Attack speed in third person mode

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kenny26
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Joined: 17 Feb 2021, 03:06

Attack speed in third person mode

Post by kenny26 »

I've been playing around more with 3rd person mode following the graphical overhaul I did to my OpenMW and especially so after 0.47 introduced over the shoulder camera with visible crosshair. It's amazing playing like that, being able to actually admire my character and choosing armor for aesthetics as well as functionality.

One thing that bugs me however is that fighting in third person mode has revealed to me that attack speed is much slower. It has a legitimate gameplay impact switching back to first person view to absolutely annihilate the enemies, as opposed to lazily taking a few swings every second in third person mode. I only really do the latter when I'm deliberately grinding my armor skill and I actually want to take a bunch of hits without killing my opponent right away.

That being said, it would be nice to have the option to start rapid-fire attacking even in third person. Is this an old bug in the game? Something that's not easily fixed in OpenMW?

I know it's just a small detail, but given the effort that has gone into giving third person mode some love with this latest update, it might be worth looking into this aspect of balancing combat in third person mode.
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DestinedToDie
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Joined: 29 Jun 2015, 09:08

Re: Attack speed in third person mode

Post by DestinedToDie »

I decided to look at some of the attack frames for the 1st and 3rd person. Slash attack, in specific.https://imgur.com/O53UMOC

So you can see that in first person, the attack has this many frames:

1252 - 1232 = 20

But do the math for the third person and it's:

7554 - 7535 = 19

In this case it would appear 3rd person is actually faster. But judging by the fact that there is a 1 frame difference indicates that the animator did not bother to make consistent animations for 1st and 3rd person mode. I would not be surprised if some animations are longer in 3rd person, just like this animation is shorter. This is a content issue, meaning you can fix it on the content side and don't necessarily need to change the engine. You just have to redo all of the animations to be consistent.

Maybe someone already has made a mod that accidentally does something along the lines of this, not replicating the vanilla Morrowind difference between 1st and 3rd person animation frames. You might want to search for mods that replace the combat animations.

Here's another crazy idea: copy paste the base_anim.1st.nif file and rename it to base_anim.nif. This way 3rd person animation file would be identical to 1st person animation. I expect this will end poorly and mess something up. I tried it myself and for me nothing distinguishable happened. I'm not used to looking at my character swinging weapons in 3rd person so I can't know if there's a noticeable difference. Maybe you might.
kenny26
Posts: 22
Joined: 17 Feb 2021, 03:06

Re: Attack speed in third person mode

Post by kenny26 »

I'm unclear on where I'm supposed to find the files you refer to. I ended up doing a search through my entire harddrive looking for those file names and it eventually found my Animation Compilation from the overhaul list: https://modding-openmw.com/mods/animation-compilation/

That mod only changes casting animations so I'm almost positive messing with that won't do anything to the attack animations.

What file path should I be looking in? The vanilla morrowind files or the OpenMW directory?

I'm surprised you couldn't notice the difference yourself. Try equipping a short blade (I'm using a daedric wakizashi) and just click as fast as you can. The attack speed on that weapon type is particularly fast.

Then try switching to third person and doing the same. When I do that, I notice my character's animation has to cycle through the entire animation of raising the arm above the head, making a full length swing like you do when you hold left click to 'charge' the swing first.

The difference is remarkable.

