Duke Patrick's Heavy Weapons Combat

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


If you are upgrading from a previous revision of my mod, then you MUST do a SKYRIM CLEAN install! Read the Skyrim Clean install Read me file that comes with this mod for instructions.


This mod and all it's features is a port of my Oblivion mod. It is intended to be a melee combat simulator (as much as I can mod Skyrim to be anyway) based on my 30 years of medieval western heavy weapons (SCA tournament) fighting. I was King twice and hold the rank of Duke and Knight in the SCA.

see here: http://www.spookyfx.com/book/tromp.html

But this is also a work in progress! There are still many features needed to give all play styles more ways to fight. Some features will not be possible until SKSE allows it. This will not stop me from working on the features I can do now.

I will avoid game-ish features and contrived game balance mechanics when I possibly can. Please do not ask me to include such features. And the PACE of the combat will possibly be slower than you are use to in games. But it will also be brutal and you will actually feel the weight in your attacks and blocks!


Real life SCA combat is wonderfully brutal, fascinatingly tactical and unbelievably FUN even if you lose the fight. There is no reason PC game combat cannot be the same way if it is designed to do so properly.


Below is only a brief list of the mod's features, refer to the ReadMe files for details.
(for all actors including the player except were noted.)


Dynamic Blocking Stamina Burn


Weapon mass used to attack is offset by the weapon mass used to block.
Top heavy weapons used to attack get a bonus.
Shields used to block get a bonus.
Attacker Strength divided by Defender Strength.
Then x 3 if it is a Power Attack



Dynamic Damage

Stamina now affect how much damage actors do!



Locational damage


A power shot to a head can be a fatal one shot! A blow that does enough damage to the legs can trip your opponent.

Head shots give the most damage, the body does about half of the head and the legs/feet do the least amount of damage. However the locational damage multipliers are player configurable in the Configuration file or by the console.

So fights could be fast and brutal or go on for a long time depending on how well they block and what armor they are wearing versus what weapons you are using and where you hit them!





Configuration File

New file now comes in the mod zip package called: aadpCombat
Set all your preferences in this file.

To Run as a Batch File in Skyrim via the Console: Start up Skyrim. While in game, open the console (default key: ~ or `).

Type "bat aadpCombat", without quotes and the console will handle the rest!




Combat Endurance

This kind of combat is so physically intensive that sometimes the victor is not the most skilled, he may only be in much better condition than the loser. You can literally defeat your opponent by outlasting them as long as you make no mistakes in your defense. This fact will make building your stamina base up to high levels just as important as your health and skill.




NPC Can Fumble!
NPC might hit each other by accident if they miss hitting you and they are crowding in and around you.



Duke Patrick's Feint System!
Now you and the other actors can be tricked into opening your defense with true to life feinting mechanics that is part player skill and part actor skill!





Left Hand Weapon Attacks Are More Difficult To Defend Against!

Forget all the movie and game nonsense you have heard about Florentine style (two weapons) the real reason fighters used this style when it was their choose to do so was because can confuse and mentally overwhelm the opponent. When you or any actor attack with the left hand weapon this adds bonuses to your success to bypass their defense!



Increased Backwards Speed Plus Trip And Fall Risk
THIS IS NOT DONE WITH RANDOM DICE THROWS!
The falls result from running into objects in Skyrim!

This Trip and Fall feature can be adjusted or turned off in the console.



Bow Draw Stamina Consumption
Zoom now only consumes a very small amount of stamina. Normal drawing of the bow now consumes stamina. This can be adjusted or turned off in he console.



Attack Blocks!
If you attack with a normal or power attack while you have a melee weapon and while your opponents is attacking and you hit the weapon (aim at their arm) that is attacking you may be able to deflect their weapon attack.


Two Weapon Blocking when you step backwards and you are not attacking.
You will raise your weapons and block as you would if you had one weapon.


Actors Show Pain
All actors react to getting hit! This is based on damage done not by a random dice throw! If the player or other actors are hit with only a little damage no pain reactions ("stagger") will trigger, but if hit with a lot of damage (20% of your current health on each attack) actors will stagger.
This means anything that reduces the power of the attack (such as armor, magic or actor low stamina ...and more) could prevent the pain reaction.



Combat Pacing
The heaver your weapon the more stamina is consumed for power attacks. The more damage that hits you the more stamina is consumed to block.

Block Skill will matter much more now to block damage. So although your shield and weapons can block a LOT more damage you sill not do so unless you have a LOT of skill.

Combat stamina auto regeneration rate is now very low! However you can FAST REST by not moving nor attacking nor blocking nor casting magic. This means you need to use footwork and timing (timing attacks and timing blocks) to get your stamina back up to good levels.

Actors must have 25% or more Stamina or they will not be able to do a power attack nor a bash attack.
Normal attacks cannot be done unless you have more than 10% stamina.

