Vishankas Mod corner

[Vishanka 236]

9 hours ago, Flix said:

If you want fully separate High Elf and seraphim-High Elf animations, you'll need to make 2 separate character entries in animation.txt

I did that and it does have the same issue as replacing the seraphim gr2 model; the run and walk animations won't work, other animations function as they ought to. any idea what causes that issue? If I could resolve that it would be the easiest solution

Edited September 9, 2022 by Vishanka

[Vishanka 236]

After trying everything I did the last thing that was left and did a copy/paste of the whole animation entry and pasted it to replace the seraphim entry with a new model called a_sera_helve.gr2

that solved the issue with the run animations.

I can only guess it's something about the entry number position since I already copied the run animation infos into the seraphim entry but that did not solve it. strange behaviour but solved nonetheless

now I can finally start doing the mod for the 4th time.

[Vishanka 236]

 

tiny lady with big gun and hurling her fireballs into enemies faces (archangel's wrath).

I liked a cast animation for it more than doing an attack animation, AND archangel's wrath was shooting somewhere out of her belly so I was quick to replace it. I tweaked the execution times a bit so it really feels good to hurl them at someone, I promise, better than with the highelf herself.

Nothing is buffed or nerfed by the way, all the animation lengths are based on the seraphim entries.

Not sure if I will keep it orange, I kind of like it. I'll have a look if there's a way to change the color without changing the high elf fireball but if not I'm satisfied as well.

I added 2h sword entries, it's a bit tricky though. 2h swords are slower than the 1h animations I'm forced to use... I don't know if it's possible to slow down the animation itself at that point... it looks acceptable, not perfect but acceptable. one can notice they are not always executing perfectly smooth if they hit the air like 10 times, but who does that.

I was pondering changing the models to 1h weapons but I actually think it's still ok with that size so I might keep them that way. Maybe I'm also spoiled from the WoW swords.

[idbeholdME 394]

On 8/30/2022 at 2:16 AM, Flix said:

This was a false "double hit" animation that would randomly trigger along with all other normal left-click single hit attacks.  The problem is that such attacks can only hit once, meaning you got a false double-hit attack with a long animation but only one hit.

All such misleading animations were removed from the pool of the player's normal left-click attacks in PFP because of this.  In CM Patch, EE and other such mods they were repurposed as "SM24", an additional special move animation, since combat arts can take advantage of multiple hits.

Funny enough, the existence of these animations misled people into believing that they were seeing the results of the "Chance for Double Hits" item modifier in action, and were taken as proof that the double hit bonus from weapon mastery actually worked.  In truth, double hits on weapon attacks use the same normal animations, and simply apply the damage twice, while the weapon mastery double hit bonus is just completely broken.

Just had a quick read-through the thread and this piqued my interest.

How many of such animations were there and for which characters? I immediately thought of an alternate solution - just add an additional attack entry to the animations.txt and time it correctly with the animation. In a similar vein it has been done to some enemies in the PFP, which for example dual-wielded/hit tiwce in the animation but only hit you once. The player characters have a multitude of animations for every weapon type, so I don't think it'd be that bad if there was a 25% chance to trigger a double hit animation and left click attacks are very niche builds anyway.

Basically, instead of removing them, actually make them hit twice in the PFP. I made a couple of my own timing and animation fixes on top of the PFP. For example, Seraphim mounted melee Pelting Strikes with Polearms includes the tiger swiping at the enemy and then doing a couple weapon strikes. But the animation had no attack point for the tiger swipe, making it seem very off in the game. So I added it myself. Yes, it affects the balance somewhat, but I vastly prefer the visual actually corresponding to reality.

And I feel it's a real shame completely removing animations in a game like Sacred 2 

Among the timing fixes, I touched up mainly the Seraphim bow animations, because the arrow went flying long before the character actually assumed the full firing stance. The total length of the animation is unchanged, I just adjusted the ATTACK entry timing (made the arrow actually fly a lot closer to the end of the animation).