Trying to search for combat animation mods only comes up with people referencing the one I linked above, with remarks similar to mine; it only changes casting. It does nothing to the attack animations. There don't seem to be any mods that do this.
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DestinedToDie
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Joined: 29 Jun 2015, 09:08

Re: Attack speed in third person mode

Post by DestinedToDie »

kenny26 wrote: 02 Dec 2021, 13:47 I'm unclear on where I'm supposed to find the files you refer to.
Oh, you won't find it because it's packed inside Morrowind's BSA files. What you need to do is get the Morrowind BSA unpacker. https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/12189

Then unpack Morrowind.bsa file. Inside, you will find all of the meshes and textures of Morrowind. What you're especially interested in are these two: https://imgur.com/CSKiTqM

Oh and I guess if you're playing a female character, you're interested in the female versions of the anim files rather than the ones I highlighted.
kenny26
Posts: 22
Joined: 17 Feb 2021, 03:06

Re: Attack speed in third person mode

Post by kenny26 »

Thank you for the reply. I downloaded the BSA browser and pointed it at my game directory. Now it shows an overwhelming list of files with options to extract them. How do I proceed from there?

Sorry to bug you, but I really am new to this. A detailed step by step guide may be needed if I'm going to try this.
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DestinedToDie
Posts: 1181
Joined: 29 Jun 2015, 09:08

Re: Attack speed in third person mode

Post by DestinedToDie »

kenny26 wrote: 02 Dec 2021, 20:13Now it shows an overwhelming list of files with options to extract them. How do I proceed from there?
You can extract them all if you want, that's what I did. What you might be especially interested in are these two: https://imgur.com/CSKiTqM

Base_anim and base_anim.1st contain the animation files for male characters. If you are interested in female animations, then instead you want to handle base_anim_female files. They are located in the meshes directory of the extracted files.

What you want to do once you have them at hand, is take the base_anim.1st file (or the female version), rename it to base_anim (or base_anim_female), copy it to your Morrowind/data files/meshes folder. Then boot up the game and see if there's a difference.
kenny26
Posts: 22
Joined: 17 Feb 2021, 03:06

Re: Attack speed in third person mode

Post by kenny26 »

I followed your directions and copied the renamed animations file to my vanilla morrowind Data Files/Meshes directory and loaded up the game. No change. I tried copying the changed file to my OpenMW data files as well and still no changes to the attack speed.

Thank you for trying. I guess I will have to live with the oddity of varying attack speeds based on 1st/3rd person mode.
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DestinedToDie
Posts: 1181
Joined: 29 Jun 2015, 09:08

Re: Attack speed in third person mode

Post by DestinedToDie »

kenny26 wrote: 02 Dec 2021, 22:20 I followed your directions and copied the renamed animations file to my vanilla morrowind Data Files/Meshes directory and loaded up the game.
I tested this and I got it working. I copied and renamed bunch of files rather than the one file I was talking about. https://imgur.com/JWXlnk5

I'm pretty sure it works now. But here's the catch. I don't think 1st person animations have any walking animation. So all those NPCs simply slide everywhere. :D But if I attack a guard, the guard takes out his spear and pokes me with 1st person animations it would seem to me.It's very distinct and weird, the 1st person animation wasn't made with the idea that you'd be able to see it in 3rd person mode.

A screenshot can only show a little of it, but they seem to have very awkward stances while attacking.

https://imgur.com/Gf2uNdy
https://imgur.com/gPWLqWL
https://imgur.com/4q0tRw8 Couple awkward frames in hand to hand animation
https://imgur.com/6Y2LgLs
kenny26
Posts: 22
Joined: 17 Feb 2021, 03:06

Re: Attack speed in third person mode

Post by kenny26 »

That sounds hilarious, but not very immersive. I'm fond of how smoothly my game is running. Getting more than 200 mods to work takes some doing and I don't want to mess it up by making every NPC slide around with no walking animations.

The idle roaming is actually a wonderful new feature of the game. Used to be I could steal just about anything by making an NPC greet me (thus turning to face me and I would make them look the wrong way). Now I can only do that to a few shopkeeps who aren't roaming idly. The rest of the NPCs have much more awareness of my thieving ways because they routinely turn around, scanning their surroundings as they wander aimlessly.

0.47 is wonderful and I hope to see even more updates in the future. Thank you for your help. I might try to replicate the experience you had sometime, but for now I'll just switch to first person mode to attack more rapidly in melee.
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