Duke Patricks Combat Archery Mod REV 1.4
OBSE 18 or better needed.

New in REV 1.4
THIS IS A BETA FEATURE! ONLY SET TO 0 IF YOU WANT TO TEST THIS NEW FEATURE!
Set to 1 in the INI file to prevent critical hits on the Player AND to turn off the bounce of slow arrows off the player's armor.

YOU MUST DO A CLEAN INSTALL of this rev or you may get a CTD the first time you try this.

And be sure you install the new mesh file in your data directory!

The Critical hits on the player is optional, it can be turned off even if you keep the Arrow bounce off player's armor feature on.
Set this in the INI file.

Haven't even tried 1.3 yet.

If using combat geometry - any recommendations for settings?

Thanks for your first-hand experience and your tips. I'm reluctant to try the mod now since my game is (mostly) stable, and script-heavy mods tend to tip the balance toward the dark side. But I'll get to it eventually.

Nope, all the comments were aimed at this mod, with some comparisons with Marksman challenge from time to time. I'm not thinking of using both Marksman challenge and this together, of course, it's the other mods I mentioned I want to keep. Now, according to what you say we can configure quite a few options in Duke's mod in-game; but I think modular plugins or at least an .ini file would be less of a hassle, especially when reinstalling the game. I really prefer when mods focus on one thing and do it well, and keep the more secondary stuff to separate esps.


Skeleton archers at least seem to keep shooting at me even after I hit them, and with Kuertee Attribute Damage multiplier, they sure hurt. The vampire archer I mentioned did the same, as far as I remember. Maybe this behavior comes from a mod, I know that MMM changes combat AI quite a bit. I'll have to double-check, you're making me doubt what I saw.
Anyways I think it's cool that they keep shooting at me instead of attacking with a rusted iron dagger, but I'd like to be able to interrupt them while they're knocking the arrow.

OK yeah skeleton archers will probably continue to shoot at you as may goblins.

Think of them as less intelligent. And with default damage ini settings you will probably die with one shot in the first 5-7 levels.

realism and immersion they call it. Shield bash feature takes practice, but works great and can be done to you too. It does place you at risk.

[edit]

And that your game is stable is the perfect reason to test the mod out. Counter-intuitive I know, but think about it if your game is unstable and you add yet another mod then you increase the chances of finding the culprit problem sometimes exponentially. If your game is stable and you add a problem mod - simple as pie to find the issue.

I love when the game is stable - mod testing time!

now available on TesNexus:
Edit: The next update will have the option to stop repricing of the bows and arrows. I was informed by a modder I trust that there may be an undocumented OBSE issue where the new prices may unintentional stay in the save game. I have not seen this but I do not doubt this is possible.

I have confirmed this now with some of my own testing. OBSE commands to change the gold value of things will stay in the save game after the mod is unloaded UNTIL you start a new game or load a save before the mod was used. So it is up to you if you want to give up the Bow and Arrow price matching the new damage levels to avoid this issue. We can thank TheNiceOnce for this very important discovery.


Also, if you notice the bows heath raise past 100 percent this is a know issue but it also will disappear once you repair the weapon.
Auto repair of the weapons (not the same as HEALTH SET commands) via script commands cannot be done (yet) or I would do this for you in the script.



Critical Hits on the player and slow Arrows can bounce off of the player's armor. THIS IS A BETA FEATURE! ONLY SET TO 0 IF YOU WANT TO TEST THIS NEW FEATURE! Set to 1 in the INI file to prevent critical hits on the Player AND to turn off the bounce of slow arrows off the player's armor.


SUMMERY OF REV 1.4:

Players can crowd archers, so they will not be able to fire at you at point blank as long as you are close enough to them to crowd them. Player can shield charge Archers if the player has a shield and the NPC has a bow (same rules as for when an NPC Shield charges the player.)

Players are now affected by critical hits (optional) but also player armor will bounce slow arrows. (This is a Beta feature for now and still needs some adjustments.)

