Two Questions Regarding BSAs

[movomo]

I'll tell you what I can think of so far.

 

>> Magic effects: I had a neat idea that kinda got shot down when I took a look at the magic effects in the CS. They are hard-coded and seem to be impossible to expand upon? If I was to add, say, new bound armors - how could I go about that? Is there a workaround maybe via scripting that allows me to add a whole bunch of completely new bound armor spells together with their associated armors?

 

They are indeed hard-wired.

 

The first and the most traditional way is to replace existing (but preferably unused) stuff. Unused effects are "numbered" like BA01, 02, ... or BW01, ...(consult the wiki) However as you can expect this will conflict if the user is using similar mods. Like Monsterg..*cough*

 

The next one is to mimic a bound effect using script. The idea is very simple, add some equipment on cast and remove them on expiration. This sounds nice, but has its own problem... if the actor gets out of player's vicinity, spell effect scripts tend to behave a bit unreliably. So for example it may fail to retrieve the gears back, then we need to add more script to prevent bound armor bloating (or something), and so on. Or, completely forget about spell effect and attach object scripts to them.

One more problem in this is that you can't make the NPCs cast scripted spells in any natural way.

 

Somewhat fancier approach would be to use Oblivion Magic Extender (written by the same person as AV uncapper). The biggest drawback in this is that it requires one more obse plugin that not too many people are using.

 

 

>> Special animations: If I was to add a totally new type of weapon with attack and movement animations unique to this weapon type - how would I add these animations to the NPCs wielding these weapons? And even more importantly - this I imagine to be the really hard part - if the player picks up such a weapon: How to make these weapons work even for the player? With the correct animations, that is.

 

That might be a bit tough to implement.

If they are just NPCs and they are supposed to use only that type of weapons, you could simply assign those special attack anims to those NPCs and forget about it.

But if not (which seems to be the case) that's where things get complicated... heavy scripting.

 

If you remember the plugin that I had sent to you ages ago (the one that lets you fly)... you can "toggle" certain anim paths for a certain base actor. Like it temporarily swaps walk/run animations with fly animations. Vipcxj's fly system basically uses this approach. (as well as some combat mods - spear mods for example)

Also worth noting that this obse function affects the base actor, so everyone (say, bandit) with the same base object will change at the same time until you revert it back. That means you may want to make sure that the situation is strictly controlled.

 

It is also possible to use Blockhead for this. I haven't tried that function yet so I'm not 100% certain, but it seems like it could override animations per individual reference basis. Symon might know about this, I think?

[fejeena]

Magic effects: Yes Bound Armor BA01 to BA10 are not used and bound weapon BW09 and BW10.

But Scripting would be better to avoid conflicts with other Mods.

[varenne]

>> Special animations: I may actually need to look into this a bit now. I'm continuing my clean up of Margrette Lena v5 Ultimate (Evy version) and one outfit comes with a Chinese paper fan as a weapon, but it is categorized or listed as a staff, but not working as intended. At least not yet. When arming she goes into a staff battle pose, but unarmed, which is rather weird. Not sure if I need to replace the animation or just make the paper fan a sword type. Chinese MODs can be so strange to me at times...

 

On another note, I had a short while back discovered a fairly new MOD (I think it was new) on I think Nexus. It allows you to have certain sets of animations for your PC and just vanilla for NPCs. I think it was when I was looking into DR or the other gore combat MOD. Now I wish I had DLed it. There's also another that acts as sort of database of sorts for adding hairs, so you can assign them to multiple races. Still looking for that one too as I feel it may have potential for Tamago/Hiyoko, short of going to Blockhead at this time.

[fejeena]

The old  Kamikazes Combat Animation Selector ?  "KamiCAS lets you use multiple THIRD PERSON animation styles for walking and fighting "

   http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/36650/?

 

or CCAO - Cotyounoyume Combat Animation Overhaul ?

http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/36261/?

[varenne]

Yup, those are them. I wonder if any of that could be extended or altered to weapon specific animations, for what Poontank is looking to do.

[movomo]

If unfortunately the mod uses idle animations like MAO, it will fuck up lovers system pretty quickly.

Those two linked above seem like using skeleton swapping. That's probably ok except that swapping skeleton is a bit slow operation. is anyone using any of them?

[varenne]

I'm not using either one at the moment, mostly as I'm not using DR. If this is skeleton swapping and/or not compatible with Lovers, then I doubt I'd even bother with it then.

[Poontank]

Seems I better should forget about handguns then. And all rifle-type weapons I already have will just be used as staves with staff animations.

I want to keep it as simple and hassle-free as possible. The mod is about the characters after all. Sure, would be nice to have Steampunk NPCs wielding hand cannons - but only if there is a simple way to implement matching handgun animations. Maybe in a later version...