Edited September 10, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Vishanka 236]

2 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Basically, instead of removing them, actually make them hit twice in the PFP.

Now that you say it, since I restored them I actually I have not noticed them to not hit twice  Every animation and weapon swing will deal damage for me. I'm not sure though if I used the sm24 entries or the ones from the installation before the fixpack, I will check at home.

I would not have them removed either way, every animation does have different execution times so I would not mind a longer animation with less damage. And if sm24 fixed the double hit by adding one, I'd actually just add the 2nd hit to attackx instead of removing  the animation from the melee pool. Might be a slight buff but why not 

[idbeholdME 394]

2 hours ago, Vishanka said:

Now that you say it, since I restored them I actually I have not noticed them to not hit twice  Every animation and weapon swing will deal damage for me. I'm not sure though if I used the sm24 entries or the ones from the installation before the fixpack, I will check at home.

Well, if the attack in question is ATTACKX_ST, then looking at the definition in the vanilla animation.txt, it actually does have 2 attack entries. Which is strange as Flix claims it only ever hit once 

["entry32"] = 
        {
            ["name"] = "ANIM_TYPE_ATTACKX_ST",
            ["marker"] = 
            {
                ["ANIMSTART"] = 0.0000,
                ["ATTACK"] = 0.6400,
                ["ATTACK1"] = 1.2800,
                ["ANIMEND"] = 1.8000,
            },
        },

That would mean that the unmodded Ice & Blood already did perform two hits. If that's the case, then that's even more reason to restore it in the PFP. It seems that every single character had an ATTACKX entry for every weapon type in the vanilla.

I am starting to think, that these animations were maybe originally intended to be used whenever the broken Chance for Double Hits from weapon Mastery or Chance for Double hits in general would proc as all of them have two ATTACK entries in the animation timings. The Dual-Wield animation for the Seraphim even has 3 ATTACK ocurrences.

But either way, if the animations exist and can be used and seeing that all characters have one for every weapon type, I'd also be for adding them to the pool and adjusting them accordingly.

 

EDIT:
Just restored the Polearm ATTACKX animation for the Seraphim just by copying the definition from the original animation.txt and it seems to work without issues and hits twice. Has a 20% chance to proc as there are now 5 animations in total.

And there also seems to be a mount version of the ATTACKX for every weapon type for BOTH the horse and the special mount. We could potentially be looking at 16 restored animations and attacks for every character.

EDIT2:
The animations also seem to have different behavior based on the weapon type. For example, any hit with Polearms can trigger the new animation. However, 2 handed swords and one handed weapons require the new double hit animation to be a follow up hit. It will never occur on the first hit against the enemies, you have to hold down left click and the it can happen after the first hit. Really interesting behavior. Some of them are even pretty cool looking.

Well, I'm off to copying all the animation definitions from the vanilla to the PFP  See you in an hour or two  

Edited September 10, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Vishanka 236]

43 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Well, if the attack in question is ATTACKX_ST, then looking at the definition in the vanilla animation.txt, it actually does have 2 attack entries. Which is strange as Flix claims it only ever hit once

Then I remember it correctly 

I used to looooove the high elf with polearm just for the animation alone, take a look at her, it feels so good, dryad too.

Maybe they are not able to trigger double hits from weapon mastery? Last idea for what could have been the issue to remove them but 

[idbeholdME 394]

24 minutes ago, Vishanka said:

Maybe they are not able to trigger double hits from weapon mastery? Last idea for what could have been the issue to remove them but 

Weapon Matery Double Hit never actually worked if I remember correctly.

It was just my guess as to what the animations were originally meant to be, seeing how they always perform an additional hit over the base animations. The logic being that the attack will use this X animation whenever a Double hit procs (from any source).

Maybe Ascaron didn't have time to finish it completely or dropped the idea but left the animations there, we will never know. But all of the X animations seem to be fully functional and animated and seeing as how they were present in the vanilla animations.txt I am definitely adding them back to the pool, at least on my end.

