it, it increases immersion within the environment because the characters actually react to their environment, if it's raining, if it's hot or what. Too bad it's very noticeable what it's missing, they cover up the death animation, make it look cool in other ways. Also they cut animation costs by eliminating swimming, so while there are great benefits, there are also so negatives. "You can fly in Aion, but you can't swim!"
I completely agree.
I think my most notable time that I have been dissapointed with my character death (in WoW) was when I was lagging. I believe I had hit my cap for the month (because in Australia, our internet is about 10 years old, and we still have "internet caps" where it gets slowed to either Dial-up speeds, or adsl speeds (5kb/s, or 25kb/s))
Anyway, my internet was lagging like nothing else, maybe 1500ms ping or something stupid, but I was addicted, so I played... I fell off a cliff face, hit the ground, far below. I'm standing there, going "huh. I'm not dead." So I jog forwards for a little bit, the game then registered the 7800 health or something (all of it) and I fall over, dead.
Good times.
I would much rather have the game register my fall-speed, and, in the moment before I hit the ground, send to the server that yes, I am going to die at this speed, and set my body (now turned corpse) to rag-doll physics, and crumple into the ground. That would have been excellent, and hilarious for me to watch.
In fact, there is a game based entirely on falling with rag-doll physics (and sound effects) applied. I think my top score was something like 122k...
Anyway, yes, there is definitely something to be said for death animations for MMOs. Rag-doll phyics effects are obviously going to be one of the best ways to show this on a good rig, and for other computers, hell, just give the same ol' clutching chest animation and give them the simple physics of "body is moving x,y,z at x,y,z speeds" so that the corpse is at least in the same place for everyone online (resurrect spells...)
</rant>
I've played from Ultima Online to Age of Conan - you name it I've probably played it.
From what I've seen many games to feel similar - I would defently say as other people have pointed out that Age of Conan had some of the better "animations"
I believe one core reason why some animation are just your character swings its sword and the guy gets hit and all he does is a small shuffle could be to keep combat quick. Most mmorpgs are you basicly target the person and hit a button to start swinging.
I can see a game that is more first person shoot style to allow more room for more advance animation.
Over all this just theory and I am not 100% certian why animation are still tather low on the lsit for looks.
But I don't think saying that ther ehas been any improvements is slightly false in my book.
I think there is a lesson to be learned from Age of Conan in relation to this issue; In AoC animations are motion captured and people really do look like they get hurt when you cut off their arms or have them disembowled.
Problem is that this cost a LOT of money and resources to create and didnt really make the game more popular, in fact people thought that it was irritating that so much effort had been used on the graphics and animations when the rest of the game was in such a poor condition and the content were so shallow.
Good animations and graphics in MMOs is the topping on the cake. Do it if you have the resources and the engine can handle it _after_ you have created a solid foundation to put the graphics into.
MMOs are different from single player games in that they are meant to be played for a much much longer time and not just to be admired graphically for a few weeks. And no matter how good or bad graphics is in a MMO then over the playtimes involved in MMOs they step mentaly into the background because you get used to them and then its the gameplay that takes over as enjoyment or annoyance factors.
Graphics and animation dont make an mmorpg.
To me Graphics and animations do make an mmorpg.
1. I can't like my character if it looks ugly. Example - Lotro
2. I can't like the combat if it has poor animations. Example - Lotro
3. I don't like to explore a boring looking world. Example - Darkfall
You're looking at the graphics all the time so they damn well better look good. World of Warcraft nailed it because they got better graphics outta their engine than Everquest 2 did outta theirs cause WoW has amazing art and EQ2 is bland and ugly.
Anyways do people remember Star Wars Galaxies Pre CU motion captured animations? They were pretty sweet......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP5gX09YgZk
www.youtube.com/watch
You lost me at 'toon'.
Yes, I am that anal. It is a tortured existence.
Crazy thing is, is that these are mostly turn based MMO's, that have different animations for eah attack / move / magic spell. www.linkrealms.com/ <-- What good animation looks like.
A bigger question for me, is that why haven't any MMO's used rag doll physics yet? (or am I mistaken?). Mortal Online uses rag dolls and the hit boxes look clean and animations more fluid.. It also might be a game where your own death might frighten you a little..
Dana,
This is something i've talked to people about for years.
The way my character is animated is immensely important to me and its a major contributing factor as to why I'm not currently playing any MMOs. If you play a game like Fable II and then go and fire up LOTRO... the difference in your character's animation/interaction with their world.... is immense. LOTRO feels like your character is a wooden doll, where Fable II makes your character move around like a fluid creature that bounds across the ground with a realistic weight and feel to their motion. The same can be said for a game like Gears of War... your characters in taht game move about like the MASSIVE tanks that they are, it Feels... perfect.
No MMO has done this. Its as though they believe that poorly animated characters are a part of the necessary key to making an MMORPG.
And I'm sick, to death, of it.
I adore the idea of an MMORPG.. I... loathe, the MMOs that have been made to-date. They're all doing it wrong.
Animations which occur often, like walking are important. Animations which do not occur often like dying are not. Bum cheeks are more important than animations when you have to look at them on your avatar from the moment you switch on the game till the moment its switched of.
I don't think we need an uber-rig for good animations. It's just a question of interest from the Devs. In EQ2 animations were updated a few times in the past years and now look very realistic (especially the running animation). This means that the Devs realized it's an important part in the game and decided to actually do something about it.
I quit Vanguard and Lotro only because of the horrible animations, nothing else. If my character is standing like a scarecrow, runs like a wooden string puppet and drops dead flat like a pancake it is preventing any imersion in the game (and seeing your character moving in 3rd view is part of the "RPG" portion of an MMORPG). So yes, Devs need to understand it's a major part of the game and it needs to be adressed (whether it's done before release or by patching like in EQ2).
"However, a lot more could be done on MMOs than is being done and, honestly, I don't believe that a lot of it would overload an average PC. Most computers can handle rag doll death, for example, but few (or no?) MMOs use it."
You are exactly right in what you say and its nice to meet an MMORPG.com staff that seems to have a fuctional brain and doesn't seem to let the advertisements do the talking for them.
The downright myth that animation or more complex game mechanics being put in an MMO would cause severe lag is a load of garbage, the truth is, no one has even attempted to actually try and put something more complex in an MMO before because the developers have found that they can get far more money both quicker and more effectively by stringing a select few along with promises of shiny items and epic gear and levels.
What they fail to realize is that this will last them only for so long, people lose interest in these sorts of games, the only MMO's to ever try to achieve something different was both AoC and Darkfall and frankly, their efforts were completely half-assed, if they had actually pushed on and tried to fix what they had they wouldn't be as dead as they are today.
If someone bothered to create something like a Mirror's Edge MMO as a sandbox people would be flocking and not just from the MMO industry, remove the grinding, remove the pointless string along tactics and you will attract far more than the measley few millions that we've been getting.
And I don't care that everyone else is going to tell me "But but! We have millions on what we currently have already!" the huge corporations in other industries consider what we consider a success as pocket change and thats the honest truth, we will get nowhere as an industry if developers act nothing more like scam artists and refuse to give people a tangible product.
Agreed, City of Heroes is the perfect example that what the author of the article wrote is true. It's a 5 year old game, and it still looks great (sure, there have been a few updates, but anyway), mostly thanks to the great effects and great Havok ragdoll animations. All hail Crypitc! :)
A game that has killer death graphics is Mount and Blade. You can set it to rag doll and when a person dies they fall limp to the ground. If they right near the edge of a ledge or on a ladder or stairs, they tumble off or down it as they would in real life and sometimes the get hung up on stuff and hang there. So all most of these games would need to do is just put in rag doll physics and you'd be good to go.
re: EQ animations
With The Serpent's Spine, they introduced a new race, the drakkin, on a new model base. This would have been a perfect time to give it some jaw-dropping (or at least adequate) animations, right? HA. I'd rather leave my drakkins on horseback permanently than to watch them run (one of the most common animation of all).
I don't mind badly animated. Goodness knows, I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons in the 70's and 80's. What I hate are animations that are distractingly bad, as with the drakkin mentioned above. My dark elf might make the same motion no matter what kind of sword she's holding, but at least it doesn't annoy me to watch her.
I actually kind of enjoy watching my EQ2 assassin and bruiser fighting. That's not so bad, ya know?
Thinking about it overnight, and only other MMo i can say i enjoyed animations apart from AOC that i mentioned earlier was Matrix Online. Was strange combat system, but animation was wicked when you got locked into combat with your enemy. Shame it was yet again one the games that to me didnt have much end game content to keep me interested.
So you're asking for better animations? Well, why not but is it really so imporant?
I look at the past successful games and the evolution of gaming and I see better sound, nicer graphics and many many poor game play.
Honestly graphics are just a topping in a FUN game even in MMOs.
I'd rather have studios spend more time and $$$ on gameplay and content then and only then if they can afford it, enhance graphics and animations.
