Well, thanks to thetalkietoaster, as of tonight you can now amputate virtually any part of an opponent in UV (legs, arms, hands, feet etc.). It's done as a random chance when a particularly strong power attack strikes the correct location. The ultimate effect of this will be for them to bleed to death i think, though effects may vary depending on what you amputate.

The only slightly annoying fact is that the amputated part doesn't appear, since it's just modifying the skeleton. It *may* be possible to create a duplicate of the actor with a sort of 'inverse amputation' where I basically cut off everything but the limb, and leave that other actor dead on the floor (not unlike what SC does with heads in DR) but I'm not sure if it's worth the bother, since there's a huge amount of extra work involved. How do people feel about this? If you chop somebody's arm off is it important that there's an arm lying on the floor at the end of it?

Since I've done the rest, I'm also considering doing heads as well - just for completeness. It'll never be as visceral as SC's work since I don't plan on doing blood emitters, or the gruesome animations that he does. Again I'd like opinions. It's a certain amount of work, so should I bother when DR already does this excellently?

I think that if you can get it so that it integrates well with the DR decapitation, then go ahead, but if it's going to be weird to have these two different decapitations, then it's not worth the work. The dismemberment sounds really neat, though

honestly I think it's just not worth it if it's not done well, plus as you say DR already does that and everyone is gonna use both

the mod should already provide enough punch even without MORE gore

that method sounds awesome though and it could be something SC might like to try for DR7

UV doesn't really bring the gore - it's family friendly violence I think i'll probably do it but make it disableable (like everything else) so that those people who don't use DR will have the complete set anyway, and those that do can either have both or just DR's.

I may be procrastinating somewhat to put off the scary maths i need to do for weapon rotation, but the upside of that is that other stuff is coming along at record pace. I've still got a terrifyingly large todo list though, even though the vast majority of features is done. It's got stuff like "hostile reactions" on it which are a b**ch and "death stat tracking" which is also not fun.

'Family friendly violence' is a great quote

I think that, of course, it would be good to have the severed limb lying on the floor, but if it means that we would be waiting longer, or that it would too much work for you... then i think everyone will be happy without it> the amount of features that are present in UV are more than enough to satisfy everyone's violent nature!!

I'm happy enough that this is moving forward as it is!:)

Severing limps sounds good though.
I'm sure you've seen http://www.youtube.com/user/TheTalkieToaster#p/u/4/lJSJS6Ng3dk?

Edit: grammar?

Talkie's technique is exactly what i'm using (thanks to his handy modder's resource). I've still got a few issues to work out though. Ideally I need to be able to swap out skeletons on the fly, as the scaled skeleton causes some strange head behaviour. At the very least I need to come up with a way to have the player use a different skeleton to the NPCs. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Congratulations on continuing this epic project. I don't mod for Ob anymore, but I found myself lurking here tonight and finding this gem of a thread! I thought some of the devils in this community had driven you away for sure. I for one am glad you are still here HeX_0ff. I'd say best of luck to you, but with your skills, luck is no so important. If there is anything I can do to help, just say the word.

Khugan

I love this. I am anxiously awaiting the RELZ.

Sounds excellent. I recommend you going Tarn Adams way and releasing stuff in portions, or you may risk burnout I think. Praise for released features is an excellent motivator to work on more complex features... just make sure you don't skip on testing too much, or feedback you'll get may not be exactly praise .

The thread halted!!! Scary!

But of course still anxiously (I don't think I would want anyone knowing exactly HOW anxiously) awaiting the release of this mod... And of DR6... And of Unholy Darkness.... Did you guys plan this!?!?!? Sneaky sneaky modder gods!

This. is. totally. EPIC.

I know, there's an OOO in the works (FCOM has the updated bsa in their super secret files that i read about on the forum), and when that comes out, i'll go ahead and install FCOM. I'm hoping that this all comes just as my last final exam is ending.

I won't be at all available until after my exams... last of em are on the 20th. However if you want I could make limbs as clutter items - skin colour being accurate would be a problem for custom races unless DW gets the texture changing feature coded in nifscript I guess - with meaty/bony ends.