Tally of X animations per character:

Seraphim - 16

Dryad - 16

Shadow Warrior - 22

Inquisitor - 16

High Elf - 10

Temple Guardian - 8

Dragon Mage - 18

Edited September 10, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Vishanka 236]

2 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Well, I'm off to copying all the animation definitions from the vanilla to the PFP

By the way, if you should discover why I'm not able to add completely new animation entries with completely new names, let me know. I tried ANIM_TYPE_Schockwelle_1H and ANIM_TYPE_SM30_1H.

Without problems I was able to add all 2H, TGUN and ZW entries at the end of the file in any order I like, but it will not accept the ones with the names above.

It would also not accept to change the name of an existing entry to its spell name, for example renaming SM18 to nova (I'm sure I edited all related files correctly).

I would have wanted to do that since I'm annoyed by having to look for the number all the time but it's time to accept that I don't really understand the file...

 

  

49 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Weapon Matery Double Hit never actually worked if I remember correctly.

Oh? I used a level 200 seraphim lately with 200 points into dual wield and I remember it triggered the doublehits without issue... I'll check again quickly, I think I still got the character...

Triggers correctly, 41% chance for doublehits (sorry for the bad hitchance )

Edit: I might be wrong here, I'll do one again with a 1h sword

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by Vishanka

[Flix 5,116]

Left click attacks only hit once guys.  You're wasting time performing a long animation that only does one hit.  You could design an animation with 40 swings and 40 attack parameters in the animation entry and it's still only going to hit once from a left click attack.

Enemies can take advantage of those double hit animations because we made a special combat art that uses SM24 and assigned that CA to every enemy in creatures.txt that had those animations available.  So they cycle through it while attacking and it has the appearance of a normal melee attack.

I'm done trying to understand the audience for PFP. 

[Vishanka 236]

3 minutes ago, Flix said:

and it's still only going to hit once from a left click attack.

What is happening here then (the last hit)?

 

[idbeholdME 394]

20 minutes ago, Flix said:

Left click attacks only hit once guys.  You're wasting time performing a long animation that only does one hit.  You could design an animation with 40 swings and 40 attack parameters in the animation entry and it's still only going to hit once from a left click attack.

Have to disagree there. I'm currently testing it extensively and the ATTACKX animations hit twice. Hard to show in a video as it would require seeing the inputs but I assure you, it's animations that do multiple hits.

Just copy the ATTACKX for whatever weapon type you like from the vanilla animation.txt to the end of the PFP animations definitions for that character and keep hitting monsters with that weapon. Polearms for the Seraphim are the safest bet. Be sure to let go off the left mouse button once the swing starts. Once the ATTACKX animation gets rolled, you will see a 2 hit animation. An overhead swing, followed by a stab, hitting twice. All the X animations I have tried so far seem to work without issues. Well, mostly.

There is also some issue with the hair animations during these attacks. They seem to be missing in the PFP, causing the hair to clip inside the character's head during some X attacks. Just copied the hair animation definitions from the vanilla into PFP and that seems to have fixed that.

 

47 minutes ago, Vishanka said:

Oh? I used a level 200 seraphim lately with 200 points into dual wield and I remember it triggered the doublehits without issue... I'll check again quickly, I think I still got the character...

Triggers correctly, 41% chance for doublehits (sorry for the bad hitchance )

 

Dual Wield attacks strike with both weapons, meaning always 2 physical hits. But you will never see 3 or 4 hits (the doubling) no matter how high you push your Double Hit chance from Weapon Mastery. Only the Double Hit chance bonus on items and CA mods actually works.

Edited September 10, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Vishanka 236]

4 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Dual Wield attacks strike with both weapons, meaning always 2 physical hits. But you will never see 3 or 4 hits (the doubling) no matter how high you push your Double Hit chance from Weapon Mastery.

Haaa, yes I just noticed on my 'real' seraphim that she would do that as well my mistake here. Maybe I confused it with my tests with Pelting Strikes.

[idbeholdME 394]

@Flix Here is a vid of the ATTACKX polearm animation for the Seraphim. First attack is normal, the second one is the ATTACKX animation, which visibly and audibly lands 2 hits. Mouse was clicked exactly 2 times in the video.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ek8ifb3kjcfmvkj/multihitleftclick.mp4?dl=0

Vishanka also posted a good demonstration.

EDIT:

I just finished modifying the PFP animation.txt. Added all the ATTACKX animations to all the characters and replaced the hair animation definitions for the Seraphim with those from vanilla animation.txt file, which fixed some hair clipping issues during some of the attacks.

Should I upload it? Really only tested the Seraphim so far. To my great surprise, even the mounted animations work correctly.

 

1 hour ago, Vishanka said:

By the way, if you should discover why I'm not able to add completely new animation entries with completely new names, let me know. I tried ANIM_TYPE_Schockwelle_1H and ANIM_TYPE_SM30_1H.

Without problems I was able to add all 2H, TGUN and ZW entries at the end of the file in any order I like, but it will not accept the ones with the names above.

It would also not accept to change the name of an existing entry to its spell name, for example renaming SM18 to nova (I'm sure I edited all related files correctly).

I would have wanted to do that since I'm annoyed by having to look for the number all the time but it's time to accept that I don't really understand the file...

My bet would be the names might be hardcoded so really not subject to change. But this question would be better aimed at somebody more knowledgeable about what is hardcoded and what is not.

Edited September 10, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Vishanka 236]

1 hour ago, idbeholdME said:

Only the Double Hit chance bonus on items and CA mods actually works.

Could you please test something?

I recorded two videos of me hitting the air with a polearm 71 times.

 

I counted the amount of the double hit animations occuring with 200 points into polearms.

30 of 71 hits were double hits.

 

Then I removed the weapon skill.

5 of 71 hits were double hits.

 

You know where I'm coming from, could it be or was it just luck?

Edited September 10, 2022 by Vishanka

[idbeholdME 394]

3 hours ago, Vishanka said:

Could you please test something?

I recorded two videos of me hitting the air with a polearm 71 times.

 

I counted the amount of the double hit animations occuring with 200 points into polearms.

30 of 71 hits were double hits.

 

Then I removed the weapon skill.

5 of 71 hits were double hits.

 

You know where I'm coming from, could it be or was it just luck?

Holy hell, it actually seems like that's the case. I didn't expect my theory to actually be true, but it seems like the logic is there. When I bumped the Sword Lore to 305 (49% chance), it seems to occur much more often in general  It might actually turn out that the Weapon Mastery bonus was working all this time, except not in the way we expected and it actually increases the chance to roll the ATTACKX animation. It is not a flat increase, but the increase in overall frequency of the ATTACKX animation is notable. The Mastery doesn't just make you cause double damage, but actually makes the character use a more masterful animation.

This is actually a massive discovery.

EDIT:
One more thing. Only 3 characters have the ATTACKX for bows. Dryad, Shadow Warrior and Dragon Mage. Gonna go see if ranged weapons can actually trigger this too.

EDIT 2:

Ranged weapons can trigger the animation, but there is no way to make them shoot more projectiles. Even with multiple attack entries, only one ever gets released. So I'm going to remove them again. But all the melee weapons work Even unarmed. It performs 3 hits instead of 2, same as dual wield. Seraphim has a nice uppercut animation for it. Also, just to make sure. The weapon types. Am I correct that:

ST - Polearms

ZW - Dual Wield

2H - 2 Handed Swords

1H - 1 Handed Weapons

BH - Unarmed

BOW - Bows

BG - Blowgun

THR2 - Thrown Weapons

2HA - 2 Handed Hafted

TGUN - 2 Handed Energy Weapons

GUN - Energy Pistols

DO - Don't really know what this is. Anyone?

