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Working on an update for the Taketori Katana

Apr
21
2008 in Product Updates, Testing, Bug Reports and C:SI.

Sorry for the lack of news these last few days, I’ve been sick

Somehow, despite a profound lack of energy and overpowering brain fog, I’ve managed to come up with some code changes that I think will help people who are experiencing issues with jump-slash, jump-kick, and a few other issues.

I hope to be testing those changes tomorrow, and if they aren’t complete crap, I will distribute a few updates to some of my beta testers. Ideally, I’d like beta testers that are experiencing some issues so that they can tell me whether there’s improvement in those areas, but I also need beta testers that are not currently experiencing any problems who can tell me whether I’ve introduced any new ones.

Assuming all goes well (yes, I know that’s a big assumption) I plan on moving on to a new special attack and the ability to hide and show the tsuba, and some other "missing" features.

I’ll keep everyone posted.

Popularity: 21% [?]

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Some feedback on Taketori Katana V1.0.3

Apr
16
2008 in Testing, Bug Reports, C:SI and Second Life.

9 Comments

I’ve received some interesting feedback for the latest update. Most of it is positive, which is great, but some of it is negative as well.

For instance, Keen Nitely reports that he cannot properly jumpkick; When he tries to jumpkick, leaving the kick button pressed, he slashes instead. I cannot duplicate this, which I find very frustrating, since I know he is telling me the best way he knows about how to cause it.

entraxx Winkler reports :

if you are in a fight the combo kick slash slash do not work. You even do not here if you are slashing in this combo. That is why i cannot here if i am stunned.

Untill this bug is fixed this kat is for me useless, and i will not use it with a serious spar.

Rakka Owatatsumi had even more to say about the update in a notecard :

Hello Robby,

first I want to tell you that I generaly really LOVE your Taketori. I would like to have this as my main Katana… but… there is one issue what makes the Taketori more or less useless for me.
That issue is the block animation/ script.

The block of the Taketori is WAY the slowest of each Katana I ever tested (I know all Katanas beside the Ashes V3 and the Dragon Katana from Archatek). What do I mean with this… hmm, I try to explain (since I am not really into creating animations and scripting).

If I am in block pose and want to do a counter hit, I get always "stuck" in the block pose. Yes, this happens with each Katana if your fingers move too fast from C to W (or A, D, S), but with the Taketori this issue is just too big. I need 5 or 6 tries to make a hit, in this time I got kicked almost to death by my opponent ^^ If I wait a bit longer with hit the W (or A. S, D) button then the hit comes, but way way way too late.
I don’t know why that is but it feels like that the block pose is having too long for to stop and it "disables" my hit I want to do. I kinda just stay in block pose.
I do not expect the Taketori as so fast like the Musashi’s (where you can hit the W button in almost the same moment as you left the C button) but it should at least be possible that I can do my hit fast enough.

Kenshin Sonada doesn’t has this issue. No clue why. I talked to some other fighters and some of them agree with me that the block pose needs too long and it disables/ neutralizes your hit, so you just stay in block pose.

The odd thing is: if I am in third person mode, this issue is not there(!?). I can hit faster (off the block) then with the Musashi Katanas. The block pose stopps immediately and allows me to hit. But not in mouselook. It is that slow in mouselook that it is even almost impossible to go through the medium level of Eyana’s reflex pole.

But again: beside this issue is the Taketori absolut fantastic to handle. It feel good in the (virtual) hand and it has a good weight (feels not that heavy like the Archateks).

If your Taketori would go faster off the block pose it would be for sure the best Katana in CSI. I would even prefer it over the Musashi Black Rose and Dynasty Flame.

I hope I do make sense.

Rakka Owatatsumi, Tendai Samurai ^^

Again, that’s another issue that I cannot reproduce. Nor can I understand why the behavior should be different in mouselook than it is in third person, though I know that I’ve seen differences in responsiveness for *all* swords on the left and right slash between those two viewing modes. It’s a mystery to me why that could possibly be true, and I’m not super motivated to go through the Second Life Viewer code (again!) to see if the viewer handles keys differently in mouselook.

I am looking into these reports (and some others that I’ve gotten less detail on) to see what I can do about them, but what might help is knowing how many others are also experiencing such issues.

Perhaps if more people report these problems, it might lead to finding some commonality that I’m currently not seeing. And, perhaps, if few others are experiencing these issues, that might be significant as well.

Popularity: 21% [?]

