» Thu Jun 23, 2011 7:40 am (Based on my old SCA combat mod but bigger and MUCH better!)
Requirements: Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE) v20. NO BETAS
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History
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January 2006 first release of this mod.
This was the first real "Mod" I had ever made. I did a tiny bit of WAD authoring in the days of DOOM. And some Hex editing of other games. But the only other programming I have ever done was a very simple color basic language 4k game 30 years ago on a TRS80 PC. That modest work in color basic was the only way I was able to decipher the script language used in Oblivion today.
get it here:
http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/914-duke-patricks-melee-combat-no-recoil/
This mod includes:
- NO MORE BLOCK RECOIL! Staggering and recoil will happen from hits and other combat related reasons but no more "hobbled" attack combos! And being "paralyzed" (non-magical) will almost never happen!
- Dead bodies get bashed to the ground violently instead of floating down thru the air like a feather.
- Locational hits with critical damage (INI configurable)
- Location armor for the head, body and legs. Wearing a good helmet may be all you need!
- Blunt damage will be more effective against light armor.
- Both the player and the NPC can Bob and Weave to avoid attacks. You will consume fatigue based on encumbrance load.
- Enemy melee AI is greatly improved and will also watch for the player's "tells", but this also means you can "trick" them!
- AI settings have been overhauled to attack, block and move more deviously, dynamically and ruthlessly.
- You can now use actual real-life sword and shield feints to land your shots (such as the "rising snap"!)
- BOTH Passive and Active blocking!
- Weapon/shield size matters! Bigger weapons/shields give you more geometric protection. But they also take more fatigue to parry with! The bigger the weapon/shield relative to your body size, the better your passive block chance. The better your block skill, the better your chance to parry. Bigger heavy shields / weapons have the advantage to absorb more damage than lighter/smaller ones.
- Weapons stats are now much more realistic. Weapon hit range is based on the actual model length of the weapon in the game. No more 20 foot long short swords! War hammers do not swing quickly like they are made of plastic. Weapon damage stats are not dramatically cranked up, they are only balanced relativistically with the speed and range of the weapon. This is all done via scripts "on the fly" so even custom weapons from other mods are included.
- Draining your fatigue completely with button bashing will result in blurred vision! ( INI configurable for the ...er...casual players.)
- Defensive Geometry and great timing is now more important than great player speed and reflexes. The angle of attack is a little tighter, so Offensive Geometry is more important in landing a shot.
- Footwork and range games are now very important for blocks and attacks.
- H2H now includes grapple blocks and throws.
- Fighting Giants is now a very scary undertaking, sometimes the only way to live is to run away!
- Bottle necking overwhelming numbers (such as with doorways) and other such tricks MUST be done or you will die!
- Weapon speed (timing) vs damage is now the second most important tactical consideration. Heavy one-handed weapons take an eternity to hit, but they hit HARD!
- Power attacks now require good timing to land but they do more damage!
- WRAPS This is a shot where you stand very close and swing your weapon to wrap around your opponent's shield thus reducing the benefits of a large shield.
- Aiming under their weapon or shield gives a bonus to land your shot.
- If a feint works, the shield or weapon will move out of position right before the attack lands. What this does is give you a view of the opponent being OPEN for the shot as you land the blow!
- Results are based on the attributes, actions timing, conditions and dynamics of the combat not on simplistic dice rolls. This means you can eventually learn to take advantage of the subtle factors in combat and predict your opponent's action.
- All blunt weapons now have a good chance to stagger or even "push over" depending on how heavy the blunt weapon is and how strong the attacker is (modified by his fatigue) versus the target's strength.
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1. DESCRIPTION
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This mod changes the combat to feel more like SCA combat, a worldwide historical organization that includes full armor, full speed and full contact western European medieval martial arts. (As much as I am able to do in an Oblivion mod.)
Please see my Web page: http://www.spookyfx.com/book/tromp.html
The mod is based on my 30 years of melee tournament and war experience. SCA wars consist, on a good day, of two teams of several thousand fighters all in one battlefield trying to knock each others' heads off with everything from short swords to 12 foot spears!
This mod is made to focus on the psychology and physics of melee combat.
Although I very much favor shield and sword, after finishing the mod and play testing it seems that lighter faster fighters (such as single sword fighters) more often "beats" heavy slow weapons and shield IF the light weapon's fighter was at the most extreme levels of skill in Weapons, Block, H2H, Strength, Agility, Speed and Fatigue. I had believed (wanted to anyway) that it would to be the other way around were an expert with a weapon and shield would beat an expert with say a bastard sword.
