Indeed, haha! But I guess that seems to be getting more into die-roll/stat-based combat mechanics of old!

I do long for the day when games get away from hit-point-based health systems... and make it more abstract and dynamic. Believe me, if my life depended on my ability to do math, I wouldn't survive long

mmmm...... well I cannot talk about it much but I was briefly involved with a start up game dev group. They asked me to work with them as a consultant. They had a very interesting idea to "get away from hit-point-based health systems and make it more abstract and dynamic".

So there are DEV out there that are thinking the same thing.

And I have thought about using the CoD method myself for my Oblivion combat mods. But I was afraid that it would make health spells and potions useless. Imagine my surprise when Bethesda adopted a CoD- ish health system for Skyrim!

However if you remove the health bar you need some other way to indicate actor damage such as different animations for moving and fighting and or different skins for the armor and actors getting dirty and bloody and torn.

You (and others basically) said:
I can definitely understand that as far as having armor getting stronger the more you wear it. But just for my own knowledge, would an armor skill make sense in terms of "experience"... or getting used to armor? That is if a novice has never worn heavy armor before, wouldn't his movements be slower and more awkward than someone who has worn it for years?


Me:
You guys are right on that point, my rash statement was focused on the silly idea that armor got more passively protective with skill. There is NO such skill taught or practiced of any kind that I have ever seen (outside of games) for becoming a master of Turing your body to best use your armor. You are way to busy turning your body to attack and parry! Now, there are some small exceptions to what I just said, for example when a blow is about to hit your head and your parry weapon is too far away or too involved in other actions to be used it is better to raise your arm and get hit in the limb than to get hit in the head. And if you have armor on your arm that is far better than if you do not. And there are ways to move your body to best glance attacks off your body and again if you have armor on your body at the time that makes the situation much better, but that kind of thing is covered under the skills of dodging and "slipping" not "armor wearing".

We put new guys (no skills at all) in full plate armor to protect them in the SCA. As they get better over the years many then start to remove some of it (such as no shoulder guards) or change to lighter armor such as boiled leather. So really the way the skill works for armor in this game and others is more the opposite of reality.

That said, you guys are right that you do get skilled at moving a little faster and you learn not to fight against your armor so your attacks and parries get better. A new person in armor tends to get a lot of "armor bites" from trying to move in ways the armor will not allow and the edges of the plates and rivets from leather can cut your flesh. Some of my worse scars are from armor/shield/weapon hilt cuts and tears.


You:
Ah, and I have another question. I fear I really have no personal experience to make such a claim, but is my thought of armor off base? To me, it seems as though heavy plate armor would be akin to a tank's armor. If hit, it either stops the strike or it doesn't. Is there really much of a grey area where it would allow a percentage of damage through like in a video game? I can understand lighter, more flexible armor, but for plate? Concussive energy, perhaps, but cutting or piercing?

me:
well....yes and that is why I mod it to protect up to 95% instead of 80%. But you still do get (thru the armor even steel plates) dangerous contusions, concussions and torn muscles and tendons, dislocations, and even cuts from your own armor sometimes. The momentum from top heavy weapons push your armor into your body even if the armor does not breach. So even a system were the armor either worked or failed would still need to wear you down with some damage.

EDIT:
However, it is small enough amount that ditching it completely and just using a work or fail system could be more efficient for a PC game and still be close enough to realistic.

I like the health regen in Skyrim.

After using Real Injury for Oblivion and then trying out and testing several other regen mods for Oblivion - I just no longer saw the health bar as a representation of the life of a character. To me it is more the fight in them. Once it goes down you are unconscious and to be killed by whatever is attacking you. It saves the time gulping massive amounts of red liquid after a fight or spamming healing spells. Not that it couldn't use some tweaking.

What would make it better is an overhaul of the potions and potion drinking. I know this mechanism comes from fantasy literature. It is funny how even in 'classics' like LotR where one potion is used in like an entire book -- in D&D that gets uped to something you can do during a round of combat ... then to video games where it is a cheat. Open inventory and click click click ... full health - as if these red bottles are a reserve of life force and they are administered by a divine hand without need or worry.

It is a huge disconnect ... we gather ingredients and make potions or collect them. Then, in practice, they are not potions so much as a reserve of life force.

If I could (maybe I will try) I would make it like this:
- Drinking a potion is always accompanied by an animation (both in stealth and not) - one animation for each potion.
- These animations leave you wide open for attack.
- To compensate for this and to think of potions proactively - make them on average 4x stronger and maybe 10x long lasting.
- The amount of potions one is able to be under the influence of/consumed at once is related to alchemy skill/perks.
- Addition of ingame visual effects for using potions above our skill level. So if low alchemy but drink strong potion that increases strength then visual effects of tunnel vision. This is reduced as skill level goes up.

All this to completely remove the spaming cheat that is potions. It is a tired conceit in video games.

Also why potions? Why not gums to chew or compounds that are rubbed on the skin?

I like the health regen as a convenience in the game as long as it only regens AFTER combat. That will be how it is in my skyrim mod if i can do that. no regen of heath in combat but fast regen out of combat to prevent the boring gulping of potions before moving on to the next room. I have nothing against potions, in fact alchemy is my primary skill in Skyrim after blocking!

And just like I did in my Oblivion mod I will force some kind of drinking animation. At first when I did this in my Oblivion mod I hated it, but wow did it change the way I approached combat.
It adds realism to the magic that helps to make the magic more magical...if you know what I mean.

Thank you for all your knowledge!



May I suggest the tried and true method of the classic Jurassic Park: Trespasser? ;-P

http://www.gamesradar.com/the-10-most-creative-life-bars/?page=2



I was hoping such a thing could be implemented by my http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1299411-concept-damage-overhaul-not-tactics/ by making non-lethal/damaging blows deplete stamina instead of health. When stamina <= 0, you are unconscious until your stamina regenerates back into the positives... leaving you completely defenseless to any attack.



Haha, this sounds like how Zelda works! It's a pain when I haven't mastered the controls yet
That's why I carry fairies with me

I definitely like the idea, though!

Another idea that would only be possible in a catch all overhaul type mod: that health, stamina, and magicka exist on a continuum and are never seperate stats.

To me it is a heirarchy Health represents physical integrity, Stamina represents the stress on the physical body, and magicka is a combination of focus and concentration. So that if the health is low then Stamina regen is low ... if stamina is low ... then magicka regen is low. Perhaps even capping the stat that it has predominance over. Like Realistic Fatigue did for Oblivion: If you health was low your fatigue was capped at how much health you had (percentage wise).

This means that if hulking out - you can't count on an ever replenshing magicka supply to heal up.

I think Psymon's suggestions are really good. As a side comment but in Demon's Souls(Prequel to Dark Souls) you could mass obtain healing items, play really careless then heal up en masse.
That game also had a "drink" animation" but it was shorter than what they have in DkS. So the balances they implemented to discourage "Careless play followed by potion chugging" were:

A) Drinking animation is slower, making it crucial to find a "safe spot" to heal. 90% of the time, if you healed at a bad time you would be punished for it.
Drinking heal animation heals late in the animation, as opposed to early on, that way you might get hit as you pull out the potion if you did so at the wrong combat time. Defeating the purpose of the potion.
C) Not 100% sure, but I believe you would take some extra damage if hit while healing.
D) Can only hold a limited number of healing items at a time. Refilling healing items respawned all enemies.
E) Healing was more powerful though as a balance, and your healing items could be stronger with upgrades.
F) Magic could heal you, however healing magic had even more cast time than potions! But again, they were powerful as a balance.

It's not possible to really prevent all kinds of "item hoarding" to cause limited potion holding, but a suggestion I have would be to make potions toxic if too many are used in a certain timeframe.
Maybe something like...if there are too many potions within the bloodstream, the results are "toxic" due to how they affect the body.

The limitation could be either...how much hp was healed within a certain time frame, or alternatively how many potions you've chugged in the last...in game hour or so. If the person chugs over
that particular amount, the potion will damage instead of heal them, or perhaps not heal them at all.

What do you think?

@ shingouki and Psymon

Both of you have some interesting ideas on the potions but I would not be doing anymore than just forcing a drink animation when you drink in the same way I did it in my Oblivion mod. This is in part because I do not want to get too far away from this being a combat mod ( this is not an Alchemy mod). But mostly it is because many of those things I do not think can be done anyway, but that is only based on my knowledge of Oblivion. It may be different in Skyrim. But some other moder that is doing a alchemy mod will have to do them.

Here is the section from my read me file for my Oblivion mod concerning the Feint mechanics. I thought this may be of interest to those of you that are new and did not experience my Oblivion mod.


THIS IS NOT YET IN THE SKYRIM MOD! This is only to describe the feint mechanics in my Oblivion mod and what I will attempt to do in this Skyrim mod once the CK is out and SKSE has the required commands.


=====================
Feints
=====================

Feinting is the act of starting a swing one way then changing mid-swing to another way. This is not necessarily just a change in direction but can be a change in HOW the attack is thrown.

For this RPG, generally your player reflexes should not determine the success of the feint, your stats, your opponent&#39;s stats and other combat conditions should. However you will need to be prompt and accurate in finishing your blow after a successful feint or you will lose your opportunity. I have several very deep chapters in my SCA combat book on this subject but due to the limitations of modding Oblivion I had to adapt this vast amount of information to a very simple system, but I feel it is as close to real life as I could make it.

The fundamental of most feints is to reduce the amount of time your opponent has to respond to an attack. This is done by hiding or camouflaging the start or end or all of your attack as much as possible. You must either hide or camouflage the clues that tell your opponent where the attack will land, the pathway the attack will take, the threat level or the timing of the attack.

For this mod there are four kinds of basic feints that can be attempted:

Target Feint: Start high then finish low or vice versa
Flank Feint: Start the attack off-center on their left then finish on their right or vice versa
Range Feint: Start the attack at one range then finish at a much different range.
Blind Feint: Place and hold your shield in their face for a moment then throw a fast shot.


These basic 4 can then be combined into 10 other compound feints:

Blind Flank Target Range Feint
Blind Flank Target Feint
Blind Flank Range Feint
Flank Target Range Feint
Blind Target Range Feint
Blind Flank Feint
Blind Target Feint
Target Range Feint
Blind Range Feint
Flank Target Feint


This makes 14 feints total that can be used in the game.

You may attempt them whenever you want and as often as you like but when one of the 14 types succeeds (you land your shot) then that same feint cannot be used again until they are not expecting it any more.

These feints can only be used once per opponent until their memory timer is up. This memory timer is twice their intelligence in seconds.

You may still use the other 13 feints and so on until all the feints have been used. Then once the timer on each feint zeros out you can use that same feint again. There is no way to know when this is (no timer on your screen) so you will need to use your intuition.

Success of feints is related to fatigue, so in some cases you may want to tire your opponent before throwing your easiest less powerful feints.

For a feint to work they must be able to see you and your false clues. So any attacks at 90 degrees to their side or more will not allow a feint to work.

There are many ways to do the feints, all you must do is throw your blow one way then finish it in another way using moves that do not fight against momentum.

For example to do a Target Feint, you could thrust at their feet then at the last moment finish the thrust at their head. Or swing the attack high and drop into a crouch to hit them in the legs. Or power attack at their legs and step up on a rock to land the blow on their head. In the game all you need to be aware of is where your cross-hair is aimed at and when. The shorter the time you spend in the the "real" part of the attack the more effective the feint will be. So your best feints will be ones that combine the most false clues and then use the least amount of time to land the blow once you are no longer giving the false clues.

The Blind Feint is done by holding your shield up and lifting your cross-hair until the shield completely blocks the actors LOS. Basically you need to put your cross-hair in their eyes. Hold it for a brief moment then immediately fire a fast attack!

Range Feint is triggered by starting the attack at one range then finish the attack at a dramatically different range (30% change in range while still IN range).
In real life combat range transitions are where many fights are won or lost (the killing blow is often landed). This is because the angles of attack and the parts of the weapon that can strike you change as you move away or close in. A pommel attack can turn into a blade attack in this way for example.

These feints can be performed serendipitously as well! Meaning that due to the dynamic nature of combat an opponent can throw a high blow and without purposely doing so finish the blow low (like when they miss your head because they took a reflexive step to the side and the blow pass on by, hitting your torso instead). So in a fight you may throw many feints without even realizing it. In truth, these unintentional "feints" are how many shots get by one's defenses even when no feints are purposely used. This will happen in the game as well. You may be surprised to see that you succeed at this or that feint (via messages) even when you did not know you were doing one.

As with all my mods the results of these feints are based on the attributes, actions timing, conditions and dynamics of the combat and not on simplistic dice rolls with only very few exceptions. This means you can eventually learn to take advantage of the subtle factors in combat and predict your opponents action. For example if your opponent shifts suddenly from your left to your right, closing in quickly from out of range and attacking after holding their shield up, you know this could well be a Blind, Flank Range Feint. This would be very hard to block, your block calculations will be dramatically penalized, so ducking or moving out of range may be a better tactic than trying to move your shield to block!


All of these new maneuvers will now work in the game the same as it would work in real life, with some limitations due to the fact that I am molding an existing game and not creating one from scratch. For example, a great shot is to start a blow out of range aimed at the head on the left flank, then lunge in and finish the blow at the legs moving (side stepping) to the right flank. This combines the range feint, flank feint, target feint and wrap shot all in one and is very good at harvesting legs! This is a real life move and works in the game the same way.


Some players have removed their cross-hair. Cross-hair is not needed, it just makes explaining the feints easier. In truth it is ONLY the middle of your screen, basically where you are looking at, the zone of best perception that is straight out from your nose.

I only fight about %20 of the time (more or less) in 1st person myself, many of the feints are definitely easier to do in 1st person but can be done in 3rd with practice. However feints like flank and range are just as easy in 3rd as in 1st.

It is fun to watch the arena fight with this as well, they act WAY different than before, a little smarter. For example, if one has a long sword but no shield they will back up a lot more. A fist fighter will dodge in and out depending on whether they are trying to avoid a weapon attack and if they think they can do the Grapple blocks or not.


When a feint works you will see your opponent's block (animation) drop or move out of the way enough for you to land your attack.
All this can work on the player as well.