But well before that and especially in MMO I wish the studio spent more time on the following key elements that are always poorly done:
In fact all that stands between the player and his character.
I'm very surprized such major features are mostly rushed out considering they can make or break the game play.
Don't get me wrong, I'm an explorer type of gamer so I like nice graphics but they always come after the game play. A nice game with poor game play won't last more than a few hours. Honestly when you are engaged in challenging and fast combat you don't really focus on animations you don't have the time to.
[quote]
I mean, seriously. Imagine if the outcry if graphical standards hadn’t been raised!
[/quote]
No one will notice.
Part of the problem of old games, is that as soon you have played a type of game with best graphics, you are spoiled.
I have played Quake1 for six years, with not problem, but after a few months playing something else, it hurts to look back at Quake1.
The thing is that "graphical standards" don't need to "raise". THAT IDEA IS WRONG.
And.. what is a enhancement?
Look to this version of Turret Defense.
www.vectortd.com
You could probabbly have graphics like this on a Atari 2600. Vectorial polygons. But is still cool today 2009.
Oh the deliciousness of reading this on mmoRolePlayingGames.com
Oh the deliciousness of reading this on mmoRolePlayingGames.com
QFE!
I always find it funny when people talk about bad animations in LotRo, one of the few game with a storyline and something more to do than killing mobs.
TBH I couldn't care less about decent animation. I am far more interested in current and future MMO's releasing in a complete state rather than the bug laden morass that all of them have been. Seriously... if better animation means that the MMO releases with the same bugs as they currently do, or... worse.... MORE buggy/feature incomplete? I'd rather pass on the 'decent' animation in favor of better bug stomping, better feature completion and better overall gameplay.
When was the last MMO that released in a state that it was REALLY ready for the public? To be honest I can't remember... WAR wasn't.... BAD.... but it really should have waited another 3 months before releasing, imo... AOC? Same story... released too soon... released too buggy.... released too empty of content.... The list goes on.
So while I agree that better animation would be nice? It's not exactly high on my 'god I wish" list. Right up at the top is "God I wish someone, anyone, would release a feature complete MMORPG on Day 1"... To be brutally honest I can't think of a single one that has since DAOC other than WOW, DDO and LotRO. (yes, DDO was feature complete for what Turbine was trying to do with it. We won't go into their failed design with that one...)
The issue with the games industrie these days (from a animators perspective) is that everyone going into animation well the majority all want to be model designers and not actualy animators so there isnt a large enough pool of computer game based "character" animators .
In my opionion graphics and animations are really important, I can't play games with poor animations and out-of-date graphics, unless for nostalgic reasons.
AoC has the best MMO animations I've ever seen so far, when the game was on the pipe I've read they actually hired professional contemporary dancers to capture their moves, so in that sense, they did a good job.
Great article! I must say it has become one of my gripes No1 about MMos now. The combat looks and feels so incredibly dull, and thats mainly because the animations I have seen OVER and OVER and OVER for years now.
When the author says:
"No one really expects anyone to parry attacks in real-time and have full out movie-quality sword fights. But just because it cannot be perfect, doesn’t mean it cannot be better."
I say, why the heck not? Why expect anything LESS than the best? Life is way too brief to be satisfied with mediocre things! Ok, sure, maybe movie quality isnt possible at the moment. But things can be made better, and I am sure game developers are just lazy and they think people wont mind. Or take it as a conventional expectation.
I really, totally can not STAND this EQ type combat anymore. I am so filled and done with "go to one mob, press all combat attacks and watch the pre-defined boring animation X over and over." When any of these EQ2, WOW and whatnot chars attack, it is always so symbolic.. some animation runs and you never have the feeling of combat any time. Sure, when it was new we didnt know better. Thats why I loved the AoC combat. It wasnt perfect for other reasons, but at least with my 2 axes swinging Barbarian I got something to see that at least LOOKED halfway like combat. I want to have the feeling of impact. This new spear wielding class in LOTRO had quite a decend combat animation set. (Forgot the name of the class now.)
Or magic. How terribly boring the magic looks in many games. I recall what a letdown the magic animation in Vanguard was and still is - such a contrast to the lush world. I want to see fireballs raining down and smacking on people, burning them, and they try to make it out or something. Maybe some randomness in reactions, and some way that the NPC responds to my action, and not I perform my stuff, he does his, and we all totally ignore each others last actions.
It is still a large way to go. But personally, I am so done with this EQ style combat, standing in front of one bear/boar/gnoll, hack hack hack 5 min, then move on to next mob, all the same boring combat animations. People stare at the skill bar usually anyway, which also is a matter, since the entire EQ-style combat system is just so outdated now. I really hope future MMOs make more visceral and impact-combat a priority, something that feels more like action and fast paced and not like a pawn plowing his field of crops.
Dana,
Hasn't animation gotten 100% better since Everquest..? Look at EQ2's animation, etc. Even Everquests engine and animation in the last 10 years has been greatly increased. Vanguard has great animation, i just wish it was mor polished.
BTW, "WISH" was a great game, possibly one of the best game worlds I ever played in. It just a shame that it was centered around PnC movement.
Sorry, not to troll, but seriously these "why not?" columns have to stop. Just my two cents. It's one thing if there's a couple what if columns but this post is the 4th one now and it's getting a little on my nerves . The historical mmo's was good but then all the other ones... yeah...
It does seem that game makers have gone totally rabid when it comes to graphics but in my opinion current graphics are well above my graphic needs while content and animation are well BELOW my needs.
there are so many things I expect to see and immerse in that simply dont exist or are in the crudest forms possible.
rarely can you climb trees or cliffs, you never swing on a rope and fights with mobs are basicly 2 mobs standing 3 feet apart swaping blows (and a desprit few of those) I would be nice to see a tumble and some punches and kicks and yes Id like to see charactors have several more states ,, if your on fire you dont just stand there like it doesnt exist,,
I also think they shgould make much more use of mobs as objects like walls or pillars or doors that you can smash and "kill"
a precious few games have any siege weapons whatso ever and nearly all games have fortifications with no doors so mobs just run in.
WORLDS ARE STATIC this is a double edged sword as sure new people get the exact same expirence that the guy 2 years ago but also the guy that joind 2 years ago has no reason to go back to lower zones and they become very desolate and making a world too static and predictable is the definition of non-immersion and un-believeable hence terms like TOONS.
QFE!
I always find it funny when people talk about bad animations in LotRo, one of the few game with a storyline and something more to do than killing mobs.
I also found the animations and models very bland. I always felt that LOTRO had alot of potential but after Moria's launch I was turned right off and canceled my account less then a month in.
More to do then killing mobs? Give me a break bud LOL. LOTRO is no different then any other MMORPG on the market, i played it for almost 2 years....
I'd ask the same question, but when I do, I always get shouted out by the pixel junkies that instead of animations prefer pink rainbows and shooting stars and fireworks worthy of the 4'th of july comming from their characters behind when they do the simplest thing.
Just look at SWG. It had gorgeous animations, one I remember very fondly was when shooting the Rocketlauncher...
My stormtrooper(I played a trooper, not some Whiney Luke Jedi wannabe) would kneel down, put his E-11 carbine on the ground(!!!) put the launcher on his shoulder, aim and fire it, before grabbing his E-11 carbine and getting back on his feet.
It was such "art" that I always carried 10 with me(They were bugged, and hard to craft, so no one used em in PvP or PvE) when I could find some.
Then with the CU and NGE... The animation vanished, replaced by a carryable gun that fired lightshows worthy of the New years eve fireworks. Instead of a game filled with motion, we now had a game where your screen was filled with rainbows cluttering and hiding anythig going on in the game...
And, we see it again in the upcomming SOE hero game, where again animations have been swapped for nauseating(typo?) purple sparly rainbows. Instead of animations...we get fireworks. And I hate it, and thank Thor and Odin that I'm not an epeleptic, because then I might have had to quit as a gamer.
Trust me, at no point would I rather have pretty animations than a good game. However, for a major studio, this is not an either/or proposition. Saying "we chose to concentrate on good content rather than good animations" is just code for saying "designers cost less to hire than animators."
"So you're asking for better animations? Well, why not but is it really so imporant?!"
So many people just seem to not get the fundamentals of how to make a game and its amazing, for a 3D game you NEED animation, without animation there is no movement in those fancy 3D characters you cling to so much, without animation you cannot see what is going on in the game, without animation there is no real-time engine.
Many high end graphics games to date and not just MMO's put the bear minimum on animation, they're just lazy, I see games like Legend of Zelda and Super Mario 64 having ten times better animations than the retarded robot walk that many 'high end' games operate on today.
Fallout 3 is a great example, you'd think they'd have the decency to at least vary the walking a bit more or the run, it looks rather ridiculous when you see super mutants fifty feet higher than you walking in the exact same way.
