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About this mod
Adds directional combat system to skyrim, inspired by Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Mordhau, For Honor, and other swordfighting games. Feel a real swordfighting experience instead of rolling around. Includes realistic animations. Now includes 1st person animations
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Warning: This makes 1vX fights VERY hard. Use a mod that allows you to 1v1 enemies, such as Wait Your Turn or bring lots of followers to soak hits. There is some 1vX mechanics that should help though.
It's highly recommended you run my other mod Bigger XPMSSE Skeleton Collision Bounds. There will be a considerable amount of clipping between NPCs otherwise
If you feel the mod is too hard, change the weapon speed settings and AI settings in the .ini file!
1st person animations have been added.
Want something more realistic (but not that realistic) than the usual action RPG mechanics? Tired of jumping and rolling around instead of clashing swords? Want some more depth to your melee combat? Then this mod is for you!
This is a directional combat mod, inspired by multiple swordfighting games such as Kingdom Come Deliverance and Mordhau but is not an exact copy of any one of them, just takes mechanics from them. It is intended to add new mechanics and depth to the relatively meh melee combat system in Skyrim right now.
Third person is designed to be used with True Directional Combat, in order to support KCD/For Honor style gameplay. Or, you can use mount and blade mode to freely fight without locking on.
There are a bunch of requirements so make sure you get those.
Think you can just install through mod manager and run nemesis. It's mostly an SKSE plugin. I wouldn't worry too much about uninstalling either. There are 2 nemesis directories, one for 3rd and one for 1st persons
DirectionModRaces.esp - This file is an optional file that allows support for non-weapon carrying creatures and NPCs to participate in directional combat. In order to add this to more races, you must add the custom keyword to the race you want to add it to. By default, this file modifies dwarven centurions and spheres, because they use swords. This file also modifies draugr behavior. This causes the vertices of draugr and skeletons to stretch! So be careful to disable it if you don't want it
DirectionModPerks.esp - Replaces perks in the melee combat trees with ones that support directional combat, since MCO and this mod remove power attacks.
DirectionModMovement.esp - Contains ranged movement speed changes to enforce melee combat.
Use your best judgement. This is a somewhat expansive mod but since its mostly an SKSE plugin everything should technically 'work'.
Combat behavior mods such as distance based combat probably will not work well. This is really meant to be used with MCO/SkySa and nothing else.
Full Precision Support. Precision is highly recommended as it changes up the hit times so moving around really matters and affects the time you should block
Not compatible with Elden Parry or any other mods that change bashing
Animated Armory supported. You do not need to do any animation replacers since the battleaxe/warhammer animations have been replaced with animations that are appropriate for pikes/halberds/poleaxes as well. You can treat all new and existing weapons as polearms in this way.
Important: The upper body and lower body run separate animations in order for direction switching to look right while moving. That means you probably want to delete the *_walk and *_run animations if you are running an animation replacer, since it will try to blend the _idle animation with the walk animations.
Some of these changes are modifiable with the Settings.ini file. More settings will be added over time
This should theoretically work with all enemies that hold a weapon, but animations may not work. I've included a plugin that changes draugr to use human behavior files but killmoves are totally broken with them and they look all fucked up. You fight so much draugr and skeletons that I think it's worth it though.
Please use https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13395 or something to remove killmoves
Attack in a specific direction and block in a specific direction. There are 4 directions:
Top Right/Top Left/Bottom Left/Bottom Right
You must block in the same direction as the attack in order to succeed, and you must attack in a direction that is not being blocked in order for it to land.
If you successfully block an attack, the attacker has an attack lockout of 1500ms. This is to ensure that the blocker has initiative to perform an attack, leading to a back and forth battle.
There are 3 major input methods for directions:
There is an additional For Honor mode now that only has 3 directions instead of 4, so you can play it in the same way For Honor does.
Parry Direction Commitment
Changing directions while blocking consumes stamina. Make sure you get the block direction right the first time, or else you'll get punished.
Each direction has full animation support for major weapon groups: 1 Handed Swords, 2 Handed Swords, Battleaxes (Thrusting Polearms) and Warhammers (Swinging Polearms). This consists of Idle/Blocking/Attack/PowerAttack animations. 4 animations * 4 directions * 4 weapon types means 64 new animations.
I have included 64 (HEMA inspired) animations with this mod. They were made by Cult skyrim. Thanks!