The most powerful bows have a chance to penetrate shields when the NPC try to block the arrows.

Thus, when used with "Duke Patrick's Actor Can Miss Now mod" basically all the penalty effects of this mod that work on the player archer now affect the NPC archer, except for the "draw the arrow effects". This is because it is hard coded in the game that NPC always draw their bows all the way to fire an arrow.


Optional running back wards (slower speed) setting. This feature can be turned off in the INI file.
It is only include as it is needed for archer combat realism and I have not updated my combat Exhaustion and Fatigue mods.
I would like to make running speed adjustable on the fly so that you can run back wards as fast as you "are able to" but not so fast that the back wards running risk becomes too much of a ...risk. But unlike the running back wards trip risk (which is a MAJOR factor in combat archery especially over dead bodies)this "adjust running speed on the fly mod" should not be part of this Archery combat mod.



YOU MUST DO A CLEAN INSTALL of this rev or you may get a CTD the first time you try this.
And be sure you install the new mesh file in your data directory!

The Critical hits on the player is optional, it can be turned off even if you keep the Arrow bounce off player's armor feature on. Set this in the INI file.




WARNING! READ ALL READ ME FILES OR YOU WILL BE CONFUSED BY WHAT THE MOD IS DOING IN YOUR GAME!

Any posts that ask questions answered by the Read me file will be ignored! Please do not make me put "read me file lock outs" on this mod.

"Read me file lock outs" WORK, but are irritating to both myself and the other players that actually do read the read me files.

I have confirmed this now with some of my own testing. OBSE commands to change the gold value of things will stay in the save game after the mod is unloaded UNTIL you start a new game or load a save before the mod was used. So it is up to you if you want to give up the Bow and Arrow price matching the new damage levels to avoid this issue. We can thank TheNiceOnce for this very important discovery.

Turn off the Gold value pricing of Bows and arrows in the INI file.

I can confirm that too. After uninstalling my iron bow was still worth 200 or so gold.
So I reinstalled in an effort to get Marksman Challenge and this to play nicely together. They both have some interesting features and in theory, thanks to the .ini's that both so generously provide, they should be able to work alongside eachother with hardly any interlap. The only potential problem I could see after sufficiently editing both .ini's was that both mods have denock functions which cannot be turned off. However, in practice this didn't seem to cause any irregularities: I could denock either by looking straight down or hitting my denock key.
However, there was another issue when I tested this. It seems as though "set aadpArrowfixQuest.ArrowScale to 0", i.e. turning off the mod's stat adustment feature, is incomplete. Here are two pictures I took demonstrating the difference with and without Combat archery editing the bow values: http://yfrog.com/12vanillano3orddp, http://yfrog.com/5kjustdpp. There are a few little oddities:
1. The bows (not the arrows) retain the {} symbol indicating their alteration.
2. The enchanted bow, Ruin's Edge, has had its attack values altered, and its condition has also been upped significantly. The unenchanted golden bow, however, maintains its attack and condition values.
3. The costs are a little weird. Ruin's Edge is worth ~660 gold without, but ~200 with, and the golden bow has likewise gone from 55 to 30.
4. One thing not noticeable in the menus is that the arrow speed is still adjusted with CA active.
To be sure I tested this with "set aaDPSCABOWSWAYquest.NoPriceChange" and "set aadpArrowfixQuest.ArrowScale" to both 1 and 0, with the aforementioned master value still set to 0. Damage scaling was 1.1 the whole way. Both pictures were taken with Marksman Challenge deactivated, but I took a lot of pictures to determine whether anything else was getting in the way, and pictures taken with FCOM Durability and Damage, Kuertee's Attribute and Skill Based Modifiers, and Marksman Challenge (and various combinations of these) all indicated similar trends.

You:
1. The bows (not the arrows) retain the {} symbol indicating their alteration.

Me:
Yes, bows will always get the {} symbol with this mod no mater what.

