Giant explosions! More seriously, today we'd like to share a few of our favorite animations in Ship of Heroes, and why we think our animations and FX help to make the game exciting. Reviewing and upgrading animations and FX was a major project lasting many months. And no wonder: there are animations for when hero and enemy powers fire, reaction and impact animations for the target, movement animations for heroes, civilians, and enemies including non-humanoid enemies, idle animations so heroes and NPCs do not stand there stiffly, emote animations, and special purpose animations such as dancing in the Beta Club and animations related to NPC roles. Both heroes and some enemies can fight in flight, which greatly increases the number of animations. We have not taken an exact count, but in total, somewhere between 500 and 1000.
Players often come to love and identify with their favorite combat powers, and with how they look and sound. In this video, you'll see a few of ours, and what makes an animation or FX a good fit for SoH. And you’ll see how some non-combat animations can add to the immersion in the game as well.
One of the key considerations in a superhero game like Ship of Heroes is that the animations should look, well, superpowered. For us, this means that they should look smooth, powerful, and plausible. And what’s plausible in a setting like ours, with advanced gadgets, improved genetics, and magic? Quite a lot! But it’s not exactly the same for every hero, much less for enemies.
Animations that illustrate superhuman physical prowess, magic, psychic powers, futuristic technology, or unusual biology are all very helpful in conveying the superhero themes of the game. FX also help to carry this idea, not to mention being fun to look at. This is one reason why Ship of Heroes is a fairly large game to install – at launch, you'll see over 270 distinct powers of all kinds, with a very large number of polished and distinctive combat animations.
You'll also see heroes flying, running faster, and leaping higher in the air than any normal human could. Teleporting to key locations, activating spells, using psychic powers, and fighting with futuristic superweapons are all part of the mix. Seeing is believing - and the best part is learning to use those powers with your own unique heroes.
We look at many features for each animation to see if it is a good animation for its use. Ideally, it should be:
a. Fast
b. Strong
c. Weighty, with visible kinetic momentum
d. Smooth, so the character only stops or shifts direction with appropriate timing
e. The FX matches the power's nature: high-tech, or mystical, or psychic, or something else
f. Any weapon attacks use cool weapons that fit the story
g. Footwork is good
h. Posture is good
Certain features in a superpowered combat animation make the animation good, or great, depending on how they are implemented. For example, a hero’s attacks should usually be faster than a normal human could manage, and if they have a momentum aspect - punches, sword strikes, explosive shots, etc - then the attack needs weight.
Weight is delivered both in the attack, and in the reaction animation. But magical attacks may be different, they may be healing or debuffing oriented, and if so, they should not have much weight to them. Does a laser beam knock an enemy back by 20 feet? Not usually. So, each animation needs to match the power's the underlying story and premise.
Another factor is smoothness. Ship of Heroes blends animations that overlap, so you can take off into the air while throwing a fireball, and see a motion in between what either action alone would look like. If you're punching and being punched at the same time, your head or shoulders may flinch back in an impact animation, at the same time as your arm moves forward. Flight is even more complex, with movements for ascending, descending, hovering, flying in every direction, etc. And SoH is built to enable aerial combat - you can already encounter a couple of enemies who will attack while flying.
Making foundational animations look good also depends on other parts of the game, like the pathing AI. The NPCs have legs, but do they ever move around outside of cutscenes? After a major battle in the hazard zone, will you find civilians standing in different places and doing different things than before? Do allied combatants ever help out, instead of just standing around? Do they follow you to the next enemies when it's appropriate? In Ship of Heroes, the answer to all of these questions is yes.
Of course, the ultimate test for any animation or FX is, "Do people like it?" We’ve benefited from a huge amount of feedback from players and testers who like, or don’t like, different animations. Some have even made insightful requests for changes. Others ask for a cool animation similar to something they have seen in another game. Those reference powers and animations are always interesting to consider, too. So, every animation in Ship of Heroes has a proven audience of people who are every bit as excited as we devs are to play this fun game.
Some of the highlights from the video that accompanies this newsletter are at these points, but you can choose your own favorites:
0:10 -- One of our devs thinks Heat Wave is the best power in the entire Fiery Melee powerset. He says it is just enormously fun to launch.
0:47 – Roll Away is a great power. It’s just over the edge of what a superb human athlete can do today, but this is an example of how melee fighting takes a step up once heroes are more than human.
1:36 – Flying superheroes land with style because they are supers!
1:49 – Challenge is a taunt power that shows one of the innate superpowers of the melee classes – to protect the team by drawing all of the enemies to himself.
2:22 The Nagdellian Berserker pre-death animation has him weaken, recover and stumble to his death.
02:23 – The Nagdellian Berserker has a huge knockback power that can send dozens of heroes flying!
Technical Notes:
1. In any MMO, one of the first decisions is how big to make the animation budget. This budget is not money, though there’s one of those, too - it’s measured in how much latency or lag the animations are allowed to cause. The bigger this "budget" is, the easier it is to make animations look awesome. But when there are lots of moving characters on the screen, especially player-controlled heroes with unique animations,, the budget gets divided up into very small pieces for each animation.
2. Multiplayer games also have the issue that players located around the world are all interacting, creating additional lag, even with no animations playing. Single player games generally have much less of this kind of distance or network latency, so the animations can cause more lag without making the game feel janky.
3. And even with without the additional latency implicit in multiplayer gameplay, everyone has a different PC. So big animation budgets and cool animations usually prevent some people from playing a game smoothly… or at all. Ship of Heroes is designed to be playable without the latest costly hardware, but even better with it.
4. As discussed above, animations should match what the character is doing, in several ways. So, animations can certainly be used for more than one power. MMORPG veterans will be familiar with this fact already. We try to ensure that the reassignment makes sense in the story, and that every power has something cool or interesting about it.
