Stop NPCs from Jumping when using Kill Command

[AndalayBay]

We are using the Kill command to kill an NPC in front of the player. Is there any way to stop the NPC from jumping into the air before dropping dead? We want him to just drop to the floor.

I've tried forceAV to set the fatigue to 0 and to a negative value. The NPC still jumps in the air. I've tried forceAV to set health to 0 - same result. Basically NPCs only do drama death. I want drop dead death.

I've also tried setUnconscious. That just makes him stand there with his eyes closed!

[LenaWolfBravil]

I find it strange that your default death animation is to jump up. I have never seen this. The only way I can get an NPC to jump up at death is to use PushActorAway command. The default animation for death in vanilla Oblivion is to just slump on the ground without drama. So I'm confused by your question.

Verified in: Oblivion for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC CDROM version and GOG version.

[RomanR]

  On 4/2/2025 at 9:44 AM, LenaWolfBravil said:

I find it strange that your default death animation is to jump up. I have never seen this. The only way I can get an NPC to jump up at death is to use PushActorAway command. The default animation for death in vanilla Oblivion is to just slump on the ground without drama. So I'm confused by your question.

Verified in: Oblivion for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC CDROM version and GOG version.

Expand  

I agree, sometimes I notice that NPC is pushed backwards a little upon death, but jumping in the air? Definitely not. Perhaps something else is at play. In theory it could be something like PushAwayActor, but my attempts to subside it failed (played with SetUnconscious and SetDestroyed commands, making clothes with weight 9999 and adding them to NPCs making them over-encumbered failed too). 

[AndalayBay]

It's very odd. Others have said that the NPC usually just drops dead. The only thing I can think of is that he's fairly close to a wall. We're not doing anything other than actorRef.kill.

I'll try moving him farther away from the wall. He's not actually jumping. I guess it's more like he's being slammed by a huge force, but he's not just dropping dead. He rises up what I would consider to be a couple of feet or half a metre.

Thanks for the confirmation of the expected behaviour.

[LenaWolfBravil]

Have you installed some mods that alter physics? Ragdolls? Skeletons? It sounds like that.

[AndalayBay]

Yup. I realized earlier that that was it and was coming over to say so.

I had installed a ragdolls mod to fix some of our creatures. I actually need to remove it now because we had someone fix them and I need to verify that. It's too bad it adds drama deaths!

Thanks again.

[AndalayBay]

Uninstalled the ragdolls mod and it didn't make any difference. I'm not the only one seeing this. My mod partner is too and he's not running any mods.

I'm not going to worry about it anymore.

[LenaWolfBravil]

It's just one of those random things. Wrong phase of the moon or something.

[RomanR]

If it's hapenning even without mods... I remember seeing a warning somewhere that Havok can act funny with high FPS (but that was like 200+) and I always run my Oblivion at 60Hz V-Synced.  It's just a wild guess though.

[LenaWolfBravil]

Now that you mention it, @RomanR... I've had something similar with a wrong setting in EngineBugFixes in combination with Oblivion Display Tweaks - it was about capping FPS. They both have settings for that, plus there's a setting in Oblivion.ini. On my system I had to disable that everywhere to get normal behaviour, otherwise animations and physics acted differently at different FPS. @AndalayBay I'm not saying you have to do the same, but rather - look into it, those settings seem to conflict.

Alternatively, you need to up your virgin toad sacrifices to keep the gods happy...