» Sat Jul 31, 2010 10:54 am OBSE 18 Needed.
Get it here:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15103
This mod is a merge of my two older mods for NPC and player Bob and Weave dodging.
However the player's Dodging has been revamped to allow a player with high stats and low encumbrance to dodge more like a hero in an action movie. Previously my mod only allowed a few ducks at a time for realism. This mod is still based in realism per my years of medieval combat experience for immersion reasons, but it will also reward players that worked hard to get high stats and are willing to forgo lugging a lot of equipment into battle! At some point I would like to update this mod with new animations to produce a more dramatic attack evasion game mechanic. I am just not at the point to produce such animations yet.
MOVIE showing the Bob and Weave in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_M-QH3upEU
[youtube]h_M-QH3upEU[/youtube]
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Overview of the Player Bob and Weave Dodge
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If using a bow or fighting hand to hand you will use a lot less fatigue in the Bob and Weave dodge and will have less of a chance to fall than if you have any other weapon in your hands.
If you block with the shield as you are trying to Bob and Weave you use much more fatigue to do the Bob and Weave dodge and have more of a chance to fall.
You can Bob and Weave as much as you like as long as you have enough Fatigue! The Bob and Weave costs Fatigue to do however based on your encumbrance.
If you use a blade or blunt type weapon to block with as you try to Bob and Weave you will use a little more fatigue for the dodge and have more of a chance to fall, but not as much as if you use are using a shield.
When trying to Bob and Weave dodge while at the same time actively blocking with a shield your chance to succeed is reduced by 50 percent.
The more encumbrance you have the more fatigue it will cost to do the Bob and Weave dodge and the more of a chance you will be too slow to evade your attacker. But it will not DIRECTLY increase your chance to fall. This is because encumbrance slows you down more than it reduces your coordination. However the less fatigue you have the more of a chance you will have to fall! So in the end there is an indirect connection between tripping and carrying too much encumbrance while trying to Bob and Weave.
The Best Bob and Weave Dodgers will be unencumbered, with a FULL reserve of fatigue and no shield or only a blade or only a blunt weapon and not trying to block as you dodge!
The worse bob and weave dodgers will have too little Hand to Hand skill, and too little Agility. Also acrobatics block and luck have some effect on your success as well.
Fatigue and Encumbrance will act as the biggest modifiers to the chance of success but the base chance comes from your stats!
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Details of the Player Bob and Weave Dodge
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At almost full encumbrance there is a 90 percent chance you will be too slow to successfully evade your attacker. At 1/2 encumbrance you will have a 45 percent chance and so on. The less encumbrance you have the better your chance to succeed.
Even if you have no encumbrance there is still a chance you will trip and fall while side stepping and contorting your body to weave around the incoming attack.
Set Chance to ( ( ( player.getav handtohand * .9 ) + ( player.getav agility * .75 ) + ( player.getav acrobatics * .5 ) + ( player.getav block * .25 + ( player.getav luck * .12 ) ) ) * player.GetFatiguePercentage )
If ( 20 + random percent ) > ( chance * "state of blocking" ) then you will trip and fall!
Both the chance of falling and the chance of moving too slow are modified by your state of blocking! If you try to dodge and at the same time you are BLOCKING with a shield you will greatly increase your chance of moving too slow to evade the attack and or falling down. If you try to dodge and at the same time you are BLOCKING with a blade/blunt you will slightly increase your chance of moving too slow to evade the attack and or falling down.
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Performing the Bob and Weave
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Deflection Dodge
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The attacking weapon's angle of incidence is changed by angling your head, body, or limbs to turn aside the attacking force from its course or fixed direction. The angle of deflection must be high enough to reduce the killing force to a harmless level.
With large angles of incidence, called grazing incidence, almost all the attacking force is deflected.
Keep in mind that if you move too soon, your opponent will redirect his swing. You must move so that it appears to your opponent that he will land the weapon. In reality, you will be retracting just a moment ahead of your opponent's swinging weapon.
Evasion Dodge
.......???.....