 

I have run into the described weapon-equip weirdness before. It's just the wrong weapon type assigned to that paper fan (a 'Harisen'?) in the esp.

The same can already happen if a two-handed sword is put into the one-handed category.

 

Since I only have a small portion of the armors completed so far which actually need the bound armor spells I think this will have to wait a bit until later. Right now I concentrate on implementing all the material which I have readily lying around, and then I will tweak the characters more seriously and distribute all the available gear to them. So that I can release a first version as soon as possible.

 

After implementing a lot of new equipment in the past few days now this is the current status of the mod:

 

[ger4]

Seems I better should forget about handguns then. And all rifle-type weapons I already have will just be used as staves with staff animations.

I want to keep it as simple and hassle-free as possible. The mod is about the characters after all. Sure, would be nice to have Steampunk NPCs wielding hand cannons - but only if there is a simple way to implement matching handgun animations. Maybe in a later version...

 

I have run into the described weapon-equip weirdness before. It's just the wrong weapon type assigned to that paper fan (a 'Harisen'?) in the esp.

The same can already happen if a two-handed sword is put into the one-handed category.

 

Since I only have a small portion of the armors completed so far which actually need the bound armor spells I think this will have to wait a bit until later. Right now I concentrate on implementing all the material which I have readily lying around, and then I will tweak the characters more seriously and distribute all the available gear to them. So that I can release a first version as soon as possible.

 

After implementing a lot of new equipment in the past few days now this is the current status of the mod:

 

CurrentModStatus.jpg

Well, you might be able to use Blockhead's animation override function to override the staff animation with ones for a handgun.

[Poontank]

It's possible that such an approach might just work. I've only scratched the surface of that plugin's capabilities yet, so far only using it for custom player character stances in the menu screens and such.

 

For the moment it's all hypothetical anyway - now that I've checked it out I found the awesome handgun animations for which I had such high hopes - are first-person animations only! Head > table. Should have taken a look way earlier. Maybe one day somebody will create (or simply adapt) a few third-person handgun moves.

 

Here is a WIP shot of planned projectile weapons still in their assembly phase.

Only the classic blunderbuss in the middle is certified to be working at the moment. With staff animations. And it has become prettier than before.

 

 

 

 

The other rifles are easy to get to work with staff animations as well using the blunderbuss as a template for placement and angle.

[Poontank]

Here is another concept for the mod I came up with some time ago. An immersion thing affecting one particular group of enemies: Ranged assailants, meaning all sorts of archers. Bandits, marauders and vampires. Also Dremora, townguard and Legion bowmen.

 

In any fight, once the player approaches ranged enemies they switch to close quarter combat by unequipping their bow and pulling a dagger. It has always bugged me that neither their bow stays visible on their back when they are in melee combat mode nor any dagger is visibly attached to their belt when they are shooting. Now since in my mod all these enemy types are using their unique armors and outfits, it will become possible to give archers a second version of their respective gear and swap out their equipment with an attached script to reflect the assailants' current mode of attack.

 

The shooter outfit would feature a dagger or shortsword prop on the belt, the melee outfit would have the specific bow and arrows a character is using as non-functional props on their back. This at least is the approach that first came to my mind. Simply swapping the items 'Break Undies'-style. Or is there a better way to make this concept work? If the swapping process would be executed via scripting, what would such a script look like? If the equipment will be marked as playable, after looting both outfits from a fallen archer the player should be able to profit from the same immersive swapping effect, right (with the swapping scripts attached to both outfits)?

 

It's clear that alternative sets of armor for the characters in question will mean quite a load of additional work. So this 'immersive archers' segment probably will have to wait until later. Right now I better concentrate on finishing a first version of the mod for a soon-ish release.

[varenne]

I think the non-appearing bow on back or dagger on belt is due to the game only allowing for one right (or left) hand item at a time to be enabled. If an NPC has one enabled, say a bow, then even if they have the dagger in inventory, it cannot be shown as enabled also.

[Poontank]

Yes, I find it's a very annoying technical limitation. But this makes it all the more interesting and challenging to find a way - even if it's just a cop-out 'fake' make-believe - to simulate fully equipped enemies.

 

The idea occurred to me the first time when I added multiple quiver props to archer outfits. In general many of the mod's enemy armors are having all sorts of secondary weapon props attached. It's one of the features I always loved the most about Waalx's work, WAC's equipment concepts are a strong influence and source of inspiration to me.

[movomo]

In my opinion, creating two separate objects and swapping out between them - Break Undies approach - sounds a bit easier than swapping one object's mesh path - Break Armor approach. That is, I mean if the outfits are non-playable. Writing such script isn't much of a problem by its own. But both have its own pros and cons. One more disadvantage that both methods share is that such script can sometimes be burdening.