this isn't so much of a request as much as it is me asking if this is doable from a technical standpoint. i'm not requesting it becuase i can guess that its either impossable or VERY hard. but would it be possible to create a usable whip?

I'm sure it's possible. In fact there is already a flail mod I saw a while ago. Try searching for flail on the nexus and you'll see.

yay hope! hunting vampires Balmont style!

Actually no, it is not possible. The flail mod uses a looping animation, so the flail will swirl around in the same way no matter what you do - even if you don't do anything. A real whip or flail is not possible. Because havok doesn't work on conscious actors and equipped items can't make use of animation groups since there is no way to target them. People have been asking this since Oblivion came out and there is no solution.

Theoretically you could script every single part of the whip to move physically correct (Hex_Off mentioned he could do that :unsure: ), but that is just insane and not even closely worth the effort and performance drop it would probably cause.

Possible for a chain linked flail (with relatively large links) yes. A whip is much harder (probably impossible) to do in that fashion as it would require much smaller pieces. As I said last time. It's possible, and I'll offer advice to anyone who wants to try, but there is zero chance of me spending the time to do it: it's far too much math for too small a result in my opinion. If I genuinely thought it would be something I'd use then I'd consider it, but it's really not - i'm a sword user...

However, as always new technology brings new possibilities. If you didn't mind a whip having the same style of animation for every attack, then there is a possible solution. You'd need to make an animated nif of the whip uncurling and curling back up, as well as a static "curled" nif. You could use NiSE to swap out the nif when you make the attack, run the animation once, then swap it back for the static one.

Of course NiSE was it currently works won't let you do this, because it still requires a refresh (equip/unequip) to lad the new nif, but this is something DW and scruggs are addressing. So there is a possibility for it that didn't exist before, but you'll never have a fully havoked whip.

HeX

Implement rope physics with ObScript ?! :ahhh:

ha ha! I asked something similar a long time ago...well actually it was even more complicated than just a whip alone...and Hex provided the same answer (except without the NiSE answer). Nonetheless, it is possible, just not probable.

considering you can have animations on weapons....

Yes, a whip would be way ot hard ot make, as there would just be too many parts....a chain is easy, just give it a number of different animations that are triggered by OBSE detections. Eg, an idle slow sway animation, an attack swing when the player uses it, etc.

not an easy thing to do though, this flail uses a single animation to make it fly around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGXZxWSuNUk but there is no reason why you couldnt have mutliple animatinos and use OBSE to trigger each one. but on the scale of the whip, just too many parts to make it feasible.

Has anyone put much thought towards havoking conscious actors?

Biped doesn't permit that.

Yes, but their head exploded.

The problem is that when a weapon hits, then the physics would alter the animation at that point for both the hitter and the victim. The animation engine would have to be able to adjust the swing of a sword to decide whether to bounce it off a shield or slice into flesh, and take into consideration the varied momentum of the wielding arm in different armor weights with different weapons on the resulting movement of the person just hit. Not an easy job. So the sword swings through the target if it's not a rigid object, because that's easier to do.

Even for the rigid targets, there are only two situations. The immovable object case (statics) where the weapon bounces off, or the moveable clutter where the weapon swings, and the item goes flying.(rate depending on mass etc) but the weapon is unaffected is if it hit nothing. In both cases the attack animation plays unchanged, so swords swing through solid walls etc. In both cases the attack animation is unaffected so sword swing through solid walls.

Heh heh, like that would ever happen... :rolleyes:

:read:

:nuke:
:shocking:

In all seriousness, I can definitely see why that would be a nightmare. :ahhh: