Skycaptain I hope you truely know how much you've really done for us. Mear words can not express our gratitude for the amount of time, patience, effort and support you have given us over the years. In my eyes you are the greatest modder in the known universe. Deadly Reflex inspired me and I am sure thousands more into the world of Modding. You have given us what no person or game company ever has. Exactly what we wanted! time and time again. You alone were one of the first people in the world to put dynamic dismemberment in a 3D video game. Pretty much all on your own too. God himself could not have done a better job. No one could have, no one else would have been able to, an then where would be. Dont get me wrong vanilla Oblivion still is one of the greates games of all time, next to Morrowind. But like any one else whose tryed your mod. I couldnt play it without it. And that is where mear word cannot be used to express our thanks. Just know, and I think I speak your everyone whos ever downloaded your mod. That all of us will NEVER FORGET what you have done your us. Every mod Ive ever uploaded Ive tried to put the same amount of effort and care, even to the little details as you do. And I do so with out of respect for the gratitude modders like your self show us for nothing. We are not wearthy of your skills but youve bestowed upon us your time and wisdom just out of the kindness of your own heart. You truly are an example to people and kings alike. I could litteraly go on for ever and i would still feel in debt to your infinite generosity. I and I know for a fact that thousands of people feel the same way. I look forward to DR6 more than any game. Future, past or present. and everyone in this forum, probably even including the some of the games developers them selves. Just remember youv done way more than make a few mods for Oblivion, you literally improved the lives of thousands and thousands of people! Shown us things no one's ever seen before! and inspired thousands to do the same. I love you Like the Brother i never had! Thank you so much for every second of valuable time that you have given us.

@ Kman: Now THAT's a compliment

Dude, you know how to write! :trophy:

I use the 3rd Person animations in 1st person mod, and I've discovered that setting "fNearDistance=0.0000" will help greatly with the armpit problem. I also use normalized weapon animations which changes the running bow animation, and this tweak helped greatly with a problem with the bow going invisible as it neared my face.

The only problem is that the boxes that surround your choice in the main menu end up half-invisible.

A simple OBSE script can be used to fix that issue. Just apply the tweak once the game's loaded, and remove it when in menuMode.

I?m currently overhauling the chance system.


The problem with current system was, to put it simply, that many chances were determined like:

if [(playerskills + playercondition) / NPCSKills - NPCcondition] * manyMultipliers > random

->success


The idea was to combat the problem with direct comparison, and reward good condition and damaging the enemy. There were tons of extra adjusting in place as well. But it still tends to result in either negative (ie impossible) chance, or, constant high chance.



I?m now refactoring the chances pretty much like this:


if [(playerSkills / NPCSkills) * iniMultiplier * conditionalMultipliers * random] - [(NPCCondition + 1) * random2] > 0

->success



Note that these examples are great simplifications and are just meant to show the princible.




The new way differs from the current one in that there is more fluctuation in the chance - there is no such thing as impossible, on the other hand there is no such thing as 100% certain. There?s two random numbers that are being compared, and the variables "only" put weights on them. Note also the "iniMultiplier", this represent the values you can adjust in the ini.




If you are wondering about the conditional multipliers, there?s a bunch of those, but one of the most interesting is a new one, which is calculated from how unique your attack is. In short, favoring any move or attack makes it less efficient, so using all features in a balanced way works the best. On the otherhand, not using some move until later in the fight makes the move a lot more effective, so "saving" some move, for example the decapitation attack, for later in the fight has an exponential effect in the chance of success - not only are you more likely to score because the enemy is more damaged, but also the attack itself comes totally out of the blue for the target.




Wow, you post makes me flush.


Thanks, I don?t think I have done anything SO special, more like one thing leading to another, but I greatly value your post. A simple thanks is all a modder can expect from sharing his work, and you just gave about 1000 times that. :foodndrink:

Huh, found an actual typo in the throat slitting chance calculation...


A variable that was supposed to modify the chance according to the difference between your and enemy?s level wasn?t actually doing anything, and at the same time the chance was being divided by 4 instead of 3. So the resulting chance wasn?t any better against low level inexperienced targets, and the skill based result should have been +30% to what it was (a 30% chance should have been 40%, and then more or less depending on the target).

It?s a good thing I?m going through these all...

:rock:

Question: Would you please (re) state your advice for load order of DR5. Occasionally I get a ctd the instant my melee weapon contacts a live target and I wonder if moving everything below bashed patch (contrary to what the latest BOSS does) would help. I hesitate to do this because I also use Supreme Magicka and SM_DeadlyReflex.esp is a mergeable mod which needs to be loaded after the DR plugins. Would putting it below bashed patch cause its own problems?