The attacking weapon's force and path direction is avoided by moving your body, limbs or head out of the way of the killing force and it's fixed direction.
Basically, you want the weapon to fly through anywhere that is harmless, or at least not deadly to you.
Many such dodges can be performed with little movement of the legs at all. In fact, it may be more desirable to stand your ground and move just your torso or head for the dodge. You may need to drop you center of gravity by bending your knees a little. The "Bob and Weave" Dodge can be performed using just the upper torso and head, without repositioning the feet at all.
For game purposes the Bob and Weave is a combination of these two types of dodges.
I HATE HOTKEYS, they are NOT immersive. Memorizing a arbitrary key combo like Dkey +Cntr Alt left shift to do my dodge would svck EGGS! And assigning your own hot keys is not much better, it still svcks eggs!
Instead I try to use intuitive action combinations to trigger events in my mods. For this mod you will move left and right and down at the same time to do the bob and weave dodge. In other words you press your slide right key, your slide left key and your move back key all at the same time!
This will trigger the Bob and Weave attempt, then either you will succeed at evading the attack, or you will perform the dodge too slow and get hit or you will slip and fall. Either way you will consume Fatigue based on your encumbrance. Your PC will also go into a slow motion state. However this slow motion feature can be turned off in the INI file. I only suggest that fast twitch players do this!
This is great fun when you only have a sword in your hand and no shield. But you cannot attack at the same time that you are Bobbing and Weaving. For technical reasons (limitations of the game hardcode) you can attack just before or just after the Bob and Weave but not at the same time. Once you have mastered this trick you can Bob and weave plus throw a blow at our opponent right after you dodge to catch them while they over shoot their attack at you. Thus getting a hit on them without taking a serious hit yourself.
But if you have a fast player character with a fast weapon like a sword it is easy to get in the attack right after as the opponent over swings and is pulled wide open!
It is possible to Bob and Weave several times in a series. Depending on your stats, up to several times in a few seconds. But much less for those with low stats!
However, if you "bash" your buttons to Bob and Weave like a mad man you will slash your fatigue down to almost nothing and will trip and fall to the ground.
This Bob and Weave dodge will require the player to have "fair" to "good" timing to get it to intact at the moment the incoming weapon is swinging at your head. Starting the Bob and Weave Dodge a little early (when you first see your opponents start an attack) is the best way for most players. But your success heavily depends on your stats not the player's "twitch" skill.
As stated before, when you get good with this skill it is great to play with if you only have a sword in your hand and no shield.
I have found it to be good to dodge swings from your side and from behind you, and good to dodge multiple attacks that swing at you all at once from multiple attackers.
If your timing is great you can duck under arrows (depending on how fast arrows are in your game ) by watching when your opponent lets loose of their bow (not by trying to spot the flying arrow!)
It is very useful for dodging around the crushing blows of giants!
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Overview of the NPC Bob and Weave Dodge
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This Rev of the NPC Bob and Weave mod has some sophisticated AI based on my years of combat experience. It suffers from having to mesh with the rest of the oblivion combat system as well as my limited scripting talent and the limitations of the game. So it is not as great as I would like it to be if I were programming the game from the ground up.
But it is still much better than just random NPC dodging.
The chance of success depends much on the NPC stats but the opportunity is based on factors that would be used in real life. Such as if you are moving around behind your target, suddenly losing sight of your opponent is a major trigger to dodge away in real life. So this and similar triggers are scripted into my mod.
Now when the NPC does the Bob and Weave 30 points are deducted from their fatigue. Also the NPC fatigue has a great effect on when they will try to duck.
So the more often they duck without stopping to rest , the more tired they will get and the less likely they will be able to keep dodging non stop!.
Plus the players speed attribute and the player's weapon speed is now in the calcs. This makes a FAST player with a FAST weapon much harder for the NPC to bob and weave the attack.
If you come up directly behind the NPC in combat (rear flank) they have severely reduced a chance to do the duck depending on their H2H plus their Blocking skill level.
However they get a boost to this chance if they see you are strafing left or right to get around them to hit them from behind.
