Weapon Decal-Animations

[Knightrose]

I'm referring to the *particle affects on weapons such as Flaming, Holy, Cold, Acid etc.

Before Mod5 these affects were very pleasing to the eye. Now they are rhythmic and in an ugly loop around the item.

Any plans to make them 'pretty' again? It has always been annoying since they changed. Makes the game look severely dated.


EDIT: thanks MT

[MysticTheurge]

I agree.

(And the term that the Devs seem to use for these is "Particle Effects.")

[Angelus_dead]

The new effect is called a "Holy Kebab", because six identically-shaped blobs of twisted marshmallow are spaced along any holy weapon. This bug was apparently introduced as a network optimization: instead of the server sending separate animation frame indices for each blob, the same index is used for all of them.

There is no reason network performance should have a visible impact on particle effects like this- the animation frame of the effect should be computed randomly on the client-side, and never sent over the internet.

[negative]

The particle effects have looked like this ever since, maybe Mod5? when they changed them to make them "smaller" or "less noticiable" or something to that effect. The entire effect was scaled down, thus requiring more "bubbles" of effects to take up the entire length of a sword. When they were larger, it was harder to notice the division between the "bubbles". Now its very noticable. I prefered the older, larger effects myself.

EDIT: they may have made this change at the same time as the change mentioned in the post above mine (I noticed the paritcle effects were in sync when they reduced their scale). The two together make for a bad combination.

[Angelus_dead]

The particle effects have looked like this ever since, maybe Mod5? when they changed them to make them "smaller" or "less noticiable" or something to that effect. The entire effect was scaled down, thus requiring more "bubbles" of effects to take up the entire length of a sword.

That is entirely wrong. The number of bubbles is exactly the same. The difference is that now they are synchronized with each other.

I found a before&after picture made of the same weapon.

Notice that in both cases the sword has four main fire blobs. In the before picture its harder to tell where the individual blobs begin and end, and since one of the blobs is in a "small" phase of the animation cycle, you might think there are only three.

[Coldin]

This really should be fixed back. Weapons with particle effects just look so bad with the effects all in unison.

[tihocan]

I'm also hoping to see them fixed soon.

[MysticTheurge]

Didn't it happen at the same time as the engine "upgrade"?

I suspect the two are related.

[Drider]

Didn't it happen at the same time as the engine "upgrade"?

I suspect the two are related.

Probably causes a little less lag maybe?

[Shaamis]

Didn't it happen at the same time as the engine "upgrade"?

I suspect the two are related.

It could have something to do with how the game renders the particle effects....might save some resources by having object ID#<sword> with partcle effects #1,#2, #3, and #4 having the same animation sequence.

Trivial, but animation usually causes the most lag.......

[GreyRogue]

Didn't it happen at the same time as the engine "upgrade"?

I suspect the two are related.

That is exactly when it happened. I wish they would adjust the weapon particle effects to look like they used to, but I'm guessing that it is not going to make it onto the list of "bugs that MUST be fixed in the next update" anytime soon.