Help with animations please.

I could really use some help figuring out the character animations. I'm working on a Shield of Hextor. Now the priests of Hextor (at least the Legion of Battle) are supposed to cary spiked shields that they also use as weapons in battle. I've got the grapical representation, but I can't get the anims. What I've tried.

Giving it a damage type and a hit die. Assigning it obj_weapon status. Giviing it an apropriate protos ID. This allowed it to be used as a weapon, but every time the PC goes into combat stance they decapitate themselves. I've tried changing the # in column 30, and tried changing Weapon Type. Neither seems to affect the strike animation. I also tried putting a weapon name in Weapon Animation Type field, also to no avail.

Any suggestions would be apreciated,

Thanks.

Cuchulainn.

 

tried a dagger animation cuch? it has a thrust animation might work for shield?? ill try to investigate as well.

 

woh oky this is hard.. tried lots as well, the main key problem seems to be that if its an amour type in the range of 6000-6999 it wont accept any weap info and if it in weap range of 4000-4999 it wont accept the armour info.............hmmmmmmm, even if you force change types.

tossing a shield model on a weap template allows the weap to work offhand but the zaxis of the weap grip makes the shield face sideways into the body...

maybe starting with a weap template and modding the nature of the animation ref and .ska .skm will allow the shiled to keep its correct postion on arm but... theres still the prob of the shield inheriting no armour properties correctly.

its not looking favourable

 

The one problem with this is the game is going to apply the AC bonus full-time, whereas by the rules if you don't have Improved Shield Bash, you lose the shield's AC bonus in any round you use it to attack.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

VS: I noticed the same thing. As a weapon in the off hand the shield gets carried perfectly, looks better than when carried as a shield, and the dagger strike looks perfect. I can't seem to get around the shield turning in when they go into combat stance though. Will try playing around with the ska and skms. Did you notice the idle dagger animation getting applied to the shield? Looks hilarious, but I'd have to fix that to. Thanks for all the effort.

ShiningTed: It seems like where you put it (4000 or 6000) makes more difference than the obj_t reference. I'll try putting it as generic, obj_t and #, and see what I get. I'll look through the examples you mentioned and get a feel for how the weapon with armor bonuses works. I was pretty sure it had been done, but I didn't know on what items.

Kashane and everyone really: Unfortunately I know squat about the actual D&D rules. If the game can't handle it correctly even it I get it working, how much of a problem is it? Should I just go back to having it as a shield, which would at least be rules compliant?

Thanks again,
I'll keep tinkering away and let you know how I'm doing.

Cuchulainn.

 

Hey Cuch if ya can zip up ya files ya experimenting on and post em would be cool so i can try same templates and stuff as you are.

other wise sounds like making some progress at least.

 

Hey,

Thanks for the offer VS, nothing I can really post at the moment. All the changes I've been making are in the protos. I've tried copying a shield and changing it to a weapon, and tried copying a dagger and giving it my shield model. I haven't tried Ted's latest suggestion of the generic object type yet. I'm working on some other stuff while I wait to hear if the shield causing damage is even wanted. If not being able to make it rules complian means it won't ever be in the game there's probably no point in spending more time on it. I did check out the weapons with armor bonus and that works well, just put AC Bonus in one of the property type fields.

If you ever have any luck editing skms I could sure use some advice on them. I thought I'd found what I needed several times, but when I change the values with a hex editor and save, the object never changes in game.:scratchhe Basicly what I'm hoping for is to able to either change the size of the components of the model, or the rotation. I've found lots of cylinder and sphere references complete with size values, but when you change the values nothing happens. Anyway I'll keep playing around, if I figure it out I'll make sure and post the info.

Cuchulainn.

 

Well, it would make shields the ultimate TWF weapon, since you'd get an AC bonus on top of being able to make extra attacks.

It's a shame we can't add feats. If we could add an "Improved Shield Bash" feat that simply functioned as a bashing shield proficiency (as in you'd take a non-proficiency penalty for trying to use any shield you could bash with without the feat) that could get around the other limitations of the engine. It wouldn't be perfect from a rules perspective, but it would still be a trade off.

 

The question remains, what happens if someone without the Improved Shield Bash feat strikes with the shield? Does he lose the AC bonus? If not, then there's no reason not to use a shield as a TWFer.

 

Can you make it a large buckler? The buckler seems to function in a rules compliant manner when using a two-handed weapon or two weapon fighting, so if your spiked shield were actually a buckler, and the spikes themselves were the offhand weapon, maybe this would be a two-stage process for aquiring a spiked shield attack, requiring two separate items that could be given the optical illusion of merging when worn.

 

Well I started this whole mess, I'm definetly still onboard. I'm not at all sure I can get it to work though. We still can't do any new anims, and I didn't manage to find one before that would work. The problem with my first effort was that it carried normaly but rotated 90 degres during the strike animation, so just rotating the model won't solve the issue. Howver I do know more now then I did then and with the ability to create custom models it will certainly help. I might be able to find a different weapon style whose strike anim doesn't rotate but was wrong in the normal carry or somthing. I'll give it a shot and post my results.

Cuchulainn.