Star Wars: The Old Republic : On Combat Animations

Principal Lead Animator Mark How has penned the latest in a series of developer diaries about various creative processes for Star Wars: The Old Republic. How writes about Combat Animations this time.
As with most things Star Wars, the team focused, at least initially, on the "iconic" clash of two lightsabres and working to ensure that this type of combat is brought to the game correctly:

We worked closely with the combat programmers and designers to ensure that the combat visuals do not detract from the gameplay experience. A key aspect we learned early in development was that players do not enjoy having character control taken away from them because of an action or animation. Similarly, we realized that any action a player takes in the game needs to be visually represented in a way that is consistent with the player’s expectations.

From here, How moves the discussion to combat cover and its importance in The Old Republic. The team was determined to make the animations work correct for barrel-rolling behind a crate, for instance. How talks about the length of time this took to function as it should, with the team play acting the way they hoped the animations would turn out.
All in all, it's a great article about bringing great ideas, seemingly simple ideas, to life within the constraints of MMO development.
Read the full article on the Star Wars: The Old Republic site.