If you train your skills up around 75 or more in all the skills I just listed (and you earn them not just cheat your skills up in 15 minutes) you will probably then complain to me that combat is too easy when fighting against sword and shield man even if you only have a dagger.
You may ask "why would I need to earn them, why not just cheat them all up to 75?"
Because there is some player skill needed as well. You will need to learn how to use the mod features correctly. The only way to do this is to earn your skills in game by putting in the play time. This is the part that I hope will keep the player interested even once their character has reached master levels in all their skills.
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2. INSTALLING THE PLUGIN
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************* take time to backup your KF files before using *****************
BACK-UP THESE FOLDERS IF YOU WANT TO UNINSTALL MY MOD LATER!
\Oblivion\Data\meshes\characters\_male
Now extract the mesh, textures and sound files from my zip to the proper folders in your Oblivion Data directory.
There is a set of optional animation files in the folder called:
meshes - OPTIONAL attacks animations
These are a few attack animations I tweaked from vanilla to look much better in 3rd person. They look terrible in 1st person as the timing for the climix of the attack is incorrect. I never used to fight in 1st person so this did not bother me at first. Now I am looking for other animation files that will work for both 1st and 3rd as I am spending more time theses days in 1st person. Sorry, the choice is a bad one because the vanilla animations these replace are very very silly and may not look right in some situations with this mod.
The spinning animations for left and right power attacks are horrible, unrealistic and will not visually work well with this mod. I have provided reworked left and right power attack animations with this mod but they have small timing issues in 1st person. You can use any other custom animations as long as they are not acrobatic in style. If you can make new attack animations for my mod I will include them with credits to you. Any acrobatic animation would probably still work (even the terrible vanilla spins) but sometimes it would look unrealistic and strange in combat.
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3. PLAYING THE PLUGIN
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Playing a new character will be the most rewarding over time. Low level characters will find it extremely difficult. Just to survive you will need large shields, long weapons and heavy armor. But once you pay your dues and obtain master levels in most of your combat skills you will be able to easily take on a large Orc in full plate armor swinging a war hammer while you are butt naked with only a dagger as a weapon!
You may not appreciate that (you will feel you are overpowered) unless you start this mod with a low level character with heavy equipment and work your way up to lighter equipment by gaining skills.
Your combat skills will all need to be about 60 or higher to see all the perks in full force.
But even a low level player as a small chance to perform any of the features in this mod.
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Weapon Attributes
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BASE weapon damage, range and speed for melee weapons have necessary adjustments for the mod to work. However these adjustments make the weapons more realistic as well. For example, weapon hit range is adjusted for the sweet spot of the weapon, not the tip. War hammers do not swing quickly like they are made of plastic. Weapon damage stats are not dramatically cranked up, they are only balanced relativistically with the speed and range of the weapon. Dramatic critical damage is done via scripting. It is recommended you do not reduce the damage rate because armor is more effective now and blocking skill is much more effective at reducing damage if a block is successful. However, if you really still want a higher mouse click to kill ratio then first try adjusting critical hit damage in the INI before adjusting the weapon damage scale.
Blunt damage will be more effective against light armor,
So if you have an opponent with a light helmet (chain hood or leather ) and you want to do more damage with the head shot damage then hit him with a blunt weapon!
All blunt weapons now have a good chance to stagger or even "push over" depending on how heavy the blunt weapon is and how strong the attacker is (modified by his fatigue) versus the target's strength.
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Blocking and Parrying
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Term: "parry weapon" refers to anything that is used to block or parry.
A parry weapon can be a shield or sword or even a chair (no, blocking with a chair is not in this mod... yet!)
The bigger the parry weapon (sword, shield, 2h axe, mace and etc.) relative to your body size, the better your passive block chance. The better your block skill the better your chance to parry.
All weapons and shields (parry weapons) and even H2H are able to block up to 99% damage. However, that will only happen if your block skill is at 100%, you do not miss your block and you only use active parry. The way the system works a H2H parry of a sword blow is very hard, a weapon parry of a sword is less so and a shield parry is much easier. However if you have the required skills, 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 head straight into your arm.
Passive blocks can block up to 75% damage and have less chance of success than an active parry but require almost no skill (neither player skill nor character skill).
-------------Fatigue consumed in blocking---------------
The bigger the attacking weapon and stronger the opponent as compared to your parry weapon, the more fatigue will be consumed in blocking.