There are also first person animations included for 1h and 2h swords.
There is a masterstrike/chambering mechanic that allows you to defend and counterattack simultaneously. If you attack within 200ms (configurable) of another attack hitting you, you will automatically block and land an attack at the same time, while heavily staggering your opponent. This can happen to you too.
If you successfully land two attacks (not blocked) on different directions of a target within a certain time limit, your third attack will become an unblockable attack. Your indicator will become orange and your next attack will be unblockable, as well as dealing significantly increased damage. The only way to defend against this attack is through a masterstrike
Most mechanics will apply to the AI as well.
The AI will try to block in the same direction as your attack. Sometimes they are very, very good at this. Balance is a continuous tuning thing.
There are multiple difficulty levels. This is dependent on your current level and the enemies current level. Enemies that are significantly higher level than you can become ridiculously difficult to fight, constantly changing directions while attacking at your open directions, while enemies lower level should be much easier.
The AI gets easier or harder depending on how many attacks it lands or how many you land. Attacking in a predictable manner makes the AI harder, but attacking from a lot of different directions causes it to get easier.
AI will try to attack in specific patterns, but be careful. Sometimes they attack outside this pattern to keep you on your toes.
You can condition the AI to guard specific directions. This lets you open them up to attacks from other directions.
Stamina System
Attacks cost 10 percent of your current stamina, with an additional cost based on your weapon weight. Additionally, continuously attacking on the same direction will double the cost of stamina, as well as slightly reduces attack speed and damage. You are severely punished for spamming attacks.
Blocking does purely stamina damage now, unless you do not have enough stamina to block the attack. Attacks that you try to block while being out of stamina will heavily stagger you. The stamina damage dealt to block is multiplied by the weight of your blocking weapon versus the weight of their blocking weapon.
As a result, stamina regen is heavily increased. It is increased by a percentage of your base stamina as well so you are not punished by having more stamina for attacking.
The AttacksCostStamina setting disables this entire system.
Stagger System
This mod has its own stagger system implemented. This causes stagger only if you are hit while attacking, in order to enforce initiative.
Damage Changes
This mod comes with customizable modifiers for melee weapon damage and ranged damage. By default, melee weapon damage is cranked up while ranged damage is severely decreased. You shouldn't be using ranged with this mod anyway.
Weapon Rebalance
This is a thing you can disable which basically goes through and normalizes the attack speeds of all weapons, decreasing or increasing their damage based on if the weapon speed was altered. This is needed because weapon attack speeds REALLY affect the mod, so you don't want things that are too fast or slow. Not customizeable at the moment.
There is also a weapon speed multiplier which is a general thing. Slow it down if the mod is too high pace.
Movement Speed
I've altered the movement speed to slow down movement during combat. Otherwise you can just step out of attacks instead of blocking. Also ranged has significantly lowered movement speed because fuck ranged
Directional Power Attacks Removed
Sorry. Couldn't make it work well with the AI and there are too many animations to make.
Feinting
Feint your attack within the first 300ms with Q. AI can do the same.
Bashing
Bashing has been turned into a guardbreak/grab/kick tool. You can bash immediately with the F key. If your opponent is blocking then a bash can drain their stamina and stagger them, giving you an opening to attack. However, if you bash into an attacking opponent, you will be staggered instead. This is incompatible with mods that affect bashes such as elden parry.
Timed Parry
If you press the block button, 300ms after you start blocking a timed parry window will begin. This is a 333ms window where any attack that hits you will stagger the opponent. This or masterstrikes are the only thing that fully block power attacks.
DMCO dodge support
This mod has AI support for DMCO dodges, as well as contains custom modified DMCO dodge animations that are designed to fit this mod. Dodging is mainly used as a repositioning tool. Dodge rolls are completely removed with these animations, there is only step dodging. This is disabled by default, you must enable this in the Settings.ini file
Interface
You can customize it! Change the PNG files in the resources folder. The mod will color the images for you
This is what the Guard indicator looks like. Grey is neutral
Blue means blocking
Red means attacking
Fully orange means the next attack is unblockable.
This means you cannot attack. If your attack is blocked, you and NPCs will have an attack lockout where they cannot attack and only defend.
DAR Animation Support
DAR is required for animation support. This means that animations will not work on AE until DAR gets updated.