You
2. The enchanted bow, Ruin's Edge, has had its attack values altered, and its condition has also been upped significantly. The enchanted golden bow, however, maintains its attack and condition values.

Me:
Please elaborate on this, any bow should always get the {} symbol and its Damage should always change per your INI file.

You:
3. The costs are a little weird. Ruin's Edge is worth ~660 gold without, but ~200 with, and the golden bow has likewise gone from 55 to 30.

Me:
This is covered in the Read me file.

You:
4. One thing not noticeable in the menus is that the arrow speed is still adjusted with CA active.

Me:
Yes, arrows will always be speed adjusted with this mod no mater what IF you do not pull the bow string all the way back.
Again, covered in the read me file.

Right, then...
1. Yeah, I wasn't sure, I was just curious on that one.
2. Well, the bow multiplier is set to 1.1 in my ini so another mod can handle it, yet the attack values still appear modified. The enchanted bow went from 5 to 20, and the unenchanted one went from 4 to 5. Is this merely the unreliability of the menu values again? I suppose I'm having trouble remembering that those aren't meant to be accurate. The 480% durability is also a little odd to me.
3. So it's still meant to reprice bows based on condition even when bow repricing is turned off?
4. Ohh. Oops. I always assumed fully drawn meant shortly after nocking the arrow. Sorry about that.

I'm sorry for being so dense. I have read the readme, but some of the stuff I'm seeing is still confusing me a little.

You:
2. Well, the bow multiplier is set to 1.1 in my ini so another mod can handle it, yet the attack values still appear modified. The enchanted bow went from 5 to 20, and the enchanted one went from 4 to 5. Is this merely the unreliability of the menu values again? I suppose I'm having trouble remembering that those aren't meant to be accurate.

Me:
1.1 means a 10 % INCREASE to the BASE damage of the weapon PLUS any other modifiers such as the Magic boost unless you turn this off in the INI. I.E if it is an enchanted bow or arrow the damage is boosted, both configurable in the INI file.

AND yes depending on other damage related game modifiers ( such as health of the weapon, PC skills and attributes, active spells, and many many more modifiers) this could end up as much more than a base 10% increase you see in the menu. However in your case I think you just forgot that the 1.1 is 10 % more and that enchanted weapons get more damage.

You
The 480% durability is also a little odd to me.

Me:
This is a known issue, with the existing commands available it can not be solved with a script. You will need to wear it down and then repair it with a hammer. Then you should not see the same bow do this again. This is because the bow is 100 percent health, then is reset for durability by the script, the game is not made to understand this so it shows in the menu to be over 100 % health. Again just wear it down and repair with a hammer and then after that you should not see this on he same bow ever again.


You:
3. So it's still meant to reprice bows based on condition even when bow repricing is turned off?

Me:
No, if this is happening this is an issue I need to fix. Or maybe I am not understanding what you mean.
I thought what you said was the the bows were not repricing "LOGICALLY". NO? So what you are saying is the the bows are repricing even when the repricing feature is turned off in the INI?

You:
I'm sorry for being so dense. I have read the read me, but some of the stuff I'm seeing is still confusing me a little.

Me:
If you truly did read the read me file completely (not just "skim it") then I am happy to try to explain it better and then update my read me file as well. I know there could very well be un clear directions in my read me file and I WANT to make them more clear if it is really necessary for most players.

But you would be shocked at how many players "skim" it and then swear they read it.
I discovered that this happens a lot when I invented my READ ME FILE LOCK OUTS.
The mod would NOT run unless you read the full read me file to get the unlock code for it.
People would skim the file and not see the mod unlock code and then claim they read the read me file.

Because of that I may be a little jaded to any issue I believe I have covered in the read me file.

I found a bug that prevented the "arrow bounce off the player's armor" and "player critical hits" feature from working.

This is fixed.
I will do more tests and then release a rev 1.5 tomorrow.

This rev will no longer be a "beta only" for the "arrow bounce off the player's armor" and "player critical hits" feature.
However, the circumstance for the arrows to bounce off the player are rare.
Now It does NOT eat up all that much CPU but the script for this feature is not absolutely free either.

