I totally agree with decoration. Tassels, strings, hats, tufts of hair, stuff hanging from belts, scarves, Chinese-style decorations hanging behind speartips or from sword pommels... The possibilities are endless.Lotus Wolf wrote:Anyway, yeah, there are several weapons that need this type of bone to operate realistically. I can think of several other ways to use such bones simply for decoration, like tassels or strings on clothes.
As far as weapons go, though, I can think of only one type of weapons that could use a physics-enabled bone, and that's variations of the common flail, the kind used to trash wheat. Since they originated as peasant weapons there are probably dozens of variations, but most can be animated as either small ones used on one hand (nunchuck), or longer ones that have a medium-length staff and that ends in a a shorter, hinged striking end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef9Xuzu3aa0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a839l7fIYBU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKOUO9r3dX4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjESEVTRG6M
That's a cool weapon... but it's not iconic, it's mostly unknown and I don't think I've ever seen it in a game. So basically, unless I forgot a weapon or I'm wrong on the stuff below, there probably won't be any weapons in Overgrowth that'd need jiggle bones.
Anyway, to the stuff that wouldn't work. There are the maces with a handle and one to several chains that end in a ball. They are known by at least a dozen names, but I hope you all know what I'm talking about. They do indeed need some physics to work properly, but that's problematic for gameplay. The chain only comes into play when it wraps around something. When it wraps around something, it gets past the block - around a shield, say, or past the haft of a polearm or staff. It'd be a weapon that can't be blocked, and it could very easily become unbalanced.
It could be cool to see it used properly, though. Here's a guy thinking about different ways to use it. He bases it on nunchuck movements, but it's still pretty cool.
Unless I missed something, all the other weapons that seem like they'd benefit from simulated animation, would have some sort of chain or rope. I believe that they can't be properly represented using animations that are simulated during gameplay. The in-game simulation would be of poor quality, and the rigged character wouldn't use the weapon as well as a real person, so he'd end up hitting himself or missing the enemy. It'd be much easier to use a set of attack animations where the weapon has also been animated (in Blender or whatever).
The "Shaolin three-section-staff" is a good example of that. Imagine a rabbit using the exact same attack animation while his legs are in (slightly) different positions, and hitting himself in the legs with the end that's supposed to come up, and hitting himself in the head with the other one.
Whips. They aren't even weapons, really, and doing the animations by hand probably wouldn't be any more complicated than making sure the physics-based animations work well. And again, the whip going around things would be problematic.
There's also urumi (a sword + a whip == ???) and 7-section steel whip and 17-section steel whip, and chains, and chain whips... I believe they'd also be easier to do by hand, than to simulate on the fly.
Meteor hammersand rope daggers... the attack animations would probably be impossible to do without hand animation, since the loops and twists get so complicated.