Concerns over Hood animation changes

[-Variant]

Okay, I had a little fear going over the bug reports last night about this, but I figured it'd be unlikely so I refrained from bringing this up.
This is very, very kneejerk of me to instantly bring up but I'd rather do it now than later.

My fears were confirmed.
The hood's layering and removing the 'headbase' sprite of characters caused many issues, many animations that drastically moved the head would break. This is also why the unique character faces were dashed, the hood had many, many visual errors.

To account for this, they're not changing the hood itself, but rather editing the animations to have a more subtle/stable head.
Here's an example.

EDIT; here's the new animation in motion.

I fear this because this is editing perfectly fine animations and making them account for an already somewhat messy new hat item.

This causes some characters to loose interesting animation quirks as well! Notably Wortox.
When Wortox teleports, his hat would fly off for a bit.
This is no longer the case.

 

TLDR concerns: Player animations are being changed to account for the hood replacing the characters head.
This has two major effects, 1 being the animations looking better with the hood equipped.
And 2 being the loss of potential character quirks in said animations alongside defining silhouettes.

I propose either these animations being split, and only playing with the hood equipped over replacing the existing ones, or changing the hood itself if it really is causing this many animation issues.

[. . .]

Personally, I prefer more stable heads in animations, but it might just be me. Though, I would not mind these animations being only played if the hood is equipped or something which requires a stable head.

[-Nick-]

17 minutes ago, -Variant said:

When Wortox teleports, his hat would fly off for a bit.
This is no longer the case.

Wait wouldn't that mean the Wormhole jump animation was changed too?! I always loved seeing the hat fly off as you jumped in.

[-Variant]

Just now, -Nick- said:

Wait wouldn't the mean Wormhole jump animation was changed too?! I always loved seeing the hat fly off as you jumped in.

Yes, the hat bit has been removed.

[WhackE]

This is.... concerning.

[-Nick-]

Just now, -Variant said:

Yes, the hat bit has been removed.

Nooooooooooooooo

[CameoAppearance]

Using these altered animations only while wearing the hood (or similar equipment, like maybe the brightshade helm) would be the best of both worlds, I think. That would allow the animations to be as dynamic as possible and keep them from losing their charm for the sake of a single very-late-game hat. Maybe two endgame hats if it is indeed extended to the helm, but still a small percentage of the equippable items in the game and one that many players will never reach.

Personally I would especially miss the way characters' hats fly off when they jump into a wormhole and land back on their heads again when they pop out. I see that animation a lot, because who wants to run across half the map if they don't need to, and the hat motion is the best part. I don't want it to be left behind and only exist in singleplayer Don't Starve.

[Theukon-dos]

The more that comes up in these updates, the more my faith in Klei wavers. At this point I'd rather just the character's face be visible under the hood at all times, if making it all shadowey has caused this darn many problems. 

[crushcircuit]

i definitely agree with having the animations split; i think these could work if they werent enforced upon everything no matter what! it makes things rather dull and stiff, to me, and it removes a lot of the charm some of the old animations have; though they'd work perfectly fine for just the hood. with the wolfgang example, the animation is noticeably less clear and completely messes with the silhouette he had in his old animation, and we can all agree the hat falling off of your head as you teleport was one of the most charming parts of the animation

i'd really like to see these only applied to the hood. in fact, the eye mask has similar issues with the teleport animation, so they could make it apply for that as well! just not everything; this is definitely not "one size fits all"

of course, if they altered the hood itself so it didnt cause quite as many issues, id totally be fine with that as well! it seems to be rather problematic in its current state...

[CameoAppearance]

1 minute ago, crushcircuit said:

in fact, the eye mask has similar issues with the teleport animation, so they could make it apply for that as well! just not everything; this is definitely not "one size fits all"

Right, right, the eye mask as well. That's three hats that would benefit from having their own set of animations. I'm not an expert on DST sprite construction, but it seems like if we can have every emote get its own riding-a-beefalo counterpart we can have special sticks-to-your-head animations for hats that cover the neck and leave the original animations in place for literally every other hat. If it takes more time to implement it that way, I would gladly wait longer for a better result.

[HalfEnder776]

Oh I hate this...

Also if their going to go over and modify existing animations, could they at least fix swap face and maybe hairfront???

[maradyne]

Alternate animation being used specifically for full-head 'hats' seems to be the way to go here.

[Primalflower]

i really like the idea of alternating animations for full head hats and not-full-head hats.

[Duck986]

Would definitely like to see different full-head/part-head animations than changing the whole animation cast just for 1-2 new hats (3 if counted with Eye Mask)

[CameoAppearance]

Speaking of riding a beefalo, does this also apply to when you get bucked off and momentarily lose your hat? That hat flutter really sells the abrupt motion of that animation!

[Anthony_L3hr]

First Wilson's idle animation change, now this.

[YouKnowWho]

oh I am not a fan of this at all

[Notecja]

... Klei... why. Just why.

I am heartbroken. Removing so many cool details, because... what? Not even checking alternatives?

[TrashLord]

I'm not sure how things work behind the curtain per se(I'm at best a hack fraud when it comes to coding), but having two sets of animations for whether a character is wearing a fully-covering headgear or not would be ideal; as many others have stated in this very thread, sacrificing expressive character animations across the board for the sake of 1-2 items just doesn't feel worth it to me.

[Paxtonnnn]

I'm REALLY hoping Klei doesn't just ignore the feedback here, these animation changes are bad

[Dragonboooorn]

4 hours ago, -Variant said:

EDIT; here's the new animation in motion.

Thats literally the biggest nerf Wolfgang ever got. And not a deserved or a good one (Wolfgang deserve love, not nerfs), fix it or Im gonna throw dumbbels at a Kleis office

#justice_for_heads

[BoysenSyrup]

haha! wow! this isn't very nice

[Creatorofswamps]

#justice_for_heads

[Chesed]

I don't normally comment on these kinds of things because I am aware Klei has a more nuanced understanding of the development of their own game than I do, but the entire saga of this item has been confusing to me.

These changes (in my opinion) are absolutely for the worse, and applying them to these animations as a complete replacement - instead of an alternative when the cowl is being worn - is a disappointing move.

But mostly it makes me sad, because surely it was a lot of work to do this? Surely it took effort to comb the animations for ones that did not work with the cowl, and tweak them?

I don't understand why the design of the cowl itself was not tweaked if this was going to cause such a huge problem. It had already been tweaked once before and seems to still be causing issues. I hope (and am guessing that) the reason why it's not being changed is because there are other future hats that are going to look like this too and this is future-proofing, otherwise I just don't get it.

I really hope Klei considers making these changed animations alternatives, if they have the time to. I'm not going to get upset if they don't, but this feels like a constraint that is going to limit animations in the future... and that's a little sad when the visual style of the game is what I enjoy the most about it.

(EDIT: As a disclaimer, I'm not angry or emotional about this change - I just talk too much!)

[Creatorofswamps]

6 hours ago, -Variant said:

EDIT; here's the new animation in motion.

His head is too low, which makes it seem like his hands are growing out of his chin