IF YOUR STAMINA IS ZERO YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FIGHT! A slight blur effect will nag you but you will also not be able to block!





Hand to hand now has a chance to block a melee weapon attack

If you have the Block skill, you can do close in grapple blocks that can even stop a war hammer by impeding the limbs that swing the weapon instead of taking the force of the weapon from the weapon's head straight into your arm.



Less "Arcade" Like Weapons Speeds

Weapons speeds (all weapons even from other mods) are now modified by weapon type. H2H and 2h blades (balanced) move a little faster that was in the vanilla game and all other weapons including the 2h top heavy weapons like a mace or axe move a little slower. This works for all weapons even from other mods.
Actors (NPC and player) weapon speed slows way down when stamina is under %25.


Normal Attacks Consume Stamina Depending On Their Type
In order of cost:
Fist
Dagger
Sword
2h sword, 1H Mace and Axe
2h Mace and Axe

Swinging Balanced weapons like blades will use much less stamina than when your weapon actually hits a target. For technical reasons this feature only works on living targets not things like trees.


Swinging without hitting a target with a Top Heavy weapon like a mace or axe will use much more stamina than when your weapon actually hits a target. For technical reasons this feature only works on living targets not things like trees.




Combat Geometry
Rear Flank attacks do extra damage and get bonuses to tripling and other critical hits.



Realistic Attack Range
Melee combat range is set WAY down and now will play much more realistically and allow for more intuitive action.



Weapons Block Arrows
Swords and other weapons can now deflect arrows IF the arrow hits the weapon no perk needed!. (Player only for now.)



Shields Block Elemental Damage
The elemental protection perk is automatic when you use a shield (blocks 90%)

Please note: Block Perk tree is re arranged. ( I plan to add to it in future revisions of this mod.)



No Auto Aim! (the attack magnetism)
Now attacks for BOTH the Player and the NPC will miss more often making dodging a practical defense now.



Shields Feel More Realistic
Shield and weapons block a LOT more damage now, you will now actually feel a difference when you allow a weapon to hit or you succeed with a block.



THIS IS NOT THE READ ME FILE! YOU MUST READ THE READ ME FILE TO USE THIS MOD PROPERLY.

....200 posts already!!!?

I wish we could still edit our own posts even when locked for a post limit. It takes me SOOOO much longer to rebuild the topic cover page when I cannot just go and copy and past it from the last one WITH the hidden text code.


So there is no practical way for me to detect a power attack. The way I am detecting when an attack starts cannot tell the differences from a fast attack or a power attack. So at this time I will not be changing the way power attacks consume stamina. But I am looking at other aspects of the mod to try to reduce stamina cost without breaking my combat pacing.

What about mods that alter weapon speed depending what material its made of? Crafting 300 comes to mind, some materials are heavier/slower and other lighter/faster. Will there be compatibility issues?

I agree with you on the post limit editing

I just found out that my uncle is in the Kingdom of Ansteorra. He does all kinds of thrown weapons and archery. I knew he participated in some organization, but I never saw the relation until earlier today. Sorry, random observation.

Answering your question from the previous thread about the difficulty of the feints, Spooky:
the "ease" with which you can pull off feints isn't a problem of your mod, it's a problem of the way the mouse look works in the hands of an experienced player.
Realistically we shouldn't be able to change the direction of our attack, for example, from the targets' legs to the head over the span of milliseconds. However, the mod uses the camera position (or well, the target reticle) to record these changes and with a mouse we can move the reticle very, very fast. Personally I'm "scoring" target or target-range feints on most attacks nowadays, after 2 weeks with the mod.

Now, what the gamepad does is pretty much limit the speed at which you can rotate the camera and thus the reticle with a much more realistic cap, making you actually time the feints with much greater precision in order to actually get the enemy to open - because where, say, with a mouse, the time needed to move the reticle from enemy's feet to his head was 50 ms (for example), with a gamepad it is now 500 ms (again, example value).

You should give it a try, it really feels great.

Probably yes IF they are using the weapon speed multiplier actor value to change speeds (very doubtful).

If, however they are changing the weapon speed stat in the CK (most likely) then no probably not.

BUT...if in the future SKSE allows me to change weapon speed stat on the weapon on the fly then YES it probably will conflict but not is a way that would break the game. I would just be overriding their changes on the fly, but that is way in the future.

Hey Spooky,

Yeah its more about block costs, but I started a new game (before that made a reboot of all mods) and now although I only have 160 stamina the mod works pretty well And yeh now I see that power attack stamina consumption is more game related) I think I just messed up my prev savegame and somth went wrong. For now i am using 3.5 version as it is the most stable one for me You are doing a great work and I am sure you will find how to overcome the problem with elevation

Spooky, I've sent you a link for a video I frapsed today, if you approve of it I'd like to make it public - a rather fun fight I've gotten into in my opinion (twice, even). And it seems to demonstrate a whole bunch of the mod's features.