You guys trying to argue against this have absolutely no argument, there is none, even if you reduce the animations to the bare minimum you still have animations, the only time you could even consider not having animations in a 3D game is if it were turn based but even then guess what? *gasp* you still need to animate the characters on the screen so they actually shift forward slightly in order to attack!
In fact I would say that the highest priorities of games design are not graphics, graphics is just an after thought, what should be focused on is the gameplay mechanics and animation, it doesn't matter if you have a stick figure, if you have it really well animated and put an interesting game behind it then it'll look great regardless.
If you guys want graphics so badly then get a text based game and stick a bunch of really pretty pictures up on the backgrounds because thats basically all you'd have without animation, the majority of you simply don't realize how essential it is in development to have even the minimum effort put into animation.
Great article Dana! Gets the ideas flowing! :)
To some extent I have to agree, but with out the detail the immersion factor would be lacking. When developers start to cap out on what they can do with details/textures we'll start to see additional animations.
Funny thing is if you compare sports games year after year they always push the bar on textures, animations, and AI.
I think some got a little confused by my earlier post about "...really beefy rigs for better animations". I did not mean a high end gaming pc. Rigging is simply a term we use in modeling/ animation that take a mannequin-esque 3d character/ object and attaches morphs and control joints for animations, which are then tied to bone hierarchies, for animation. The more you have, the more lifelike the object is. For facial emotes, a good round number is around 80 points on the face that can be morphed and animated, depending on the character type, for example. Each point is located and attached manually, which of course takes time.
Think of those old string puppets. The more strings you have attached to parts of Pinochio's body, the more lifelike he moves (depending on your skill at puppeteering, of course). Same can be said for 3d models. The problem is, many mmo studios do not care for a high level of control, hence why some emotes look bland. It has less to do with your own personal machine (most of the time of an animation load is spent loading the models/ textures involved- not the actual animation sequence). Now we have established what a " really beefy rig for better animations" is for.
In contrast, the NUMBER of animations available, completely depends on the time and budget for the animations. Since most people know how to rig for keyframing, that is what is most often used. However, it is the choice that takes the most time, thereby cutting down on the number of animations available (ie death animations, for topic purposes). Some have recently started using a motion capture camera setup, which is hugely expensive, but well worth it, I think. By using motion capture and real actors, the skeleton is derived straight from the animation file, and can then be directly attached to the character rig. See that actor hold a weapon realistically on camera, and you see your character model do the exact same thing. In fact, the ONLY drawback to motion capture right now, is the cost of the equipment and the actors. In my opinion though, if you are aiming for a AAA title, the equipment should be factored into your budget anyways these days. It will most often not only pay for itself in the first title, but you can indeed use the equipment for subsequent titles, thereby bringing much more value.
Then you have the new Havoc engine that games like Requiem: Bloodymare uses. While giving "super-realistic" ragdoll physics, the rigging is considerably different for that engine. Not many animators today really are comfortable yet with it, but we are all learning. This is a really cheap way of getting nearly infinet "death animations", as well as "falling", and so forth. Expect to see this engine put to far more use in the near future, as studios learn how to use it.
My personal opinion, being a cinematix affectionado, is to use both motion capture for the "stale animations" like sword swinging, emotes, running, stuff like that- and use Havoc for that bloody goodness at the end of life, whether a 10 ft tall Minotaur throws you, or you get cleaved in half and your arm chucked 20 paces away. I expect studios to soon be using both of these methods, in far more popularity, to address the problem.
"My personal opinion, being a cinematix affectionado, is to use both motion capture for the "stale animations" like sword swinging, emotes, running, stuff like that- and use Havoc for that bloody goodness at the end of life, whether a 10 ft tall Minotaur throws you, or you get cleaved in half and your arm chucked 20 paces away. I expect studios to soon be using both of these methods, in far more popularity, to address the problem."
It depends on how complex your game is, sometimes you have to use a mixture or use simple animations so that its just easier for the programmers to actually get the animations into the game without it looking ridiculous, Empire Total War is an example, they did motion capture for all the infantry fighting apparently and while yeah the animations themselves look cool, very rarely do the weapons and characters actually meet so they either end up going through each other when they shouldn't or they just fight thin air because of the way the game was coded.
Sometimes its better to have quite simple animations and actually intergrate it into the game directly so that when you click that button you do that strike in that direction as opposed to doing fancy spinny spinny swordfighting and end up just fighting thin air. Pre-Cu SWG did the animations great but it ended up actually looking rather silly because very rarely did the animations actually play in a realistic fashion because people were just too busy spamming combat skills at each other.
You've also got to bare in mind that motion capture is apparently far more difficult to do than just doing some sequences in a 3D software and even then I wouldn't touch animation with a ten foot pole because the idea of key-framing just drives me insane.
Trust me, at no point would I rather have pretty animations than a good game. However, for a major studio, this is not an either/or proposition. Saying "we chose to concentrate on good content rather than good animations" is just code for saying "designers cost less to hire than animators."
People always ask to choose one or the other like do you want Gameplay or Graphics? I say I need it all to come together bercause if theres one thing that bothers me then it'll get on my nerves the whole time playing and just put me off. If the PVP isn't good then I wont want to play it and if the graphics arn't good then I don't want to explore and if the animations are crappy then I wont enjoy combat.
It all needs to be good and thats why WoW is so popular because it does so much spot on where as other mmorpgs make you choose.
only 1 good reason we compromise witht he graphics these days its not like going out and buying a xbox360 and a brand new game
these days you need a almost brand new pc with top notch graphics cards to play anything so a xbox360 $199 + game out the door
brand new gaming laptop / desktop with 3+ GHz and ndivia graphics or ATI graphics cards with 2 gig + of ddr3 ram will run u in a couple
1,000's i mean would you rather buy a 200 - 300 $ gameing system to play new games and a basic older pc to run online games insted of spending money your dont have on expensive shyt that will be out dated in no time the way games and their graphics are?
im not rich i could barly afford a xbox360 and my laptop is over 5 years old and i cant play half the games online that i want b ecause they require more advanced graphics and memory that my laptop has but look at te xbox360 the system is like what 3-4 maybe 5 years old since it came out and still not outdates its kinda annoying how pc's get outdatd faster than gaming systems and gaming systems are cheaper
thats all i have to say
"It all needs to be good and thats why WoW is so popular because it does so much spot on where as other mmorpgs make you choose."
Anyone who's done their research knows that the reason WoW was a success was because of Blizzards massive marketing campaign and the fact they already had a massive franchise which automatically gives you a playerbase. Gameplay wise it doesn't really offer anything that other MMORPGs haven't already offered except they made it far more easier for people to level up etc. in fact I don't know why I'm even saying this because I just know I'm going to be ignored anyway as a lot of players here aren't interested in facts and just want stirred up drama which must be why the Darkfall forums are currently the most ridiculously active.
While I am sure neither of those things hurt Blizzard, I'd say the biggest reason it got so huge is that they executed things so well and simply for a general audience.
Too many MMOs require a book and a spreadsheet for someone new to the genre to figure out. WoW distilled that perfectly and, somewhat paradoxically to this article, did it in a way that looked good on a large range of PCs.
Oh yes I agree what kept and still keeps the subscribers is how simple and solid the game is, in fact thats what it usually takes just to get me to at least try a game, but what got the millions was the fact that they actually reached out to people in the real world rather than just spam advertisements across the internet, I'm sure even if you were in an area that they weren't focusing on you would have at least noticed the odd bus ad or advertisement in a game store, I know I did. People who use the internet have likely gotten into games so they're probably going to be on the lookout for a game anyway for the most part.
Current MMORPGs aren't necessarily complex, far from it, they're bloody simple the repeated grinding for levels and all the gear and statistics just give the illusion of complexity and most people just simply don't think in that way so it seems unnatural to them.
Its the same with me, I love games like Mirror's Edge but when I pick up an MMO now its just utterly boring because all it is really is just a bunch of numbers flashing up on the screen, they don't even attempt to entertain me with flashy animations which would at least keep things interesting.
Understood. I got the sense from the other comments that some people were misconstruing possibilities. Yeah, ragdoll and current "PhysX" should 100% be in every mmo made henceforth. This and similar measures I agree with.
Don't worry, I do trust you.
I see your concern and I would also be very happy to have nice animations.
Even there is so much to be enhanced or simply fixed in MMO that animations are far behind in the list. At least in my book.
Now can studios afford doing nice animations along with the rest. Could be but all is a matter of choice. And contrary to FPS animations aren't the main concern in MMO so far.
"Now can studios afford doing nice animations along with the rest. Could be but all is a matter of choice. And contrary to FPS animations aren't the main concern in MMO so far."
Just to correct you there, animators get paid just about the same as 3D Modellers but of course it purely depends on the personality of the company, most of it is down to either deadlines or just outright laziness and frankly a lot of the time I have found it is more due to laziness than actually having a problem implementing proper animations in the game.
