Teaching an Old Dog new tricks?

[scarycave]

I'm once again working on a dog mod...it's a follow up of the Wanderers Dog and Laddie mods I did awhile ago. To help it stand out from it's past predecessors I've always wanted to get the dog to cast spells. The types in particular are touch and self spells.

 

The touch spell for a mend-wounds spell: Licking the player if he's hurt like a real-dog does. (Even though I don't think you should but when my dogs try it though I'm moved by the gesture. Unless their just trying to eat me - or soak up my blood with their mustaches.)

 

The self spell is a howling spell which casts shield/fortify's a few stats. Pretty much pumping him self up, or signaling the approach of the mail-man.

 

I tried copying a howl.kf and renamed to it to castself.kf and it doesn't work. (That would be too-easy.)

 

I'm honestly surprised Bethesda didn't let all creatures cast spells. There are quite a few that could have used it - Mud-crabs casting shield at low-health, Bucks casting a fear spell - similar to how they intimidate real-life predators. Mountain Lions casting fireballs and thundaras and stuff. I'd actually be quite happy if I could ever make a mod to add spells to all the creatures out there. But first, I need to find out if it's possible and how exactly...

[DrakeTheDragon]

The filenames aren't really the important part here. There's a name attribute inside the KF file, if you open it with NifSkope, which is telling the game which kind of animation it is meant to be used as. Just look inside the castself.kf you got and you should be able to spot what it is with ease. Then rename the one inside the howl.kf you copied into a new castself.kf accordingly and the CS should be able to detect it as a castself animation.

 

Beyond this though I can't be of much help. I'm not an animator and my knowledge in this field is very limited.

 

edit: Just read it up, it's the name of the NiControllerSequence and in a castself.kf it reads "CastSelf".

Edited September 13, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon

[WarRatsG]

I know even less about animations than DrakeTheDragon, but you could simulate some spell effects with script I think.

The animation could be done with "PickIdle" I guess

You could play the magic effect shader with "PMS"

Then it is a matter of adding the spell to the dog for an OnSelf effect, or to the target for a touch effect.

 

 

OOO does this with hell hounds - you could take a look at how they accomplished it.

[scarycave]

I got the touch-effect to work. Dog succesfully cast drain-health on a mudcrab. Mud-Crab is the first victim to be hit by my spell casting dog. :D

 

I had to use the console command though, I had his combat set to NpcMarauderMage but he wouldn't cast on his own or his health was full.

 

The howl won't play correctly though, his head jerks up and plops back down without casting the protect spell.

Edited September 13, 2012 by scarycave

[scarycave]

I've tested with the target animation, it seems to play in the Animation preview. I've tried several animations for the CastSelf, the closest one came to actually finishing was the Scratching Animation, where he kept his foot to his head but never completed the animation. He still won't cast any spells on his own, I've tried changing his fighting style to hunger (which mainly focus with touch attacks) to no effect. I've set his magicka per level to 50 and his Magic is 50 and all spells are Apprentice leveled.