So there are two things that happen when you block or parry; a check is done to see if you miss the block/parry, if that happens all the damage hits you, you will actually see the actor's weapons/shield/arms get knocked aside. If you do not miss your parry/block then your block skill is used to see how much damage is deflected. Bigger heavy shields/weapons have an advantage of absorbing more damage than lighter smaller ones.
Chance to succeed is based on the size of the shield/weapon combined with your block skill and then modified by many factors such as if it is active (the first .5 of a seconds you press block) or passive (all the time after .5 of a second), as well as fatigue, any feints, whether it is a power shot or not (power shots are easier to catch because they are slower and have a lot of body language broadcasting).
If you use a big weapon and you are small and weak you will use up more fatigue to active parry and to move your parry weapon into place the first time for passive blocks!
And when you are hit by bigger weapons you use more fatigue! But the bigger your parry weapon (and shield) the less fatigue you consume for the Passive block.
I hope this is making sense concerning the attacker's weapon weight, the defenders parry weapon weight and the act of moving the parry weapon to active parry and the act of moving the weapon to passive block. This is all very logical and even common sense as far as momentum goes ( no esoteric heavy weapons fighting knowledge needed ) but it is so different from most games I fear it could be confusing for players about how fatigue is drained for parry and blocking.
-----------------------Feints----------------------
Start a blow aiming at the feet and finish it at the head (this is known as a rising snap) and it will greatly hinder your opponents chance to succeed at the parry/block. Same with starting a blow out of range, or starting a blow at one flank then finishing on another. IF you can manage it you can combine all these as well.
-------------------Hand to Hand----------------
If you are in H2H range and with no shield you can sidestep while you hold your block button to trigger a grapple type flip (with some basic animations).
If you do not side step but are in H2H range you can do a grapple parry where you hinder the movement of your opponent's limbs/shoulder/hips instead of deflecting the blade of the attacking weapon (also with basic animations). This means H2H can "stop" a great sword attack but again only if you are at a very close range and your block and h2h skills can succeed in doing so. Most of the formulas use a bell curve instead of tapered levels. Meaning even a level 1 PC has a chance to grapple parry a great sword attack but it is very unlikely to happen.
You can Grapple block and Grapple throw with a weapon in one hand but you there is a 25% penalty to the success.
I also use a diminishing returns philosophy in some of the calculations when going from a skill 80 to a skill 90, it will not give you the same jump in results as you did from skill 40 to skill 50.
You may Grapple Block and Grapple Throw with no weapons or even with a 1H weapon and no shield! So if you are out of H2H range you parry/block with the sword, but in H2H range you do the grapple parry and you can do the grapple throws.
This gives a great tactical reason to fight with a sword but no shield if your skills are up to it. At beginning levels you will need a big shield to survive fights. And when you come up against really good opponents that block like a devil you can trick them with feints!
All this makes changing range in combat VERY important, and the size of your shield/parry weapon is important as well, giving you many options in fighting style while still being as close to realistic combat as Oblivion will allow me to make it.
H2H skill, fatigue and block skill play the biggest part in the grapple blocks and throws.
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Bob And Weave Dodging
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I hate button combos and hotkeys. I only use what I call "action triggers" whenever I can. These are actions that as much as possible logically and intuitively performed in combination with each other to trigger new actions. In this way more complicated actions can be controlled in the game based on only a few familiar keys.
I wanted to make the "actions trigger" the left, right and down controls but for technical reasons I had to make the Bob and Weave action trigger as follows:
Block action plus Crouch action
So press or hold your block control and tap crouch to do one bob and weave. There were too many issues with trying to artificially force the crouch on the player by disabling and enabling buttons. Under some conditions the player can end up with their controls stuck on off.
There are some ways to monitor that and revert the controls but this mod is already very complicated so the best thing was to include the crouch action as part of the trigger to do the bob and weave.
NO tripping in this version and you can repeat this action as often as you want but it consumes fatigue each time you do it based on your encumbrance load.
The chance to succeed is based on H2H skill, Agility (a little of Luck ), Acrobatics skill, Block skill, your encumbrance load and current fatigue.
If the attacker is power attacking it is much easer to succeed at the dodge.
AI factors for the NPC to decide when to attempt to dodge includes:
- If they have a shield or not.
- Their encumbrance load and current fatigue.
- The distance between them and the opponent.
- Their skill level and other attributes.
- Visibility
- Opponent movement such as circling around to their rear flank
- If they have a weapon out and if it is a 2H or 1H weapon
- If the attacker is power attacking.
- How fast the opponent is moving.
