So do you mean women can't be strong enough to use a warhammer? :confused:

That's basically want some people are saying. They have some misconception that women are helpless and can't lift anything heavy, which is terribly wrong.

It might double the RAM requirements. :shrug:
(of the animation data)

Indeed, and most women don't know they can be strong, it's cultural I think... "Don't do that, just ask a man."

I weight 135lbs (muscle, little fat), 5ft4 and I can lift my own weight. It's mostly about technique, pivot, balance and all.

no! lmao infact i want to see most of the people who play this game lift the warhammers shown in the TES World. they can use any weapon just they would be a bit different about fighting with one is all. Sleign dude have your GF lift a sledge hammer above her head and hit the ground. Then you do it will you do so exactly the same or with the same ease or have the same impact. now she may do so better than yo the point is still the same you will hae done it differently

im not saying they arent strong at all honestly. and i swear if i get labelled a sixist im goin to get a bit angry

Im 6ft1 i weigh 240 and i bench over 270 would we swing for instance a axe the same way?

From a woman's point of view, no you're not sixist. We take different roads but we get to the same place.

I personnaly would not swing an axe or warhammer... my poor back. But a few women are bulky, maybe they could? Some men are delicate, most aren't.

Stacey uses the sledge the same as me. She uses it to smash the ice off the steps and she cocks it back with both hands at an appropriate distance from each other on the handle allow for proper leverage for her to swing it straight over her head. I think some people think that "You do this like a woman" because say with a sledgehammer usually women put both their hands right beside each other on the handle. That's not indicative of "women" that's indicative of someone that doesn't know how to use it. I've seen children and even advlt men that do the same thing because they don't know how to do proper leverage. Just because I'm a man and have naturally more upper body strength doesn't mean that a woman with with proper technique can't do the same things I can with the same motions. Like I said, women could use different non-combat animations but there is no reason to have different combat animations.

I'd like to see some different animations.
Although I have to admit I never noticed it in Oblivion.

There is an interesting skeletal difference between women and men. A man and a woman can both stand [feet flat] at arms length from a wall, bend at the hips and rest their heads on the wall (barely touching it)... From this position, only the woman can stand up again if holding any kind of weight (a few pounds) ~say like a chair or a bar-bell; Try as they might, most men cannot do this.

My only concern about gender animations is that the size and layouts of the towns might be affected when there are both genders intended to be present (living there). And that the amount of RAM needed for the NPC animations might double (or triple if there are alternate beast race animations split by gender).

If it doesn't take extra strain ,then by all means add it.It would be nice.
If not then you ladies are stuck in mans world......allright!
Joking...please don't hurt me!

( Slices head off Fell Beast )
( Removes helmet )
I am no man, but I don't need any extra moves or animations to show my feminine side.
( Stabs Wraith in face )

i like your style!

One:

Since the Fallout games (Fallout 3 and Fallout: new Vegas) had gender-specific animations, I guess Skyrim will as well. I hope so, anyway, I despised how little they considered the difference between male and female body-mechanics in e.g. Mass Effect 2.



Two:

Some of the forumites here should do some studying of medieval weapns if they want to discuss them.

A 14th century longsword. (one and a half-hander) weighs in at a staggering three pounds. The same with a scottish 14th century claymore, as it is the same weapon.

A 15th century two-hander weighs around five pounds.

A one handed warhammer between two and three pounds. A one handed axe the same, maybe a fraction heavier.

A halberd/poleaxe/lucerne-hammer etc, etc. comes to around five to six pounds.

Roleplaying games have seriously distorted people's ideas regarding the weight of such weapons. :biggrin: If they are heavy they are unwieldy and slow. If they are unwieldy and slow, the wielder is dead very soon. Unlike RPG's in Real Life it doesn't take ten of fifteen strokes to bring a man down. Or a woman. All it takes is one.