The directions are applied as a spell. Place animations into these folders in order to change the animation for a given direction.
Ersh for having code on Github for me to look at https://github.com/ersh1
D7ry for having code on Github for me to look at https://github.com/D7ry
Maxsu for having code on Github for me to look at https://github.com/max-su-2019
Monitor and Distar for helping me out with behavior stuff
Qudix for this https://github.com/Qudix/template-commonlibsse-ng
Nickanak and animated armor for some of the polearm bash animations I included
Cult for animations
Edg3lord for ADXP Mco animations I stole for certain power attacks
ImGui
My animations look weird when I walk
The bone weights in the behavior files expects the vanilla walk/run animations. If your walk/run animation replacers have angled hip rotations, it may cause the upper body to face in a different direction. If its a big problem let me know
The mod is way too hard
Change the AIDifficultyMult in the Settings.ini file if you want to make the AI easier. There are lots of other knobs in the Settings.ini file to change the difficulty as well.
X Feature does not work
Let me know which one.
1st person isnt working
1st person has a seperate nemesis folder, you need to enable it as well
I don't like the animations that come with the mod
Thats rough. You can replace them with DAR.
It doesn't work on AE!
That's because the mod requires DAR. Once DAR works on AE (unknown when), it will work.
Can I use something besides MCO?
Yes, although the annotations may make the comboing difficult. It relies on the annotation `MCO_WinOpen` for comboing attacks from different directions. It will work without it, but you will have to wait for the entire attack animation to end before switching directions.
Will you make a 1st person version?
That is 48 more animations and reconstruction of a more complicated 1st person behavior animation graph.
Help! My custom animations don't combo right
So here's how it works: Each direction is considered a perk for the purposes of DAR. That means when you add MCO annotations, you need to add the transition to an attack that also exists in another direction.
For example, if you Direction1 has attack1 and attack2, but direction2 only has attack1, you cannot transition to attack2 if you are switching directions away from attack1. I would make sure that each attack animation chain can safely chain to each direction.
There's a reason why I only have attack1 for each direction.
Source
https://github.com/machinegod420/SkyrimDirectionalCombat
It's highly recommended you run my other mod Bigger XPMSSE Skeleton Collision Bounds. There will be a considerable amount of clipping between NPCs otherwise
If you feel the mod is too hard, change the weapon speed settings and AI settings in the .ini file!
1st person animations have been added.
Skyrim Directional Combat
Want something more realistic (but not that realistic) than the usual action RPG mechanics? Tired of jumping and rolling around instead of clashing swords? Want some more depth to your melee combat? Then this mod is for you!
This is a directional combat mod, inspired by multiple swordfighting games such as Kingdom Come Deliverance and Mordhau but is not an exact copy of any one of them, just takes mechanics from them. It is intended to add new mechanics and depth to the relatively meh melee combat system in Skyrim right now.
Third person is designed to be used with True Directional Combat, in order to support KCD/For Honor style gameplay. Or, you can use mount and blade mode to freely fight without locking on.
How To Install
There are a bunch of requirements so make sure you get those.
Think you can just install through mod manager and run nemesis. It's mostly an SKSE plugin. I wouldn't worry too much about uninstalling either. There are 2 nemesis directories, one for 3rd and one for 1st persons
DirectionModRaces.esp - This file is an optional file that allows support for non-weapon carrying creatures and NPCs to participate in directional combat. In order to add this to more races, you must add the custom keyword to the race you want to add it to. By default, this file modifies dwarven centurions and spheres, because they use swords. This file also modifies draugr behavior. This causes the vertices of draugr and skeletons to stretch! So be careful to disable it if you don't want it
DirectionModPerks.esp - Replaces perks in the melee combat trees with ones that support directional combat, since MCO and this mod remove power attacks.
DirectionModMovement.esp - Contains ranged movement speed changes to enforce melee combat.
Compatibility
Use your best judgement. This is a somewhat expansive mod but since its mostly an SKSE plugin everything should technically 'work'.
Combat behavior mods such as distance based combat probably will not work well. This is really meant to be used with MCO/SkySa and nothing else.
Full Precision Support. Precision is highly recommended as it changes up the hit times so moving around really matters and affects the time you should block
Not compatible with Elden Parry or any other mods that change bashing
Animated Armory supported. You do not need to do any animation replacers since the battleaxe/warhammer animations have been replaced with animations that are appropriate for pikes/halberds/poleaxes as well. You can treat all new and existing weapons as polearms in this way.