True, but a AAA MMO is monstrously complex in and of itself. I am not talking about games where some guy is running it from a few basements, I am talking big studio fare. With recent releases of 3ds Max and Maya, we have integrated object collision, which should also stop the problems stated above. Also, I agree that the programmers need to make sure it works in the right instance. However, choosing between a motion captured file, and a key-framed file to insert in the code, does not make a difference. Once the captured file is attached to a skeleton, and the skeleton to the model, along with supporting texture maps, it doesn't care what file type originated the animation, be it captured, keyed, or even Havoced. Even Havoced at that point, will just load the animation parameters into its engine and get the end result. Not as much control over it (unless you are OCD about it), but it really doesn't require much, if at all,special coding on the programmers part to distinguish between the three.
The great thing about motion capture, is it generates its own key frames. You don't have to move/rotate a pinky finger in to a new XYZ rotation! Capture ball has already done that to the skeleton you built and attached the file to. Now just put that skeleton on the rigged model, and away it goes! I hate key framing as much as anyone else. It is sadistic work, keyframing. But it seems that is still the focus in school these days. Not slamming the technique by any means, as I use it myself- but there are more effecient ways to do the same thing, with better results. So any enhancement that can get us away from that, I am all for. If you have ever had the chance to work between the two animation types, I guarantee you will prefer motion captured over spending days for one keyframed sequence!
Trust me, at no point would I rather have pretty animations than a good game. However, for a major studio, this is not an either/or proposition. Saying "we chose to concentrate on good content rather than good animations" is just code for saying "designers cost less to hire than animators."
Dana, im so glad u said that. I grt so tired of people on these forums acting like there can only be one or the other. Why cant we have new updated graphics and a good content based game at the same time....
Out of the ones I've played "the Matrix online" had some pretty unique combat.
DDO has fantastic animation and landscapes.
Most games suffer from the animation dance during combat. SWTOR may break out of this.
I am with the OP 100%. Why dont a sword stabb stop when you hit?
Bioware are using motions suits now for their animations, that will probably make things better but it really sucks that they use 10 years old animations in the latest games.
The combat doesnt look the least bit real and it should today with modern graphics.
Congratulations on your article.
It really points a valid point and the reason which it took so long to be brought should be basically the reason why it hasn't changed - people haven't asked for that.
At least for me, I never paid much attention to animation, but thanks to this read I started to pay more attention and see how pathethic animations relatively are when compared to the graphical evolution of MMOs, you could even say it has received no progression. In my case it's because I'm pretty much outdated outside the MMO genre, so I don't have that "neighbor's greener grass" to envy.
Still, the reason it has not changed is because customers haven't talked much about it - so hopefully your article will make people talk and ask for it.
This is essentially important for the growth of the MMO genre to make it compete with other genres and absorb players from them, so MMOs can go on on their quest to dominate the world in a true Matrix (haha).
I generally agree with the article.
Even if we don't animate every single different type of trauma animation, we could at least get some groups of such. For example, why not have a different animation based on the type of attack?
Melee hit = grab chest and stagger a bit
Melee block/parry = attacker's weapon seems to "bounce" from the target, who swings weapon/shield to the side
Dodge = target hops back and/or sidesteps a noticable bit, then goes back to a neutral position
Ranged DD hit = stagger back a step or two
DOT / AOE = go to one knee for a moment, maybe stagger in random direction one step
These are just some ideas. The point is that even if we don't try to animate a perfectly realistic sequence to everything that hits a model, maybe we can just compromise for now on slightly more realistic hit animations.
Too bad they cancelled Gods and Heroes, google that for some sweet animation videos.
You know, I can at least understand why we don't have more variety of animations to match every hit location or death event. You could make hundreds of highly specific animations and still wish you could have more.
However, what is inexcusable is the largely mediocre to poor quality of existing character animations in most MMORPGs today. Quality does vary. You'll definitely notice the difference when you play a game with good animation, then play one where it's lacking.
It seems to come down to three things; time, money and talent. You really need all three to get things right, but a huge focus on talent. Talented animators can do more with in time and monetary budgets. Even for really good animators, it's about having the time to tweak animations until they are just right. I've animated 3D humans for short clips of CGI video and I know the rough animations are less than half the fight, the fine tuning is what takes time, but pays the highest dividends.
The thing is, the extra effort is worth it. Players, when turning away from a game they went into with high hopes, actually DO often cite poor animations as a common element in what turned them off to a title. Great animations won't save a game with troubles elsewhere, but poor animations can be the tipping point when someone is on the fence about a decent, or even good game.
It's also something people will notice right away during that crucial first impressions phase. I can think of two titles I've played where the horrible animations actually precluded me from giving those games a fair shake. And a couple where the lackluster animations contributed to me leaving games I might otherwise have stuck with.
There really is no excuse for lack of quality in animations we see in most MMORPGs today.
To those complaining about the availability of top notch graphics/ animations vs 10 year old techniques, have to understand a few things. The pc market recieved it's first real "next-gen" turn over only a couple of years ago. It was only then that enough pcs, with the capabilities, had propagated the market to an extent worthy of trying to implement next gen graphics/ animations. Now some studios have jumped on it, Funcom being one. Cryptic as I understand it, has recently as well as Star Vault, and CCP. You have to understand, that your technique of animation, determines how the models are to be rigged, and thusly sometimes the models themselves. It is little doubt this is one reason it has taken years of development for an artist team to pull together all the required art/ animation for a top notch game, in the past. Also, it has only been within the last few years that Autodesk has made certain functions, like object collision and Havoc rigging/ motion capture of lower end models, a real possible alternative. I dare say, all games made today, use one of Autodesk's various products to accomplish the task, and thereby all studios are at the mercy of their artist's ability to navigate their <frustrating> programs for the best solutions.
Now understand, this only came about in the last few years, I mean probably trully the last three. Since many mmos to be released this year and next, probably got their production start around that time, it is sufficient to say that many of them will likely include the new animating techniques, and thusly more animations and at a better quality. In fact, I would conclude that the ones that choose NOT to include it, either began before this timeframe, or lacked the knowledge of how to use them in their own pipeline at the start.
Bare in mind though, that unless the game is getting a graphical overhaul, any expansions typically use the older techniques that the original game was based on. This is why WOTLK hasnt gotten better character models/ animations, as well as LOTRO, even though both put out expansions this year.
To real rpg'ers graphics never meant sh--. ok, i played temple of apshai on the commodore 64, and it knocked my sox off for about two weeks when i was 13 years old. All the older mmo crowd wanted was a computer version of D&D, and WoW is as close as it gets right now. The cartoon graphics are endearing. We like it. The closer computer animated graphics get to "realism" the less interested I am.
When I read the forums on this godforsaken website, most of them have to do with complaints concerning the lack of good, new, emersive, all enveloping mmorpg's. People like Wow or people like Eve. Warhammer and Conan are still too young for any of the mmo addicts to accept. What really matters is a break. Take a couple months off, meth head.
You play Wow for a few years and you realize that there is always some dumb mofo that has better gear than you. There is always someone who kicks your ass. It sucks, but that is what an mmo really is, competition. We LOVE competing. Even on PvE realms.
As soon as I can muster up enough dough to get a new comp, I will get WAR. Wow let me keep my little 128M graphic card without having to worry about an upgrade for years. Like I said, graphics don't mean sh. Beating the crap out of some other toon is what rocks my boat. ---Props to darkfall for having full loot, even if the game is a knocked off, half-ass'ed morrowind clone, full looting adds some real meaning to the term RRRRRRRAAAAAAAPPPPPPPEEEE!
The boss will immediately ask two questions when this is brought up: first how will it impact server performance, and then how will it impact client performance. Keep in mind, this impact must scale with the expected number of players that will be in the affected area. Adding any semblance of realistic animation is likely going to increase the load on both, even if the server simply chooses the most likely animation from a pool of say 10 different death animations (ragdoll physics aside). A different route would be to have the server send a simple "toe tag" to let the client know you died, at which point it could choose a random animation - less realistic, but a step in the right direction. There are teams dedicated to these performance issues, and this is one area that is often left on the cutting room floor.
I'm not saying that it isn't possible. This will improve with time, but it has to contend with the the balancing act that is inherent in the mmo genre. Most likely, the day you see mmo's with animations as good as fps's is the day you'll see fps's support thousands of people on the same map. In Requiem, they very cleverly placed mobs so that you never have too many in the immediate area. As for CoX, they do use increased physics (mainly for particle fx), but this is handled by the client, and, if you notice, enemies still all die in a similar fashion - even thrown in the air they perform the animation as if they were still standing on the ground. For that matter, keep an eye out the next time you're playing your favorite fps in multiplayer on a large map - when you shoot a guy in the back does he fall forward?
"Realistic" or "immersive" animations?
No thanks.
I don't play console games, or even offline PC games, so keeping up with graphics there isn't an issue. I like my MMOs to have first-rate set and costume design, and I like character movement to be smooth and practical to use; beyond that "reactive" animations, where the character does something visual because of something that's happenng in-game, are just distracting and irritating.
Get killed, grab chest, fall over - that's absolutely fine. Set-piece reaction animations are all gosh-wow the first time you see them, but in MMO gameplay you get to see them thousands of times and after the novelty wears off in about ten minutes, the main thing you end up thinking is "oh just get on with it".
I dont see how using a motion suit to get the animations to look a lot more real would influense the server performance.
However to use collision detection to actually make the sword hit the opponent will, yes. And I think it is worth it.
We have a lot faster net today then 10 years ago so I don't see while this isn't possible.
And of course we can have some games with the old, crappy animations but not a single MMO have good ones, I can live with a game that uses instances to make the fights look really good if that is what it takes.
Graphics have evolved so much in the last 10 years but inthis aspect have the MMOs been stomping in the same spot.
Hopefully all the motion suit animations will work well - but didnt they do that for Conan?
Aion looks to have some good combat animation but will just have to see how fluid that is.
Everquest II has some pretty good character animations.
Does it fit more squarely into this criteria than other games?
I'd rather the big gaming companies put the kind of emphasis needed in quality animation into quality of game.
That's the hugest problem with the gaming market now. It seems they try to capture the user with flashy graphics and bouncing mammories (Well that part is ok). Everquest Original is a great example. When luclin came out we had all the new player models. It was neat, I turned my character model on to use the new mount system but that was about it.
Lets look at how this whole genre started, paper pencils and dice. It wasn't neccisary for the players to have flashy images of their characters. Some of my friends would draw what their character looked like, it didn't change the game one bit. And more often then not the flashiest images in the room were the stolen gas station signs and the logo on my box of gum drops.
MMORPGs is about living a story and making new friends. I personally enjoy mine with 80 of my friends behind me taking turns kicking dragons in the genitals till they ejaculate pure fear. But do we really need our computers crying for liquid nitrogen cooling to make realistic jellybeans move in unison to the jello-ish mass inside the shirts of Elves? Not really.
Give us games, and give us good games that can be run on computers made in the past 5 years. Then once that solid game is made, throw in the character animations to assist in the story telling.
Dana, im so glad u said that. I grt so tired of people on these forums acting like there can only be one or the other. Why cant we have new updated graphics and a good content based game at the same time....
Because of time and money.
Trust me, at no point would I rather have pretty animations than a good game. However, for a major studio, this is not an either/or proposition. Saying "we chose to concentrate on good content rather than good animations" is just code for saying "designers cost less to hire than animators."
I'm just not following that logic, care to explain a tad more ..?
Horrible animations can ruin a game(Darkfall), but superb animation means nothing without great gameplay. As you can see, "animations" is the least of any gamers worries and I'm dumbfounded as to your standpoiont. Everyone wants better animations, but not at the cost of other development.
I love how every dweeb with three minutes worth of Wikipedia education and cracked copy of Maya thinks they're an authority on graphics and animation.
All too often, these are the exact same folks pitching a fit over the use of "immersion-breaking" channeling and instancing, which their completely unrealistic expectations drive developers to resort to.
Ding Ding Ding we have a winner.
And here's the kicker. Something Ms Massey sort fo misses when she talks about an inadequite number or variety of death animations. The death animations or the particular event animations in a game are almost completely irrelevant. Yes it is nice that they are fancy and varried. But it is the characters LIFE animations that add far more to the immersion.
And by life animations I do not mean e-motes, or attack or spellcasting routines. Yes they can make you go Wow! and hold your attention a little bit. But ultimately what sucks you in. What really holds you to your character and makes it feel more real to you is those animation sequences that you never really notice are there.
One excellent way to look at this is to compare to fairly current games. One older with a very low rez graphics engine, and somewhat absurd cartoony avatars. (in this case woW, sorry haters) and the other a much more state of the art newer game with a very detailed high rez engine and beutifully detailed more realistic avatars. (WAR). Both games are using very very similar source material, ie races, overall feel etc.
Now most who have played both games seem to come away with a strange impression that WAR feels more dead. There is something more unnatural about the more highly detailed avatars. They just cannot put their finger on it. The cruder brightly colored and cartoony WoW avatars just seem more alive. And most could not offer an explanation to why.
The reason why is simple. When they made WoW, and animated the avatars Blizzard borrowed some tricks from old school cartoons. They put in a most of subtle almost imperceptable animations, that the players eye registers even if they dont consciously percieve. The WoW characters do not just stand in neutral positions, they are in constant subtle motion, shifting weight from foot to foot, scratching, and subtlest yet most important of all, breathing. WoW avatars have a constant animation of breathing. Their chests rising and falling. In cold weather it even shows as misty breath. if you are not specifically looking for it you almost never notice it, but your eye percieves it, and it deepens the illusion and the immersion in the game.
Whereas WAR spent alot of time doing beautifully detailed avatars, with lots of on event animations for combat and e-motes. But they skipped much of the subtle neutral movements. As a result while the game looks great on the surface, your eye percieves the avatars as much more manequin like for reasons that you just cant quite put your finger on.
I dont see how using a motion suit to get the animations to look a lot more real would influense the server performance.
However to use collision detection to actually make the sword hit the opponent will, yes. And I think it is worth it.
We have a lot faster net today then 10 years ago so I don't see while this isn't possible.
And of course we can have some games with the old, crappy animations but not a single MMO have good ones, I can live with a game that uses instances to make the fights look really good if that is what it takes.
Graphics have evolved so much in the last 10 years but inthis aspect have the MMOs been stomping in the same spot.
Two words: It doesn't. In many cases, animations captured by the famous dot-suits, are actually smaller in file size, than a comparable keyframed file. The reason is, every interaction between body parts, is all recorded anyway to hit the final key in the sequence. Want a finger sticking from a fist that is waving? Do it with an actor in real time. Now go back and do it again, trying key framing, and you will find that there are a lot of potential keys that could make up the animation for it to look right. Not so with what you call the "motion suits". With those, there are two main keys- the beginning frame and the end frame. Makes for a much smaller file size in many cases.
Now in regards to server performance, it means absolutely nothing which you use. The only data stored on the server, is spread sheets and tables. All of the graphics/ sound/ animation files are stored client side. If your pc is descent enough to load hi-rez graphics in an mmo without a hiccup, then it is certainly able to load corresponding animations with no problem at all (unless there is a bug). It is in the models/ textures loading usually that get people into trouble because those are some of your larger file sizes. All the server is doing is reading spreadsheets like a D&D game master is reading the campaign and dice roll results. All the hard work is put on the end user's pc.
Instances are in for two reasons. Dungeon instances are there to seperate your crawl from some epeen looking to annoy. Other instances, such as AoC's are there to help cut down on the number of players possible in the zone, since your pc partially loads every one of them in the zone, and then completely loads them once they come within view. If it is high rez, that is a LOT to load for the average pc. Many cinematics require a server farm of some size to render something similiar. However, in game animations are small compared to those other files, and therefore do not in any way contribute to the hiccup potential. This goes for both keyframed and motion captured.
I wouldn't be quite that harsh on most people. It is simply that many are uneducated as to what we go through to make things work the way they do. But that's where it is our jobs as professionals; to come in and educate, however we can. Only then can we match up expectations with results.
All too often the ignorant come into a studio, guns 'ablazing', like you said, thinking that because they have this really cool idea of what is supposed to happen, which somehow got them a director/ producer/ designer position- that it will actually happen that way. Wrong. It happens the way that Autodesk says it will happen. Otherwise, hope you have a really good plug-in writer or two on staff.
"I love how every dweeb with three minutes worth of Wikipedia education and cracked copy of Maya thinks they're an authority on graphics and animation."
I love how you think that you can act like the cool or tough guy on the internet and not look like a complete moron.
Do you seriously think any of these developers currently making these games even have a degree? Maybe some do, but the majority of them probably just learned the skills like the rest of us.
Go back to your cave troll
Question: Are ragdoll type physics too taxing on a MMO not to be used? I'm thinking a game like Oblivion or Fallout 3 where everything happens using a ragdoll type physics, like falling off a cliff, the npcs or player looks like a ragdoll falling through the sky, even falling 100x's you land 100 different ways.
Using animation suits for typical movements shouldn't impact the server's performance at all - personally I'm all for them, as well. Choosing from even a small subset of data on the server to determine what animation should be used when someone is killed would have an impact on the server - albeit not drastically for a single person. However, when you throw in a few thousand people, then it can get more taxing. It's not processing huge chunks of data for a few people; it's processing very small chunks for a massive amount of people, so even simple things can have a significant impact - not drastic, necessarily, but significant to your overall goals. Also keep in mind that network speed and server processing power are two different things, though you're right, both have improved dramatically in the last decade. Where the client takes the hit is rendering the animation for the 50 people on his screen, though unless the animation pulls some funky fx that start pulling textures out of a hat, this probably won't make much of a difference on an up-to-date computer. So at the end of the day, the arguments against better death animations are dwindling, meaning we'll probably see them drastically improve sooner rather than later. As for the rest of the animations that are only handled client-side, well I could only point to the toolsets for mmo's as an excuse (and it's not much of one), but that's a whole new can of worms.
