Broken Casting/Emote Animations

[Grinkles]

I've noticed that other servers, including those on Live, allow casting animations for the upper half a player's body to happen alongside walk/run animations for the lower half. In other words, if you finish casting a buff and then begin running forward, your character's upper body completes the casting animation while the lower body does the running animation. It happens fluidly and looks natural:

​

However, something fishy is afoot with SoD's casting animations. Instead of the lower half running and the upper half doing the casting gestures, a player who casts a spell and then moves forward will animate as though he were standing still. He simply slides forward along the ground while the whole body completes the casting animation in a standing pose:

​

The first .gif above is from a private server I set up using a copy of my SoD directory. The second is from SoD. The fact that I get different results using the exact same install suggests to me that there's something unusual in the SoD server database regarding these animations. I have a strong suspicion this might also be linked to the problem with animated emotes only working clientside; a player who types /cheer will see himself cheer, but nobody else on the server will see the animation.

With help, I managed to restore some broken player animations way back in 2012, but that was an issue with a faulty .s3d file, which I'm fairly certain can be ruled out in this instance. (The animations are broken in SoD yet work on my private test server using the exact same .s3d files.)

Wonky casting animations and an inability to see animated emotes are trivialities compared to the plethora of bugs in need of dire attention. On the other hand, I want to make sure this issue is known and documented. It may be superficial, but our characters already have a very limited range of movement and expression (even among the more detailed Luclin models). A loss like this narrows that range even further. After all, what would the game be without a /dance-ing Troll awkwardly jiggling his belly or a full raid doing the /salute animation in unison when Sihala's Stalwart Shield lands?

Can anyone shed light on this issue and its fixability? I don't even know who, if anyone, has access to the database these days, but I'm looking at you, @Rymy, @Zaela, @Marza, @Taryth, @Slaariel, @Waldoff...

 

[iBluNT]

Pretty neat observation. I never noticed that other people couldn't see emote animations, but also makes me wonder how we were all able to see Santa Troll dance and such? Is there any difference in it being an NPC?

 

[AngryCow]

Santa Troll is from a pit deeper than the Eternal Well. He is from a place where madness is ordinary. He is the avatar of the Void and no mere NPC. His coming in winter is the manifest of Marlow's realm walking our plane and bringing ruin in his wake. Do not be decieved.

 

[Grinkles]

Pretty neat observation. I never noticed that other people couldn't see emote animations, but also makes me wonder how we were all able to see Santa Troll dance and such? Is there any difference in it being an NPC?

I also remember noticing Santa Troll's scripted dancing animation worked despite PC emotes not working. I can only guess that there's some kind of problem between the client and the server when it comes to issuing emotes. It's as if the text component of a command like /cheer goes from the client to the server just fine, but the animation component of the command is simply not sent or not received. I am out of my depth talking about this kind of technicality, which is why I am hoping one of the big wigs I tagged in my post will pop in with some insight.

Santa Troll is from a pit deeper than the Eternal Well. He is from a place where madness is ordinary. He is the avatar of the Void and no mere NPC. His coming in winter is the manifest of Marlow's realm walking our plane and bringing ruin in his wake. Do not be decieved.