Help with animations please.

whats with the spiked shield? I thought you could bash someone with any shield - just that spiked ones did more damage.

 

I just didn't know about shield bash in D&D, when I was researching Hextor I read that the Legion of Battle usualy carried spiked shield that they could attack with. Hence my question. If we get this working we could apply it to all shields, it would just mean duplicating them all in the protos as weapons and assingning Ted's check proficency script to them. Might mean duplicating the models as well, in a different orientation which wouldn't take long.

Cuchulainn.

 

Right. As long as it equips in the buckler slot of your inventory, and functions as a buckler mechanicaly, I suppose you could use whatever spiked shield model you'd like. A character could be equipped with a shield spike in the off hand to use current Two-weapon fighting mechanics.

If the shield model covers or blends with the off hand weapon, it would give the appearance of a shield bash.

I think.

 

The only issue I can see with making spiked shields into bucklers is that it means someone could concievably equip one and use a weapon or two-handed weapon in the same hand.

That said, I would recommend limiting the shield bashing ability to the spiked shields. While you can bash with a normal shield, the damage is minimal and since the game automatically causes a character with two weapons equiped to use two-weapon fighting, even without the feat, "weaponizing" all the shields in the game would mean that anyone who equips a shield would be suddenly getting the horrific TWF penalties applied to their attacks and get no AC bonus from the shield.

Granted, I'm sure something could be done to check for the TWF feat and have the character never shield bash if he doesn't have it, but there's some times when they character is probably just going to want the extra points of AC, or won't want to take the penalty to hit. I think it would be a lot easier to make the spiked shields be the only ones you can bash with, so a player will know that when he equips a spiked shield he's going to be TWFing with it.

I still think, all things considered, that making the Improved Shield Bash feat the only way to shield bash is the way to go. There's no real point in shield-bashing without it. A TWFer is going to be better served with a weapon in his off-hand damage-wise and without Improved Shield Bash, he won't be getting any AC bonus from the shield anyway. And it would mean not having to make a bunch of shields function like bucklers unless the character has the right feats.

My only other issue with all this, is I wonder how useful these bashing shields really are going to be. A shield can be enchanted as both a weapon and a defensive item, which is tracked separately. In ToEE, you can only add defensive enhancements to a shield. Which means once you're fighting monsters only hurt by magic, the shield bash becomes useless.

 

Did you have the shield in the primary hand when you got the good animation. I've been through every weapon type I can think of and haven't got an off hand anim I'm really happy with. If it was in the off hand please tell me what weapon type you used.

I we can't find a better one I do have an off hand anim that's not terrible. It's a backhand strike that does at least hit with the face/spikes of the shield, and the cary will be fine if I rotate the model. It just looks a little exagerated especialy with a large shield.

The column it the protos that controls the animation also controlls the proficiency I believe. So I was wondering if when you activates proficienies you tie them to an animation type.

Also I haven't found any way yet to make the shield equip automaticly to the off hand when it's setup as a weapon, does anyone else know how to do this?

Oh yeah the carry position is different than a standard shield, but I didn't see that as a problem. If you can only use sheild bash after being trained to, you probably would cary the shiled a little differently.

Cuchulainn.

 

Hey, sorry for the delayed response.

If I recall correctly it was the short sword anim I liked best, but I've since run into another snag. All the weapon types have idle animations that look goofy with a shield, I just hadn't stood around long enough to notice before.

Now if I set nothing in the weapon type, I get around the idle animation problem. But when you go into combat stance the shield twists through the PCs head, and if I rotate the shield to line it up in the combat stance it will look fucked up in the normal cary position.

So I guess my question is what do you mean waypoints? I've never built a map, but I'm assuming you can set waypoints on it that say for example "off hand strike". If that's true is there some other way we could call the same function? Maybe if Spellslinger was willing tie it too a new weapon type, shield or whatever.

Cuchulainn.

 

why not make it like this type of shield...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_shield

 

That would make it easier to get a strike animation that looks good. But it would still leave the problem that any of the weapon types have idle animations that involve spinning the object around, which looks goofy when appllied to a shield, especialy if it's supposed to be strapped to the arm.

Cuchulainn.

 

That would work. What I was really hoping is that we could define a new weapon type and hook it to the strike and idle anims that we want by number. Or possible make the shield bash a radial option menu that points to a script that calls the anim we want, if that's doable.

Anyway I'll poke around and find the file that lists them, is there a way I can call them from the console for testing purposes?

Cuchulainn.