Lyzen@Nagafen wrote: Coding the animations for 24 skeletons with each item allowing a "sit" action would likely be even more work. In addition, it would likely require having to do special animations for the size of the character in relation to the object which, since there are several re-sizing items, could mean even more work on top of just a basic sit action on each of the objects. An /emote animation could be a bit more generic and not item being sat upon dependant. Yes, other games have an item sit action. They were also coded very differntly. In SWG the character size in relation to the object was handled by resizing the character as it would do the sit action, which isn't as noticable when the maximum size difference is a bothan to a wookie. In addtion, every sit-able object was exactly the same dimensions for the seat. In EQ2, even if you don't take account of the resizing spells/items, there is a lot more height difference between a troll and a gnome or fey/arasai than a bothan and wookie. When you take into account the various means to increase or decrease the character's size, that difference becomes even greater. Additionally, in EQ2, there are a vast array of objects of different sizes that could be sit-able, even if you limited it to only chairs. On top of that, house items can be re-sized themselves. As an example, how would you handle a size-enlarged troll sitting on a gnome thinking chair? Would you then need a completely different sit action animation for a size-reduced arasai to sit on that same chair, or how about a Kunarkian throne (not recalling the largest chair I've seen)? What then if the item was also enlarged or reduced? Would that require variations on the sit action? So... if it was an /emote and the player had to be the one to manipulate the posterior of the character into the location he/she wanted, it could be a generic action without taking into account object size or character size. It is the infintately simpler solution, even though it's rather complex, too.
ttobey wrote: Well, that's not a nice thing to do to the Iksar after all these years. That said - sure you don't mean the Sarnak instead of the Iksar? I know that the Sarnak, as well as the Froglok, have a different animation base (although the Froglok are just your standard humanoid base except with the 'feet' being really big and at a funky angle). But why the Iksar?
Then the other issue becaomes fae and arasai. Where do their wings go? Plus presently they hover over 0,0,0 so additional code would be needed to that which would lead to other code and other code. Boy this is getting complicated. Then theres resized house items and characters both. Perhaps we should just focus on melee pet classesthat start with a B.
ttobey wrote: A thought I once had was to work sitting more like a mount, where the mount's geometry is attached directly to the character model. What if we had a /sitchair command that caused us to magically pop a chair out of nowhere (like a mount) and sit on it? Then, like mounts, it'd automatically be the perfect size no matter what size the character was at the time. It would mean that decorators would have to leave space for everyone's personal chairs and include fewer house-item chairs in their decorating, but it might be a viable option. Powers &8^]
How about sneaking over to BLIZZARD and seeing how they do it??? (WoW) They have both SLEEP AND sit. . . Works for them! I agree. . EQ is uch and old dog you cant teach it new tricks. . .but I still love it. . . (pats on the head and scratches it's belly)
Powers wrote: Aion does both. It has in-game items (chairs/benches/etc) that you can click and your char will set on them. But they also have /sit where your char whips out either a stool or a floating cloud and sits down on it. /sleep summons a cloud to lay on and nap. But Aion != EQ.. just pointing out that both are viable options. Rather than mucking with all this 0,0,0 and looping idle stuff, how about an animation to sit indian-style? That would resolve 99% of my issues with sitting. I can handle sitting in a chair (or on the ground) indian-style much better than sitting on the back of my legs, or kneeling (as a fae).. or whatever frogs do. Seriously, go sit on the back of your legs for a few minutes and see how comfy it is before your feet & ankles start yelling at you.
Sneaking over to Blizzard to see how they do it? I think all their chairs are the same size. I think the beds are too. And they barely have a handful of races. This is way more difficult than people are making it out to be. You have a ton of different races, all different sizes with different features. Then you can scale your house furniture to different sizes. How would you handle that? The only way to ever make this work is to remove furniture scaling. So pick one. Being able to have your character sit down, OR.. never scaling house items ever again.
