7 replies to this topic

[Female]

I propose that a system be implemented where you can customize the appearance of your mech driver. And like in Starcraft your drivers appearance should show up in a little box in the corner.

Also, depending on how you die, the mech driver upon death should open up the front of the mech and crawl out and collapse or something along the lines of that. Would give a more rp sense to the game.

[AsianJoyKiller]

(I say this from a game animation standpoint) Any death animation related to having the pilot crawl out would be quite lengthy. You have a certain amount of time that your "death" takes up and I see no conceivable way you could make a decent "pilot escape" animation without significantly increasing how much time you spend in a death-cam mode.

Aside from that, when you kill a mech, it blows up into a giant heap of twisted, flaming metal.
I'd be more than a little surprised if I saw a pilot survive this:




On the topic of custom pilots, I wouldn't mind, but it's very low on my list of things I would like to see.
Anything related to gameplay comes first, and even when you get down to cosmetics, anything regarding more mech parts or paint schemes comes ahead of a pilot.

[Female]

AsianJoyKiller, on October 31 2012 - 07:01 PM, said:

(I say this from a game animation standpoint) Any death animation related to having the pilot crawl out would be quite lengthy. You have a certain amount of time that your "death" takes up and I see no conceivable way you could make a decent "pilot escape" animation without significantly increasing how much time you spend in a death-cam mode.

Aside from that, when you kill a mech, it blows up into a giant heap of twisted, flaming metal.
I'd be more than a little surprised if I saw a pilot survive this:




On the topic of custom pilots, I wouldn't mind, but it's very low on my list of things I would like to see.
Anything related to gameplay comes first, and even when you get down to cosmetics, anything regarding more mech parts or paint schemes comes ahead of a pilot.

Perhaps only cause bullet damage deaths to have the animation and it is a rather quick process for them to crawl out of the mech. It's more like them being launched.

While talking about this I had another idea. While being shot by bullets or rockets. The glass on the mech should get char burns or bullet holes. Very small ones though so it doesn't disrupt gameplay.

[AsianJoyKiller]

Female, on October 31 2012 - 07:08 PM, said:

Perhaps only cause bullet damage deaths to have the animation and it is a rather quick process for them to crawl out of the mech. It's more like them being launched.

While talking about this I had another idea. While being shot by bullets or rockets. The glass on the mech should get char burns or bullet holes. Very small ones though so it doesn't disrupt gameplay.

The current death cam is about 6 seconds long, with half that time being spent on the mech collapsing.
As an animator, I don't see how I could create a reasonable animation of a person crawling out of the wreckage with a 3 second time limit. As I don't believe there are ejection seats on these things, it just takes too much time to show the pilot escaping (and that's even if the pilot could escape). It would take most of the time remaining after collapse to create a convincing animation of a pilot opening a hatch.

On the note of charring and bullet holes, you see the outside world via cameras and the view you see is from screens inside the cockpit.
As they're inside the mech, you won't see any charring or bullet holes appear on them.
And yes, I know it looks like the TV mech has a window, but that's just a silly design mistake (which I hope the keep in game, logic and lore be damned).

[Inny]

Edited by Inny, October 31 2012 - 08:28 PM.

[Arcana13]

I didn't think the parachute would work so well at such a low height. Well... gotta love educational videos.

Edit: Personal driver appearance / personal tag design would personalize my personal taste a lot. It can wait though.

Edited by Arcana13, November 01 2012 - 03:17 AM.

[Aelieth]

Would like to see a personalized driver appearance. Especially if clans / teams are made for competitive play, would be good just to have small avatars on the side of the screen to show the status of everyone. Here's a few ideas, crawling out of the cockpit may be a bit much but I could see something like this:

• Snipers that are in sniper mode could be shown in some sort of sniper node
  
• Those that are dead could have static / signal lost
  
• Help requested so you know who exactly is requesting it
  
• Reactions to multi-kills and being near death

[Lazoraz]

If there's a gametype with no respawning until the next round, I think that a death animation involving the viewpoint of your pilot would be cool. But when you need to respawn I think it'd get in the way.