So unless you are really concerned about the rare occurrence were the arrow should bounce off the player's armor or you want the added realism of the critical hits on the player you might just want to keep this feature off via the INI file.

I may even make it the DEFAULT to be off.

One problem with your readme file is that it's very long, and not sufficiently organized. You should break it up with numbered headings, and have a table of contents listing those headings (this way we can quickly CTRL+F to a section). The most important thing would be to separate the essential, technical information needed to play the mod and have a basic understanding of what's going on, and the "flavour" information, such as the description of the various materials. And make it easy for players to get to the essential stuff, whether they're playing the mod for the first time or are trying to find a specific bit of information.

A clear changelog covering all versions (not only the latest additions) would also help, for players who tried any older version and want to know exactly what changed since then, without re-reading the whole readme and trying to "diff" it in their head against what they remember of the old one.

Well it would seem that I was wrong about the low end arrows. Even the slowest arrows after my mod adjusts them (iron) do not travel under 800 unless they are fired from a bow that has not been drawn all the way.

So this is what I will do. I will make a player setting that will bounce arrows off armor if the arrow speed is below this player setting.

However, this player setting cannot be set below 800. The script will raise it up to 800 if you try to set it too low. This way the minimum is still used so that the mod will work properly, but if you so choose you may pick a higher cut off point.

Iron arrows for example are a speed of 1000 once my mod changes them. So if you set it to 1000 all the IRON arrows will not penetrate armor if it hits a location on the player or NPC wearing armor. This location system however is still subject to limitations as described in the read me file.

And I do not have the time to test every arrow in Oblivion to find their speeds, so you will have to do some fishing around on your own or just use the Iron setting of 1000 or the default 800.

I will also post speeds I find as I happen to stumble across s them.

Oh and please keep in mind that this is "Oblivion arrow speed" units NOT FEET PER SECOND.
800 speed for example is about how fast you can throw an object.

Rev 1.5 Now ready to download on TesNexus.

See my previous post for details on the new revision.

Next Rev will have a BIG improvement on how the Draw time of the bow works.

Right now Draw time is based on player attributes and weapon damage but then 1.5 seconds is added to this to compensate for the
animation that loads the arrow in the bow.

This was not very accurate and accuracy makes a big different in the archers Rate of fire!
Now I found a much better way to compensate for the animation, I can detect when the animation SOUND is over then start the
draw the bow timer after.

Rev 1.5.1 will have this change. May be ready late tomorrow.

hELLO; spookyfx.com,

thank you for this mod, its absolutley a must have! Can tell how many reasons for I find...

I have one question, about the new feature in rev 1.5, the critical hit against the PC( player character).

In general its a very good idea for having both sides equal chances.
But from my viewpoint, it may be very likely I wont spot the enemy archers before they hit my PC.
Especially when its dark, rainy, or when my PC is wandering through woods. Or in fights, in case any archer sneaks around me and attacks me from behind, while I am fighting with a warlord.

Wouldnt it make sense to have some kind of warnsignal, like the sneaking eye blinking red,
and have a chance to do a fast dodging move, perhaps already mapped to a key, like the dodging move from deadly reflex 5?
( the warning signal could be an arrow, already fired at a critical spot, or an enemy targeting at my PCs weak spot before shooting the arrow)


it could be an option at least....

Do not worry about this, in theory you are right, but in actual game play the NPC almost NEVER hits critical locations because they are not aiming for them. They aim for "Center Mass" (the torso above the Solar Plexus) and they only hit other locations if they are almost straight above you (head shot) or if the arrow is slow and falls too much or there is a sudden elevation change such as the target runs down stairs. NPC "take aim" mechanics are hard coded. It is not too hard to "push the arrow" a little to make them miss their shot but "guiding" the arrow to an exact spot in the chaos of combat would be outside the scope of this mod.

