Or the Lightning Spell, as it is being called in Legend-9. This time i just want to share the details of the process of upgrading the Arc of Death weapon, cause that turned out to be quite a task, and i am right in the thick of it.
For starters, if you look at the vanilla game, this weapon's animation looks like a maladroitly spliced combo between a seesaw and the passing of an egg yolk between eggshells, lol. This bothered me since very long time ago, because of how clumsy it looked, still - it was a magic weapon and no competitors had anything better, - not even Witchaven, which in the long run i liked more than Hexen (surprise, i still most certainly do), so i just took it as "the best i can get". But that was in another life ;-)
The next point is that the attack had no recovery segment: the Mage's hands just pop up out of nowhere. This is a common problem with multiple weapons in the vanilla (particularly the melee ones), and it's not a technology issue to blame. It's laziness. Pure and simple.
Last but not least, the anti-climatic soundscape, which came all the more weird compared to how lively Kirt was. What Kirt??? That Kirt. The only one Raven made well. But i am willing to overlook that one :-)
The tricky part begins with my collaboration with the HWR mod. The challenge is three-tier: ONE, reshape the animation completely - to have both hands moving in opposing circles in a manner that would loop reasonably, in visual terms. (a kind of motion akin to making a plasticine ball). To remind, the vanilla did not face this problem, as the animation is just a left-right, not a circle. TWO: create a recovery animation segment, where after breaking the lightning sphere, the Mage slams his hands back together into creating the lightning ball again. And THREE: to make sure that all three sequences (standstill, attack, recovery) flow smoothly into one another, and do not make odd jumps in transition. Finally, all this must be accompanied by a properly smashing sfx. Because of the high quality bar set by the HWR, it was tricky to make these modifications while remaining on par, or at least - as close to it as possible.
So, that's where i am now. Animation / animation-transition polish. While it is indeed the most demanding weapon modding process that i have done since Warrior's Fire Sword, but I have already solved most of it. It took me a few dozen tries to get the standstill animation right, ngl. But my main surprise was the fact that for so long i deemed this weapon "impossible to modify", and it really isn't. Modifying something like an Axe is ten times more challenging. I learned that from the HWR mod, and it most definitely became the inspiration for further enhancement ideas. More so, it made them possible. I am by far not the best animator out there, but i am persistent and i learn fast. My thanks go to the HWR mod and its creator for that.
I want to assemble all the joint-effort enhancements in a single video, so i am refraining from posting short videos now. One thing i promise you :-) this weapon is going to turn a new page. Permanently. :-)