Personally I think it'd be a lot easier to just make chair mounts that of course root the player when active. Mounts already scale, so all you have to do is the actual chair art, which is already in the game if we use the furniture models, plus the player "mount" pose for it and presto. You could even just attach the mount use effect to the preexisting furniture, so when you click the chair, the chair "disappears" (becomes invisible/clippable and then move the player to the chair's location/orientation and pop the mount effect on them. Or something. I'm just throwing out ideas of different ways to do it.
Cyque@Everfrost wrote: Not having scaling wouldn't solve anything, there are still always going to be chairs of various sizes, and races of various sizes to fit on them . I am just really happy to see Ttobey taking the time to discuss and look at options for us -- if its not feasible (right now anyways) at least we will know that its on someone's radar and is actually a possibility sometime down the road .
Instead of working all the animation to and from the chair, just having a chair work as a stationary mount would seem the easiest way to handle it. Chair scales to whatever size the house designer wants it as while he's decorating, when a person clicks the chair teleports him to chairs location with chair scaled to sitter. We don't have a "get on your horse" animation, you just pop there, so why fuss about a stand to sit animation when using a chair would be like using a whistle but it's permarooted. The sittable chairs only have have to be coded in as mounts with a unique lower leg nonmoving position(feet forwards instead of to the side). Have "sitting in a chair" made into a buff that you can cancel to stand up. Even working "click to mount" as part of appearance mounts (you know a buttload of people want this too) by clicking a placed horse in your house or guildhall to "ride" as an appearance buff can be worked in the same way, only chairs root you, while with mounts the buff stays on you as sort of a "mount illusion". The appearance illussion (sitting in a chair, sitting on a horse other than the one yer buffed with) would have to override the appearance of yer current mount and illusions similar to how current mounts override illusions. EDIT: This would also free up having to itemize the buffs put on some new mounts by having mounts that are only house items with a mount appearance illusion on them.
Getting characters and mounts to work together is one of the most time consuming processes for me, so mounting a chair isn't a good solution at all. That would definitely require animating a sit 25 times.
wouldn't it just be the right leg of the carpet mount mirrored to the left with an upright torso of horse mounts?
yeah it can't work that way. Anything you want to sit on (using the mount code) would have to have a saddle joint put on. The player is attaching to a saddle joint.
Idea! How about we have permanetly affixed chairs to our butts? And as you resize your character, you resize the chair! So we run crouched like old people? So what? Fae have been doing it for years on stand up mounts. I feel like that kid in that taco commecial that invented the taco shell that stands. The entire village picked him up on their shoulders and celebrated his idea! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3KXaF2_UzU
ttobey wrote: So, when will flying gnomish chairs be introduced as mounts? (Obviously, we'd sit in the chairs backwards, because sitting in a chair normally is, well, boring)
So it seems like the best chance of sitting down on something looks to be an emote that pulls a chair out of thin air that you sit down on. And it would have to be coded in like Feign Death, where it's a spell with an infinite timer that requires you to cancel it to get you back on your feet again. Sounds like a lot of coding for something that not all players want. That said - I'd love to sit down. Or for that matter, I'd love to have a sit command that places us into a proper sitting position based on our current Z axis height. Yes, it would be far from perfect (feet clipping through the floor, legs clipping through objects, rear end not lining up just right), but it sounds doable from an outsider's perspective. The question though - is it doable from a coder point of view? One thing to remember - the devs have a specific train of thought as to how your characters will 'look'. They don't like it when items clip through other items (remember when they turned off robe animation when mounted without warning?). Yes, there's plenty of exceptions (my Iksar's tail comes out in an...odd place when mounted on a horse), but this has been their mantra for years.
ttobey wrote: But think of all the mounts you can create using the chair mounting animation. Stage Coaches, steampunk vehicles, locamotives, etc, etc
ttobey wrote: you just pop back up to standing. not even any easing into the stand animation. and if it really is tweaked per skeleton, i really can't tell. i've had a high elf and ratonga at the same height, standing on top of each other, and hitting feign death together. they seemed to fall identicly.
