$12256 / $11500
I've noticed that if you carry a sword and a bow at the same time, when you shoot your bow, the sword will appear on your back for a split second. I'm wondering... is it possible to make this a permanent feature for all weapons? So that you'll always carry your weapons on your back, until you're in combat (which is when you'll hold your weapons in your hand, obviously.) This would be a pretty awesome feature. If anyone would be able to explain how to do this, please do. I'll definitely make it into a mod if I can find out how
Attatched a screenshot to show what I'm talking about.
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It's something I think about sometimes.
In the case of bow shooting I put away the melee weapon. One easy change would be if some melee weapons were always put away (e.g. at the hip or on the back), and are in the hand only when actually doing a melee attack. Or, e.g. a shield that is on the back and appears in the hand specifically when blocking. This could differ by individual weapon/shield, and nothing about the game engine would have to change.
The harder change would be as you suggest, have different animations when in combat and outside. It's a cosmetic-only change for a lot of work so it's unlikely to happen, unless we can think of a more general implementation that gives us new features too.
The first option is what I've been thinking. And I've been experimenting a little to see what would work. Changing the texture files would be simplest way, in theory. I was thinking I could layer say, a greatsword file over the file of the chainmail set and change the position of the sword when you're not in an attack or block animation (tried this with a shield too). But come to find out, none of the files line up...... So that was kind of shot down pretty quickly. That still seems like the easiest way to go, however. If the images could just line up then it would be smooth sailing for all the weapons and shields, I could have that done in just a few hours :P
Edit: I actually got this to work with the preview files. Those aren't a problem and line up perfectly. So its definitely possible. I'm going to start doing this with all the previews.
I can create one of the files as a test. Let me try the greatsword.
http://clintbellanger.net/temp/backpack_weapons.zip
Try this mod. (put it in your mods folder then enable it in the config screen). It makes the male's greatsword attach to the back instead of the hand during most animations.
You can see the illusion breaks for some directions (noticeable if you face northwest). That's because the draw order for holding a sword in the hand is different than having it on the back, so it doesn't draw in the correct order all the time.
The engine doesn't have a way to really solve this right now. Draw order is by slots, and that is sorted by the most common position of the slots (hand in this case, not back).
Can't give a specific item a unique draw order, because if several simultaneous items have unique draw orders then it's probably not possible to always solve the correct final order.
If all handheld items were usually sheathed there may be a new overall draw order that works better. E.g. if I make this mod so that all right-hand weapons are sheathed to the backpack, I think the mod could also specify a new engine draw order.
But it might be close enough that casual use is fine? Let me know what you think.
That works great, except the sword doesn't appear in your hand when you swing. Other than that, facing north isn't even a problem.
Hm, it appears in the hand when I swing. I'm using the latest engine build from the repo though, not the 0.18 release.