REV 4.03

get it here:

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/1139-duke-patricks-heavy-weapons-combat/

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3646



NEW This Rev: Fixed broken Endurance feature. Endurance global has been changed back to an Integer of 5. Add clean up of scripts from dead and disabled actors. New Fast Rest Fine Tune adjustment so the player can try to compensate for slower computers.


I will try to answer some posts now, but others will have to be latter this day. SKSE beta has been released, so a few big changes may be coming soon for my mod.

Looking forward to the "big changes", hopefully you can find a way to fix all those annoying engine bugs.

2-This may be solved with REV 4.03 Previously I made a sneaky script to trick (by pass) the skyrim script management. But in the end I decided it was causing more problems than solving for my mod so I replaced it with a normal script. But a bat file script stop feature is a good idea, I did this in Oblivion and it helped some issues.

3-Yes spells are DAM hard (impossible in some cases) to separate from normal attacks right now. I am hoping SKSE will eventually help But in reality fire on your head WOULD hurt more than on your feet.

Try new REV 4.03 on a NEW GAME with no other mods loaded. If that solves the issue than it is a conflict with other scripts from other mods.
It that is not the case then you can try turning off some features in my mod such as the backwards tripping.

Will do.

The scripts are 1/10 the size I made in Oblivion. It is not the size or complication so much as it is just that Skyrim svcks for combat scripting.... ANY combat scripting because of the high potential for script delay not only form MY scripts but from other scripts in other mods you load with my mod.

I posted my Endurance script: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1367622-duke-patricks-heavy-weapons-combat/page__view__findpost__p__20678436

Look at it as an example of all my scripts, it is not THAT big nor that complicated and it is optimized as much as it can be AFAIK as no one has made any suggestions yet to change it as I had asked.

You cannot ACTIVELY block nor move for a moment. This is triggered AFTER you perform a "successful" feint. This should be in my read me file?
Same thing happens to the NPC.

This is certainly not how I would prefer to do feints but Skyrim lag will not allow any other way. In previous posts i showed the breakdown of the process in milliseconds. Bottom line is that there is not enough time to do anything like I did in Oblivion where the block is stopped for the same attack (the same moment) that triggered the feint.

no longer relevant

OK, so the debug messages I left in the 4.03 were to test new ways to detect spells that hit an actor (as opposed to weapons) and it seems (so far with limited testing) like they may help. But I cannot decide if I WANT to stop fire (elemental attacks) head shots or not.

This is only for spells that are cast not for enchantments on weapons (that so far is impossible to separate out).

Any arguments for or against this? I will consider it over the weekend.

Was coming here to report just that, the pop-up message that I was being attacked by magic.

One thing that I did notice is that before stamina would regenerate somewhat quickly when standing still (like 2-3 seconds to regen fully), now it's not as fast as before, like ~5 times slower (yes, I'm standing still and not blocking). Don't know if this is intentional or not.

Will try out 4.04 now.

Spooky, I started yet another fresh character and this time the mod just died after 5 minutes. Worth noting that I removed the changes I made to skyrim.ini (that is, my settings were at the default value of 1.2 instead of 4.8).
By "died" I mean that the stamina changes just stopped working completely together with locational damage and feints at some point. All I did was start the game with Live Another Life, begin in the Thieves' Guild (at which point I installed the mod), exit the Ratway and run around Riften a bit, then enter Ratway again. Then in Ratway I encountered a hostile NPC and noticed that nothing was working as it should.

I think I'll probably be taking a couple of months of a break from Skyrim, by the way. I'll still keep an eye on all the updates though but I'm just tired of the everyday update routine.

YES, it was WAY too fast in previous rev. However you now have the Fast Rest Fine Tune global that will raise it up to 20% faster to try to adjust for individual game lag.

If you have time please try the save game you gave me with no other mods loaded.
That is how I test my rev now. There is just too many things that can go wrong with this game to make any assumptions (to assume there is no conflict or corrupt save).

I think there is even a the possibility now that a mod with a change can conflict with a savegame that was only made with that same mod. Basically the rev are incompatible with each other in the save game. In this new REV I had to completely remake a few globals with new names instead of just change them in the CK because of this. (The Endurance global would NOT change in the game no matter how I changed it in the CK, so I had to make a NEW one.)

I wasted all of last night testing with a save I made AFTER making changes to the mod, today I started a new game with the save you gave me and finally things worked. The save game is not our friend anymore. If anyone comes up with a save game editor this may be the only thing that helps Skyrim moding.

So I understand that you want to wait for things in Skyrim mods to get better, I wish I could do that myself. See you in a few months.

Every time I get attacked by magick a notification box pops up saying something like attacker strikes. Thing is this pops up for each hit so if you get attacked by the stream elemental spells (fire hands etc) it constantly pops up till he stops attacking you with that (you get out of range, he runs out of mana, he dies from an steel overdose to the face etc.)

Yes, I'm using 4.04 and I even changed the settings in the bat file to deactivate debugging messages. Fresh start lvl 1 save, only mod I used was live another life to skip the tutorial. Then I activated your mod and tested it out.

mmm.. I may have missed a message, I will look again right now.

OFGS....I forgot that you need the NEW scripts, the ESP does not hold the script like Oblivion did...sorry will upload the full zip with all new scripts now...

oh boy....

Ok, it is uploaded now to both sites.

In future REV of the mod I will include the save game I use to test (just for player troubleshooting ).
We cannot assume that "another life" will never conflict.