I know absolutely nothing about SM_DeadlyReflex.esp, I have to admit.


But I don?t think it?s about load order anyway, basicly it shouldn?t really matter with DR5, although I don?t know if Oblivion also processes scripts in load order, and thus any combat mods trying to run something on the same target also obey the load order. If that?s the case, then of course my advice is to load DR as late as possible. But before or after bashed batch, shouldn?t matter, it?s more down to if any other scripted combat mods load after DR, which I recommend against.



But what kind of target? Creature? Is your weapon enchanted with some elemental effect?

It's happened with both creatures and npcs of many types. Until recently I thought maybe it had something to do with the elemental criticals too but it just happened with an unenchanted weapon. It happens fairly rarely... just as contact is made, producing a formid error.

DR is the only combat mod I use (have won thousands of battles with v5- 450+ hr game since late ~March '09!) If you could make use of it, I'll post the error next time it happens.

This could be related to some blood emitter / stain bugs I fixed at some point for DR6. So you don?t need to post the error, it?s most likely fixed already - but I?ll keep an eye on anything similar, just incase, it helps to know it?s not the elementals if it happens.

Completed the new chance formulae, and quickly tested what it spitted out in combat.


I love it, it?s so much more contained now and easily adjusted via the ini, works overall so much more better with the new combat options. This is a big improvement, and one more big task done. :foodndrink:

Well done Skycaptain. Thanks for keeping us all up to date, and good luck with your progress on DR6. I am awaiting it eagerly!

*Jumps up and down like a 10-year old the day before christmas*

Any rough ETA, comrade?

a couple questions, and as always do know that DR is one of the must-have mods out there so big thanks

1) will horse combat come back in DR6 or is it scheduled for later?

2) any chance you could tweak the slit throat so that it works fine with proximity based sneak penalties? it's an awesome mod but it makes throat slitting pretty much impossible

Dont know about the second one, but horse combat will come back in DR6 :celebrate:

I'm not Skycaptain, but as far as 1 is concerned, it will be in DR6. As for 2, check post 182 (this page, above). There was a problem in the formula, so hopefully this will fix some problems with other mods I'm sure he will explain that in more details than me though.

thanx guys, that's some pretty awesome piece of news. this, UV RC2 and SIE are the ones I'm most looking forward to right now

Proximity based sneak penalties lowers your sneak skill according to how close you are. As you need to be close to slit the throat, and on the otherhand my formula uses sneak skill, it?s a tricky one "fix".


We had some disucssion about this with the author a year back or so, and while the extreme penalty kicks in closer than DR requires you to be, I later realised - how can you tell? In practice, you just go as close as possible, and therefore get the maximum sneak penalty.



I COULD take the sneak skill out from the chance formula, assuming that sneak skill is already taken into account since you need to get close undetected....but that?s only true with such a mod as PBSP. Then again, I use it myself I consider it essential.

So I guess....oh man what the hell I?m even contemplating here? I?ll just use the sneak BASE skill in the chance formula!



EDIT: There. Compatibility enchanced. :grad:

:P

I have a real strange bug with deadly reflex. I know this isn't a troubleshooting thread but when in Rome

The game just won't load when DR5 is active. I read the entire readme, set the load order correct, I'm using othe obse loader and I have the latest version of Oblivion, but it just won't load. As soon as I click obse_loader the screen just flicker then then goes back to desktop. As soon as I disable DR it's working fine again. Did I do something wrong?

Sounds like missing esm. Activate the HorseCombatMaster.esm.

awesome. can't wait to slit throats and rampage through the lands on my horse, sowing enemies and trampling them under migthy hooves

Ohh man, just drooling over the new complexity of being able to kill with ease. Once its installed I might teleport to a test area and sleep for 3 days, just so I can reset the cells and have a fresh ground to drop bodies.

I remember after installing v5, I would find bodies on the ground in my travels back and forth, and remember how I killed them. like the time a bandit jumped out on me from nowehere (behind a bush), came at me with a shortsword, I blocked a split second before the hit was completed. He was recoiled and stumbled back, I got in a good swift kick to the chest, sending him flying back to his back. Being a Master vampire has its advantages, so before his back hit the ground, I jumped the distance onto his chest and as soon as he touched down, so did my sword, through his chest.... I got hundreds of stories like that, lmao.

Ah that worked. Read in the readme horse combat didn't work so I didn't activate it

Decapitating people is fun as all hell. This is the most impressive combat mod I've seen by far