Have you all watched our new video yet? Have you? If not, stop reading this right now and watch it!
Finished? Ok, good.
We hope you enjoyed this first peek at the crazy, unique and fun feature that is Mage Faire puppeteering!!! I’d like to follow up and talk a little bit more about what exactly it is that you saw in the video and how you do it.
Puppeteering or “expressing yourself” in Mage Faire is a way to move your avatar (apart from simply moving forward, backward and side to side) using the keyboard and the mouse.
It is very common in games to have “canned animations,” for example, you type “/wave” and your avatar waves. Our unique form of avatar expression was born out of the desire to do more than what these canned animations could offer.
Don’t get me wrong, these certainly can be fun, but it can also feel like it isn’t really you who is doing it. After a while I would find myself thinking, “But I don’t want to wave/dance/bow/greet someone else that way. It’s too bad I can’t ________________.”
It left us wanting; lacking the true personality that we are striving for in Mage Faire. So, puppeteering was born.
You, as a mage, do what you want to do. You can twist, you can spin, twirl, bow, jump, nod your head, shake your head, bend side to side and move one or both of your hands in any possible combination that you can think of. And then some. And maybe then even some more.
Imagine one day, you are strolling through Mage Faire and you come upon one of your friends. They wave enthusiastically at you, and in response, you wave back. Actually, you wave both of your hands, just to be thorough. You can do that.
Imagine also one day you see a mage doing something particularly enchanting, and you want to show your appreciation. You can bow to them. You can even put your hands up and bow forward as if to worship them (well, they were really good). You can dance around them, headbanging or jumping up in the air excitedly and floating down gently around them.
You can nod your head calmly. You can hold your hands up and spin around like a crazy person. Hey, it’s up to you. The point is, you can. You directly control what you do.
It’s an insanely fun and expressive way to communicate in Mage Faire, and we feel as if you really get a sense that you are interacting with another person. Not a bot, not something that someone has pre-programmed for you to do, but someone. Another mage.
When someone else is doing something specially for you, to greet you, to cheer for you, to dance with you, it really feels special and unique, much different from a pre-programmed animation.
But not just that, it’s fun. It’s really fun. We here in the Art Department spend an enormous amount of time seeing what new combination of puppeteering we can come up with to make each other laugh. (Best job ever!!!)
Do you know how to use WASD movement? (W and S move you forward and backward, A and D turn you left and right.) Move your hand over 3 keys to the right on the keyboard. These keys control your avatar’s upper body in a similar way to WASD (T and G for forward and back, F and H for side to side) allowing you to bend, twist, bow and lean.
Now, click on your hands and drag them around. It’s that simple. Add in some jumps, twirls and some movement and you’re a puppeteering master! Now go forth and express yourself!
WASD!
Oh, this is lovely! So much less limited than standard fare.
One quick question: would it be possible for us to, individually, save some custom emoting to keyboard shortcuts? Self-canned animations, as it were.
We have thought about something quite similar, but it’s not implemented yet. We will note it as a feature request. 🙂
I think I could actually master these key combinations. I’m wondering if WASD and TGFH can be used – one at a time – in concert. You know … W-T-S-G, for example? I’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure. Thanks for the update!
Pretty much every combination that makes sense works. For example, W and T make you bow and move forward, like a charging bull. You can also add A to that and your charging bull curves to the left. Release the A and press the D, and your charging bull curves to the right. You can jump, twirl to the left, twist your upper body to the right, and wave your hands all at the same time.
However, you can’t do W and S at the same time, because forward and backward are opposites. Similarly, you can’t do A and D at the same time, etc.
Thank you for more information. I am still unsure about this though. First, I am no typist. Even though I spend a lot of time every day typing, I have just never learned the keyboard (mental block?). Therefore any use of WASD causes me to take my eyes off of what I am doing and look at the keyboard, maybe more than once. Now I need to learn TGFH too? Well, it will take a lot of practice but if I do it enough I may actually learn something. I will see how it works out “soon”.
It’s actually not much like typing. All you need to do is look down long enough to get your middle finger on the W or T, and then just rest your fingers there. Your middle finger moves you forward or back, and your fingers to the left and right move (or tilt or twist) you left or right. Your fingers are already right where they need to be. You don’t even have to learn the rest of the keys. In fact, I wrote the software to handle these events, and I don’t remember any of the other keys besides T! Because I simply don’t need to.
Sounds like fun,so glad my keyboard lights up. HP really is a great laptop for games. Hope soon this game will Alpha. Gardening done,cooking for summer light,
and lots of time to learn Magic TY.
This is such a great idea! O_O
I absolutely love doing crazy things with my avatar in other games, so being able to do custom movements is the best idea yet! (Or not completely, but it still ranks up there with the idea of this game, lol.)
Oh! I second the idea of allowing us to save certain custom movements (the “self-canned animations” Darkheart mentioned above). Just in case we want to do some really awesome moves faster or more crazily! XD
Can’t wait to try this out on my own! Keep up the great work! ^^
It’ll be cool to combine custom movement with Memorata magic to create emote/dance/etc. tutorials and share our custom canned ideas 🙂
Yes! That’s thinking like a Mage!
We can have dance contests! And group dancing–forward and back; bow to your partner; circle ’round your corner; bow to your partner again… and chorus lines, with a dozen mages moving in tandem, possibly creating entertwining streamer patterns as we go.
Yes! More thinking like a Mage!