Guild Wars 2

Normally I would not post topics on forums, not for a long time. But I felt since this is a mature and good community I should talk about something I have always held close to my heart, shouting out in the name of all those who have suffered for years, that of the cape, the shall, the banner and everything which waves in the air and how it clips into other objects.

One might ask, what is clipping? Well clipping is where artifacts of the artificial virtual world become visible thus blatantly destroying the magic of the world that is the video game environment. It’s where polygons which are flat invisible partitions in the void connected by vertices covered in textures move into one another and you can see other objects poking though them or they in turn going though other objects which in reality would not happen unless they somehow had the power to go though things like Kitty Pryde, which I am pretty sure a flapping flag or a rag on your back doesn’t have this power… I think…

Not only is it ugly but it in turn as said before suddenly brakes the immersion and the illusion of the adventure. I feel it does more damage than most other bugs in games… even bleeding.

Hence why I presume the developers of Guild Wars 2 were reluctant to put in capes to begin with. But with that said I wonder, how can game developers go about building animated floppy things which go onto another animated object, be it a moving stick being waved about or a player character or monster running about doing all sorts of animations and then independently animate on it’s own without requiring said object to be made of so many polygons it brakes your graphics card trying to render it in real time?

I am sure many have asked it, many have discussed it and many have talked about it. But I say talk is for those who cannot get things done, I say action, questions and brainstorming is how things get done. Have an idea, say it, have a thought? Speak it, have an inspiration pursue it!

Just a little topic to get a creative and constructive conversation going on the issue of making animated banners, flags and capes etc look cool without the ugly clipping.

In SWTOR they deal with long hair clipping by not having long hair styles. Like the female hair choices are short or are styles where it looks like they were once long but got chopped. Not that great of a solution since it means hair styles are limited and generally horrid.

Clipping is a problem in pretty much all MMORPGs because the cost (time and resources) graphically and code-wise to deal with it would be insane. Sucks but it would just take huge amounts of resources to get every piece of clothing to work correctly with every single piece of gear.

Long hair clips shields pretty regularly here. Male or Female. I just don’t run with a shield unless I just absolutely feel I need one…like when fighting mobs several levels above mine.

But, all in all…clipping is a pretty minor issue with me. All games have it to some degree.

The cape in Arkham Asylum was really well done, having said that I remember seeing a video where they said they had somebody working specifically on the cape and nothing else, and I’m pretty sure Anet don’t have the resources to do that just for capes.

In Arkham Asylum only Batman wears a cape. Guild wars is massively multiplayer and capes would render on every single player on a wide variety of computers.

It’s inevitable to some degree, unfortunately. What bothers me, as a Norn that wears medium armor, is that all of my armor options have some kind of trench-coat look. This means that every single weapon I wear is half hidden in my coat flaps. If I want to preview the look of an axe or something, I have to go to my character tab and take off my armor, otherwise I can’t see my axe. It’s also annoying that I know my cool looking items aren’t easily seen by others without me having to draw my weapons.

They did it in guild wars 1, so they obviously have the know how…

Anet’s reason of clipping is kind of moot to me; I mean everything on my character clips the kitten out of everything already. If nothing else clipped it would be a valid reason but since literally everything clips it’s not.

Anet, please give us cloaks/caps with optional hoods. We don’t mind the clipping, really! My character has already come to terms with her hair being consumed by her shield.

I feel like they did a decent job on hair, but every weapon I have clips through my armor.

Not that I care much, GW2 is a pretty bad game for immersion anyway, I found that out real fast.

Considering how much and varied the movement is in GW2 (running, swimming, dodging etc) there is a LOT that needs accounted for.

Doing a backroll to dodge and having your cape flipped over your head (realistic) may not be a desired result.

Echo.7634:

Considering how much and varied the movement is in GW2 (running, swimming, dodging etc) there is a LOT that needs accounted for.

Doing a backroll to dodge and having your cape flipped over your head (realistic) may not be a desired result.

True. But then they could at the very least look into clipping issues that happen when you’re standing still and out of combat, right?

The problem is probably easily solved with good cloth deformers but it will have no effect if you turn those effects down in game and if you crank it up, you’ll use up a buttload of resources when 20-30 people around you have capes on.