Important: The upper body and lower body run separate animations in order for direction switching to look right while moving. That means you probably want to delete the *_walk and *_run animations if you are running an animation replacer, since it will try to blend the _idle animation with the walk animations.
Mechanics and Changes
Some of these changes are modifiable with the Settings.ini file. More settings will be added over time
This should theoretically work with all enemies that hold a weapon, but animations may not work. I've included a plugin that changes draugr to use human behavior files but killmoves are totally broken with them and they look all fucked up. You fight so much draugr and skeletons that I think it's worth it though.
Please use https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13395 or something to remove killmoves
Directional Block/Attack
Attack in a specific direction and block in a specific direction. There are 4 directions:
Top Right/Top Left/Bottom Left/Bottom Right
You must block in the same direction as the attack in order to succeed, and you must attack in a direction that is not being blocked in order for it to land.
If you successfully block an attack, the attacker has an attack lockout of 1500ms. This is to ensure that the blocker has initiative to perform an attack, leading to a back and forth battle.
There are 3 major input methods for directions:
- Mouse only. I highly recommend a lock on mod if you are doing this way, since looking in different directions can cause you to change directions when you don't want to. Or, you can use mount and blade mode to switch directions.
- Mouse with a keyboard modifier. Use a modifier key you have to hold down to change directions with a mouse
- Keyboard press
There is an additional For Honor mode now that only has 3 directions instead of 4, so you can play it in the same way For Honor does.
Parry Direction Commitment
Changing directions while blocking consumes stamina. Make sure you get the block direction right the first time, or else you'll get punished.
Full Animation Support
Each direction has full animation support for major weapon groups: 1 Handed Swords, 2 Handed Swords, Battleaxes (Thrusting Polearms) and Warhammers (Swinging Polearms). This consists of Idle/Blocking/Attack/PowerAttack animations. 4 animations * 4 directions * 4 weapon types means 64 new animations.
I have included 64 (HEMA inspired) animations with this mod. They were made by Cult skyrim. Thanks!
There are also first person animations included for 1h and 2h swords.
Masterstrike/Chambering
There is a masterstrike/chambering mechanic that allows you to defend and counterattack simultaneously. If you attack within 200ms (configurable) of another attack hitting you, you will automatically block and land an attack at the same time, while heavily staggering your opponent. This can happen to you too.
Combos/Unblockable Attacks
If you successfully land two attacks (not blocked) on different directions of a target within a certain time limit, your third attack will become an unblockable attack. Your indicator will become orange and your next attack will be unblockable, as well as dealing significantly increased damage. The only way to defend against this attack is through a masterstrike
AI Support
Most mechanics will apply to the AI as well.
The AI will try to block in the same direction as your attack. Sometimes they are very, very good at this. Balance is a continuous tuning thing.
There are multiple difficulty levels. This is dependent on your current level and the enemies current level. Enemies that are significantly higher level than you can become ridiculously difficult to fight, constantly changing directions while attacking at your open directions, while enemies lower level should be much easier.
The AI gets easier or harder depending on how many attacks it lands or how many you land. Attacking in a predictable manner makes the AI harder, but attacking from a lot of different directions causes it to get easier.
AI will try to attack in specific patterns, but be careful. Sometimes they attack outside this pattern to keep you on your toes.
You can condition the AI to guard specific directions. This lets you open them up to attacks from other directions.
Stamina System
Attacks cost 10 percent of your current stamina, with an additional cost based on your weapon weight. Additionally, continuously attacking on the same direction will double the cost of stamina, as well as slightly reduces attack speed and damage. You are severely punished for spamming attacks.
Blocking does purely stamina damage now, unless you do not have enough stamina to block the attack. Attacks that you try to block while being out of stamina will heavily stagger you. The stamina damage dealt to block is multiplied by the weight of your blocking weapon versus the weight of their blocking weapon.
As a result, stamina regen is heavily increased. It is increased by a percentage of your base stamina as well so you are not punished by having more stamina for attacking.
The AttacksCostStamina setting disables this entire system.
Stagger System
This mod has its own stagger system implemented. This causes stagger only if you are hit while attacking, in order to enforce initiative.
