Samurai: Hai!

[Corben Dallas]

Ancient Chinese saying: "Those who say it can't be done should not interrupt those already doing it".  

War is a game of chance. Train all you like, but run into a battlefield with either sword or gun, and you may last five seconds, five days, or five years. Becoming good at picking people off in OFP is far from real, so I'm not entertaining that much of an idea of 'reality' to begin with.

I see your points, but I think you perhaps aren't seeing past the apparent limitations, nor taking into account the huge skills some people have in modifying OFP.

Nothing is perfect, and the perfect game doesn't yet exist - never will, either. However, bringing such an atmospheric theme and gaming arena to OFP has to be a fun thing, and if done well the limitations of the game engine won't seem so obvious. Heck, some guys even made a roof jumper who does slow-mo Matrix leaps off buildings, from what I've read!

More is possible, and often even the very simple can be surprising.

[XCess]

A Samurai has a bit moreskill than a ten year old playing weith a plastic sword from Toys R Us. Your characters will have even less skill than those children as they will only slice in one way.  It won't seem like a sword fight.. you can't even parry. All yu can do is run at somebody, click, hope they dont swing first, retreat and repeat. No fun.

[Lean Bear]

I'm afraid Corben's right here, XCess.

This has the potential to be a great mod. Once the fighting system gets worked out - even with only one repetitive atack - we can make it much more exciting.

btw Parrying is very easy to do

[Corben Dallas]

Well, a moderator may slap our wrists for going off topic a bit here (though it does concern the addon).

People with great skills were/are often killed in seconds in a battle. The luck (or bad luck) of the draw. Samurai fights seldom lasted long apart from in a few instances, neither do people up against a mob weilding sticks and rocks - it's usually a few hits, and sayonara my friend.

So, I don't think of this as a terrible limitation. After all OFP gameplay as it is uses little apart from the basic running, lying down and shooting, etc. I can see no reason why this can't be converted into bows, sticks, swords, etc., even if it needs a few different classes of character to stop it looking too 'samey'.

When all's said and done, if you don't like it go for something else, but please stop trying to wreck something before it's even started. If it turns out well, you may just enjoy it. If it doesn't you can say, "I told you so". Even in that instance though, it may just be your opinion, and others, including myself, may get countless hours of fun out of it. Which is what games are about -aren't they..?

Enjoy what you enjoy, and contribute what you can - seems to be a kind of unofficial OFPEC motto to me.  

So, addon ideas, anyone..?

[XCess]

Lol i'm not trying to ruin it... just trying to see  if you can think of ways to get past the problems I'mm putting foward. I haven't seen any ideas at all on how to get past them. I wanna see this working out because if it does then it will be great, but if it's done half assed then no.

[Corben Dallas]

Ok - LOL too! - I'll consider you 'Devil's advocate', just trying to point out flaws.

(Trying desperately to keep this on topic...)

Ok, the addon idea. Someone with more anim/addon skills than me (I'm good with creative and organisational stuff) makes a 'peasant' who carrys a stick in his belt. (Not hard to see that it can become a sword in a new class).

The peasant addon gives a character who can properly draw his stick, and on attack lifts it quickly, striking from say top-right to bottom-left across his opponent. Damage is set to take say 5 hits to kill. An ok addon, and some funny demo fight missions can be created.

Ok, not too bad, but gets boring quickly because as you say, limited animation. So, we create a few more: some poke, some strike differently, some don't have sticks but throw rocks - already the fights with groups take on a new dimension.

So then we go for more skilled aristocracy with longer sticks, different anims for different classes, different weapons, and then on to the deadliest of all; the Samurai.

Different clothing, gender, heights of characters, colour and type of weapon, damage caused - all these make up for the small limitation of pre-set animation. After all, OFP gameplay is far more subtle than Tenchu style running in and looking cool by doing three moves per kill. This is more about war, about battles with random outcomes, where even the skilled can be skewered by a loon with a spear.

What's more, play a skilled monk, wandering the land; feared when a weapon is drawn, but accepted as a peasant when it isn't. A Samurai though? Not so. Or play a Lord who commands some Ronin he's hired...

Get the idea..? With the skills the OPFEC community possess this can be absolutely awesome.

PS: Done half-assed doesn't come into it - what a waste of time that would be. Full-assed or nothing at all!  

[XCess]

You mentioned playing as a monk. Shaolin fighting monk or the like I suppose. Now.. Imagine being the standard playing browsing the news sites when he comes across Samurai: Hai. they think "OH COOL I GET TO DO SOME KICK ASS KUNG FU SHIT", and they hit download... with the inevitable 100mb+ download size. An hour or a day later they install the mod and run it only to find they can do only one move per class. Imagine the dissapointment.
You seriosuly NEED to find a way to get past the single animation problem, switchMove maybe? Using event handlers, about ten different "weapons". foward thrust, diagonal left slice etc. It may sound annoying doing the repeated presses of space bar but it's better than just running in hitting mouse key and running back. And also the parries could be detected this way.. using the event handlers you can find out which way the weapon came from, find their last move and give a partially random chance of parry based on that information.. as well as direction and position.

