Archer character's - running out of arrows

Revenant · February 01, 2007, 01:21:55 PM

I had an idea about playing archer characters. (Eve of course is her own entity - I'd imagine she can morph surrounding wood or plant life into ammunition.)

But as for other non-superpowered archers, I was wondering how to set them up so that if too much energy is expended firing arrows off, they will run out, and will have to go the rest of the mission or scenario using their wits and their own two fists.

I think the FFX battery powered attribute is a slow-draining energy supply. Was there one (I'm not at my home PC) where they have energy that lasts until it is all used up? Then maybe he would take on an involuntary form so that the character mesh can look arrow-less (having the arrows in the quiver hexxed off for instance)

catwhowalksbyhimself · February 01, 2007, 01:26:12 PM

Well, FFX has a Trick Arrow attribute. If it doesn't work quite like you'd want it, you could probably modify it to act exactly as you want.

Revenant · February 01, 2007, 02:30:08 PM

Cat, is this a new attribute? I don't remember it in any other releases, I've only played FFX for the second game if that is the reason.

i just read the FFX manual on the website, I think Battery Powered is what I'm looking for. I might have been thinking of Deathwish (where the character's life meter slowly drains)

crimsonquill · February 01, 2007, 03:31:10 PM

Quote from: Revenant on February 01, 2007, 02:30:08 PM
Cat, is this a new attribute? I don't remember it in any other releases, I've only played FFX for the second game if that is the reason.

Trick Arrows were part of FFX 2 but had to be removed because FFvsT3R made it tricky of pull off the arrows that appear around the character and how they should be fired... same with Utilitly Belt. Belt was fixed in the 3.1 update but it took someone making a special arrow mesh and code rewriting for it to finally appear in FFX 3.2.

- CrimsonQuill

Revenant · February 01, 2007, 03:40:55 PM

That sounds pretty exciting.. I've been too busy to DL the new FFX and set it up.

I just realized that using battery powered might be nice, but if the archer runs into an energy-draining opponent, they're in for an unfair arrow theft!

lugaru · February 02, 2007, 04:32:36 AM

Hmm... for my characters such as the punisher I do accidental change at 0 energy (with battery powered of course) and this means all his guns need reloading. He then transforms into a punisher where everything is 0 cost (knives, punching, etc) but once his energy reloads he turns back into machine guns and grenades punisher.

So what am I saying? He's not going to reload his quiver but make sure he has plenty of good 0 cost powers and a transformation might be necesary to ensure that.

Talavar · February 02, 2007, 07:17:28 AM

I do something similar for archers and Batman, I give them a really low energy score, 2 or 3, combined with a custom attribute 'energy tanks,' which is really just a re-named 'solar stores.' Arrows, batarangs, and anything that should run out costs power; melee attacks cost none. I preferred this method to 'battery powered' because it gives so much energy, that conserving power scarecly matters in a standard rumble room mission.

tommyboy · February 02, 2007, 07:27:58 AM

Am I the only one to think that in most fights its perfectly feasable for an archer to retrieve his arrows?
I mean, yes, they shouldn't be infinite, but then if you want realism surely you should be more worried about how Iron Man or Superman fly than how many arrows Hawkeye carries, because the flying makes even less sense than the arrows.
In the real world, archers really do collect arrows to re-use after a fight, and even though some break, or are lost, or stuck in fleeing opponents, it make them more re-cycleable than, say, bullets or repulsor rays .

BentonGrey · February 02, 2007, 07:48:18 AM

That's true Tommy, but with GA, a lot of his arrows are expended in a certain way, either with a net popping out of them, exploding, or expending an electrical charge. Ha, but perhaps this is thinking too closely about it ^_^

Talavar · February 02, 2007, 08:33:41 AM

Quote from: tommyboy on February 02, 2007, 07:27:58 AM
Am I the only one to think that in most fights its perfectly feasable for an archer to retrieve his arrows?
I mean, yes, they shouldn't be infinite, but then if you want realism surely you should be more worried about how Iron Man or Superman fly than how many arrows Hawkeye carries, because the flying makes even less sense than the arrows.
In the real world, archers really do collect arrows to re-use after a fight, and even though some break, or are lost, or stuck in fleeing opponents, it make them more re-cycleable than, say, bullets or repulsor rays .

