ULTIMA8: Option to disable the turning animations when turning the Avatar around

[thecommissar]

In Ultima VII (7), when you move around, you can turn on the spot without an animation having to play. This makes moving around a lot easier and more fluid compared to U8 Pagan.

Because in Pagan, you can't change directions and start moving quickly because an animation for the Avatar to turn has to play every time. It's clunky and frustrating.

I'd like an option to disable the turning animation on the Avatar if possible; I feel this would make movement feel a lot more satisfying.

[OMGPizzaGuy]

While the animation add a few extra frames, I feel the primary thing that make movement feel slow is the delay before movement when using mouse-based movement. The delay is normal 500ms for the double-click timeout to occur. This can be reduced with the "double_click_time" config setting, but any value less than 250 may be difficult perform a normal double click.
Alternately you might try keyboard/gamepad movement, which can be relative (tank - turn left/right, move forward) or absolute (directional - move left/right/up/down). This method has no movement delay.

I could also experiment with removing the mouse delay when not in combat, as nothing maps to right double-click in normal movement.

Removal of turn animations is possible in Actor::turnTowardDir, but I found the result unpleasant and would like to consider other options before reworking this as a supported config setting.

[OMGPizzaGuy]

Small correction - double right click on the player does enter/exit combat mode.

[thecommissar]

I guess the issue is that using keyboard/pad movement doesn't really solve it because I still can't just turn around; I have to either run in a circle to get there, or stop moving and wait for the Avatar to cycle through each direction, which takes about half a second if I'm turning 180 degrees.

This happens whether I start moving from stationary, or whether I try to turn while already running. It'd be much more fluid & enjoyable to not have that annoying delay for something so simple as turning around.