SigniferOne's Animations Pack

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

I found this mod included as part of someone's Roman re-skin and re-model mod.

I've a question, though, since I have an issue that's potentially caused by this mod. I've noticed that when *any* unit marches, even a non-Roman one, the formations tend to be ragged and incohesive, as if the soldiers don't know where to do. This is particularly disturbing, since the measured, even marches of the original game were rather good--especially for the Roman units. Is there any way to rectify this?

[masterj3123]

signiferone i no u are probably extremly busy with all of these animations u are working on but u are the only animatior i know. i was jsut wondering if u would like to make the shield wall. i have a thread of it down below this thread. if u dont then thats ok but if u can i would really appreciate it.

[Darkragnar]

nice work SigniferOne but can i suggest u angle the shield better in mid flight because the shield in you new animation is perpendicular to the ground, it would be better if the soldier made 45 degree with his shield because no only will the force applied on the enemy soldier will be downwards and forward which makes the enemy fall down on the ground, the solider doing to jumping will also avoid breaking his wrist when he slams the shield on the enemy.

[SigniferOne]

The shield is the way it is for the soldier to keep balance. He cannot employ his entire weight to crush the enemy soldiers, cos he'll fall down himself. So he's using the top, propped by the shoulder, to apply the force, but is prepared to use the bottom if he loses balance upon landing.

master, as I already said to you in another thread, just wait two months and CA will come up with a much better shield wall than we could ever do on our own. Right now the closest you have to a shield wall are my hoplite anims, with the soldiers holding the shields close to their body, and perpendicular. If you make the shields big enough, they will even overlap. But no programming effects of this can be done, which is why CA's expansion will be so valuable in this respect.

Gaius Statius, I have enocuntered this problem during my development, I think it is more of a result of my earlier releases than anything else, because I have not seen this behavior in the latest version. Also, can you tell me whose mod is using my animations? I don't remember giving any permissions to any mods you describe, and as I state in my readme, all use of my anims by other mods is explicitly forbidden unless permission is given.

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

I'll retrieve a link to that person's mod shortly.

As for the animations--no, I tried downloading the newest version simply to make sure, and I still have the same problem. Some units mill about as if they're confused, and the legions move ridiculously fast--as if they're always charging--and have trouble keeping their formation. Sometimes they do move properly, but then they lose it again. The enemy units act similarly.

EDIT: here

Your mod is in the .rar file of that mod. It's included intact as a full zip I think, so they didn't just implement your stuff--it still has your name and textfiles in it, but it is packaged with the other one.

[Trajan]

The new charge jump attack animation is another important Roman animation that CA forgot to put in. I can't believe you did it. Good job SigniferOne.

[Darkragnar]

-The shield is the way it is for the soldier to keep balance. He cannot employ his entire weight to crush the enemy soldiers, cos he'll fall down himself. So he's using the top, propped by the shoulder, to apply the force, but is prepared to use the bottom if he loses balance upon landing.

but wont the enemy soldier move into the guys lower part of the shield and change the angle of the shield so that the legionare'r shoulders slide forward hence his whole upperbody slides forward making him unblanced and hence falling on his face? that could also happen if the man is jumping into a bigger man who has more body mass then the roman ?

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

Mm, it's definately the mod. I restored my backup animations and changed all the Roman fs_s1_gladius skeletons back to fs_swordsman, and everything is back to normal. The non-modified units work normally again too...

SigniferOne, it's a brilliant mod and it's unfortunate that a problem such as this makes the game unplayable (since nothing works in battle when they're all confused), because I did like the mod. I don't care for archers and never use them, and phalanxes look fine to me--but I absolutely loved the accurate Roman warfare, and I was pleased to see Roman styles differentiated for once. I hope you can find a fix for this problem soon.

EDIT: Problem solved. I was a goofball and didn't upgrade to 1.2. Whoops.

That meant, of course, that I had to painstakingly re-edit every single change I ever made to most of the game's files. Fortunately I've the benefit of hindsight and I already knew what to fix, so that's good.

[Captian Marcus Cornelius]

i cant get thisd mod to work on SPQR for some sreson if set it up like you said but every time i enter a battle whith any of these units the game CTD.....

[SigniferOne]

Gaius Statius, whew... goofball indeed! I was starting to get concerned...

