So, I made a pretty significant update to this mod, immersion-wise. I finally figured out how to animate creatures and made the archery targets fall over when they're broken, just like the practice dummies.

There's a modder's resource and a player mod that adds them to forts and other training areas.

http://download.fliggerty.com/download--893

Very nice!

It would be great if you could alter the practice dummy model to correspond to the original one more closely (the stick is too short and it seems to be positioned differently than vanilla dummy model). If this was fixed, it would be easy to replace all dummies in game with tes3cmd commands.

The practice dummy is complicated, so it'll be difficult to reposition. I'm a bit worried about Blender breaking it, so it might be easier to alter in nifSkope (but I'm not sure about that). I'll see what I can do.

Thanks! I just checked the documentation for tes3cmd and I'm not sure how to change static objects to activators, so it might actually get a bit more complicated than I thought, so no hurry

What a fantastic update! I can't wait to try these out.

You'd actually have to change static objects into creatures. Using creatures takes advantage of Morrowind's combat engine rather than trying to simulate it. I'm thinking of someday making a mining mod that uses creatures for ore seams, which you could only "kill" with a miner's pick, and would crumble into rocky chunks that you could pick the ore out of. The only issue I'd have to find a workaround for is creature collision. I'd have to make sure all the creature-rocks are wedged firmly into the cave walls or else they'd fall.

I'm going to hold off on altering the practice dummy because it has all sorts of stuff in it that I don't have a clue about. For example, it has this invisible ground object that, I don't know, is for collision or something? I literally learned how to make a creature yesterday, so I'm not going to touch the practice dummy until I know what everything in it does and how it works in Morrowind. I suspect some of the stuff in there is for games with actual physics engine and could be stripped, but I won't attempt that until I know what I'm doing.

Thanks! I have to say, it's a little bit satisfying just to walk up to a target, punch it, and watch it break.

Good stuff. I have some questions though:

- Why does the dummy use separate textures? They're identical to the vanilla ones, so you can just use them, and this way the dummy will make use of the retextures.

- I don't really understand why there are some invisible meshes in the model, there's probably no need for them, as the collision for the creatures is managed by the bounding box.

- It would be nice to add real-time shadow for the dummies.

I guess I'll mess with the models a little in my free time and report to you if I'll succeed making any improvements.

By the way, why not to make the dummies die when their fatigue is reduced to zero? That way players will be able to train their h2h the same way as other weapon skills, and without any exploits.

You'd need to "stunt" their fatigue regeneration some way though.

The answer to your first questions is, I haven't altered the practice dummy meshes from BLK'/AcidBasic's original. If you can improve it, that would be great.

Your fatigue loss idea sounds good. I'd have to do a check for H2H hits so that permanent fatigue loss only gets set when you're punching it, but it sounds do-able. I'll do some fiddling with the script.

Ah, okay then. I'll do what I can.

Nice.

By the way, what about magic users? As I understand, they can abuse the dummies as well, maybe it'll be a good idea to make dummies and targets immune to magicka?

Thanks, Reizeron! No rush at all, and if you can't do anything with it, that's ok too.

As for magic use, I tend to play mages and they can easily destroy the dummy with spells. Making them immune to magicka would actually have the opposite effect. It would mean magic users could cast spells on it as much as they want and never damage it. With magic, you don't need a successful hit to gain ranks -- as far as I remember -- because back in my powergaming days I used to make the lowest point fireball spells I could and just spam them at a wall to train destruction.

Now if some could be beast race shaped my rather bigoted Telvanni ratbag would be really pleased ! The s'wit !

Reizeron did a great job improving the meshes. The extraneous stuff has been removed from the practice dummy, so it should be easier to alter it in the future. WH-Reaper, if it turns out you can change statics into any other type of object in tes3cmd, let me know and I'll shift the dummy into the vanilla position.

I'm going to work on some script improvements, so another update is forthcoming.

There's no need to use tes3cmd to replace all the static dummies with activators/creatures/whatever, you can do that in the CS with the search and replace function.

I've already done that in the current mod. I'm guessing WH-Reaper wants to be able to do it for other mods that add static dummies to the game, like just run tes3cmd on his whole load list or something.

Edit: Craaaaaap, the simplest solution to the h2h exploit has been sitting under my (and several other modder's) noses all this time! Since the dummy doesn't have a KO animation, all I have to do is give it 0 fatigue and h2h hits will deal health damage instead. There's no need for fancy scripting at all!

Nice find! That is a most eloquent solution.

Yes, I was planning something similar to my http://download.fliggerty.com/download-58-1060 and abot's http://abitoftaste.altervista.org/morrowind/index.php?option=downloads&task=info&id=56&Itemid=50&-ACEG-Animated-Containers-Expansion-Generator. Unfortunatelly, I now realise it would not be possible. Even if I would find out how to replace statics with creatures, unlike the two apps mentioned before, this would not work on esp files but only on esms, since you are not just altering record, you are actually removing static from world and adding creature. And you cannot remove object added by esp with another esp.

Couldn't you just make a generator that would generate alternate esps?

Well, yes, but that would be a bit of an overkill for this matter.

I'm getting the impression this is a "no" on needing to alter the creatures so they perfectly mimic the statics?

Because if so, I got a fresh update almost ready for uploading...

It is no to the automatic tool that would take your load order, scan all plugins and create new esp which would replace all static dummies with creatures. Yet if you make these changes, it will be possible to create addons for TR and other stuff simply by using search and replace function in CS, without the need of adjusting each of them separately. So it is up to you I would personally say if you will ever have the time, it would be nice, but it is not anything to die for

Hmm, well on the one hand, I can always update later -- but on the other, then people have to change their stuff around if they're using it as resource in their own mods, so a change like that is better done earlier than later.

Hmm...

I'll see what I can do.

Assuming Mash replacers work with creatures, I think best compromise could be:
- use a tool (editor, file manager. grep-like...) to search for *.es? including "Furn_Practice_Dummy" string (you could use tes3cmd but it would be slower)
and get the list of mods to tweak
- use a Mash replacer on them e.g. Morrowind\Mopy\Data\Replacers\practice_dummify.txt


As this is a 1-1 replacement, you could use another replacer to revert back easily e.g. Morrowind\Mopy\Data\Replacers\unpractice_dummify.txt
You still need to right click each mod from Mash, but it is faster than doing it from the CS
[EDIT]typos

Reizeron managed to fix the model's position, since I couldn't do it in Blender without breaking it, so in the next version, you should be able to straight swap the static models.

However, he also reported that setting the dummy's fatigue to 0, though it does let you hit it without exploiting it, doesn't actually train h2h. Apparently you need to hit non-KOed opponents to gain skill in that discipline. So, if I'm going to make the dummies actually functional for h2h training, it will require a scripted method like the one earlier suggested.

Back to the drawing board.

I tested this out on a test mod and they work great. I'd like to include these in the next release. However, the creature object is still present in a mod after it's replaced. Is there a remove function for Wrye Mash's replacers as well?

If you don't want to include the resource in each tweaked mod just comment the @ srcmod entry e.g.

#@ srcmod#modContainingMannequinCreature.esp