Some ideas. although as usual I'm not sure if i made myself clear.

[Corben Dallas]

Hmmm...

Well, ok, I'm not going to bother too much about the 100mb download stuff. I think we'll keep it smaller than that, for example modularise it. Anyway...

In the first instance, if it is a one-shot job, then it'll be either a punch to damage, or a stick, or a sword - whatever.

Do you know, incidentally, that most successful martial artists (and I don't mean the superb fighters, I mean those who are known to have been killers) perfected just one strike, or one weapon strike? Their timing was superb, and they knew one strike killed, or they were killled. You can look this up.

Anyway, going on to more 'interesting fights' in OFP...

I like your idea for different anims, even if it means hiting SPACE as you say. The thing is, I don't think it has to be turned into Tenchu or Ninja Gaiden, etc. OFP is about far more than that, including freedom of movement, the chaos of war, etc.

My monk idea is more of a character who has good combat skills, ie., his/her hits do a lot of damage, but being overwhelmed by numbers, or caught with some SOB with a sword is curtains - unless they run like hell of course...

I'm not trying to make OFP into a one-on-one fight game, as there are many other games which do that better. I mean, if you want Splinter Cell, why play OFP? I think what we need to do, those of us who feel OFP: Ancient Japan is a cool mod to create, is to focus on the OFP game engine's strengths, and work around the 'weaknesses'.

For example, pretty much all we have now is run, crouch, dive, shoot. Oh, and lots of weapons. So, think about that in Old Japan terms. Run, crouch, dive, shoot. Hmm... and with what weapons. And what else can be added..? It's got to be good.

Just needs thinking about, and thanks for your continuing thoughts on it - every comment will make it better in the long run, and I can just see this running, and people going, "Holy cremoli - why didn't they do this before..?!"

[Coldfire]

One thing that I thought would be obvious... you could have each weapon have different "firing modes" just like the default guns in OFP... imagine, your holding a katana, you press the "fire" button and your character on screen does a horizontal slash. You press "space" (or whatever switch weapon thing you use) and fire again and your character stabs forwards... it'd be just like switching between "Semi" and "burst" modes on an M-16 in the orgional OFP.

[Corben Dallas]

Yep, could be good. One thing though - isn't switching weapons slow? Seems so to me. Maybe it doen't have to be that slow? Perhaps switching could be instant, so it would make for different moves, etc?

Even if it was only 3 different slashes it would look cool, with any of the short stick, long stick, and sword weapons.

Heck, if anyone can animate an old master in a flowing robe crouching and sweeping a mighty sword which decapitates his opponent... Ah, never mind. No need to re-enact old divorce cases...  

[Coldfire]

no I'm talking about switchinbg firing moes, not weapons. It's like how in the orgional OFP you press a button and switch to one firing mode, you press it again and your using grenades, you press it a third time your back to the default firing mode.

[Corben Dallas]

Ahhh - makes sense.

Now, can you make it work..? With a peasant holding a stick? Who can become a lord with a bigger stick..?

[Coldfire]

I can't, but I'm sure there are people who can. It wouldn't be too hard you just need the anims. you could do the same with hand-to-hand combat. One mode to punch, another to kick, etc.

[XCess]

Can you find firing mode with the EH though? Because that would be needed for both animations and finding where the hit will be. I think weapon switching is only slow tdue to the animations.

[Chris Death]

Well, after little bit thinking again i came to the conclusion
that it could theoretically be possible to do what you want
Corben (at least what belongs to the different animations).

But:

Not by switching different firemodes, as there would be a
better way;

Eventhandler Fired is a good start, but instead of using some
modified firing animations (note that you're very limited
with these), you should just use various random switchmove
animations, activated by the eventhandler.
The firemode switching could then again be used to switch
between defensife and offensive moves  

Now this animation question could be solved, but there
are still two big big problems.

A: the hit/damage detection
If the mod should look a little bit like quality and not turn into
a one-time try, you need a working hit-detection - and that's
the problem - it's a nogo

B: I suggest you to ask Sanctuary about what he thinks
of how much effort this will take, as he has most experience
in the comunity (at least what i know) with creating custom
animations. And what i've read he said that creating the patrol
packs was a pain in the ass.

Note that compared to your idea of Samurai hooray Sanctuary's
animation packs were still very close to the original animations,
but still he said that making the transitions between the different
animations was so much work that he don't want have to make
this again. In your case i even don't want think about it.

However - i wish you success with this project, but at the moment
i'm still not sure if your mod will see it's first light before armed
assault 2.

~S~ CD