I wrote the AI based on my own "rules" for dodging. I seem to be a gifted dodger in real life combat. This surprised many of my opponents because I am heavy-set looking even back in the days I was fighting 4 days a week. The first real fight I was in was as a boy in High school, I "won" without throwing any blows by ducking, the other kid broke his hand on the nearby metal lockers. And I was always the last one to go down in dodgeball. That really frustrated the older and more athletic guys! :~)
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Locational damage
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Locational armor for the head, body and legs. Wearing a good helmet may be all you need!
Like my archery mod, you can hit the head for extra damage. A power shot to a head that is not wearing a helmet can be fatal!
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 that head and the legs/feet do the least amount of damage. This is player configurable in the INI.
The scripts for detecting location are not made to work pixel by pixel, it may on some occasions not work 100% accurately as per what you are seeing on the screen but I doubt you will notice it that much, if at all!
Aiming under an opponent's weapon or shield gives a bonus to land your shot (they receive a penalty to block). So if they have a small shield or a weapon and you hit them in the body or legs you get a bonus. If they have a medium shield and you aim at their legs you get a bonus. Again the formula for this takes into account the size of the shield or weapon relative to the size of the opponent using that weapon/shield.
There will be messages at the top left of the screen to tell you about location shots, feints and other stuff. This can be turned off in the INI file. Some messages may not be in sync with actions. There is a delay that all the screen messages suffer from as they are placed in the cache to be displayed. So you often do not actually see them at the time they are called.
Critical locational damage will not happen unless your opponent missed their block or you are around to the side or back where they do not "block". Otherwise the damage will be normal low vanilla damage (the damage that is inflicted on one who is successfully blocking.)
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!
AC of the armor will reduce the damage directly.
So a HEAVY type helmet (steel plate) with AC 2 would reduce the critical head damage by 20% if hit with a sword and 20% if hit with a blunt.
A Light type helmet (chain hood) with AC 2 would reduce the head damage by 20% if hit with a sword and 10% if hit with a blunt.
The Agility attribute has a small effect on the actors' accuracy to hit the head. An actor must still aim at the head but if they are a little off-center they could miss if their agility is bad. A miss only means it becomes a body shot. So moving around a lot in combat could very well save you from a head shot! Accuracy is improved when directly behind an opponent. This in turn means critical damage is easier to achieve. So do not let an opponent slip around you and hit you from behind.
Shield or weapon will move out of position right before the attack lands. What this does is give you a view of the opponent being OPEN for the shot as you land the blow!
This is not how it is in real life as the combat is more subtle than the shield suddenly not being up for the block, but for the game it does give you that feeling of tricking your opponent into moving his shield in the wrong way and creating an opening to hit them.
This will happen if your feint works or any thing that would make their block skill go to 0 such as very low fatigue and a bit of bad luck on their part.
This mod has a feature that if an actor or player is getting up you can be knocked back to the ground if hit with enough force again. There is a time window for your opponent to do this. The stronger you are the smaller this window of opportunity is.
I hated the way actors could just slowly rise to their feet again even when they were being clobbered repeatedly on the back as they got up. This makes getting tripped to the ground very dangerous! However this can be turned off in the INI file.
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Wrap Shots
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Also new are "wrap shots"! This happens when you get in close (H2H range) with a weapon that is either a top heavy weapon (blunt) or a blade that is longer than 2 feet and your opponent is blocking. Wraps are "scorpion" like shots that circle around the side or over or sometimes under the shield to land the blow. This produces a weaker attack but cuts the shield/weapon size (passive block chance) by 50%. To trigger this just get in real close with an appropriate weapon. No special animation for this, however most of the normal ones look good enough once you are that close.
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Short Shots
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This happens when you strike with the Center of gravity of a weapon that is not a top heavy weapons such as most swords. On most 1H swords that is just a few inches above the hilt. When you hit this way it is like hitting with a light weight mace. Thus all the same calculations used for a blunt attack (like a mace or axe) will now be used in your sword attack. The short shot happens when you are in H2H range of your opponent but they are not blocking.
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Feints
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Feinting is the act of starting a swing one way then changing mid-swing to another way.
Generally your player reflexes should not determine the success of the feint, your stats, your opponent's stats and other combat conditions should. 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 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 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 the 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.
Keep in mind I have the feint memory timers turned way down for now so that the feints can be repeated way sooner than it will be in the final mod.
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, 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 "real" part of the attack the more effective it 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 as if they miss your head 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, this is how many shots get by one's differences 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 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'd 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 fight 1/3 of the time in 1st person myself, many of the feints are definitely easier to do 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.
