Seeing as the game is finally finished, out of EARLY ACCESS, completed, done, and all that good stuff - Could animations get some needed love?
Animations in general for everything but our characters are great, honestly. Maybe a few wonky instances, but for the most part it rivals over Path of Exile, for example.
The animations for our characters, however… :undecided:
Dual-Wield could use some attention. It doesn’t matter what class of weapon the character wields, blades, axes, blunt, they all act exactly the same. Rather then swinging a blade, it’s more like a hammer, and while I love the physics, the potential for limbs being severed is lacking.
2H Weapon animations, while better then Dual-Wield, they all act the same. 2H Blades, axes, blunt, doesn’t matter.
Melee in general is pretty weak, and while casting has it’s fair share of uninspired animations, the effects for most make up for it.
The reason why myself, and likely others have never really brought this up is simply due to priorities. Now that the game is complete I wonder if we’ll get any updates about the team going back to improve character animations.
While I completely agree that you would not swing a sword the way you would an mace, particularly the two-handed varieties, it ultimately comes down to cost and scope.
We have one animator on the team, and he is one heck of a hard-working dude who pulled some hours I would consider insane, but creating unique animation sets for specific weapon types simply became unfeasible for us when there were 6 weapon sets to animate for two character rigs on top of all the monsters in the game.
In a perfect world, the character would wield a greatsword differently from a maul, but that fell outside of the budget and scope of our small team.
With the game finished, we have to look onward to the upcoming updates and releases.
Understandable, and as I mentioned in a post, you guys did a wonderful job at managing your budget for Grim Dawn, and I can’t honestly judge as I’m in no way an animator - I’d imagine It’s fun, but also nerve-wracking.
Could Mod Tools give modders the opportunity to change animations in any possible way? That would be something, indeed.
That makes sense. Somewhat similar to, say… Skyrim when people change, or even implement their own animations into the game, it’s entirely on them and last I remember a discussion with a modder, the mod tools don’t go that far, and likely for obvious reasons. I could be wrong, It’s been a long time since I bothered with that.
You can tell your mate that as far as the creatures, ambiance, physics implementation and the chance to severe limbs - Pretty damn impressive for just one person. Though glad to know we agree on a few things
I wonder if we’ll get any updates about the team going back to improve character animations.