This mod updates and replaces both of these older mods:
Duke Patrick's Vampires Bob Under Your Shots.esp
Duke Patrick's NPC Now Bob Under Your Shots.esp
This new ver has 1/3 the scripting, is much less CPU hungry!
But it is also more complex in its AI. This is because I have more modding experience from when I originally wrote the older versions and because of OBSE 18.
If the NPC is a Bowman or a hand to hand fighter and the player is up close to him he will duck more often. If he is a 2-handed weapon user he will duck more often but not as often as the bowman/hand to hand fighter. Weapon and shield men duck the least of the three groups. However this all depends on the their SKILL level for the Bob and Weave dodge.
Their Bob and Weave dodge skill level is calculated with these factors in order of importance:
Fatigue
Hand to hand
Agility
Acrobatics
Block
So a high skilled sword and shield man may duck more than a low skilled Hand to hand fighter.
NPC use a cascading logic AI in my script to evaluate when it is the best time to attempt the bob and weave dodge. This includes such things as distance, threat potential from the player, opportunity, and physical lack of restrictions. They cannot bob and weave if they are swimming, falling or knocked to the ground for example.
In real combat there are other forms of dodging when falling or on the ground but that is not covered by the traditional Bob and Weave maneuver.
After checking for physical reasons the NPC could not Bob and Weave, they are checked for Fatigue to see if they have the energy to do it. If so then their skill is checked and if all that is a GO they will attempt to dodge and weave your shot.
However there is also a matter of timing! Sometimes they may start too late or end too soon and you will be able to catch them in mid dodge. Or you can swing a barrage of attacks at them and one of the shots may hit as they mistimed their bob and weave dodge.
There is a player setting in the INI file to force the mod to only work for Vampires.
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Requirements
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You will need OBSE 18 or better.
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INSTALLING THE PLUG-IN
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If you are using any Duke Patrick Bob and Weave Dodge mod you must delete that mod entirely first.
Extract the files (esp and sound) from my zip to the proper folders in your Oblivion Data directory.
LOAD ORDER
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Load order is not important for this mode unlike most of my other mods.
This Duke Patrick Mod is a stand alone mod, it does not require any other mod to run and can be loaded in any order.
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CONFLICTS / KNOWN ISSUES
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Getting stuck in the sneak mode may happen if a script spell is running the command "push actor" on the PC or if for any reason control is taken away from the player at just the wrong time. If this happens just tap your sneak key to get up again. This should be very rare.
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CREDITS
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Thanks to Bethedsda for giving us this truly great game and the TES Construction Set.
Thanks to Scruggsywuggsy The Ferret for helping to solve the sneak mode issue.
I am a little obsessed with making the MODS for this game because I have a very hard time finding combat games that run the way I want them to in order to enjoy them.
I am less a "gamer" and more of a fantasy based virtually reality addict in search of the thrill and "feeling" of realistic medieval combat.
Of the many, many MANY dozens and dozens of PC Sword Combat games I have played in over 30 years I have only seen 2 that I thought were close to "done right".
This great game company ( Bethedsda ) has made it possible for me to try some of the ideas I have had for many years but had no way to implement them because I was more of a hardware guy not a software guy. I did a tiny bit of WAD authoring in the days of DOOM and some hex edits of other games but unlike the works of art possible with Oblivion modding that was like painting with your fingers in kindergarten!
They did not teach programming when I was in school. The only programming I have ever done I had to teach myself using a very simple "color basic" language to make a 4k game 30 years ago on a TRS80 PC. That modest work in color basic is what I now rely on to decipher the script language used in Oblivion today.
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LEGAL
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I worked very hard on this mod. But this mod is a product more of creativity, sweat and tears than script writing talent.
DO NOT distribute or use any of my resources, AI logic or scripts. You should only find this mod distributed from TesNexus! If any other web site 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 dodging or evading attacks. I.E do not make a disguised knock off!
And you must credit me fully and include my "legal" as shown above.
For the most advanced SCA combat with sword and shield:
http://www.spookyfx.com/book/tromp.html
