._. another Request

[ntom]

I am sorry to be posting another topic here in this forum with another request, but people here are a bit nicer and I think whether it goes through or not people atleast will brainstorm ideas for this.

I have had this topic running for awhile now in the Official Forums and well people have talked a little bit about, some have been rude, some have been nice but either way I feel like for the most part I am the only one trying to figure it out. I suppose it is because it is so difficult to do...but anyways, I will describe the mod, and explain the thoughts so far.

Anyone played any of the SoulCalibur games? I have been playing them since #2 and they are currently at 4. in the most recent one, one of my favorite players is the charecter Ivy...well she looks...indecent (since I am not aloud to use any other lovely words) so...you know, I use custom charecters that I make, using her fighting style with her weapon.

Her weapon is know as a chain sword (also heard its actually a Japanese Chain Sword) ofcourse searching google images; nothing comes up but chainSAW swords. anyways, what it is is a short sword, a regular short sword, that is seperated into multiple sections. inside the sword is a chain and upon releaseing the chain the sword peices fall apart into a whip.

In Soul Calibur, Ivy's whip sword can take 3 positions; Shortsword (unextended), wrapped extended, and free hanging extention.

Obiviously the Shortsword position is just the sword in the shortsword position, in the game some attacks can make it automatically extend into the chain sword, however for this mod, doing that would take ages to do and would be too dang complicated to do, SO, ignore that. that was simply to tell you how it is.

the second position is the sword extended but wrapped up, basically in this case the sword can reach a certain length but not the full extent.

and the third is used liek a whip, and its quite fun >=D

so the mod idea is to beable to incorporate two positions (using Oblivion combat style, not all her flashy attacks and stuff) where basically the player gets the sword (I am thinking a bit longer than a short sword...but maybe not the full length of a long sword) and can equip the shortsword and upon telling the game to equip again it will extend into a whip.

Combat style of the shortsword would be the vanilla animations, obviousl, however the whip position would most likely require new animation, either that, or I would assume you would have to apply havok to the extended part of the sword with a collision on it.

anyways. both positions have their positives an negatives. the short sword, though it has a shorter reach, would be more powerful and could provide a better block, while the extended position would reach muuuch further than really any sword and could possibly stagger an enemy with a power attack.

so far, it would obviously require OBSE, so it would require some sort of scripting.

since unfortunately Oblivion tells any new weapon equipped it must run the "drawweapon" animation. so, I don't know much about scripting, but here is what I thought could be done, for anyoen who knows scripting, maybe a script written somewhat like this could help, since I am sure somewhere in the Oblivion script is says run that anaimation:

"player has [weapon] change true, run animation drawweapon

endif

player has [weapon].[chainsword] true, run animation drawweapon false"

ofcourse that obviously isn't script, you could consider that translated script

another person was trying to do....something in the idea of this working as far as the 3d modelling and collision goes. I don't know much about modelling but here is his post:

"If you use simple NiTransformController and attach it directly to NiTriStrips/Shape branch then collision won't be affected at all here but if you do anims via NiControllerManager which is linked to particular NiNode branches then collision inside of such NiNode should behave in the same way as Strips/Shape branches (just look at secret door in basement of the house for sale in Anvil where the collision of that door rotates as well - it is the same with oblivion's gates too.).

As for the former approach, Blender can export such anims pretty well, and in the latter case (NiControllerManager) as I don't know anything about 3ds, I need to rely solely upon Nifskope here."

this guy had another good idea on how to make the animations for the whip:

"Now while this is possible (I have a pseudo-attack in a mod im messing with right now), it would be pretty tricky to get it to look natural. If you wanted it to look better but be impractical you could wield it with the grab key to let havok determine the physics and then collision detect with enemies with one of the many methods to do so. This raises an array of problems (havok will probably slow oblivion to a crawl with a bunch of little chains colliding with each other).

The best thing would be to make animation to be a static one. I'd forget all the physics and have the chain fly out in some kind of static animation. I know nothing of animating so I would probably script it. It'd be a bit of a pain to calculate the functions to find the position of each chain (especially in 3d space), but definitely possible.

I'm far too busy to do this myself. If you want a starting point, start by learning general scripting. Then get some trig down and try to make a rock or something orbit you.

Its a thought-provoking idea. Impractical for the layman, a worthy challenge for a talented programmer. May or may not be trivial for an animator. They are the rarest bunch by far."

anyways, please provide help/thoughts/ideas/ [b]SUPPORT =(

thanks for taking the time to read another one of my walls of text. I took quite a bit of time typing this.

Link to original topic

[DarkRider]

From what I've heard, Oblivion's havoc doesn't handle chains well. But there's a lamp in the vanilla game that has a fairly pliable chain. might not be too far a stretch possibility wise to attach it between two blades. I'd lend you more advice, but modeling is my truly rubbish skill set. Others may know more. Good luck!

[ntom]

From what I've heard, Oblivion's havoc doesn't handle chains well. But there's a lamp in the vanilla game that has a fairly pliable chain. might not be too far a stretch possibility wise to attach it between two blades. I'd lend you more advice, but modeling is my truly rubbish skill set. Others may know more. Good luck!

yeah...well like one of the people said, it might be easier to just make an animation of the whip lashes rather than have Havok do the work. from what I have heard, you really can't apply Havok to a weapon that the player is holding because the weapon becomes part of the players skeleton or something like that, and so...I don't know, you get the point?

I do appreciate you thoughts though! it's great to atleast hear some thoughts on it.

The one problem that exists is finding someone to model and animate...