Still, I'm on the fence about whether it's worth the cost right now, though as you note, instancing would be a good way to make it happen. And perhaps to even further your argument, I would cite Planetside. I can't tell you how disappointed I am that nobody really pays any attention to the technical marvel that was Planetside (admittedly it was far from perfect, but what they squeezed out of the servers was amazing imho). But again it comes down to a balancing act, and the people with the money carry the most weight. They like a clearly delineated and catchy feature list, and putting "realistic animations" on the box in this day and age often strikes the wrong cord with them (they expect that to be a given). That being the case, the arguments for improving animation such as these may be the only way let the money know how important it is.
Nope. Not really at all. The taxing part comes in the newly popular Havoc engine that is being used for ragdoll. Not many mmo studios know how to model and rig for it, and not many coders really know how to code for it, to make it a more viable option... yet. I say "yet" because the industry is growing in its knowledge of how to use it, so expect more studios to be starting the pipeline with Havoc in mind. A similiar thing happened with the film industry, when Massive (and it's knockoffs) were brought into affect a few years ago. Now it is almost mainstream to use such a program for those kinds of situations. The same thing will happen with ragdoll.
The quality od animation is only limited by the animators themselves. There are plenty of keyframes to go around. If the run cycle is stiff or the attacks look lame, blame it on the guys with action figures on their desks.
Realistic animation is not always the best animation. In AOC for example the transitions are badly done and when coupled with an overall realistic style, it all falls a part. Lets not even go into the horrible run animations, sliding and skating. Some of it is well done while other parts are stiff and awkward which kills the whole package. I don't think their avatars blink, which is a big damn problem when they look kinda real. All motion capture in MMOs just hasn't delivered for me, besides emotes=)
WOW on the hand is about as high quality as you're going to get in a MMO to date. Like someone previously mentioned, most people won't even notice all the subtlety and thats because its THAT good. BLizzard's animators are excellent. Sure, the death animations are the same and there could be more variety overall, but thats every MMO. The whole package works though.
WAR is a mixed bag. Some of it is excellent while certain classes seemed like they were animated by interns who just started animating a week earlier.
Older MMOs like EQ up through DAOC, were horrible. I don't think they actually hired animators at all=) Certain newer MMOs, like Darkfall probably had their coders doing double duty. Its near embarrasing.
Aion looks very promising. Every video I've seen is quite impressive.
Animation in all MMOs can be improved esspecially when it comes to volume. There just needs to be more of it, but that can reduce performance, so there has to be a happy medium. Havok would be a great addition as long as it doesn't interfere with performance in a persistent world. This is all coming from someone who beta tested 3DSMax back in 1995 and has been teaching it regularly ever since. I've been animating for quite a while now. Animation in games is very important for immersion, at least for me. It can always be better.
I couldn't Agree with you more Dana, over my experience of alpha testing, beta testing, pre alpha, pre beta testing of games in the past 16 years...
I'm sick of all the look a likes, give us some vibrant being that a game is suppose to be... like mimicing life itself but in its own setting like sci-fi etc...
Atleast some of the new FPS games for consoles is trying to work on it (one only i know of i think it was the new CoD)
I want to see skin get pushed in when getting stabbed and flesh hanging off or getting slightly puffy or how about an infection on a cut wound when a cut with a sword or that big ogre that just hit you with a axe grazed you with a chance on a miss...
How about breathing enhanced when running for a long period of time and sweat appearing whenever you waged a huge battle continuously...?
I mean my god I would be addicted and drooling over games like this!
I've played over 2,000 test phases for greater than 72 hours and I tell you... I want a game like the above.. stop with the idiotic look a likes and take a chance...
As for your game wish, if it had realisticness in it.... I'm sure people would of loved the game... I heard of the game but unfortunately wasn't able to stay up to date with it...
Also the weather systems needs enhancing!!! like snow stacking upon your armor when out in it standing in one spot for a while... eventually causing you to freeze after being turned into a snowman from standing in one spot for 30 minutes or more..
THESE TYPE OF GAMES... (sorry for caps but im gonna do it) ARE NEEDED! there... i said some of what I wanted to say...
If i could get all the game devs togeather id ring everyone one of their necks lol and force feed it to them until they start developing stuff like this... and also same goes for those who back them up in wage so the production continues..
ugh.... i feel so sick just thinking about it... think I'm gonna go have a beer to calm me down... make it a case if game mimicing continues...
Um, I thought Dana was a dude. amirite? O_o
I couldn't agree with you more! WoW's animations are the best and most fluid I have seen in the games I have played. But they have to scrimp elsewhere to accommodate those great motions. That's why the world graphics look like they do. If they made the world graphics as excellent as their animations are- wouldn't that greatly reduce performance and fps?
But the thing is, I'd rather play a game with gorgeous world graphics than great animations. LoTRO's animations are a lil clunky and stilted but the world is so freaking gorgeous! I want life-like water reflections and zillions of textures and constellations in the sky and all that jazz.
I might be odd but I want a pretty world more than I want pretty combat and death scenes. If I could have both, that'd be great but I probably would need some monster quad-core PC to run it with 8 gigs of RAM LOL! Or is 16 gigs the max now?
Is my theory wrong? That animations are kept minimalistic so that the Devs can put more pizzazz into the world graphics? I don't know anything about game development and software engineering- I'm just guessing.
Lori
Um, I thought Dana was a dude. amirite? O_o
Apparently putting the photo in the column isn't enough to convince everyone I am indeed a dude ;)
Apparently not, I saw the photo and tried to go back to point to it but couldnt find it again. Had a friend named Dana in high school, definitely a dude.
http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/3046/Well-Animated-MMOs.html Click there, hes the blonde dude in the pic on the right.
one MMO that did have pretty nice animations was tabula rasa, they added lotsw of little attention to detail anims, such as if you run into gradually deepening water at a ertain point your character would actually jump into a racing dive rather than suddenly starting to float, and jumping from a high place would cause you to land in a roll, was nice stuff....
Anyway lots of people seem to be talking about the computing resources taken up by animation, but thats bollocks, what the article mainly asked for was variation of animations, the only additional resource more animations would take up is a little hard drive space, the real actual issue however is that most MMOs are animated like SHIT, I can't really think of an MMO that's even as well animated as Half life 1, it's an attention to detail issue to be honest, good graphical work is often pushed to the back on games that have a lot of other stuff required in them, it's an area to be addressed....that said, Global agenda looks quite nicely animated insofar, though if you ask me it doesn't look as good as it SHOULD for an unreal engine 3 game.
Re think your little rant. AoC has the best animation bar none in the MMO crop currently but I didnt see you give any credit to them. And also I'm a 3d artist. Your 'opinion' of how much harder a animator is compared to a 3d artist is laughable.
The simple fact is the pipeline doesnt call for intensely fluid animations.
So please do yourself a favor and dont use tech terms that is used by me. You dont have a grasp on what they really are.
The more detailed the model is (polygons), the more calculated effects its influenced by (lightsources etc) and the more movement in the surroundings (more detailed animations and amount of animated models), the more performance you need. Its not like loading a wmv file from the harddrive like you think.
Two other posters gave two good reasons. First one was to comment about WoW animation, where the subtle animations make the characters appear more alive. You really need talented animators and a lot of time for that.
The other person comment was about the number of characters that your client has to render. There is a reason why FPS games didnt allow loads of characters on a single map untill recently.
Furthermore, MMOs are way longer in production then singleplayer games and need human resources in a lot of other fields then just graphics. For this reason alone, it is not surprising that the animation quality and variation is lacking in MMO land.
You could have everything in one MMO, you only need to convince the investors that you really need all that manpower :p
I find these 'why not?' articles a bit shallow. Why not put everything in MMO's and hand out supercomputers when people subscribe?
And companies like Blizzard and Bioware can't do that? I can understand why smaller companies like Cryptic can' t afford good animations bt there are some giants that makes MMO too.
Just a single MMO with good animations is enough for me. Yes, it will use resources but computers are a lot better now than 10 years ago, at least some good animations is a must.
Funcom put at least in some quite good animations in AoC and if they can, why can't Turbine, SOE and Blizz?
And companies like Blizzard and Bioware can't do that? I can understand why smaller companies like Cryptic can' t afford good animations bt there are some giants that makes MMO too.
Just a single MMO with good animations is enough for me. Yes, it will use resources but computers are a lot better now than 10 years ago, at least some good animations is a must.
Funcom put at least in some quite good animations in AoC and if they can, why can't Turbine, SOE and Blizz?
Well, there are a couple of things to consider. First and foremost, is when was the production phase started with the games you are thinking of. AoC was started after LotRO, many of SOE's games, and even Blizzard's million pound baby gorilla. However Blizzard's problem is not animations, as much as character modeling. It worked, though, for the time it was released and to fit the lore. I will say that Blizzard pioneered quite a bit in the animation/ modeling side of games before WoW, so they already had a great foundation.
