Fallen Earth dev journals detail respecs, effects and melee animation changes

With so many rapid-fire changes coming to Fallen Earth lately, some players may feel like they'll miss something important if they so much as blink.

Updates such as Blood Sports and mounts are getting plenty of attention, but there are many other things that you may be excited about while at the same time wishing they were explained as thoroughly as some of the others. The respec option, for example, is a fantastic opportunity for those of us who spent points unwisely while we were still learning how it all worked. The effects revamp is certainly going to have a significant effect on gameplay as well, but these are both potentially complicated updates. The Fallen Earth team is working to make sure that everyone understands how the updates will work and how they affect the players, starting with a pair of brand new dev journals. There are separate entries for both the respec and for the effects revamp, each detailing how they will work and offering a few hints for making the most of them.

And finally, Fallen Earth's Lead Animator Gabriel Smith has given us a great advance look at the melee animation improvements that we'll see in patch 1.4. Follow along after the jump to see what Gabriel had to say, and don't forget to check out the respec and effects dev journals as well.

Melee Animations Journal

With the massive amount of content that's about to explode in Fallen Earth's Grand Canyon Province, players may be too busy picking their jaws up from the ground to notice the smaller details we've been sure to enhance...but there are a lot!

While us animators were hard at work on all the new content (think companion pet, mutant mounts), we also took some time to look back at some of the existing content and animations. We've recently added more ways for you to terrorize those poor prairie chickens in the form of new poses for two-handed melee weapons and improvements on all melee grip animations, adjusting the fingers for a sexier grasp. We wanted to keep this momentum going and one of the other major alterations we've been wanting to make with our animations has been with melee combat-both one and two handed.

Initially, almost all of our melee weapons had around the same animation timing, which meant if you attacked with a slower weapon, the animation would cycle through at the same speed as if you were attacking with a faster weapon. This meant a short, motionless waiting period before the weapon's cool-down was complete and players could attack again. While it wasn't a major upset, we definitely felt the animations could be tightened.

So what we've done (and what will be included with our upcoming content patch) is break available one-handed melee weapons-Knife, Pipe, Hammer, Baton, Blunt and Hook-into Slow, Medium and Fast categories. Now, depending on which type of weapon a player is using, they will see an animation for the full length of the weapon attack and cool down time. By the end of the animation, players will be ready to attack again.

Not only have we improved the melee animation times, but we also re-created several of the attack animations to allow for better blending. So while some animations will look slightly different than previously, players should definitely notice the improvement in animations.

We've been working fiercely the past four months on our animations and all the new content and in phase two of our melee animation overhaul, which will follow the patch, the remaining two-handed melee weapon categories-Axe, Bat, Heavy Stick, Sword and Tool-will also receive the same enhancements.

Keep an eye on the Public Test Server in the coming weeks to try out the new animations and Blood Sports system before they hit live!