Regular arrows aren't really the issue, but I do want to limit the number of exploding, or electrically charged arrows (or batarangs) these types of characters can toss around. It's not so much a question of realism as one of strategy.

catwhowalksbyhimself · February 02, 2007, 08:37:57 AM

And that is *exactly* what the Trick Arrow attribute was made for. Since it's included to FFX 3.2, there's reason why you wouldn't want to use it.

BentonGrey · February 02, 2007, 08:52:14 AM

Hmm, looks like I'll have to check that out Cat :cool:

Revenant · February 02, 2007, 02:09:32 PM

I should have been more clear on that-- and tommyboy makes a good point-- I meant to limit the exploding, stun, and gas variety of one-shot arrows. Plain ole' pointy ones can be a zero-cost power.

And I'll definitely be using the Trick Arrow ability!

Urthman · February 04, 2007, 10:11:55 PM

The Weapon Master attribute is a bit of work to set up, but once you get it going, it works great and is a whole lot of fun. You could create a weapon called a bow, give it a set number of charges, and as many associated powers as you please. A bow with 30 charges and 7 arrow powers would let the archer use any combination of those 7 arrows 30 times in a mission. (30 smoke arrows or 15 smoke arrows and 15 net arrows, etc.)

Or you could create up to 3 "arrow bundles" each with their own charges. So you could have a bundle of 4 bomb arrows, a bundle of 10 net arrows, and a bundle of 12 smoke arrows. The point being to have lots of arrows, but only a few of the more powerful ones.

Or you could combine these approaches and have one of those arrow bundles be, say, 15 exploding arrows with different head attachments (smoke, stunning flash, fire bomb, etc.). That is, you'd have a weapon "exploding arrows" with 15 charges that could be used on your choice of 4 different arrow-powers. And then you could still have another bundle with only 4 charges that only has net arrows. This gives you more than just 3 choices of arrows, but still lets you group them so that there's fewer of the more powerful ones.

Having a suitable .nif for the weapon will be tricky. You don't want it to conflict with the mesh's bow and arrow. What I would suggest is using a .nif that looks like a single arrow and attach it to the character so it's floating behind his back near the quiver. You could make it an invisible .nif, but then you'd never be able to pick it up again when your character drops it. Weapons get dropped when a character is hit and stunned.

If you've got an arrow bundle with explosives, don't forget to give the .nif an area power to be triggered if it is destroyed.
It would be very cool for Hawkeye to have the bomb arrows knocked out of his grasp and then have someone accidentally destroy them and have them blow up in his face. Or for Green Arrow to get nailed by an area attack and have his net arrows get blown up, trapping him in his own nets.

catwhowalksbyhimself · February 04, 2007, 10:23:04 PM

Now why would you want to do that when Trick arrow already does what you describe, and has an included skinable arrow.nif to boot? Plus, no worries about the weapon nif interfering with the built in bow.

detourne_me · February 05, 2007, 06:13:04 AM

cat, im guessing you could also add other weapons too, so a character like arsenal could fully be explored in an interesting way... put him on a taskmaster mesh, with the bow and guns actually hexed out. but when you activate the weapon master attributes, you could use the .nifs you hexed out of the original mesh... so he could drop his gun or bow and arrows, and only have a limited supply of ammo.

and the keyframe versatility of a taskmaster mesh would allow you to fully customize each trick arrow or trick bullet with seperate animations.

does seem like it would be a lot of work to accomplish, but i think the end result would be incredibly realistic.

i did a similar thing before making almost all of batman batarangs weapons. trouble was i couldn't pick em back up again (or re-stock bataranggs with hidden stashes in maps) because Ren's FX didn't have a bounding box
but we got nifskope now, so maybe i'll revisit the idea... and give some of the FX bounding boxes.