Also, aside from the time that those games went into production, each had particular focuses. AoC wanted as close to photorealistic as possible, automatically taking their in house machines to the farthest reaches and still be somewhat playable. Ok, well playable.... NOW. Turbine's Lotro wanted very nice screenshots of vistas. Why? While Tolkien wrote great characters, he birthed an even greater world, with his explicite detail to scenery. Turbine wanted to bring this into their game, therefore giving more of the budget to environmental artists and programmers, than character artists. Expect Blizz next mmo to have all the yummy goodness you are asking for, or at least something close to it, chiefly because they have reputations within the computer graphics industry to protect.
As for SOE... two words: John Smedley. As long as he and his crew are around, expect to see a lot of headless chickens.
And companies like Blizzard and Bioware can't do that? I can understand why smaller companies like Cryptic can' t afford good animations bt there are some giants that makes MMO too.
Just a single MMO with good animations is enough for me. Yes, it will use resources but computers are a lot better now than 10 years ago, at least some good animations is a must.
Funcom put at least in some quite good animations in AoC and if they can, why can't Turbine, SOE and Blizz?
Doesnt AoC have good animations? WoW has good animations. But if you are not interested in playing those, then there is maybe more that you want besides good animations.
Apparently there seems to be a lack of talented animators in the MMO industry or maybe it is a lack of vision? But I think its about priority and/or technical issues. In a FPS , animations are relatively more important then in a MMO. A MMO is a far more complex games that requires knowledge and manpower in way more different fields. A company that is awesome in managing a budget for a FPS, could be completely fail in managing a budget for a MMO. This results into having to cut costs, so they need to prioritize just a part of the features that they had in mind at start.
Its not that they wouldnt like to have awesome animations, but that the reality is that they cant afford it. I also dont want to rule out performance issues that easily. Those companies dont like to rule out a large part of potential playerbase because of pc requirements.
Adding them afterwards can also lead to unpredictable (and very costly) problems. All kinds of problems like latency issues, graphical performance or How good can the client scale down pc requirements in the options etc.
This topic is like asking 'why not add awesomeness to a MMO?'
Very valid point.. Animation to me is as, if not more, important as graphics.. It is a major deciding factor when I decide to play a game.. Combat animation is probably the most paramount, especcially in 3rd person MMO's..
I think it isn't asking too much considering that secondary models could be swapped in for the "living" toon at death impact. Also, you are correct that it sums up to about an extra int variable on the server side for passing around to any other clients who come into the viewing range of the "dead" toon. All of the rest of the work is client side, meaning that a client could choose to disable that feature and experience close-to-no performance penalty.
Well believe it or not, most players care more for the dance and hug animations than the death one. Much of the time players like to hang out and just chat and play with all the animations and emotes available to them. In games of any death consequence the player is (or should be) concentrating on how and why he died and not what it looked like. Besides, if the death was grueling and entertaining and realistic, just how many times are you going to relive it just to see it again? Probably not many. My son thought it was cool to jump off a bridge over and over. Didn't play the actual game a lot, but loved jumping off the cliff. He was 7 years old. He also plays Nascar Racing just to crash the cars.
The combat itself is more important to me. Games such as WoW and EQ use the "magnetic roller skates" animations which are really tiresome. You aggro a monster, it comes sliding full speed up to you and slams into you then proceeds to hop around in a predetermined flailing animation until you clutch your chest or it does a flip and falls into a heap.
City of Heroes has a much better combat model where the AI has to think and path around obstacles but is not as predictable as the WoW and EQ models. Character motion is also much higher advanced in CoH, but yes they still ahve the same clutch chest, apply gravity death scene.
Not only do we need better animations, we also need the e-motes to be voice activated.
It's the only way I can think of that would make player controlled body language fluent. Pressing different buttons for dozens of e-motes or making scripts to chain them doesn't really work.
Think of how cool it would be if you could actually communicate effectively by body language! The MMO genre would take a huge step towards really coming alive.
A few things to bear in mind:
Realism isn't all it's cracked up to be.
There comes a point where realism meets diminishing returns and believe it or not, can undermine itself. What I mean by this is, the closer you start to approximate photorealism, the more even the slightest imperfections can glaringly standout and interfere with the suspension of disbelief.
Furthermore, and perhaps most relevant to animation, sometimes (often) the exaggerated looks more authentic/believable/pleasing than the real thing. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but this is something Disney animators have known and put into practice for years. Techniques such as rotoscoping and motion capture are great, but by no means a substitute for real talent. All the best technology only gets you so far; taking it to the next level requires true artistry.
The best looking visuals happen in a closed/controlled system.
Ask any magician or someone adept at slight of hand. You're at your best when you know where your audience is, what they're looking at, and you're in control of your environment. In short, the fewer variables, the better.
Even with a fixed camera, scripted events, and predetermined characters, good animation is a challenge. Now enter the world of a typical game or MMO. Seldom are you in control of the camera, what or even how many characters are interacting, or the behavior(s) they might attempt. The number of variables can be exhaustive, and that's before even accounting for performance differences in hardware or bandwidth.
Is any of this an excuse for some of the more rudimentary, unimaginative, or crude animations that can (and often do) appear in MMOs? Not necessarily. But if you're hoping for something along the lines of the best choreographed, wire-fu visuals Hollywood has to offer, good luck. It might be time to re-evaluate your expectations.
Sometimes my articles likely go too far being clever and thus lose the core point, so I wanted to chime in and note a couple things.
I am not suggesting as some have that they have console level quality, as the poster above says, in many consoles games they can predict all the variables and thus it looks better. I am also not talking about huge upgrades in technology or millions of more animations. It's just common sense stuff.
Let me give a practical example:
Most MMOs have a knockback and prone state. Players can be flung across the screen and they can be "rooted" to the ground when they land for a few seconds.
If your game has these two elements, there is no excuse for sending the player up in their air and landing while standing vertically, then making them unable to move until the root wears off.
Many, if not most, MMOs do exactly this. If you're lucky, they'll toss in a small particle effect around your feet to tell you you're rooted.
I am not saying I need the monster's club to connect perfectly with my head and my head to snap back like Fight Night Round 3, or something. I am saying, if you have a call in there for "knock back" you should have an animation that looks like someone... getting knocked back. If you have a call for "prone," then the player should have an animation where he lays on the ground and gets up. It's simple stuff. Knock back ends in prone. Prone remains until 1 second before root ends, at which point player stands up and can move when root ends/he gets back to feet. Then run back into battle. Voila, a logical outcome.
My riff on clutching the chest was mostly meant to illustrate this point. Of course, there are a million places people can die and getting them all is impossible (thus I am pro rag doll), but there are situations where companies just blatantly don't bother doing the animations and it only serves to remind people that they're playing a graphical representation of a bunch of dice rolls. It dampens the impact of the event. You don't go "Oh god, I just got thrown thirty feet through the air," you say "Knockback, curses, I am going to lose 3 seconds of DPS on that mob."
And that to me is the biggest problem in many current MMOs. They feel very artificial. The system is the focus, not fun and to truly be "fun" they need to heighten the emotional impact.
Amen, Dana!
Good article!
Great read. I have thought about the same thing and I feel exactly the same about it.
Well, there are some that have approached animations with more variety. Some games, use one animation for just about every ability. Some (like LOTRO) there is a unique animation for every ability, they also have gone the extra mile and animated the faces for the extremely long list of emotes.
However, the largest limitation for animations in the MMO space, is the number of transforms on verts, and streaming of the animation data off the Hard drive, all of this are considerations that are made agent performance. Wile having rag dolls would be nice, and is independently rendered on each client. Its somewhat worse than canned animations simply because of its nature, that's procedural animation ( of course not replicated across the visible clients, they all see something different) that are ALL unique, run time transforms. This hurts performance in the area of batching. Considering all mmos are held back in terms of fidelity, because developers simply do not know HOW MANY people will be on the screen, this is all most a Recipe for disaster.
The main reason that such things are limited, again, are because there is noway to control how many people will be in a spot at one time, sure animation culling and frame skips lesson this worry (ALA LOTRO, this is why some complaing about the animations, when its thier machine specs, and the frame skiping and culling kicking in), but the animations are canned, rag doll is not, its dynamic, frame reduction (ETC) is not applicable.
Of course its all a game of give and take.
Age of Conan, yeah has great graphics and pretty good animation, not ragdoll though, played that for the month before it got boring. Requiem yeah tried that, ragdoll was pretty cool., tried that for about a week, got boring. Although not MMORPG tried spore for a few weeks, easily beat it, got bored.
Although EQ had pretty blocky graphics, I played that for a couple of years because it had content, so yeah, graphics and animations are nice, but content is still king.
Amen MMO developers need to take their heads out of the statistical analysis box and stick it into the suspension of disbelief box for awhile. I think they've nailed down how to make an MMORPG. Now they need to make an MMO that feels alive, has character and actually makes the player give a damn about the world they're paying to be in.
