Throwing Daggers Scripting Help

[miscdude]

Alright, I couldn't decide if this should go into requests or mod talk, but I opted for this seeing as I'm not asking anyone to make this mod for me or anyone else who wants it. I am willing to do all that I can to actually guide this along, but I am in need of some help. I have a fairly clear-cut idea of how a throwing weapon mod could work, but there are logistical and scripting issues that I feel like I need to type out to better understand and could benefit from the knowledge of others on. I've learned a decent chunk of the creation kit, I can make areas and weapons and import models and blah blah blah. There's plenty of documentation on that and spell-making and re-texturing, but on my hunt for information regarding my endeavor, I have come up rather thin.

 

One mod I found that wanted to add throwing daggers was headed in the right direction. This mod uses scriptdragon to fire an arrow when you press the allocated throw button, and it almost looks like you're throwing a dagger. Now, thats kind of neat, but not nearly close enough to be something as awesome as the Deadly Reflex throwing weapons from Oblivion, which is kind of what I'm aiming for. I really like the idea of using scriptdragon, because it seems to bypass the normal scripted prerequisites and timings of the creation kit's scripting. I had a hell of a time trying to find out how to edit, decrypt, or otherwise find out any real information on how to use a .asi file, other than it essentially being a .dll file. That file is where the meat of the coding is though, and without being able to dissect or even find out how to compile a .asi myself I am at a loss as to how to utilize scriptdragon.

 

Another modder made this mod which allows you to craft throwing daggers which essentially do the same thing as the above, but with a unique weapon and non-arrow projectile. This is also a good foot in the door, but still not quite there in my opinion. Throwing daggers aren't throwing daggers without the satisfaction of actually seeing the dagger leave your hand, and going to go pick it up from where it has impaled a wall, target or unlucky foe. These two mod ideas along with my original thoughts have produced the following:

 

With a dagger equipped in either hand, you should be able to play normally with the daggers. So the daggers must be real daggers that act as daggers and if at all possible are plainly the original daggers. This in mind, I think the best way to go about turning these into throwing daggers would be to have a button that put them into "throwing mode," use script dragon to take an input key for each hand like "b" and "n" to make the daggers go from a dagger state to a more bow-like state. While the key is pressed, the actual mesh from the daggers would be gone and in its place would be the same mesh, but that mesh would actually be that of a projectile, starting in the same spot as the dagger to look as if the transition from held to thrown was replacing the drawn arrow to fired arrow. This would occur by, ideally, having a dummy projectile which utilizing scripts or scriptdragon would take the stats from the actual dagger and apply them to the projectile. Less ideally, you would need a dummy projectile for each weapon, which has a much lesser compatibility with weapon mods and I'm not too fond of the concept. From here, the invisible dagger which would act like a bow would behave as such, you hold whatever button corresponds to whatever hand and when you release it launches the projectile. Then the projectile would fly through the air at a distance and speed relative to the wind up. When fired, the original dagger would be removed from the inventory. Some sort of setting on the dummy dagger projectile would allow it to be recovered 100% of the time, for fear of destroying any unique daggers. When the projectile is picked up, a script would run wherein the projectile is destroyed and the original item is placed into the inventory.

 

This seems, from my point of view, to be logically sound and plausible, but the reason I'm posting this up here is very simple: I don't know how to do any of that. I can learn Papyrus with a little bit of time, but subtleties like when scripts can or cannot be executed, how exactly to make scriptdragon plugins, and how realistically possible certain elements are seem to have a lack of documentation or comment from what I've seen. I'll learn what I need to learn, script what needs to be scripted and make any required graphics or animations. I just need someone more knowledgeable who likes the idea of throwing weapons as much as I do that is willing to help me out. I welcome any responses from anyone, a link to a wiki page or tutorial that would be appreciated. Thanks for reading :]