Total Realism Overhaul

I got good news and bad news.

Bad news is that I won't be able to release the 0.1a just yet. But, the reason is good news, which is that I yesterday managed to create a whole new way of enabling the AI to react to and anticipate player moves. Current combat mods using scripts usually rely on the onHit events to do their stuff like dodging and blocking, but that's always reactionary - meaning the hit HAS to happen for a block animation or a dodge animation to occur. The consequence is that, especially with this mod, you get a confusing result, the hit obviously connects but no or little damage is applied and the NPCs raises their weapon to block AFTER you have already hit them. It is confusing and it's not really a good solution.

The new system enables NPCs to detect when their enemy (not just the player) is attacking them, and react BEFORE the attack happens. This makes blocking and dodging have a much more profound impact on gameplay. It is also essential for this mod, because without it the new combat system actually makes the game ludicrously easy. Now NPCs with shields will raise them if you aim your bow at them, those with melee weapons will try to block if they see you swinging wildly at them, or bash you if you're too close etc.

That said, there is a lot of tweaking to be done, right now the whole detection and reaction system is too slow, there is no lag, but I want NPC behavior to be closer to that of the player, which isn't happening right now (for example they almost never intercept a fast slash which is also a first strike), and there are minor bugs, like NPCs getting stuck in a blocking position or strafing/dodging not happening when the player is aiming a bow at a NPC who has no shield. I also need to code in a whole bunch of other conditionals to make combat as varied and interesting as possible.

All that taken into consideration, there is no sense in releasing 0.1a now, since the new dynamic classification system does away with the majority of possible bugs concerning unbalanced boss fights and in it's current state the combat is just not what I want to show to people. It needs more work.

I won't be available for the next two weeks, after I get back I'll continue work on this. Overall I'm quite pleased with the direction this is going, I think in the end it's going to be quite fun to play, but for now have a little more patience. Good stuff musn't be rushed.