Realistic Combat Animations

Something I think would make a great mod (seperate from the main Skywind mod itself, but usable across Skyrim, Skywind, and Skyblivion) would be a mod to make combat animations more realistic, for melee weapons in particular. Currently every melee weapon in Skyrim is swung like a club, and weighs far more than it ever would in real life. What I'd like to see would be unique animations for each weapon type that are reflective of real life martial arts (both eastern and western depending on the specific weapon/culture). And along with unique animations: Much lighter and faster weapons (especially two-handed weapons), two-handed swords on the hip rather than the back (It's extremely inpratical to wear a sword on the back, as it's impossible to draw it in any reliable way), scabbards for two-handed swords and any one-handed swords that lack them, faster draw speeds for all bows (cross bows are fine as they are), and of course unique animations for spears and halberds. Some inspiration below.

Western Longswords:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov_iVrHy4_A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3_qnU1RjEs

Bows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g

Katana:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PyvdjDGKWU

Spear/Staff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uejTaTtrgaE

European Martial Arts playlist:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL672ACBE7494DB58D

Last edited by JorgenGorgen on 6 Feb 2014 - 14:07.

Assuming you don't give the

Assuming you don't give the animation guys an aneurysm, this would be a really cool project. Though, it should not be worked on until the core project is done.

Yeah, I can imagine how

Yeah, I can imagine how hectic and time consuming that would be. Just an idea for the future.

I'd focus primarily on the

I'd focus primarily on the Katana and Spears. Also, what about darts and throwing stars (shuriken)? We should probably do something for those too.

I don't think custom sword/bow animations should really be done for Skywind in general, seeing as how you have plenty of those on the Nexus.

Most of those I've seen on

Most of those I've seen on Nexus are just silly. Like changing all power attacks to thrusts, and one-handed spear stuff. I have yet to see anything change two-handed animation to something better than broad club swings. Bows are fine with their default animations, they just need a faster drawing speed. Weapons need to be a lot lighter across the board.

>Greatswords in game weigh around 18-20 pounds or more (or whatever weight unit the game uses) and swing like they weigh that much.
>Real life longswords weigh at most 2 pounds, greatswords at most 3, possibly 4 for larger ones.

If we're speaking strictly

If we're speaking strictly realism, I'm inclined to agree with you. As a martial artist myself, some of the stuff on the Nexus does indeed make me cringe. It's mostly the idles for me though, that seem incredibly unrealistic. The animators are ok with swings from what I've seen, although they seem to lack that hip twist usually.

As for weight, you can make a plugin yourself if you like. We could also integrate the same weight style into Skywind's weapons too.

There are historical examples

There are historical examples of claymores that reach the 20 pound mark. Also zweihanders come from 4.4 pounds to 7 pounds. I can find no information on the weight of an odachi but so far as I know the largest sword ever made was one. It required a group of men to operate. That particular one was only used once. The idea was that you could behead the general without bothering with his troops if the sword was just crazy in size. Or at least take out his horse. Also if the weight of any of these swords has you crying bulshit. I cannot remember the name of the movie but in this old kung fu movie about a shaolin temple. A particular training is shown where a weight that looks to be 3 or 4 pounds is fastened to the end of a 20 or 30 foot piece of bamboo. The practitioner is made to keep up ringing a gong while the master just rings a little bell. I think the leverage in that puts most swords to shame. I'd stick with the lighter swords. 20 years at a shaolin temple might be too great a price just to effectively use a rediculous sword

Yeah, weight wouldn't

Yeah, weight wouldn't necessarily need to be a part of the mod, anyone can use the creation kit to adjust the weights of items.
As for the 20 pound claymores, yes, there have been, but it was extremely rare as far as I can tell.
From Wikipedia:
"The average claymore ran about 140 cm (55 in) in overall length, with a 33 cm (13 in) grip, 107 cm (42 in) blade, and a weight of approximately 5.5 lb (2.5 kg).^{[citation needed]"

"}The largest claymore on record is a sword measuring 7 feet 6 inches (2.24 m) and weighing 23 pounds (10 kg). The claymore was wielded by a 15th-century Scottish giant of unknown name and origin, though the individual is believed to have been a member of the Maxwell Clan.^{[citation needed]"}

If you wanted realistic

If you wanted realistic combat animations you'd probably need to rewrite the whole Skyrim's highly unrealistic combat system.

And no, pretty much no sword that weighs more than 3 - 4 pounds is useful. Believe me, I know about swords, I do reenactment combat for 8 years now. There were findings of swords that weighed more than 10 pounds - those were not used for combat, those were used for executions (sometimes parades, gold is pretty damn heavy).