Downloading. Will report back.

PS: if I stop posting here it's because I'm moving to a new apartment this weekend and I might be internetless (from now on that is a word) for 2-3 weeks.

Yup, it's a mess from the QA standpoint (I work fulltime as a QA specialist) so I can't even properly test things for conflicts, and I can't exactly play the game with all the bugs either.
So I'll wait for most content mods to reach their final stable versions I guess. Maybe upgrade my PC while I am at it. I'll still be running Skyrim every now and then, just not daily I guess.

internetless I like that word, I am CellPhoneLess myself by choice. I have a fast internet connection and a web phone IF I turn it on...No Land Line at all, guess I just do not like to be interrupted...

Off-topic:I do have a cell phone... it's a dumb phone not a smart phone though IE it's an old one, no fancy stuff.

On-topic: well... just found out that the bat command doesn't work as intended O_o Apparently it does read bat files placed in the data folder. It kept reading an old one that Bain put there when I installed. After removing that one it read the file it was supposed to. Still for safe measure I'd recommend avoiding it and using console commands. Also, it reports aadpSlowMo as an unrecognized variable.

There's an improvement in performance yes, but it still feels unresponsive for me. Not by a large bit of time but unresponsive combat is the worst thing in any game where it's one of the pillars sustaining the game as whole. I'm not blaming your mod, mind you, I think it's mainly due to how bethesda handled script execution in Skyrim.

As for feedback on the mod:
- IMO stamina regen when staying put is two low, it makes fighting with greatswords at low level a bit problematic since you can only get few swings in till you need to regen which takes a while. You can avoid being hit with good footwork if you can't block of course but you have to stay put to regen. It might sound silly but I liked the old regen rate XD
- tripping in combat is an interesting feature but it kinda gimps the player when NPCs aren't affected by it. Reason why I deactivated it because I find it gives them an unfair advantage.

1- LOL...than Skyrim may not be the game for you, I heard Dark souls is coming to PC!

2-There is an player adjustment. See the read me file.

3-Tripping effect the NPC in the EXACT same way as the player (same script). They just are a little more patient sometimes than the player is so they do not deplete their stamina to dangerous levels.

1, Yeah, I know I know... I have found (talking about vanilla skyrim here) that I get input lag when dual wielding and using two-handed weapons. Sword and board doesn't seem to have any input lag whatsoever. Really annoying when you want that get that last swing in and it doesn't work and all you accomplish is setting up a nice target for your foe XD And yes, I'm looking forward to Dark Souls, it looks interesting and I want to see what the fuss is all about, since a lot of console folk have been praising it.

2. It's only a 20% regen speed bonus though, no?

3. Wait, you mean to say that when I hit them and they fall down they actually tripped? I always assumed it was due to the hit.

Other things I have observed, sometimes they only equip their melee weapon when they're next to me, they'll charge in with their fists up and when they're nearing me they equip their weapon.

I've noticed that too - and then it's too late for them cos I've hit them in the head haha! I've found the latest version to be the most responsive yet so I'm enjoying it. I've also clearly seen NPCs move backwards and trip themselves up before as well.

Pretty much spot on here. They went with a more robust/flexible approach (broken scripts won't cause the game to grind to a screeching halt). But due to the sensitive timing issues that arise when you move to a threading model, you really need to know all the hidden "gotchas" of the system. Considering that the CreationKit Documentation (while better than previous) is still incredibly sparse, modders are really in the dark trying as to how to achieve the desired results.

The real shame is that since the entire game takes so little advantage of todays multi-core systems, many machines have cores sitting idle that could easily take the entire load of the scripting engine. There is performance to spare, Skyrim sadly is not set up to take advantage.

If only ScriptDragon, or SKSE or the like could patch/hook in the ability to handle in-game events (like in Papyrus), an admittedly ambitious task, then you could at least have a way to "script" completely outside of the limitations of Skyrim. As it can easily tap into all the unused performance of a machine running Skyrim.

Dark Souls combat is anything but responsive, just saying. The game is a bloody lagfest on xbox at least. On the bright side, it is actually very much like this mod when it comes to the combat flow, but without the fancy stuff such as locational damage. It also includes by default a few dragons that actually seriously kill the player. In seconds, sometimes faster, too. But, the controls are just not very responsive, no. Part of what makes the game so hard in the first place.

Anyhow I actually found the small script lag I was getting in my games to be somewhat realistic. I.e. if you hit a body with a sword it doesn't die instantly. It might even kill you too with its last breath. Then again, the lag was very manageable, usually less than 1 second, in my games.

I am very glad you said this first, I was worried that if I posted that it would sound like I was being an apologist
for how my mod works with the Skyrim script lag. In fact I do believe it is more realistic for the resulting death to have some delay.

In the SCA we do not practice that, deaths are considered to be instantaneous except for “double deaths” were each person dies
because the two hit each other at “about” the same time. In that case the fight is redone until a clear victor comes of it.

However the immediate (first in the series of) results of the injuries we "would" inflict with our weapons (if they were actually sharp and we were not wearing full sets of real armor) has been debated for many many years. And probably will be for a long time because we are not allowed to really kill or mame each other.



In this mod (eventually) I would like to prevent most automatic deaths and instead force bleed out animations. Then it would be up to you to
perform a coup de grace or leave them to their slow death. So perhaps this game lag will work in my favor for once.