Edited September 10, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Vishanka 236]

16 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

DO

Dolch, German for dagger

And just a little trivia...
ST - Stangenwaffen - Polearm

ZW - Zweiwaffenkampf - Dual Wield

BH - Barehanded probably

Edited September 11, 2022 by Vishanka

[idbeholdME 394]

5 hours ago, Vishanka said:

Dolch, German for dagger

Thanks.

Didn't even realize that daggers had their own animations. Probably because I never actually use them. I just assumed they used the 1-handed animations.

[Vishanka 236]

As the dryad animations work more or less for highelf I thought... why not also test some of her armor?

That one is not perfect since the feathers in front clip into her leg but I enjoy that featherbutt.

Edited September 11, 2022 by Vishanka

[Vishanka 236]

Fooling around with the gear... I'm sure someone was able to activate the tenergy effect of the wings and have it fade to transparency, but I could not do it so I did what I could and did this. Shattered T-Energy effect with some glowing underlay that fades to alpha.

It was like 10 seconds and a template brush from GIMP but I think the idea is worth sharing

And one other different texture... I'm sure I'll come up with something

Edited September 12, 2022 by Vishanka

[idbeholdME 394]

Cool effect. Stuff like this looks very nice especially at night and in dark environments. My favorite "inspection area" for shiny/glowing/T-Energy-fied gear is the graveyard in the ghost area, near to the entrance to the ghost village in Act 2, where it gets completely dark no matter the time of day. Can't remember the name off the top of my head.

 

I am also currently in the process of hunting down every single gear piece in every possible color (4 per gear piece) for the Seraphim. Want to see what's possible to cobble up together in the vanilla conditions. Already encountered a couple of "sets" that look cool and I barely ever saw, as they don't have an actual set built around them or don't have a unique version AND seem like they can't drop as rare items, only grey/white/blue. Merchants have been very helpful in this regard.

Edited September 12, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Vishanka 236]

1 hour ago, idbeholdME said:

Cool effect. Stuff like this looks very nice especially at night and in dark environments.

The interesting thing is that the effect for that should be in the game.

If you look at surface.txt there is a t energy effect entry, mystique wing FX.

It just does not work.

On the console the effect is visible. If you look at the sacred 2 wiki, the person who recorded the videos for the seraphim combat arts. It's from console and there the effect is visible.

 

If anyone knows what to do for activating the effect in the way it should look like I'd be happy to learn how to do it 

Maybe... @Lindor as you seem to have much expertise with FX?

Edited September 12, 2022 by Vishanka

[Vishanka 236]

3 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Already encountered a couple of "sets" that look cool and I barely ever saw, as they don't have an actual set built around them or don't have a unique version AND seem like they can't drop as rare items, only grey/white/blue.

I thought about turning the endijian spear into a one handed weapon but with spear animations so that you can wield the endijian shield with it.

Wait, is it possible to add the additional itemtype in the iteminfo.txt and just add the shield there to the spear? Maybe a very optimistic question as I don't expect it to function like that but I'll try out what effect that has, if any

 

It's actually working I added it to tinwora since I have no ancient spear but isn't it amazing?

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by Vishanka

[idbeholdME 394]

35 minutes ago, Vishanka said:

It's actually working I added it to tinwora since I have no ancient spear but isn't it amazing?

 

 

Nice, but I'd imagine the shield to seem/feel weird in motion as it would be flailing around wildly and clipping a lot during most of the dual wield/polearm animations, correct?

[Vishanka 236]

7 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Nice, but I'd imagine the shield to seem/feel weird in motion as it would be flailing around wildly and clipping a lot during most of the dual wield/polearm animations, correct?

I actually don't think it would be that bad as it's a slim shield and is more or less an extension of the arm I even quite like it while dual wielding.

I'll fix some colors and then I'll try to find a polearm model I possess