Possible to remove the flaming lances from Grail Knights?

[Fallen851]

As the title says... I've tried looking under the variants.pack, gone under the datacore database melee weapon settings and unchecked magical, tried to get the model to use the weapon from the Knights of the Realm, ect... nothing seems to remove the flame. I'm sure there is a graphical effect somewhere that is causing it, and I'm hoping someone more familiar with these files can show me where and how to edit it.

Thanks for any and all help.

[gary0044187]

their weapons are supposed to be magical, so I would bet money it is tied to the "magical" effect.

[Fallen851]

I tried unchecking that, but it did nothing.

[Lord Firkraag]

It's the same problem with glowing eyes on skeletons and flaming hooves on chaos steeds - it seems to be hardcoded into their animations. I am looking for a way to fix it like a madman.

The solution is to replace their animation with that of a "normal" soldier. For skeletons and zombies, you lose the zombie-like animation which is a shame.

But for Grail Knights, the solution carries no cost; go to the land units table and change their animation to be the same as that of the knights of the realm. You lose nothing, since the only difference seems to be the annoying VFX.

[Fallen851]

You sir, are a god.

Thanks so much.

[Lord Firkraag]

You're welcome, and thank you.

[Mooncabbage]

So wait, in general terms, are you saying the particle effect is hardcoded into the animation, or just the link to the effect? IE. would it be possible to replace the effect with another, or a null effect. Secondly, is there no way to edit the animation file? It's not something I've ever looked at, but I wonder if it's like a zipped up XML file or something, like the Variants file type or something.

[Lord Firkraag]

I will share all I have tried in the hope that it helps the community solve this problem.

First of all, I found no relevant info in the db files.

There are some possibly-related vfx files:
wh_main_creature_bale_fire_eyes.xml
wh_main_creature_bale_fire.xml
wh_main_lib_creatures.xml

I have tried editing them within PFM but it didn't help-I even tried to overwrite them with other files (for example with wh_main_creature_chaos_fire_eyes.xml) but it didn't do anything, there was no in-game change.

Now, replacing the animations does work, but I want to keep the zombie-walk, so I can't just replace them, I need to change them.

First problem: The animation_tables.animpack is not a text file like it was in Rome, so not sure it can be edited.

Now undead have their own animations and animation_fragments. And there is also persistent "VFX" metadata files that are also possibly related. For example:

hu1_black_knights_hr1_skeletal_steed_sword_and_shield_vfx_persistent_metadata_alive_0.anm.meta

and some that don't include "vfx" in the name, but are suspicious:

hu1_graveguard_2handed_sword_persistent_metadata_alive_0.anm.meta

I cannot edit these files, but I tried overwriting them by importing other .meta files (such as related _empire_ files) and then renaming them to overwrite the above. Didn't have any effect in game.

So... ideas?

[Mooncabbage]

Is it possible to change the animations in one of the Unit files? I am currently trying to create empire bowmen as a test unit, and I used the Bretonnian sword and longbow animations for that. Worked ok apart from they have crossbows on their backs. Still trying to work out that end of things.

Lord Firkraag (Isn't that the dragon from BG2?), have you made sure your mod is loading? I ask because it's a common problem for some people at the moment. For example, my mods don't load unless steam is run as admin.

[Lord Firkraag]

It's definitely loading-all other changes are working.

And yet it's that dragon.

[Mooncabbage]

I don't know if it's any help to you, but I just uploaded a placeholder tutorial on adding units to the game, which contains a link to my Empire Bowmen unit. I monkeyed around with some animations in that, giving empire crossbowmen bows essentially. You're welcome to dissect it, if it helps.

[Lord Firkraag]

That... doesn't help at all. I am talking about more complicated stuff than editing db tables.

[Mooncabbage]

Fair enough, I was pretty tired by the end of last night

If I get the chance later today, I'll have a proper look at the not-animation-files you mentioned in your earlier post, and see if I can work out what's going on. It's possible that the xml files aren't actually read by the game and are a human readability thing, but I doubt it. I'll try to make an obvious change and see if I can load it.