Also on the video you can notice that stamina regenerates very quickly for a couple of seconds after using Unrelenting Force - I wonder if anyone else using DP's is noticing this or perhaps this is a newly added feature of some other mods I'm using?
Strangely enough, even if this is a bug, I find the idea of the UNRELENTING FORCE shout restoring STAMINA rather interesting.

This is to be expected because you are standing still, not attacking nor blocking and not casting. I guess I need to find another way to detect shouts as I assumed they were included in "casting" as well.



About the video, what REV are you using in this?

I found a bad condition in one of my scripts that is intended to prevent the NPC bowman from shooting arrows if their stamina was too low.

I fixed this and it will be in the next rev. So now the bowman should stop firing arrows when low on stamina.

Yes, that does seem to be rather straightforward (boring = less chance for problems).

Considering that most values for Z are negative in the game, it is problematic that GetPositionZ() seems to be unable to accurately report them.

The only thing I can come up with off the top of my head is, trying to calculate height slightly differently, if the problem is simply related to the function GetPositionZ() (although I suspect it is deeper than that).

Something like:

aadpXMarkerStatic2.setPostion(aadpXMarkerStatic.GetPositionX(), aadpXMarkerStatic.GetPositionY(), 0)MEHeight = aadpXMarkerStatic.GetDistance(aadpXMarkerStatic2)

Where instead of using GetPositionZ(), you do a "distance" calculation from a point that is at Z position 0. Value should be the same, so if it's just the way that GetPosition calculates it, it might help.

That's the best I got, (if you haven't already tried something like that). :/

You sir are a genius!

For you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZupg3J3VS4

I will try it now, regardless if it works or not this is one of the few things I had not tried (nor thought of trying) so thank you either way!

Worth a shot, glad to provide some inspiration, although I'm not hopeful. (The Distance function likely calls getpositionz itself. But there is always hope that Bethesda did it weird and somehow circumvented their own bug).

If it does work, one thing worth noting is it will always return a positive value. Even if z is negative. Not sure how that affects your calculations, if it's important, they are probably ways to get around it.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you

It really was worth a shot, and its the first little burst of "joy" I have had in a few days working on this. But it did not work. It returned the exact same results.

This has given me some other ideas to try, maybe "dropping" an item to the ground first rather than "placing" a static object.

some good news: I found a way to make different parts of the attack move at different speeds (but only for slow moving attacks).

What this means is that the very slow attacks that you do when your stamina is under %25 will now START slow, swing at normal speed but then RECOVER slow (the last part of the swing).

Instead of how it is now were it starts AND swings slow. This really creates the feeling that you and the other actors are struggling with the weapon because of low stamina without looking so much like you are attacking in slow motion.

Tip, when you see the actors doing this you know they are very vulnerable to feints and other tactics!

@spooky
3.991, I'll add that to the description.
So, should I set it to public?

Thanks for taking the time to do this!

It does show the beautiful brutally of the mod, but it is a little too dark and only samples the 2h axe combat not really highlighting the individual features.

However if you want to make it public (it is your game after all) please just be sure to make it clear that it is not an official demo but rather your personal
player experiences with the mod at REV 3.991. Name the video something like "Iluf's Skyrim Modded Combat" rather than use my name ok?
Just so it is not mistaken as a video I uploaded.

I hope I am not sounding ungrateful, but I can do videos myself (I have the professional version of FRAPs and video editing software)
but I do not want to invest the time until I have a few more features to show in the mod (like a WORKING head shot).

By the way, I like your PC, he seems very BIG and strong (slow but STRONG) and that is very different from most of the fast, agile acrobatic skinny little girl types you mostly see in youtube games. (er.. I have nothing against that as I play that kind of PC most of the time myself. It is just rare to see the opposite type.)

It's cool, I'll edit the starting line out and change the description. Is it okay to leave a link for the mod's download page in the description though Spooky? I mean, it's only proper for me to credit the author, and I want more people to check out your work.

And, haha, I've had my share of acrobatic skinny girls in this game, but for some reason all of them ended up with a corrupted save. This orc actually started like a bit of a joke character, he was initially just made quickly to test my mod setup, using an unchanged preset and called "Durd". But I've grown attached to him after an a couple of hours of playtime and reworked him via showracemenu.
Ironically, when I completed the game the first time round, in November, it was also playing a big guy with a two-hander. Guess I'm just fond of two-handed weapon combat.

Also Spooky, mind if I share the video in this thread?