Also on my list for when I'm done those exams is making a certain fun PyFFI Spell - I made Reverse Animation a while ago and this would be similar but I guess it would be called modify_mirroranimation and work to make left hand weapon anims into right hand and vice versa (and other types of anims as well).
Pacific Morowind

Epic?!

THIS...

IS...

UNNECESSARY!

Hey folks,

Had a few days off over the weekend to spend some time with the family, which I really needed but I'm back on it full tilt now. so to answer some questions/comments:

@khugan - great to hear from you mate. Glad to know you're still lurking around

@zable - it should be soon. Various delays are occurring, so I may have been a little ambitious with my release schedule, but I'm getting there. I'm working on it 6-8 hours a day at the moment, so I'm not being lazy, just a lot to do

@balor - it's too far along now to do that. I'll be releasing it all in one big go (with a couple of possible exceptions)

@traven - just a little break, don't worry. I haven't had much to write recently, but I've been working hard

@pacific morrowind. Limbs would be nice certainly, but I'll admit to being infinitely more excited by that PyFFI spell. If I had that I would be probably the happiest bunny in all of the land

So where am I up to at the moment? Amputations are now finished and working like a charm, including heads. Light dousing is still giving me some headaches. I suspect i'll get that going properly tonight though. I have a slightly odd approach to making new features: I make a branch of the source, I make a prototype method using less clever scripts and often a lot of object creation etc, sometimes it may only work on a single object, or only once, and play with it to see how it feels as a feature. Once I decide it's worth the work I go back to the drawing board and rebuild it properly and in such a way that I never edit any vanilla objects directly in the CS.

I had an idea last night that I could modify the mesh of the soul gem to be an image of the creature captured in it (maybe just its head). I'll have to have a play with certain OBSE functions to see if that's even possible.

This is another reason for delays - I get ideas a lot

It looks like release may be delayed till various people's exams are finished (odysseusB and pacific morrowind) but we'll see where I get to before that.

On a side note, I don't suppose anybone had any ideas about swapping out skeletons in realtime?

HeX

HeX

It's time consuming work though...

i love the soulgem idea
but will the dismembering conflict with DR's dismembering??



EDIT: not sure if its mentioned here but I think i know the source of the crash with gripshifting vanilla weapons
all vanilla weapons are in a .bsa file and that is what i think causes the crash
extracting the bsa to your bethesda/oblivon/data folder should solve it

take your time, DR6 won't be out for another month or so, and the two should go together like bread and butter.

@Hex
Man, it's amazing to see how motivated you are. YOU DAH MAN

@xengyou - sometimes this solves the problem, but sometimes not. It's a bit of an oddity. Fortunately it shouldn't exist as an issue thanks to NiSE1.0. And no, my dismemberments shouldn't affect DR's. they're much less common, and work in a very different way in UV (though of course you can increase the chance in the INI or switch them off entirely). When I get DR6, i'll still patch UV to ensure that there are no possible conflicts.

You rock Hex!! :toughninja:

hey man HeX_0ff could you possibly make the gore textures more lifelike if you catch my drift thatd be awesome something akin to fallout 3 and maybe a little better,thanks


heres 2 links as a appetizer

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/8273-1-1260356660.png



http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/8273-2-1260356660.jpg

@breakdown

Sorry dude, those are FO3 textures, I can't use them as it's against the rules.

Actually UV doesn't have gore in the same way as DR. I use the bloody mess textures a bit, and a neck flesh texture when you behead someone, but I don't have chopping people in half - that's skycaptain's bag and he does it very well indeed. Everything in UV is a bit less gross than in DR The method I use for amputations is pretty much gore free, but still looks excellent. I'm not really prepared to spend a lot more time on amputations for this version, as I'm much more interested in diverse combat mechanics than making realistic gore effects (especially as I lack the artistic skills to make new meshes and textures). I'm a scripter through and through and virtually everything I do is achieved through programming. I rely completely on artists for meshes, textures and animations and am limited by what's available to me.

HeX

definite download when it comes out.

question, will it still support taunting people into attacking you with Power Attack Voicemod? I enjoyed that very, very much. perhaps this time around success chance could be tied to personality and speechcraft, to keep it balanced?