Sword on the back matter - yeah, it's hard to pull it out, and it gets harder the longer it gets. But there's no other way to carry such a big weapon. It is written so in history as well, landsknechts did carry their flambergs and zweihanders on their backs. But... Really, are you SERIOUSLY going to pull out a two handed sword in a dangerous situation? Answer is: NO YOU WON'T, you're better of trying with bare hands. There is a CLEAR distinction between battlefield weapons and self-defence weapons. Sure, some can prove useful for both, but most are profiled for either. You think halberd is a good thing to have with you when going to the tavern for a beer? A dagger, knife, seax, sword (not a long one) is what you'd carry with yourself for self defence, or as a secondary weapon in a battle. Things like polearms, battle axes, battlehammers, greatswords - these are usually difficult to carry around and hard to pull out. You do that BEFORE the battle, long before, and you go with your weapon drawn. Battlefield weapons are also not very useful in single combat, because you're very exposed and vulnerable with them (as opposed to going with a shield). Granted, you can parry blows with a wooden shaft, but try parrying an arrow, I dare you. Battlefield weapons are DEADLY and easy to kill with, but only when used from behind some kind of shieldwall, or with help of a shield bearer. That is at least most of history, there are a few exceptions, most often heavily armoured exceptions in times when shields were obsolete because of firearms (which Skywind as far as I know doesn't have).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvH7kCY9kDQ - note how people with polearms work here, most of the time keeping behind the line and only striking when they know there won't be a counter attack. Shieldings mostly just hold the line - that's their job.

On a side note, battlefield weapons can actually be useful for other things than group battles, but only in fantasy worlds. Yeah, they can be useful against big monsters.

Having said that, I REALLY like the idea of replacing combat animations with ones that don't look so suicidal. Seriously, in Skyrim the normal attacks look like power attacks. The power attacks look like drunk people trying to demolish a building with a 20 pounds sledge hammer.
In reality it doesn't matter if you charge up your attack 1 or 4 seconds, it will come out as strong. And that's not even useful - in the end of the day it doesn't matter how hard you strike, most of the time it doesn't even matter where you strike either, as long as you strike first. But then again, that might require a whole different approach to combat... Approach I think Skywind and Skyrim could really benefit from. And that approach would be simply more skill based and less spammy combat. It could probably be done rather easily with increasing the damage weapons deal and decreasing the health (both of NPC and PC), so that fights are usually over in two - three blows. That could make the more resilient creatures a bigger challenge as well, I could see ash vampires being unnaturally tough, blocking would suddenly become essential etc.

Maybe we should focus on

Maybe we should focus on actual new animations for new weapons instead of replacers for existing weapon types. As for ending a fight in a few hits, DUEL exists, go use that.

"But... Really, are you

"But... Really, are you SERIOUSLY going to pull out a two handed sword in a dangerous situation?"

You're mostly correct. However, longswords and bastard swords are two-handed swords, and they were the go to sword of the late medieval and renaissance periods, and were worn on the hip, and used in battlefield, street, and judicial combat regularly. The battlefield vs street weapon distinction only comes into play with much larger weapons, i.e. poleaxes, greatswords, lances, spears, etc. The issue there is the two-handed swords in Skyrim being greatswords (thought they're more somewhere in between a longsword and a greatsword). I'd propose reducing the scaling on two-handed weapons very slightly to make them more proportional to longswords.

"Things like polearms, battle axes, battlehammers, greatswords - these are usually difficult to carry around and hard to pull out."

Inaccurate though that may be, it's not as bad a the club swinging imo. I'm thinking making slightly scaled down versions of the greatsword, and adding them in game as a separate weapon type (still under two-handed) that's lighter, but deals less damage, and has slightly different animations would be the way to go. Longswords and bastard swords on the hip, battleaxes, warhammers, spears, halberds, and greatswords hefted over the shoulder.

I'm gonna pull stuff up and

I'm gonna pull stuff up and link it as I see it.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34950/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/18981/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/45970/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36252/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29649/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50416/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/30666/?

Now here's the thing given the collection of animations that are out there I have no intention on touching them. At any point. If you don't like how the weapons are held specifically then all you need is a new weapon idle which there are even more of those out there. I do how ever plan on doing spear, and as a result battlestaff, anims the second I hear anything from fore on alternate anims, which is from the looks of it the only way to get them working.

EDIT: I also may far off in the furture touch on hand to hand, personally I was never a big fan of boxing.

ZeroSbr wrote:

ZeroSbr
I'd focus primarily on the Katana and Spears. Also, what about darts and throwing stars (shuriken)? We should probably do something for those too.

Katana, spear weapon values do not exist in action values and can not be introduced through CKit so far. Basically katana is a sword and only sword animation shall apply... Same story for throwing weapons....

@mxzero11

Most of them are esthetic / fantasy animation that have almost nothing to do with real combat, while others are manga / anime / jap console game inspired.

There are good combat mods though but which change the AI and the arsenal of potions / spells of npcs and not the animation.

I have to chime in here but

I have to chime in here but the maxwell clan was a bunch of push overs that sword is one of my failys hairlooms and in no way are we related to Maxwell's we are the Buchanan clan get it right wiki