I wonder spooky, what difficulty would you recommend for most realistic experience, as your mod is now?

oh...wow no the way the mod is now is only a few baby steps in the right direction. I would not call it all that much of a "realistic experience" at this point.

So I am sorry but I do not know what to advise on that. I can say that I always design my mods for the MIDDLE settings of difficulty. As long as the damage done is the same level for both the player and the other actors it should not matter too much I guess.

It's amazing how much that correlates with what they taught us at my Taekwondo school.

Duke, I was curious, How were large medieval weapons carried when traveling from battle to battle? I know claymores normally have sheaths which are placed on the back, for easy carrying but what about stuff like polearms, large axes, and spears?

For battle? If you mean as part of an army traveling for war? Then wagons were used to carry most of the weapons and armor.
But if you mean as an individual? You did not actually "walk around" with such weapons, they were only for war or for guarding a post.

Good news about PERKs. After looking at them in SkyEdit it seems that they will be easy to fix!

So for example I will give the ability to anyone that can lift a shield to block arrows and remove that from the perks.

But I am now thinking about what I should use to to replace the perks I remove. To me PERKS should be "tricks" you learn after doing something for a long time. Not something that can be or is taught as a skill but learned from experience. I had a drafting teacher that you could tell him any length in fractions of an inch and he would draw a straight line with only a straight edge (no scale) and it would be the exact length if you then measured it with a scale. This is something that was programmed into his mind after 40 years of drafting!



Edit:
Here are a few I may use, at this time I am trying to list only RL type perks that I know of from my experience. But I have to admit coming up with RL versions is very difficult. So I may have to include game-ish perks like bonuses to calculations to damage reduced for blocking or accuracy bonus for archery.


Blocking

-Faster running speeds.

-(For shields ) Less obscuring your “perception” of what is going on around you. Not sure yet how to realize this in the game, maybe shield blinding feints used against you will have a penalty?

-(for weapons including bows) Arrow parry.

-More energy efficiency (less stamina used).

-Anticipated blocks. (This is moving to the most likely position for the next attack after the first an attack. Some kind of full auto block for a few of the attacks that you do not actively block yourself. )

-Bullet Time



Archery

- More energy efficiency (less stamina used, slightly faster reload times).

-Faster running speeds.

- Hitting target without aiming (short ranges).

- Bullet Time

what about giving power bash a chance to knockdown aready dazed enemies?
justification: it's not taht hard to push over someone who's dizzy.

Ps. this is an awesome mod so far keep up the great work.

yeah,combat perks needs some adjusting... it makes no sense why shield is not stopping arrows from beginning, same as why sideway great-sword swipe doesn't hit everything in front of you... that should be there from begining... Instead, all Damage increasing should be high tier perks instead...

This mod and your plans for it sound really promising. Have you thought about using the animations from the kill moves to add additional attacks? I'm mainly thinking that you could use the stabbing animation, since thrusting is an essential part of sword fighting.

Great to see you jumping into Skyrim so early Duke Patrick. At the moment am perfectly happy with modless Skyrim but am starting to invesitigate whats out there. Mods like yours are great to see what else is possible. Keep up the excellent work and thank you for doing this.

Hey Duke. http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5485mod has implemented a normal-attack-staggers tweak if you have the damage increasing weapon perks. Hope it's useful to you pre-CK.

I was interested until you said "armor protects a lot more". I've never had an issue with armor. If it doesn't protect me enough I add a perk to light armor or craft something better.

I may use that or similar if I cannot come up with the kind of perks I want as I have described.
I have sent an email inquires to the other Knights in my Kingdom for suggestions of more true to life melee combat "perks" (as I have defined them).
I was surprised that once I started to try to list them I was having a hard time doing so. But then, these are the kind of things that you only learn a few of even in a lifetime.
So I guess it makes sense that I would not know them all. Still it bothers me somewhat that I could not come up with a good list easily.

Anyway Thanks.

I was hoping for some kind of an animation editor in the CK back several months ago when the CK and the new animations system were being described in interviews. But now I am fear that was a wishful pipe dream. So yes I hope there is a LOT of existing animations I can use from the game as I am not as skilled in animating as I am in scripting. er...and I sometimes struggle with the scripting!

It is very strange that I LIKE scripting so much when I am not very skilled at it and it takes me 3 times longer to script than most other moders. But then that is my strong point for moding, I am tenacious and creative. I try EVERYTHING even somethings that are wacky and should not work until I get what I want to work.

There are historical and scientific arguments that support both positions (concerning how much armor could protect you from weapons).
In truth armor and weapons were always in an arms race against each other. So all one must do is pick a right or wrong time period
in 50 year increments to be on the right or wrong side of that debate.

Anyway this is the kind of thing that will likely be player adjustable in my mod once I have the CK and the necessary SKSE commands.