Armor modifies animation...

[Astymma]

Sensual Walks is very modular as far as mods go. It includes a howto on creating your own custom version of the installer with your own custom animations. It's set up to apply animations based on profession and/or age. For example you can assign only one specific walk to Guards... or Acrobats... or Countesses... or Young... or Thugs... etc.. The categories don't have to use the same animation, they can all use a different walk.

 

In short, Sensual Walks for NPC's pretty much already does what you want within certain parameters... custom animating by specific armor type is harder but also could be accomplished via scripting (and be MUCH laggier in high NPC count locations).

[MarkInMKUK]

Yes, I'm aware of the setup section - once I worked out how to drive the selection process (not instantly obvious and the selection box doesn't give much of a clue what/why you are selecting). Great for npcs who are always armor clad, 24/7/365. However, for the player, and companions, the armor is going to change dynamically as the game progresses, and having some way to track this and adjust walks would make sense. The third category of character to track might be quest-specific characters who may be scripted to alter clothing for different scenes.

 

Of course, if a mod adjusts npc clothing on-the-fly for some reason, maybe an immersion mod of some kind, then the script would be come more general again as people changed in and out of "work clothes", "day civilian clothes" and "evening clothes" - but that's a whole new can of worms.

[Astymma]

Yes, I'm aware of the setup section - once I worked out how to drive the selection process (not instantly obvious and the selection box doesn't give much of a clue what/why you are selecting). Great for npcs who are always armor clad, 24/7/365. However, for the player, and companions, the armor is going to change dynamically as the game progresses, and having some way to track this and adjust walks would make sense. The third category of character to track might be quest-specific characters who may be scripted to alter clothing for different scenes.

 

Of course, if a mod adjusts npc clothing on-the-fly for some reason, maybe an immersion mod of some kind, then the script would be come more general again as people changed in and out of "work clothes", "day civilian clothes" and "evening clothes" - but that's a whole new can of worms.

 

Well, I suppose it would be possible to register an event handler for the OnActorEquip (and likely also on OnPackageChange) and have that event handler farm all of its functionality out to user defined functions (so that it doesn't exceed the script length maximum). You'd have to decide on criteria for determining what "walk" was appropriate based on gender, armor type, armor weight, armor location (i.e. does a breastplate change anything? or just leg armor?) and whatever criteria you want to act upon. Is it doable? Of course... Is it hard? Absolutely. Would it play well with others? Probably not. Getting the right animation to play at the right time is one of the harder scripting tasks Oblivion mod makers face in my opinion. You could also perhaps approach this from the perspective of scripted AI packages added with AddScriptPackage based on criteria but would still need a complicated state machine as described above. To be honest, I see this as eminently doable... but I have serious doubts as to whether it would behave nicely in the Oblivion environment. I have the sneaking suspicion that it would be laggy and/or unstable.

[MarkInMKUK]

Astymma - thanks for the input - it's been very helpful for my poor brain.

 

Having thought about it a while today, the animations would end up having to "grade" across three stages of armor - nothing / light / heavy. I suggest leg armor is the item to choose if one can detect it separately - if not, then armor WEIGHT would be my choice. That may mean the occasional oddball enchanted plate item, but it adds at least some hint of "realism" - it would be darn hard to sway sexily in a full plate suit, whereas leather or chainmail should allow SOME movement, and leather trousers or a skirt should allow more.

 

Of course, graded animations means some poor soul of an animator would have to invent new "in-between" animations - or "overloaded" ones. If, for example, the "unencumbered" character used a "sexy" walk, adding light armor should trigger a more subtle walk - maybe one of the "feminine" ones, while sticking the poor girl in iron boots and greaves would end up with a "manly stomp" due to sheer encumbrance. Unless I can come up with a sensibly small list of new animations, I think that practicality alone would kill the idea off for the moment. I reserve the right to pop back with a resurrected list later if I can boil it down to something manageable though.

 

What you would end up with is, taking the sensual walks config as a basis, a list of the "unencumbered" animations for the characters, with the armor class then modifying that walk towards something more sensible for heavy weights. Of course, what to do to allow for the high heel mods is anybody's idea to play with (maybe add a random chance of falling over if the character is walking outdoors on cobbles?), but if we keep ANY hint of sense about it, plate mail won't come with six-inch stilettoes!!

 

Thanks for the input - any bright ideas are welcome but I think it's likely to be a dead duck unless inspiration strikes.