xCheeseburgerSx Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 I'm not new to modding but i am new to the CK. I'm lead designer in a mod group, the particular mod were working on is a massive draugr dungeon consisting of 6 large shells and in those shells there will be unique boss fights. Something that bothered me about Skyrim are how easy the bosses can be sometimes. Sometime the bosses are even "tank and spank", but not in our dungeon. My mod is basically going to be World of Warcraft boss fights meets Skyrim, where their will be multiple phases, timed events, AI pathing, and etc. So my question is it possible to make super epic boss fights in CK? how is skyrims AI editor? and would it be possible to have a boss fight with 3 phases and in each phase there is a unique way to deal damage to the boss(for example getting him directing above a set timed fire trap that will deal damage to the boss). I appreciate any feedback!-Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eltucu Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Doesnt sounds unreasonable. Check the Gauldur Amulet quest, that one has a lot of special bosses with scripted events, not just a draugr with more hp. Though you will have to use lots of scripting, Skyrim's AI doesnt do much besides axe-to-the-head strategy or arrow-to-the-knee strategy, though they do strafe and take cover. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackCompany Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 I highly recommend new, unique combat styles for your bosses. Found under miscellaneous, combat styles govern the "odds" of your characters performing certain feats during combat. What I recommend is the following: -Up the odds of bashing dramatically-Balance the odds of power attacking. These are easily interrupted and avoided. Too many of them turns an otherwise powerful boss into a joke for melee fighters using shields. -Decrease the odds of the creature falling back and affording the player time. Being undead, it does not need to recover stamina by resting during fights. No reason for it to simulate doing this. also recommended (i know these are not AI, but still might be helpful): -Create a custom Draugr ability for additional damage resistance and give it to your bosses. Maybe also use it to buff health. -Give it Perks for extra damage. There are perks in the CK labaled CrExtraDamagePerk (or something very similar) that do this for numerous vanilla enemies, including many Draugr. Check them out.) -Find a high level boss and check his Shouts. Somewhere in the game - Ansilvund, I think, gods that was a nightmare - I found a Dragon Priest that could shout me across the room. His was the true 3rd tier Unrelenting Force. Might consider that for one or two bosses. -Give them some sort of magical resistance. This last is utterly imperative: -Give them detect life. It will not hamper their ability to fight, and the player will never know you did it. But it will make absolutely sure one-shot sneak attacks against your bosses simply do not work. Stealth players might hate you...but these guys didn't get to be bosses for nothing. I did this for enemy Werewolves in my game...and there is no sneaking up on them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SinderionsBones Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 As something of a student of wow boss fights... as any half decent raider... I think as long as you start from the stand point of being in full control you can make some great stuff. On the other hand, it has to be asked... is there an upside to novel techniques on bosses you'll only fight once and barely get a chance to appreciate? One of the main techniques I would first use is a boss with an impossible amount of health at first so you can't kill it right away, or be confused by health going down fast. They shouldn't die on your first phases anyways. You can set their actual healthpoints based on teh players level and then the health percent to trigger(via attached script OnHit event) a next phase based on the level, or whatever else. It doesn't have to be a percentage indicative of how long it will actually take to kill the boss, just *something* to give the player control over how long it takes. The more I think about this the more I realize Papyrus has a built in mechanism to make this simplified: States. http://www.creationkit.com/States_%28Papyrus%29 If you're not familar with them. It's really mostly fancy built in checking of a variable that says what to do when, but it would greatly simplify something like this. It let's you have completely different functions depending on what "state" you are in. Set up your phases as states, and you can code completely independent behaviors depending on phase in nice clean independent blocks. During certain phases there's no reason at all you can't make the actual guy invincible, or even hidden for a while. Pop out some adds and you've got a burn phase, add phase burn phase nice little fight. Whenever you decide it's a good time to be the last phase, unprotect him, give him a reasonable amount of hp and there you go. Let the boss rely on what BlackCompany is suggesting. Sounds like he's got some experience with the actual canned in game abilities :D Final thoughts as a rebut of my own question at the top. Hints before a boss fight can make all the difference between enjoyment sapping confusion, and a fun encounter. (some of the gerdur encounters. There was no way to know what to do, you just had to flail about. I killed like 20+ versions of him and one time he innexplicably died, no hp indication.... not a good encounter...) This can come in the form of some notes through the dungeon speaking of the 'legend of this baddass guy' with some hints on his techniques, or simply minions of him that do the same thing, just like in Wow. So short answer is NO, it's not possible with just AI stuff to make epic fights, I'm pretty sure what BlackCompany is suggesting is somewhere near the limit of that. You'll need some scripting to supplement the AI, and it's not hard scripting. To help get some awesome encounters in some mods(a worthy project), there are at least a dozen knowledgeable people on here that would help you out with that in short order. By help you out I, of course, mean you ask a very specific question, you will probably get a complete script in return. Just like in Wow, ask "zomg i need script help somebody PM me!" You will get nothing. Look forward to seeing whatever it is you're working on! Like blizzard, don't be affraid to scale up the bosses at least some!! Some will whine, but they will still have fun if you're doing it right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackCompany Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Sinderion has some good points here. Only so much the canned abilities can do. Health, resistance, combat style, etc. For truly epic stuff you do need a script. Good ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stemin Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 I don't have a lot to add since I haven't done any modding and I can't even play skyrim on PC right now because I can't get my gamepad to work properly, but back in the day I used to program "specials" for MUD's. I didn't have any programming experience other than basic at the time and the MUD code was written in C. I've always been very good at reverse engineering stuff to see how it works so I would think about an area that I knew functioned a certain way in the game, and then find the code for those particular events and figure out how it worked. I ended up learning a lot about C that way and after a while there wasn't anything in the MUD I couldn't do as long as it didn't involved core code. The reason I'm babbling all this is you mentioned specific timed events and others suggested some areas to look at the scripting. There's a foresworn quest, I believe it's "Dead Crone Rock" where you fight a Hagraven and you have to fight her in 3 stages. Once the player hits her a certain amount of times or maybe it's damaged based, I don't know without looking for the information, she "teleports" to another area where the fight continues later. If this sounds like the particular behavior you're looking for, I would suggest looking at the scripts for this area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stemin Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 I'm sorry. After a little wiki research, it turns out the area I was thinking of is called "Hag's End", which is only reachable either via fast travel or Deepwood Redoubt (if you haven't already discovered it). The battle with the Hagraven takes 3 rounds. The area is a radiant quest dungeon which is used for 3 quests that I know of: "Find the source of power in <>""House of Horrors" (as a possible location the priest is being held captive)"Locate the Assassin of Old" Here are the wiki pages:http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Hag%27s_Endhttp://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Hag%27s_End Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xCheeseburgerSx Posted March 19, 2012 Author Share Posted March 19, 2012 Thanks everyone for the help and feedback! This will help me greatly in making my mod and getting my bosses to a challenging yet fun/epic experience. Look for the Mod later on in the future. It's gonna be called "The Legend of Skuln the Betrayer". It's gonna consist of 5 unique boss fights, 5 large shells (making up the whole dungeon), along with unique loot that my friend is designing in 3D Max, and an epic last boss fight that will make Aulduins fight look like a cakewalk. Once again thanks for all the help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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