This is why I put an OFF SWITCH in the INI for player critical hits and the bounce the arrow off the player feature. The circumstance for the NPC to do this are so rare it is almost not worth the resources to do it in the game. The resource use is VERY little , but as little CPU use as it is it is still not FREE.

Rev 1.5.1 is done and ready to download from TesNexus.

The draw time and the fatigue drain work very well now. If you are a weaker PC or try to use a very strong bow (much stronger than you are) there is a noticeable difference in the draw time and an obvious difference in the fatigue drain.

If your PC is very strong and uses a weaker bow you will see almost no fatigue drain and only a moment of "extra" draw time.

"Extra" draw time is the time added to the end of the "load the arrow in the bow" animation.
You will know this extra draw time is over when the bow stops moving and the sound of the bow being flexed is over.

I am fairly Happy with the mod now, I will be starting a NEW Archer Swordsman (Robin Hood like) character in the next few days and actually PLAY Oblivion for a while.

I finally got Bioshock 2 working, I agree that it is a great visual banquet with a terrific story and good action, but I am still angry about the
install issue. And on top of that the game still crashed my PC regularly about every 1 to 2 hours.
And to add insult to injury you are required to be on line and connected to a monitoring service to play the game with saves.
(More underhanded conditioning to get our young people indoctrinated to "Cloud computing".)

I have sworn to myself I will NOT buy any NEW game anymore. I will wait for a month or so before buying it.
The game reviewers OFTEN do not get the same game we get in the stores, so they do not know about this until the rest of us do!

I will be making an exception for Tes V however...

bummer...

After starting a new PC and fighting in the arena I discovered that the Crowd the NPC Archer feature is not working as well as I would like.
Part of the issue is the NPC must be in the cross hair, this was fine in first person view, but I forget about 3rd person view.
So I may need to adjust the script to update this part.

Rats, I wanted to take a break from modding...

You could loop through all NPCs in the cell and check how far away they are and whether the player's angle towards them is below a certain threshold. Not sure about performance impact about doing that very frequently for every NPC in the cell, but you would only need to do it if you're in 3rd person, running and blocking, so only in a very specific combat situation.

At least that's how I would do it.

Thanks for the new revision!

Just a quick comment to reply to an earlier spookyfx.com thread that was closed;

Leveling mods like Realistic Leveling do not have problems with large skill drain spells, only with large skill drain abilities. The reason is skill drain abilities modify the getBaseAV value and large drains will be truncated so that the base skill does not go negative. This gives leveling mods no way of knowing what the current skill base value is, and thus they cannot figure out how much the skill has advanced. Realistic Leveling does compensate for skill drain abilities, but when the drain is very large and gets truncated, doing getBaseAV + drain ability magnitude gives a falsely large value, making RL think the skill has suddenly advanced significantly, triggering attribute and level advancements.

So mods can use large skill drain spells, poisons, and diseases without causing any problems for leveling mods... just stay away from large skill drain abilities.

Note that in the next version of Realistic Leveling I will add code that delays recalculating level/attributes when it detects a large skill drain ability. This means your level and attributes will not advance while a large skill drain ability is applied, but will advance as soon as it's removed... you cannot advance while your skill is so drastically impaired.

Rev 1.6 Now ready to download on TesNexus.

Well it turns out that the real problem was that I had the "player crowds the NPC" part of the script under a check to see if the player had a bow out. So naturally the script would not run if you had a shield out and not a bow. That is fixed. While playing with this as a shield man against an opponent that ONLY had a bow and no other weapon I realized that they cannot switch to another weapon. So this is when players would be shot point blank by the NPC. I play tested this for a few hours and the result was one other little feature. read below.


Both the NPC and the Player can "crowd" the bow so that it cannot be properly nocked and fired. If an archer is up very close to their opponent the bow will be bumped to the side and the arrow will disengage from the bow.

Do not try crowd the archer for too long however, you will take a big chance of the archer attacking you hand to hand knocking you to the ground. This is calculated using their hand to hand, strength and fatigue against your hand to hand, strength and fatigue.