Captain Marcus, you will have more chance asking about this in SPQR's thread, because I'm not too familiar with each mod's configuration. I have heard that SPQR makes some anims modifications itself, which may cause the problem you're having.

Simetrical,

First off as far as I know, the Roman foot was shorter than the modern foot. Secondly, Polybius says that the legionary, like the phalangite, occupies 3 feet in breadth himself, which is way shorter than the modern foot. Thirdly, exactly as I said, "each men must keep 3 feet of distance from the man next to him", not 6 feet as EKG said. However, after reading Polybius' passage I see that they were even closer-ordered than before, because even the 3 feet distance apart that they had was measured by a shorter foot than I thought originally. So I'm not sure where your argument lies in. Basically Polybius says that each Roman soldier has a Roman foot and a half of space on each side, to do some manoevering and dodging and combat. That is adequate space for the task, but in absolute terms not that much space at all!

[Chilly5]

ey-a Signifer, can i have permission to use ur barb sword animation (the swinging one) for a mini mod of mine to create a single unit of thracian macemen? the barb animation works well (better than fs_swordsman), cause no one ever stabs with a mace, and the barb sword is a slashing animation. however, since i am not good with animating, i will need to include ur intire latest version in the mod, since i do not know wat exactly to copy and paste for only the barb animation.

[Simetrical]

First off as far as I know, the Roman foot was shorter than the modern foot.

Only slightly (insert standard Wikipedia disclaimer here).

. . . exactly as I said, "each men must keep 3 feet of distance from the man next to him", not 6 feet as EKG said.

Ah, well, there are two ways of measuring. Either you measure from each man's right shoulder to the left shoulder of the one to his right (exclusive measurement), or you measure from one man's right shoulder to the next man's right shoulder (inclusive measurement). By the former measurement, the distance is three feet, as you said; by the latter, it's six feet. I don't know which one EKG meant—I had assumed you were both talking inclusively, but clearly you at least weren't.

-Simetrical

[{H0sPiTalLeR}]

Excellent jumping animation sig. I'm glad you took my idea into account. :wink:

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

Cavalry seem to get the occasional flutter when charging, but everyone else seems okay.

[EKG]

According to Dupuy&Dupuy's military history book, each soldier circa second Punic war had about a six foot diameter circle. Excepting velites probably, I don't have the book with me right now so I don't know... I would be willing to accept the fact that throughout over 500 years there is going to be a hell of a lot of change, so... who knows?

Does anyone know how much the armour and shield in that animation weigh, in addition to the shield and helmet?

Lorica Segmentata: 17 pounds 6 ounces, this is the armour used by 2nd century AD legionaries
Scutum: 12 pounds, this was the shield those same legionaries generally used, the one from the Punic wars was around 22 pounds.
The helmet generally weighed 4-5 pounds.

In addition to the different kinds of belts, dagger and sword...

Now I understand that this would not be the soldier in your pic, but don't all the Romans jump in that?

My point is would they really be jumping 3 feet in the air?

BTW in the gladius animation is the sword edge up and down or left to right? I believe they used it horizontally to slip in between the ribs. I do agree that slashing/chopping was almost certainly very rare with the gladius, and I'm glad you made an animation to reflect that. Also big thanks for the hoplite animations, they truly are fantastic!!

[SigniferOne]

I have been working on some speeds for different animals. There will be a new heavy horse skeleton, which will be approximately twice as slow as fs_fast_horse, and will be REALLY slow in general on tha battlefield. It will, however, still charge right before the engagement as fast as it did before, only the general running movement speed has been decreased. The following pic illustrates the relative speeds of fs_fast_horse, fs_horse, and the new heavy horse skeleton:


Question: what's unusual about the following pic?

[EKG]

Either Parthian elephants or the fact that there are javelinmen on top of them...

I swear to god if those elephants can use cantabrian circle...

[Julius_Caesar]

I swear that there are Javelin Men on the Elephants not Archers?

Am I right

[Trajan]

I swear that there are Javelin Men on the Elephants not Archers?

Am I right

In some accounts there were archers and in other accounts there were javelin throwers.


Edit:

I seem to be having problems with the elephant archer riders. They never fire their arrows while moving. Could this be a problem with the 0.65 animation mod?

[Simetrical]

No, that's sadly a bug with 1.2.

-Simetrical