Measuring the wrist, and mini bosses that keep their limbs

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A wrist that looked wrong, and a number that said how wrong

On the six one-handed classes (Archer, Bounty Hunter, Butcher, Monk, Ninja and Witch) the weapon wrist folded back by 110 degrees at idle, which made the hand look turned inside out. The Knight sat at 54 degrees and the Tank at 56.

The hand meshes themselves were right: thumb forward and palm toward the body on all nine bodies. The fault was the pose, and only a measurement of the wrist angle showed it.

A wrist limit in the pose solver now turns the hand round the weapon's own handle whenever a grip would fold the wrist past 95 degrees. It eases in over a few frames so nothing pops mid-swing. The six classes now measure 86 degrees, and the Knight, Tank, Barbarian and Wizard are unchanged.

The forearm was still wrung

Turning the hand half a turn fixed the wrist and left the forearm twisted by about 149 degrees on six classes. The solver now tries five elbow directions and twelve hand rolls round the handle, and keeps the most natural pose: least forearm twist, least wrist bend, elbow outside the ribs. The search costs about 0.04 ms per solve.

There is a limit that no solver gets round. A sword hanging straight down beside the arm cannot have both a small wrist bend and a small forearm twist, because the fingers run at right angles to the handle and the wrist needs about 90 degrees. The remaining lever is to angle the idle sword forward.

One hand style per class, opening and closing

The imported hero bodies had one canned hand pose. Each class now has its own resting hand: a heavy fist for the Barbarian, loose fists for the Tank and Butcher, long open fingers for the Wizard, spread claw fingers for the Witch, a flat blade-hand for the Ninja, an open palm for the Monk, and relaxed hands for the Archer and Bounty Hunter.

The fingers close round the handle when the arm takes the weapon and open when it lets go, driven by two morph targets per body, which add about 9 MB per body. The grip radius is set per class as well, from a 2.8 cm katana hilt to a 5 cm club.

On the Ninja, Witch and Tank the fist was centred on the sword's guard end. The silver "pommel ball" in a screenshot turned out to be pale fingers lying on the guard. Each now holds further along the hilt, with the guard clear in front of the fist.

An anatomy review and a code review followed. The first found no wrung forearm, backwards hand or wrist tear on any of the nine classes at idle, attack and run, and had fists loosened where they curled into a spiral. The second found no crash-class bug across all 11 classes, co-op allies, the death path and the phone path, and caught the hand sweeping the long way round the handle, elbow churn inside swings and per-frame garbage, all fixed.

Mini bosses keep their limbs

Mini bosses were losing arms from the first heavy hit, because only Mega Bosses were excluded from the limb-loss rule. A mini boss now keeps every limb until it is down to 8.3 percent of its life. The killing blow still cuts or explodes it as before.

A new probe hit six mini bosses with 40 critical blows each:

Where this stands

Run, attack, cast, death and cut poses were checked closely only at small scale with the wrist limit, and nothing has been tried on a real phone or in a real play session. Close up, the Ninja and Witch grip fingers still read as plain tubes, because the source hands have no finger detail.