Damage Changes
This mod comes with customizable modifiers for melee weapon damage and ranged damage. By default, melee weapon damage is cranked up while ranged damage is severely decreased. You shouldn't be using ranged with this mod anyway.
Weapon Rebalance
This is a thing you can disable which basically goes through and normalizes the attack speeds of all weapons, decreasing or increasing their damage based on if the weapon speed was altered. This is needed because weapon attack speeds REALLY affect the mod, so you don't want things that are too fast or slow. Not customizeable at the moment.
There is also a weapon speed multiplier which is a general thing. Slow it down if the mod is too high pace.
Movement Speed
I've altered the movement speed to slow down movement during combat. Otherwise you can just step out of attacks instead of blocking. Also ranged has significantly lowered movement speed because fuck ranged
Directional Power Attacks Removed
Sorry. Couldn't make it work well with the AI and there are too many animations to make.
Feinting
Feint your attack within the first 300ms with Q. AI can do the same.
Bashing
Bashing has been turned into a guardbreak/grab/kick tool. You can bash immediately with the F key. If your opponent is blocking then a bash can drain their stamina and stagger them, giving you an opening to attack. However, if you bash into an attacking opponent, you will be staggered instead. This is incompatible with mods that affect bashes such as elden parry.
Timed Parry
If you press the block button, 300ms after you start blocking a timed parry window will begin. This is a 333ms window where any attack that hits you will stagger the opponent. This or masterstrikes are the only thing that fully block power attacks.
DMCO dodge support
This mod has AI support for DMCO dodges, as well as contains custom modified DMCO dodge animations that are designed to fit this mod. Dodging is mainly used as a repositioning tool. Dodge rolls are completely removed with these animations, there is only step dodging. This is disabled by default, you must enable this in the Settings.ini file
Interface
You can customize it! Change the PNG files in the resources folder. The mod will color the images for you
This is what the Guard indicator looks like. Grey is neutral
Blue means blocking
Red means attacking
Fully orange means the next attack is unblockable.
This means you cannot attack. If your attack is blocked, you and NPCs will have an attack lockout where they cannot attack and only defend.
DAR Animation Support
DAR is required for animation support. This means that animations will not work on AE until DAR gets updated.
The directions are applied as a spell. Place animations into these folders in order to change the animation for a given direction.
Credits
Ersh for having code on Github for me to look at https://github.com/ersh1
D7ry for having code on Github for me to look at https://github.com/D7ry
Maxsu for having code on Github for me to look at https://github.com/max-su-2019
Monitor and Distar for helping me out with behavior stuff
Qudix for this https://github.com/Qudix/template-commonlibsse-ng
Nickanak and animated armor for some of the polearm bash animations I included
Cult for animations
Edg3lord for ADXP Mco animations I stole for certain power attacks
ImGui
FAQ
My animations look weird when I walk
The bone weights in the behavior files expects the vanilla walk/run animations. If your walk/run animation replacers have angled hip rotations, it may cause the upper body to face in a different direction. If its a big problem let me know
The mod is way too hard
Change the AIDifficultyMult in the Settings.ini file if you want to make the AI easier. There are lots of other knobs in the Settings.ini file to change the difficulty as well.
X Feature does not work
Let me know which one.
1st person isnt working
1st person has a seperate nemesis folder, you need to enable it as well
I don't like the animations that come with the mod
Thats rough. You can replace them with DAR.
It doesn't work on AE!
That's because the mod requires DAR. Once DAR works on AE (unknown when), it will work.
Can I use something besides MCO?
Yes, although the annotations may make the comboing difficult. It relies on the annotation `MCO_WinOpen` for comboing attacks from different directions. It will work without it, but you will have to wait for the entire attack animation to end before switching directions.
Will you make a 1st person version?
That is 48 more animations and reconstruction of a more complicated 1st person behavior animation graph.
Help! My custom animations don't combo right
So here's how it works: Each direction is considered a perk for the purposes of DAR. That means when you add MCO annotations, you need to add the transition to an attack that also exists in another direction.
For example, if you Direction1 has attack1 and attack2, but direction2 only has attack1, you cannot transition to attack2 if you are switching directions away from attack1. I would make sure that each attack animation chain can safely chain to each direction.
There's a reason why I only have attack1 for each direction.
Source
https://github.com/machinegod420/SkyrimDirectionalCombat