Spellcasting Animations and Bonuses

[Tristamid]

Thanks for popping open this thread. I'm new to the forums but not the game, bear with me and read through to the end. All solid opinions and critic is welcome. Thank you for your time.

 

 

I am fully aware that I'm being a greedy idiot in this post. But if you guys could see what I see, you'd be a lil' greedy too. :P The TL;DR of this is to change the animations in Oblivion for Spellcasting. Period. The rest is just me brainstorming of all the cool things we could do with such a mod, and HOW we could do it. But at the end of the day, I just want to have more than one way to throw a fireball. Is that so wrong? :P

 

 

Instead of the Vanilla Oblivion, which only has:

• A Pointing animation
  
• An upward palm animation
  
• A thrusting palm animation (touch)
  

 

I would like to see a mod that makes dozens of animations, and allows you to assign animations to different spells. Imagine being able to

• Snap your fingers
  
• Do the Kamehameha Wave
  
• Point with Various fingers (Index and Middle/Index and Pinky aka Bull Horns)
  
• Use Naruto-esque hand seals/Ninja Seals
  
• Raise your hands to the sky
  
• Touch the ground with both hands
  
• Stomp the ground
  
• Put your hands to your eyes like looking through binoculars
  
• Put your hands on your hips, Superman style
  
• Kick
  
• Foot Sweep
  
• Yell/Roar
  
• Backflip into a Ground Pound
  
• Write invisible words on the ground
  
• Form Glyphs in the Air
  
• Clap like Full Metal Alchemist
  
• Spin and point your weapon like Sailor Moon
  
• Slowly raise your arm, ominously
  
• Sweep your hand in front of your body, as if purging the world with your will
  
• Thrust a punch forward
  
• Thrust rapid fire punches/kicks
  

 

I could go on but I won't. :P Having all these animations would make spells WAY more interesting. As each player, and character, can look and FEEL differently. Ninjas using hand seals, or Wizards raising their hands to the sky to call lightning, or a Priest calling their gods. It would give the game a new look and feel.

 

While 3rd Person animations are welcome, I'd like to emphasis first person animations. Since I imagine that's what most people use anyway, it would also be easier to see animations when your hands are right in front of you rather than trying to look around your body when its in the 3rd perspective.

 

The mod would need to be open source, so that everyone can add to it. I think its the best way to get things off the ground. The best animations can be included into the main file, with credits to it's author, but I'll leave that entirely up to the man (or woman :P) that puts the work into this. (I have no talent for this sort of thing, you see. T.T)

 

Along with the animations themselves, I'd like to see a timing configuration to the animations. That way, you can have spells activate at the beginning, middle, or end of your animation. So if a custom spell (something from Midas for example) doesn't quite look right, or activate when you'd expect it to with the animations, you can have the "Fireball", or w/e the case may be, come out JUST when you want it to in order to line up the animation.

 

While this is PURELY wishful thinking, I figured I throw out all ideas. Animations can be chained, flipped, and/or looped. So you can choose which hand you want to Thrust with, or Thrust and THEN Kick when delivering spells. You could also do something like have an animation where your hand is raised, you snap your fingers, and then point towards your target, "loop" on the snap part several times. This way you can have a Fireball spell that works with the "One Snap" animation, and another which launches 3 Fireballs work with a "3 Snap" animation. Which brings up my next point.... (sry, I'm greedy >.>)

 

You can allow your animations to cast the same spell several times in the animation. This way you can make different "levels" of spells with more complicated animations to match their skill levels, as well as have animations that make more "sense." No reason to kick like Chung-Li or something if its only gonna spit out 1 measly Frost Spell.

 

The animations shouldn't be restricting. I.E: Players should still be able to aim their crosshairs while using them. Even if it "plants your feet" like Power Attacks do. There should also be animations that don't plant your feet, so the mod won't be overlooked do to the fact that, "Yeah that mod looks cool, but it gets you killed cause you'll be a sitting duck."

 

This may have to come at a later time, perhaps by modding the mod, but it would be great if animations gave bonuses to the spells they were cast on. Special Bonuses (SBs) and General Bonuses. (GBs) [LOL, Glad Beasts. X3] Special Bonuses are bonuses for using an animation that makes sense/is designed for that type of spell. Using a animation where you touch the ground with both hands, or raise your hands to the sky will give you Special Bonuses if you're using Conjuration Magic with it. Using something like a Kick animation to Conjure Armor doesn't make sense, so there would be no SB for that. (granted, due to some obscure anime or something there COULD be a reason, but that's what the INI is for, right? :P) General Bonuses are just that; bonuses granted JUST for using a animation. This is to balance those long animations out with the really short ones. Things like more Power, or less Magick cost for the really long ones, etc. In this way, we can reshape the gameplay and look cool doing it!

 

I'd like these options to be saved to save files. So that each character/profile can have it's own settings, and you don't have to redo everything each time you log it. There would preferably be a INI file so that the average Joe can tweak things here and there.

[fore]

Great idea. I'd LOVE to see these animations ...

 

One question though: in which game do you want this realized? Maybe Skyrim?

 

It certainly won't happen in Oblivion, not even remotely.

The amout of different animations you propose is way over the capacity of animation modders.

And: almost all of you "options" cannot be implemented within the game of Oblivion.

 

Ok, it was your first post here. You're allowed to dream :wink:

[Tristamid]

Great idea. I'd LOVE to see these animations ...

 

One question though: in which game do you want this realized? Maybe Skyrim?

 

It certainly won't happen in Oblivion, not even remotely.

The amout of different animations you propose is way over the capacity of animation modders.

And: almost all of you "options" cannot be implemented within the game of Oblivion.

 

Ok, it was your first post here. You're allowed to dream :wink:

Yeah, I guess. Shoot for the stars and ram into the moon right? Guess I'll hold onto this dream until Skyrim rolls around, and see what that engine has to offer. I just figured, since Midas and Deadly Reflex both have all these features you don't see in the game, using tools besides the normal editor, that something could be done about it. And that he workload wouldn't be so bad if people took it on as a team. But alas...