I have a feeling that most people are currently satisfied with the level of sophistication in animation, given that interaction has steadily improved. You can now walk between and crouch under environmental obstacles you once had to walk around. And as for jumping up on top of, what used to be Forget about it, is now taken for granted.
There is an image on the communities page of the new PvP MMO Darkfall that intrigues me.
http://www.darkfallonline.com/community/
An Ork female (I believe) is lifting a human female with her (the Ork) left hand around the throat of the smaller female. She is poised to bash the human's brains in with a right cross to the skull with a fist as big the human's head. Meanwhile the human has her right leg over the left shoulder of the Ork as her left hand grips the wrist of the Ork hand clutching her throat and her (the Human) right hand is drawing back to strike at the Ork's unprotected head with a 1H sword.
Forget about better animation and the graphics capability needed for that, I wonder how long it will be before we are able to have this level of close quarters hand to hand combat in a game. I mean, after ten years of hacking or bashing an enemy and watching a health meter drop with each succesful blow or strike, I want to see a sword glance off a piece of armor or have to be wrenched out of a deep wound. I want to see the KIND and Quality of contact affect the health and stamina and agility of the opponent. You hit me in the eye or chest with an arrow, and I will probably be incapacitated, not just lose 20 points of health. But you hit me in the fleshy part of my shield arm with the same arrow as I am rushing towards you, and I may still be able to cut off your bow hand at the wrist.
Is there anyone else interested in this sort of combat realism?
Have you seen the teasers for NCsoft's Blade & Soul Online?
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCsmuMDXXcU)
Supposedly, those aren't pre-rendered cutscenes, but rather in-game examples.
Granted, even if true that's no indication whether or not the game will be worth a damn to play. But the visuals certainly are compelling.
I've never gotten into any of the Anime style games, Final fantasy or any of the others, but Compelling is a very good word for what I just saw. Even without the mandatory abundance of breasts.
Dana, you really wont mind soon anymore. Once you see the girls in 9th grade.. wowowow.
Seriously.. is this guy 14 or am I just a horrible judge of age?
I play city of heroes/villians
*clutches chest and falls backward*
*clutches chest and falls to kneels, THEN falls forward*
Champions Online is your answer to this topic. Wait for more videos to come out regarding the travel mechanics and the combat mechanics.. you won't believe how realistic it is
Flying will eventually, once you hit top speeds, give you a sonic boost, where the screen shakes.
Super jump makes you jump like the Hulk where your arms and legs fly all over the place, and your character animates when it lands, bending it's legs and causing a breakage in the environment.
The combat is fast-paced, but still looks very realistc, having each arm move at different times, for different powers.
I'd say get yourself into beta, or follow the videos as they get release - you'll be amazed at how much work has been put into the animation itself.
www.champions-online.com
Dana Massey is the former Editor of MMORPG.com and The WarCry Network. He recently returned to MMORPG.com as its PR Manager. Dana was also the Co-Lead Game Designer of "Wish," an MMO that never made it past Beta.
Yep, he's 14 alright - co-lead game designer, editor of MMORPG and the WarCry Network, and now PR Manager of MMORPG.com; if he's 14, then he's done a lot of game playing and developing in his young life to score those jobs / projects.
Summary
Animations for MMO's is more complicated when it comes to the number of individual toons with unique appearances in the same area and synchronisation of user action with graphics and sound.
Current graphics do not handle well large numbers of toons with individual appearances. This is even harder when much of the information has to be downloaded on the fly before it can be drawn.
Detail
Some of the games I have played with better quality images have been really out of synchronisation with what is happening on the server.
For example, you hit the command to strike your enemy. This command is sent to the server. The server sends back the instruction to draw a slashing strike that completely misses. An excellent 2 second animation then shows you swinging at the enemy and missing magnificently. However, the completion of this magnificent 2 second animation is 2 seconds plus internet latancy times behind what happened on the server, and meanwhile several other things have happened. And it is even worse when the sound is similarly out of syncronisation. Sound, graphics and keyboard instructions can be all out of synchronisation. I follow audio prompts as much as visible prompts, and things like the sound of an arrow shooting occuring at a different time to when the arrow fired visibly is onscreen is disconcerting. This lack of synchronisation seems to be ocurring more commonly in both MMO and non-MMO games. If I issue a keyboard or mouse command I expect immediate feedback that this instruction worked. Imagine if when typing, your keystrokes appeared 2 seconds after you pressed the key.
In addition, if the graphics are tied too tightly to server instructions, your computer will lag badly while your graphics card freezes as it waits for instructions from the server on what to draw. Internet connection speeds (latency) are millions of times slower than graphic cards and internet latency will not improve much due to the finite speed of light. Bandwidth will improve, so it will be possible to download more detailed information, but it will never update faster than the internet latency.
I actually prefer the old Evequest style. You strike at enemy. Your computer immediately shows you swinging your sword at the enemy. Often, the results came back only as a line of text wtihout the 1 second delay while it went through a magnificent animation. You get immediate feedback that your keyboard or mouse instruction worked, even if there is some delay before you know if your attack was succesful, there is not a further 2 second delay waiting on a magnificent animation. I prefer this to magnificent graphics that lag what is actually happening and give you the feeling that your interface is not working because the current animations never match your curent keystroke or mouse command.
The other lag problem in Everquest was everyone wanted to look different. So not only did you graphics card have to draw the animations of 50 nearby player characters plus the opposing enemies, it also had to draw all 50 characters uniquely. The more unique the characters, the more chance that the necessary images are not stored on your local drive and your graphics card has to wait while the unique image is downloaded. WoW got around this by making every toon of the same class look the same. In EQ, by contrast, several nearby players may each have very rare weapons you have never seen before, so details of these weapons cannot be drawn until enough information is downloaded to enable these to be drawn. One trick to stop graphics cards from freezing is to draw a standard image of that person's class and modify it to a unique image as details download. You can visibly see the screen updating for several seconds. Each of the 50 nearby people has 1 or 2 weapons, a shield, chestplate, boots, bracers, gloves, pants, jewelery, different heights, different classes, different races, different faces, beards, hairstyles, hats, different colour dyes on their clothing and armor set. More detail, more individuality and more people nearby, means there is much more information needed from the server.
In comparison, on a standalone PC game, there is usually smaller numbers of nearby toons, that have less variation in appearance and all of the information is stored right there on your hard drive.
Any actions taken by NPC's on a standalone PC are known almost immediately and there is more likely the graphics and sound appear to represent what is actually happening now and the graphics will change on the fly if you take some action.
While I am in favour in what some may call better animations, I do not want this in MMO's if the price is the graphics lagging your keyboard instructions. I know the graphics lag exists because many games also have the text descriptions of combat, and the text often precedes completion of the animation by 1 or 2 seconds. If the animation takes 1 or 2 seconds, how do you make the graphics represent what is happening now rather than the graphical representation of what happened on the server 2 seconds ago?
MMO's have been lacking in player deaths havent they? I figured that in most mmo's they just cut the corners because they were lazy at developing each and every concievable death (Including the death by achievements in Warcraft online... see comic joke "Warcraft Sexchievements"
There have been a lot of graphic card updates and recently games are trying to keep up with it, though most mmo's are using old school becuase its easier to render and keep up with instead of going and spending years on it like Darkfall (Fail but graphics were pretty good), and Mortal Online (Its oblivion online guys... OBLIVION!)
Now i do iwsh they they would get animations and ragdoll physics into the game but really it's not going to happen unless someone kicks the original animators ass out and puts someone in whos willing to spend all his time on it... look at most games now a days and hes right... *clutches chest* my god... I just got my balls cut off, my heart just stopped! *dies*
Blade & Soul
http://feature.mmosite.com/content/2008-10-17/20081017005708830,1.shtml
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtA1jSreK84
http://www.massively.com/2008/08/04/ncsoft-announces-martial-arts-mmo-blade-and-soul/
I think it's safe to say we've come a very long way from EverQuest ;)
Dana Massey is the former Editor of MMORPG.com and The WarCry Network. He recently returned to MMORPG.com as its PR Manager. Dana was also the Co-Lead Game Designer of "Wish," an MMO that never made it past Beta.
Yep, he's 14 alright - co-lead game designer, editor of MMORPG and the WarCry Network, and now PR Manager of MMORPG.com; if he's 14, then he's done a lot of game playing and developing in his young life to score those jobs / projects.
I still get carded regularly, so it's not just him =)
For the record, I'm 25.
I still get carded regularly, so it's not just him =)
For the record, I'm 25.
That'll work out better for you when you're in your 30's and 40's. [and so on..] With my beard, I haven't been carded for anything since I was 20. [And I most always have a beard.]
Great article. Well said.
That would be great to have better death animations, but before this article I really didn;t pay attention to it. Now I will, great! Thanks Dana!
Clutches his chest and dies.