Dancer Archive
Thread: What was that? Entertainer exotic dance flourishes are now all unique. ?
Til's right. Making this look seemless requires a bit of timing and macros don't compensate well for lag. When it is done well however..it looks awesome. Instructions for the best example I can give you are as follows:
/startd exotic3
call /flo 3 at the appropriate point in the base.
When you are coming out of the spin (about 2/3 of the way through flo 3) and your hands are low in front of you, /changed to exotic4. You will go immediately into exotic4 flo 3 (close to the end of exotic3 flo 3, when your hands are just above your head).
When the timing is right, your hands go from above your head in e3f3 to in front of you as you drop to your knees for e4f3 (same as f2).
I use the same technique to combine flourishes from poplock and break, for transitioning from popular to break and for incorporating the worm from tumble into poplock (where it belongs!).
I've got a fraps clip of Til & I doing the exotic combo described in the example above. The performance in the clip is pretty rough as the point was to try fraps for the first time..not a perfect performance. I'll see if I can find some web space to put it on.
While I would LOVE to have the devs implement a system for mixing I'm happy to use /changed to force transitions until then, just because it produces some great results.
Lolateah wrote:
ok then could it be possible that some explain it so I can understand.
) Timing it is nearly impossible due to lag and other variables, as I said. That's why I said you had to watch and decide when to /changedance. 
Message Edited by Schardour on 07-18-2005 04:52 PM
The transition is at 1:45 so watch the part between 1:31 and 1:55.
This was the first time we played with Fraps so the purpose of the video was to see if we could get it to work. The performance itself is horrid (whip..which I can avoid easily when I'm not trying to do too much stuff).
Whenever I did exotic 3, it would be frustrating because although I saw myself as facing front, the audience would see me at various stages of the base dance turn. I would appear to "whip around" when I did a flo even if the timing were perfect from my end.
My question is, if this is still a problem, how can we ever make our performances look good to the audience even if we get the transitions exactly right (from our own point of view) with respect to arm position and other issues?
Performer A and Watcher W are in the cantina. A starts /startd exotic3 (I use exotic 3 because the base dance is very easy to recognize there and the stage its in). W's client gets the message that A has started exotic 3 and his client starts showing the basedance, starting from the beginning position, and if not for some insane lag it should be in sync with what A sees.
Now halfway through the spin Performer B enters the cantina, and the two people there load for her. Her client gets the message "A is doing exotic 3". Fine, lets show the basedance... starting from the beginning position. Now on A and W's screen however A is just facing backwards and is doing the spin already.
A knows that and quickly stops dancing and starts again, now it should be syncronized on all 3 clients again (theres really no other way around it for all I know). B joins in with A and syncronizes her dance to A's, looking perfect to A, B and W.
Now Watcher X enters, and because of all the rare decoration and stuff in the cantina it takes him a while to load everything, and A is loaded 1 or 2 seconds before B is loaded. Dang, now A and B are out of sync on X's client, because again, both started from the beginning position the moment his client loaded the toons.
Flourishes are not such a big problem (after they've been started, the transition from basedance to flourish is a problem, for all the above reasons), because each client gets a "A does a Flourish 3" and starts showing A doing a flourish 3 at about the same time (depending on lag, theres a slight sync issue, but as long as the lag stays constant for everyone, everything will be lagged for that, and it will look good), no matter where in the basedance they were showing. If A hits /changedance Exotic4 during the flourish, everyone should get that at about the same time as well, and see her changing when the arms are above her head (assuming she didn't mess up). In addition each client starts the basedance at the same time, so after A changed to exotic 4 the basedance will be synced on each client (though thats not THAT important in Exo 4)
Unfortunately the Basedance position for exotic 3 is safed on each client, so if she ever /changedance exotic3 back they will not all start from the beginning again, but where they were seeing her doing that dance last time, so changing dances back to a dance you've already done is no way to fix the sync issue (unless she stopped once, then all positions are reseted).
I think alot of sync issues could be fixed if a /changedance resets the basedance animation for all other dances on the clients. As long as you /changedance once in a while it will sync the basedances again with all other performers and watchers.
As I said thats from my experience but I could be terribly wrong