Too many working parts trying to do too much all at once and nothing feels right. I'm referring to both this archived version and the current ambidexterity prototype. Here is some advice from an old retired modder:
- sparks upon hitting objects with a weapon is cool. That should be a stand alone mod for DFU 1.0
- having the weapon and shield move whilst walking is cool. That too should be a stand alone mod.
These two as modlets immediately improve the quality of DFU gameplay, but when you try to force everything into one glorious package all the broken stuff will overshadow the good and very few will bother with it.
I hope this is ok to comment on here, but I've been playing your "successor" to this mod - Ambidexterity Module - which hasn't been released here and wanted to give some input.
First, issues and complaints:
Upon installing I ran into the same issue many have had: it wasn't working right because of the input config. Changing the offhand button to Mouse0 solved the issue. It makes sense to have the left button control the left hand and right for right. Why not make this the default input? Or, at least make a massive note nobody can miss telling them that just installing the mod won't work with Mouse1 being the default.
Second, the default values in the text file resulted in painfully slow attacks. With a modest speed of 64 during testing, I still had by far the slowest attack speed of anything in the game. Tweaking the values helped out, but my opinion is that the starting wind-up before you actually swing makes combat feel clunky in general. This is compounded by a seeming randomness in the responsiveness of the controls. Also, the wind up plays the default attack sound which is confusing - you hear a blade swipe but in all reality your character was just lifting the sword up first. I'm largely ok with this swing telegraph as a concept, but it needs smoothed out.
While there's a case to be made for losing the diagonal attacks with the smooth animations not being a big deal, I think it's worth the effort to try to accomplish for reasons I'll state below in the "good" aspects.
The visual indication of parrying is barely noticeable in the heat of combat. I often found myself throwing up my hands and forgetting about it because it seemed unreliable. The player needs better feedback of some kind. I think some of my problem with it was how slow the animation was - it would take 2-3 seconds for an animation to finish before I knew for sure if I'd successfully parried or accidentally used an attack instead.
Overall, combat with this installed feels floaty and almost out of my control. I certainly wouldn't want to make enemies even stronger as suggested since my attacks are slower and clumsier than all of my enemies. Getting attacked by a group is completely hopeless now.
Now the good!:
Despite that, I see the potential.
I thought it would be fun to try the default drag attacks with the weapon collisions enabled. This could make for a great dynamic in dungeons where you opt to thrust way more often to avoid clanging your weapon against the wall and missing. This would negate the cheese quite a bit with having two fast weapons swinging around wildly since your mouse movement will slow you down anyway. In fact this could almost make for the most engaging combat in the series! The unresponsiveness kind of ruined the fun, though. Again, between having to wait for the wind up and the slowness of attacks, it felt like my mouse input was inconsistent.
The smooth animations are actually nice when the rest of the game is updated graphically. In regards to the above paragraph, this is where I think those smooth diagonals would really shine.
If it could be made buttery smooth, this mod would be legendary. The value system alone would make for good variety in the weapons, having super fast but short range daggers and slower but longer reaching swords and such. Would be great trying to keep enemies at a distance with sword thrusts and going ham with a dagger when they get in your face.
Big fan of all the work you've put into this and your other mods! Take care.
Hopefully this won’t read as disrespectful, but how implausible would an “ultra-light” version/fork of the mod be that just draws the shield and doesn’t change how shields work? Call me weird but I like the old-school jank of Daggerfall mechanics but I do miss the visuals of having a shield.
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Go here for a description and the link to the github. Will get official release soon.
https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?t=3948
- sparks upon hitting objects with a weapon is cool. That should be a stand alone mod for DFU 1.0
- having the weapon and shield move whilst walking is cool. That too should be a stand alone mod.
These two as modlets immediately improve the quality of DFU gameplay, but when you try to force everything into one glorious package all the broken stuff will overshadow the good and very few will bother with it.
Just my opinion (from a useless old fart)
First, issues and complaints:
Upon installing I ran into the same issue many have had: it wasn't working right because of the input config. Changing the offhand button to Mouse0 solved the issue. It makes sense to have the left button control the left hand and right for right. Why not make this the default input? Or, at least make a massive note nobody can miss telling them that just installing the mod won't work with Mouse1 being the default.
Second, the default values in the text file resulted in painfully slow attacks. With a modest speed of 64 during testing, I still had by far the slowest attack speed of anything in the game. Tweaking the values helped out, but my opinion is that the starting wind-up before you actually swing makes combat feel clunky in general. This is compounded by a seeming randomness in the responsiveness of the controls. Also, the wind up plays the default attack sound which is confusing - you hear a blade swipe but in all reality your character was just lifting the sword up first. I'm largely ok with this swing telegraph as a concept, but it needs smoothed out.
While there's a case to be made for losing the diagonal attacks with the smooth animations not being a big deal, I think it's worth the effort to try to accomplish for reasons I'll state below in the "good" aspects.
The visual indication of parrying is barely noticeable in the heat of combat. I often found myself throwing up my hands and forgetting about it because it seemed unreliable. The player needs better feedback of some kind. I think some of my problem with it was how slow the animation was - it would take 2-3 seconds for an animation to finish before I knew for sure if I'd successfully parried or accidentally used an attack instead.
Overall, combat with this installed feels floaty and almost out of my control. I certainly wouldn't want to make enemies even stronger as suggested since my attacks are slower and clumsier than all of my enemies. Getting attacked by a group is completely hopeless now.
Now the good!:
Despite that, I see the potential.
I thought it would be fun to try the default drag attacks with the weapon collisions enabled. This could make for a great dynamic in dungeons where you opt to thrust way more often to avoid clanging your weapon against the wall and missing. This would negate the cheese quite a bit with having two fast weapons swinging around wildly since your mouse movement will slow you down anyway. In fact this could almost make for the most engaging combat in the series! The unresponsiveness kind of ruined the fun, though. Again, between having to wait for the wind up and the slowness of attacks, it felt like my mouse input was inconsistent.
The smooth animations are actually nice when the rest of the game is updated graphically. In regards to the above paragraph, this is where I think those smooth diagonals would really shine.
If it could be made buttery smooth, this mod would be legendary. The value system alone would make for good variety in the weapons, having super fast but short range daggers and slower but longer reaching swords and such. Would be great trying to keep enemies at a distance with sword thrusts and going ham with a dagger when they get in your face.
Big fan of all the work you've put into this and your other mods! Take care.
Tried changing iteract with center object to another button from RMB but didn't matter.