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4. KNOWN ISSUES AND CONFLICTS
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The following mods are merged into this mod. Do not use my old mods called :
Duke Patricks Smash of the Titans
Duke Patricks Shield Tricks
Duke Patrick's Momentum Damage And Jump Risk
Duke Patricks Basic Combat Geometry
Do not use mods that dynamically (using scripts) try to control combat AI in any way.
Do not use any betas with this mod. If you do then please at the very least have the personal responsibility not to report "bugs" to my mod threads.
Critical hits are calculated using the race scale and the editor scale of the actor and the bounding box dimensions. So any mod that affects these 3 items could potentially adversely affect the script.
Warning! Making any changes to my files using third party "compatibility" tools may cause issues with this mod. As I have said many times before the programs like Bash is not the issue, it is the people that use the programs erroneously that is the issue. Anyone that edits my files in any way will get no support from me whatsoever. And I will never participate in any way to help others edit my files even for personal use.
One person for example changed a sound effect in one of my mods thinking "hey no big deal it's just a sound." I use sounds sometimes as timing devices and changing the sound was like removing the timer from the script. If you know enough to safely make such changes in files you did not create yourself then you do not need my help anyway.
I cannot answer any questions you have related to "changes" to my files for the purpose of playing the mod.
------------------Short list of known ways to make this mod crash-----------------
- Used any mod that has deleted Vanilla references.
- Used an incompatible mod such as combat mods that dynamically change combat styles.
- Did not load the INI file in the same directory as the ESP file.
- Did not load the support files such as the Mesh files.
- Did not use OBSE 20 or better that is not a beta.
- Did any of the above, make a savegame, then try to use that same savegame after correcting the above issues.
I have a mod that has an extremely good fighter in it, he is HEAVILY scripted for combat and would be incompatible with this mod so I check for that NPC in this mod and then do not give him the scripts from this mod.
Unfortunately there is no way around that kind of thing. It is a variation on the "rule of one". In most cases all that would happen would be that the NPC would not move or attack very well (the mods animations would be fighting each other)
CTD issue with combat styles from CM Partners.esm which assigns styles on the fly to companions. When this record is deleted from the companion mod the game will no longer crash. You will need to delete the records manually if you want to use CM partners with this mod.
Feints messages not in sync with actions. There is a delay that all the screen messages suffer from as they are placed in the cache to be displayed. So you often do not actually see them at the time they are called.
There is no way to force actors to move their attack low to the legs. They may hit your legs serendipitously if you are on a slope, stairs, you are falling while they hit you or if they are in a sneak position and other such circumstances. When you hit a prone opponent on the ground it is almost always detected as a body hit and sometimes legs as there is no reliable way to detect head shots in a prone position.
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5. CREDITS
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Thanks to
Nao4288 for a great Shield Bash Animation
TheNiceOne for getting me to start to understand and start using Arrays. This version of my Melee Combat mod with the "shield size counts" features would not have been possible to do otherwise!
"Thank ye" Omeletted for helping with Read Me file. And any errors in this doc now are my doing not Omeletted's.
Psymon for feedback on this project months before I started the forum threads and open betas.
Skycaptain for the final piece of the puzzle I needed to get rid of recoil via a script. I was doing this years ago in my first release of this mod with tweaked animations back when everyone told me it was impossible to remove the recoil. But using all the new OBSE commands via a scripts is far better.
The OBSE team
All the people that write the Wiki and the active members on my beta threads for feedback!
Bethesda for allowing all of us to shape and personalize our own virtual playgrounds!
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LEGAL
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I worked very hard on this mod for several years now. This mod is more a product of creativity, sweat and tears than script writing talent.DO NOT distribute or use any of my 3D models, resources or scripts. You should only find this mod distributed from TesAlliance. If any other website is distributing this work they are doing so illegitimately.You MAY (with conditions) use my scripts and my other resources for making a mod only as long as it has NOTHING to do with COMBAT. I.E do not make a disguised knock off that conflicts with this mod.And you must credit me fully and include my "legal" as shown above.
However the treatment in "Duke Patrick's crash course in SCA style Oblivion sword and shield combat" is copyrighted material and cannot be legally or ethically "borrowed" in any way.
Nao4288 is the animator that made the new Bash Animation KF file. I am using it with permission per his read me file. And I acknowledge it as his very fine work not mine.
Real Life Sword And Shield Combat : http://www.spookyfx.com/book/tromp.html