Well, it's not something I'd notice, unless I looked very hard. You can expect me to do that if I find a very attractive female NPC though :hubbahubba:

There used to be until Mike Tyson decided to level the field by taking a bite

Err... is that a typo, and you mean only the man can stand up again? I'm a bad example (because I train a lot), but I can perform that movement, with weight, very easily. You mostly feel it in the lower back, and as far as I know it's not a safe way to lift for either gender. Swinging an axe downwards (woodsplitting maul, in my case; 8lbs on maybe a two-and-a-half foot haft) gets the same muscles.

And yeah, weapons weren't/aren't nearly as heavy as people seem to imagine, and anyone who fought with one regularly would either become conditioned to use it "strongly" (male or female), or would have to choose another weapon. It's not like a woman who'd wielded a claymore for years would struggle with its weight - if some genetic/physiological factor prevented her ever becoming strong enough, she'd surely have chosen another weapon before getting into a battle. No one fights for real with a weapon that's too heavy for them.

Very true... but in stat based RPG's the hit might be a nick or a scratch (and only do 5% damage instead of 75%). In Fallout (1) the PC could get shot in the head and still fight. (Fallout was not very realistic really, but its combat supported the idea that a headshot, might not be that damaging. :shrug:)

There is a scene in one of those spaghetti westerns where a guy gets shot in the head three times; and has three nicks on his ear. In the film it was an act of deliberate skill, but getting shot in the ear instead of the forehead is a good example of a low attack & damage rolls that result in a hit, but not a good one. This can happen in Fallout.

You are not supposed to lift anything... I meant that only a woman has the right center of balance for that. When a man tries it, the weight throws him off balance and he cannot stand up while holding it. :shrug: (Its differently designed hips; it has nothing to do with body strength; The weight I described was a few pounds, and that's all that it takes). Do you train enough to have altered your center of balance? (Actually.. for a weightlifter its worse, as one can become top-heavy).

@Gizmo
I can stand with my feet flat on the ground and, without bending my legs or moving my arms for balance, bring my head down towards my knees -- stopping with my torso at 90 degrees to my legs is no more difficult -- then straighten out again. That's just flexibility and abdominal/back muscles.

I must be misunderstanding what you meant? I don't know the science of it, so I don't doubt you, but I can't think of a position like you described that gives me any trouble.

Ach, my delivery must have been off. I by no way meant to belittle your comment :nope: Rather, those phrases popped to mind as a way to show over-the-top sixism.

Again, my bad. :icecream: ?

I am sure TESNEXUS will be more than happy to help you after Skyrim comes out, bro. lololololol.

Well... I can't find a video of someone actually doing it, but I looked up "man woman center of balance", and found this....
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Center_of_gravity_in_man_and_woman

Oh, kneeling. Yeah, I can't do that whatsoever, and resisting with the muscles is useless in that position. I was worried I had a feminine skeleton there for a second(!). Thanks for the clarification.

I can do it just fine and I'm a man, than again I've taken traditional martial arts too. It's all practice and flexibility (Mine is higher than average though).

I dont expect any "girly" Nords are gonna be recruited as the Dragonborn.


Maybe....dragonbait or something.

This topic really captured my interest. When I was at work this evening I kept studying how people walked. We all wear the same thing (steel toed boots, jeans and a shirt), and honestly, there was so much variation between everyone that I couldn't see a definite difference between the sixes. Although, people on here have said that it's to do with hips for women, and the shirts are quite long and loose, so I couldn't really see that aspect. My job involves a lot of lifting, pushing, reaching etc. and for the most part people were doing things in the same way (i.e. for lifting stuff you bend the knees, keep the back straight). Then there's the fact that people are built differently - without being rude (and i don't mean to offend), there are many very svelte, graceful men and very broad shouldered, burly women in the world which goes against gender stereotypes:P Maybe it should depend on how you design your character (seeing as changing your body type may be in)?
I do think that it would be cool if there were different animations for different people, although I'm still not convinced it should be purely six specific. And maybe the way people walked would be dependent on armour - surely that would restrict/define movement in some way?

Either way - thanks for the topic, if only for making work more interesting (and possibly freaking out my coworkers). :thumbsup: