The wiki says using cast on the player for a target or self spell can crash the game. Would it work to make the player cast a spell with both self and target effects on themselves to fire where they look, or would it hit them or crash? I need to force the player to perform the casting animation, but without the problems associated with playgroup on the player.

Well, you might be able to set up a script that when the player casts the particular Self spell, a dummy target is created at where he is looking, not far from the player, and a dummy caster is created just in front of the player that shoots the target. Might be an easier way to do it, though.

Thats similar to what I'm already doing, actually. What I want is to make an item which, as long as it is in your inventory, will make you cast a lesser power that you don't have, on target, when a certain key is pressed. What I had before would make the spell cast from in front of the player when the key is pressed, but I want it to look like the player is doing it. I could just force the player to do the cast animation,but that can get buggy, and may not line up with the actual casting.

Create an idle animation using the cast animation KF file.

good idea. how do i do that? i've never really done any modding outside the cs and obse.

Another method you can try: when you press that certain key, you
give the power to the player (addspell or addspellns),
make it the player's current spell (selectplayerspell),
make the player cast (with tapcontrol instead of cast),
remove the power

I think the game will automatically set the player's spell to the starter healing spell if you remove the spell they have selected. In that case, you could record what spell they had active and then set it back after you do your special cast thing.

This was my first thought as well. Pretty easy and foolproof to script. Am I misunderstanding the problem?

No. you misunderstood, you copy the cast animation file that already exists in the game into an IDLE animation in the CS (call it MyCastAnimation or some such name).
Use a condition on the idle that is a variable (myVar) in your script.


Then you use this in your script:

if MyVar == 1
Player.pickidle 1
set MyVar to 2
elseIf player.AnimPathIncludes "MyCastAnimation" == 1 && MyVar == 2
set myVar to 0
endif


Thus as your post first requested, anytime you set your script MyVar to 1
the player will run the cast animation with no issues like with player.cast spell.