What prevents animations from showing certain weapons?

chimeric

Why is it that hobgoblins can only carry visible bastard swords and bows - short bows and long bows, although they are actually equipped with short bows? If equipped with something else, the weapons are invisible. Why? Where can this kind of "instruction" be found, if an animation is just a bunch of BAMs and an INI file? If a weapon is equippable in principle, if bastard swords are shown, why not long swords that are wielded and swung just the same way? Perhaps hobgoblins don't have the frames for stabs, and that could be a problem, hence the limitation, but where is this block?

Same thing with tasloi and spears. The spear is the only thing that will be shown in their hands. It's different with, for example, ogres and gnolls, where the morning star and the halberd are part of the figure. No, hobbies do seem perfectly on par with character figures, and yet...

They have these lines in their INI:

[monster_layered]
resref=MHOB
resref_weapon1=S1
resref_weapon2=BW

They perform the same without the lines or with changes in the lines, however. Tasloi don't have any of this "layered" business at all.

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kjeron

Hobgoblins also use undroppable weapons with alternate animation ID's so they display properly.

CamDawg

subtledoctor said:

There needs to be some coordination between the creature animation and the weapon animation... you can give a bastard sword to a tasloi, but if it appeared it might be floating a foot away from the creature's hand. And the hand might do thrusts while the weapon swings overhand. Etc.

Not just weapons, but everything that can be layered on them including armor and helmets. Here's why monks don't wear helmets.

chimeric

kjeron said:

Hobgoblins also use undroppable weapons with alternate animation ID's so they display properly.

You mean no stab animation? Well, it doesn't go as far as that for displaying weapons in the first place. They can use regular bastard swords and bows no problem, but nothing else. This is why it irritates me: the swings are there, and there is no difference in height between a short sword/long sword/scimitar etc. swinging.

Tasloi only display spears, no matter what weapons you give them. They have swing animations, actually, but don't use them.

To CamDawg: so where is all this layering happening and how can I strip it? People have been creating animations of their own - Diablo imports and other things, putting together BAMs, and there is none of this weirdness.

CamDawg

chimeric said:

Tasloi only display spears, no matter what weapons you give them. They have swing animations, actually, but don't use them.

Spears, generally, are set to use 100% thrusting animations. The individual item files are what inform the engine how to mix the three attack animations (swing, overhead, thrust).

chimeric said:

To CamDawg: so where is all this layering happening and how can I strip it? People have been creating animations of their own - Diablo imports and other things, putting together BAMs, and there is none of this weirdness.

The avatar naming scheme is a good starting place. EEs softcode this somewhat with the [monster_layering] section of the animation ini.

chimeric

I had given the tasloi an axe, that's why he was swinging. They have that animation for bludgeoning with the spear, and they are drawn with one in the BAMs. That still doesn't explain where the switch for disabling weapon animations is, though. So tasloi would have to be redrawn completely to get rid of those spears, but not hobgoblins. Their bastard swords look more like broadswords, so they have that in the BAMs somewhere, but if those are taken away, they have empty fists and can slash at the air...

Another question about animations. Do you know if it's possible to block the recoil animation and the blood spurt on hit? I can make a hit harmless in several ways, and I've suppressed recoil by overriding it with the WALK animation, but is it possible to make an axe, for example, score a hit without this physicality?