Damn, dont know why Im having problems with this mod. Im playing on Master, am Level 1, using default globals in the aadpCombat, no other combat mods used and Dukes loaded last and I can basically kill a bandit with an iron sword in one normal hit. I was having the exact opposite problem previously. All other aspects of the mod re: stamina seem to be working. Also the delay between the NPCs registering damage and getting hit is at least 2 seconds Have trip/fall over turned off to reduce scripts.

Ack. I've just noticed that with top-heavy weapons my stamina isn't being restored on hits again. Then watched my video again and it's the same there.

It's basically what I have reported in the previous thread, the stamina goes all the way down to 1/6 when attacking repeatedly even if I hit with every single and at 1/6 it gets "stuck" meaning I cannot deplete this last bit of stamina with attacks unless I miss or block or get stamina drained. I wonder if this is a case of some weird mod conflict of mine, and I'll give it a try on a fresh skyrim install I guess to make sure. But it's definitely visible on the video at least.

And one more important thing, it seems I am able to block continuously without having to worry about my stamina for some reason. The readme says the character is unable to attack or block at 0% stamina, that's cool but at least in my game dropping stamina to 0% - not 1-3% - is rarer than seeing a daedric item drop. So what happens basically is when I'm low on stamina I just stand still and block while the enemies are pounding on me, and if I do it right with a bit of luck (so to not get confused by them), I am able to "turtle", let's call it this way, much longer than it should realistically be possible. The same thing can be done by NPC actors especially when using shields, if I don't play clever and simply start pounding them when they're blocking without feinting, even if I'm fighting a level 5 bandit with a hide shield with my orc. Think about it, it's like pitting a skinny 18 years old kid against a weight-lifter with a two-handed axe - the kid's hand holding the shield will break after the first hit and then he's dead right after, correct?
I really liked how this particular mechanic was made in Borgut's Deadly Combat - blocking a hard hit that reduces the character's stamina to zero even for a moment puts the player's character into "hard" stagger. This might be a good substitution since Skyrim can't model anything like breaking hands.

Hurr, there, hope I was coherent enough. Off to try DP without any mods now.

Upd.: after an hour with a clean client with no other mods, I can confirm the same behavior with top heavy weapons and "endless" blocking, using the default aadpcombat settings. And another thing, because stamina seemingly almost never reaches the exact value of zero, the Endurance feature also doesn't work as good as it should. Actually I think, even if you're reluctant to introduce an additional stagger effect for when stamina reaches 0, then at least upping the limit for blocking and endurance from 0% to 5-10% should easily work as a fix. Although having the stagger effect when blocking at 0% stamina too would be really great.

REV 3.993 (now uploaded) will count against your Endurance if you block at a stamina % of 0.05 or less.

Blocking will not be possible to do "forever" because once you are down that low you can become "confused" and open your defense very easily unless your opposition has NO skill with their weapon. I am consider a forced weapon/shield drop to ground on low stamina and block, but that may be to much, lets see how REV 3.993 works out.

I do not know why the game prevents going to ZERO on blocks, it is fine with attacking but for some reason will not allow zero while blocking even with a damage stamina command by over 9 thousand points:


if Me.GetAVpercentage("Stamina") <= 0.05
Me.DamageAV("Stamina", 9999)
endif

Try new REV 3.993 (just now uploaded) and if you still have an issue please follow the directions in the "known Issues" read me file.

Great news, I'll be testing this REV tonight then.
The disarm idea sounds very cool actually if it worked for both the player and the NPCs, personally I'd be very happy if you introduced it as a toggle. And in general, player-skill based disarms when hitting actor on the hands would be awesome, although unlikely to happen without SKSE I guess.

Spooky I'm sorry to keep bothering you on the subject but is something happening to the top-heavy weapons stamina usage? Does this bug I'm reporting even reproduce for you? I'm referring to this part:

This is normal but I can see how it is confusing.

What is happening is that when you swing it goes to zero, but hitting your target "gives back" some stamina (as you phrase it) and because of the "floating" issue with how the game works as I have said before it LOOKS like the bar never went down past that 1/6 level.

Keep in mind that at that low stamina your damage is greatly reduced and your attacks are slower. So you are still punished for staying down at that level.

However I will see if I can put a condition on the stamina "gives backs" to not do so unless your stamina is a little above ZERO so you will not see the bar at 1/6th anymore.

Oh no that's only a part of the real problem Spooky, I guess I just keep phrasing it in a wrong way (still good to see it fixed though).
The *real* important part is that I don't see any stamina returns from hits when I'm above 1/6th of the bar! So the feature actually works as advertised when I'm below 1/6th but it stops working when I'm above that value, that is what I find problematic.

And that's why I'm wondering, am I the only one noticing this behavior? It's really easy to reproduce, just equip an axe or a hammer and start hitting an actor, then compare it to what happens when you swing the same weapon in the air without hitting anything - you will only notice a difference at values of stamina below this threshold I keep mentioning.