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BioWare devs talk SWTOR combat animations, answer PvP questions
Grab yourself a tall glass of blue milk, Star Wars fans, as BioWare has released a lengthy new edition of its Studio Insider feature to carry you through your Friday afternoon. The update features principal lead animator Mark How talking about -- wait for it -- animation! To be more precise, How tells us all about The Old Republic's combat animation, and he even tosses in an interesting video clip that features different stages in the development of a Jedi force leap and a Republic trooper full auto firing animation. How also gets into the challenges inherent in melding the lightsaber battles from the Star Wars films with the design limitations of an MMORPG. "Players do not enjoy having character control taken away from them because of an action or animation," How explains. "It was particularly challenging to develop animations that allowed for visually appealing combat while still allowing the players complete control over their characters." How successful were BioWare designers in this regard? That remains to be seen, but you can get a feel for their approach by reading How's blog. Finally, this week's Community Q&A feature continues the combat focus, and lead PvP designer Gabe Amatangelo has the answers to a few burning questions from the TOR faithful.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Community lives!
The community for City of Heroes got a big shot in the arm when the expansion came out. While it hadn't exactly died in the last few years, it was certainly on a lower pulse. These days, I can't log in without seeing pretty much every server near capacity. Even with a month having passed since the initial release, it seems that Going Rogue is doing a fine job of keeping people wrapped up in the game. You can rail about the lack of endgame all you want, but Praetoria's a pretty good starting ride. Of course, it's high time for us to do another community roundup post, so the fact that the community has rallied back serves my own purposes. We've got more than just a surfeit of content to talk about -- we've got a whole collection of new missions and gameplay types to work with. And, of course, there are those "just 20 levels" of starting content to chat about. So click on through to see what City of Heroes players have been chatting about for the past month.
SWTOR devs dive deep in Jedi design in this week's dispatch
The character type that will likely be played the most in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be the Jedi. BioWare has been conscious of this from the early stages of the game. This is evident in the fact that there are two distinct Jedi classes: the knight and the consular. Yet, the designers have been the most tight-lipped about these two classes. They have said this is because they wish to get it just right before talking about it. But with this week's Fan Friday, things have changed. On the official SWTOR website, a new Developer Dispatch called Designing the Light Side has popped up. In the five-and-a-half-minute video, SWTOR writers, artists, and animators discuss the most important things it takes to create the two light side factions. "We want to give players the opportunity to be the heroic Jedi like Luke Skywalker or the darker, more avenging type of Jedi like his father, Anakin," Hall Hood, a senior writer, explains in the video. On which side of the moral spectrum do you fall? Are you a hero-of-the-ages light sider, or a ends-justifies-the-means gray Jedi? Watch the video after the break and let us know.