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Taketori Katana V1.0 released

Apr
14
2008 in Testing, products, C:SI, Daikon Forge and Second Life.

45 Comments

Yesterday I quietly released the Taketori Katana. It is available in my main shop at Anhalt Hill (first place in my profile Picks) as well as SL Exchange :

So far I’ve gotten mostly good feedback, though there’s at least one person out there who apparently hates it (I think his exact words were "The handling on this thing sucks"). I admit that it’s a little different, and may required getting used to (there’s no auto-combo ability in this sword, for instance), but most people seem to be reporting that it’s pretty smooth for them.

The most important thing to remember about the Taketori Katana handling is that it is specifically designed to not require rapid-fire button mashing or perfect timing. It is designed such that it should be easy to move smoothly from one attack to the next, or attack to block, etc. As an example, if you pressed W for a forward slash, you can press and hold D at any point while the W slash is executing to move right into the D slash when the W slash is finished, you do not need to wait for the W to finish. Same with block and kick. The number one priority for the Taketori was the ability to smoothly transition from one thing to the next, almost like a rolling motion from one key to the next.

Some people have reported that the Taketori is faster, some have reported that it is slower, and there are people I trust completely on both sides of that argument. Who is right? Well, technically speaking, I did in fact slow down the Taketori a little due to feedback from some of the best fighters I could find, but a great deal of testing has not shown the weapon to actually be slow. Most testers have reported that it is fairly well balanced.

Only time and widespread usage will really reveal what the overall consensus is, and while I feel that the speed is pretty good "as-is", I think exactly the right decision was made : It’s possible to release an update that is faster, if required, but if I release a "too-fast" weapon and try to put out an update that is slower to try to balance it, then many people will simply choose not to use the update.

Beta testers may wonder "what happened to the rolls?", to which I can only say that although I still intend to incorporate the rolls in a future update, I never considered them an essential feature, and making them work properly and consistently despite SL’s quirks and the greediness (in terms of aggressive polling time and insistence on overriding literally everything) of most animation overrides was just more work than I was willing to do if it meant putting off the release by a couple more weeks.

I also plan on creating a unique special attack for this weapon. :) It’s another one of those features that, although it would be quite nice to have a unique special, was just not a showstopper.

I hope to do a postmortem article soon, but as it is I just picked up a new contract at my RL job and need to return to gritty reality

Please feel free to leave any feedback you have on the new weapon, I would very much like to hear what people have to say!!!

Popularity: 45% [?]

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Taketori Katana Beta period ends

Apr
13
2008 in Testing, products, C:SI and Second Life.

4 Comments

I have decided to end the Beta Testing period of the Taketori Katana in order to concentrate on the final steps required for actual product release. To all of those who have recently requested to join the beta program and have not received a response from me, I apologize for not getting back to you right away; I’ve had a crazy schedule and have been considering this move for several days now, which has cause me to hesitate in answering one way or the other.

Many thanks to the wonderful team of beta testers, which includes (but not limited to and in no particular order) : Zai, Aimee, Kasumi, Ravish, JulieAnne, Heather, Zero, and everyone else that sent me notecards with their findings and feedback. I find it tremendously encouraging and rewarding that the majority of feedback has been positive, and I’m hoping that many more people will enjoy the sword once it is released.

This sword has been very long in the making, longer than any other I’ve ever made before, for a variety of reasons which I hope to cover in an upcoming post-mortem article. While there is certainly much more that can (and perhaps should) be done with it I feel that I’ve reached the point where I am impatient have it released and publicly available while still working on those additional things that can be incorporated into the product via short-term product updates.

Additionally, there are some issues that I need to look into and resolve with the Wave Katana, and a near-future update of that product is on my high-priority to-do list. Besides the known issues that need to be resolved, there are a few things I’ve learned while building the Taketori that I want to retrofit into the Wave, hopefully resulting in improvements to that product as well.

I am also incredibly anxious to begin working on a new weapon, a recent inspiration that is sufficiently different from my previous weapons to have given me a great deal of motivation. I won’t say too much about it at this point, as it’s way too early to make comments on things that are more likely to change than not, but I will occasionally post here about my work on that project as it progresses.

I expect the product to be released soon. Very soon. While I am working on the product update server, vendors, packaging, etc, here’s a quick little (crappy) video I made of the sword that I want to post "just for fun" (note that you can download the actual .avi if you really want to see it, online video is low quality) :

Taketori Katana V1.0 (Work in progress) from Takuan Daikon on Vimeo.

Popularity: 19% [?]

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