The player gets a 10% bonus to this formula, however the player also will lose fatigue as they crowd and struggle with the NPC up close.

This is for technical reasons, as the NPC will never stop trying to draw their bow and would otherwise stand there forever getting crowded unlike the player who will quickly retreat or slide to the side to get out of the crowding.


One small issue with this REV 1.6 is that the "Shield charge the Archer" move for the player has a tighter window of opportunity. So it is harder to trigger now. The next rev will loosen this up a little to make it reasonably easier to do than it is now.

So, I finally tried the new version, and overall it works really well. I like the fatigue loss from drawing the bow - it seems a bit extreme even though my character is very strong, especially since Realistic Fatigue makes my character fall to the ground when his fatigue is at zero . But overall very nice mod, and misc features like the new denock work well too.


--
On a more general topic Duke, can I annoy you with a request? I help maintain the BOSS masterlist, and it would be a good idea if you avoided changing your .esp file names so often. It gets a bit annoying to maintain, as you can see in the masterlist.txt excerpt below:

Duke Patricks Near Miss Arrow Shot Alerts The Target.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patricks - Near Miss Arrow Shot Alerts The Target.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patricks - arrow shots alarm the targets.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patricks - Near Miss Magic And Arrow Shots Alert The Target.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patricks - Near Miss Magic And Arrows Alert The Target.espDuke Patricks - Stat Based Bob And Weave.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patricks Bob and Weave Dodge GOLD Edition.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patricks - Bob and Weave Dodge Mark II.espDuke Patricks - NPCs Now Bob Under Your Shots.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patrick's NPCs Now Bob Under Your Shots.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patrick's Vampires Bob Under Your Shots.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patricks - All NPC Or Just Vampires Now Bob And Weave.espDuke Patricks NPC Arrow Shots Can Miss Now.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version ('Duke Patricks - Actors Can Miss Now.esp').Duke Patricks - NPC MAGIC and Arrows Can Miss Now.esp? Old. upgrade to latest version ('Duke Patricks - Actors Can Miss Now.esp').Duke Patricks - Actors Can Miss Now.espDuke Patrick's Smash of the Titans.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patrick`s Smash of the Titans.esp? Old. Upgrade to latest version.Duke Patricks - Smash Of The Titans.esp

Another helpful idea would be to maintain a consistent version numbering system across all your mods, such as starting them all at 0.1 and then jumping to 1.0 when the mod is ready for public consumption. Most people understand this system. It gets a bit confusing when a mod is labeled "out of beta" or "gold", and then you have the post-gold editions and so on. The version number is for the upload site and the readme, though, it's still better is the esp is named the same from one version to another.

Thanks in advance! :goodjob:

Rev 1.6.1 Change:

The window of opportunity for the player shield charge has been expanded.


Concerning the Fatigue drain for "crowding":
The player gets a bonus in that the NPC will not be able to use this special H2H attack while the player is attacking, only when you are not attacking.

However the player also will lose fatigue as they crowd and struggle with the NPC up close. This is for technical reasons, as the NPC will never stop trying to draw their bow and would otherwise stand there forever getting crowded unlike the player who will quickly retreat or slide to the side to get out of the crowding.

The formula for this fatigue consumption is based on a comparison of the players strength and the NPC strength. Struggling with a weak opponent will do little, but struggling with a stronger opponent will fatigue you quickly.

Get it here:

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29831

A New Rev (1.7) will be out sometime this weekend.

I improved all the scripts. And I finally found a way to get the arrow RIGHT UP AGAINST THE NPC OR PLAYER before it bounces away!
Now the arrow will not bounce 2 feet in front of the PC or NPC.

I also fixed a few small bugs and now the player will be able to bounce arrows from their shield depending on the opponent's fatigue and bow strength compared to the players block and fatigue.

Now that the NPC arrows can bounce off the players shield, I want to see if I can get the NPC Archer to shoot at the player's legs sometimes.