Sheaths, bags, cloaks, pouches, caps, withdraw and return weapon animation for holstered weapons

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
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You guys, are GREAT but this game is SEVERELY lacking in obvious visual design flaws. I noticed it long ago, but let it slide because it was a WIP. Now, it’s a full game with a third DLC? It’s time to spill the beans as they say. Conan, in the movies, ALWAYS had his weapons, shown while holstered away. Either wrapped in leather and tied off to hang on his back, or wrapped in animal skins while secured by leather bindings, and of course a very sleek leather sheathed was adorned to hold his weapon on his back. Even his companions, you were able to see clearly that they were armed, with their weapons sheathed, holstered, or stung around around them. Yet in this game in which you all have worked very hard on for years now, needs a very real look, as to how weapons are holstered, sheathed, or strung across your torso as you cross the sands of the scorching desert, struggle against the think vines in the jungle, and track your way up on blizzard covered mountains to enter a the volcano.

  1. Conan NEEDS aesthetic weapon holsters, sheaths, and strung bows across the torso.
  2. Conan NEEDS aesthetic, HDE cloaks, bags, pouches, purses, ponchos, capes, hoods, bandoliers.
  3. Conan NEEDS NOT TO BE LIKE Fallout 4, or Skyrim, when comes to magically disappearing weapons.

Conan NEEDS realistic animation to show these massive, beautiful weapons. Eloquence in withdrawing and returning weapons to their designated slots.

Gentlemen, Ladies of Conan Exiles. Fellow players,
It’s time to make Conan Exiles, even more amazing,
Cheers !!!

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I don’t think it “Needs” these things, but yes. Excellence, is everything. So I agree, these things would be amazing. Thanks for the post.

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hi, what about character models, having a little pouch on their waistline, if they ever have any Silver Coins on them? :slight_smile:

(i never found any gold coins yet but i guess if a character has any coins, a little pouch could show on the model) …(i better go play - i mean test, the game some more in case i overlooked this minor detail) :slight_smile:

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Atleast one armor ser has a bag/pouch on it … the one I’m thinking of is the relic hunter armor you learn in Sepmeru

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Hey Cadeus! :slight_smile:

This is one of those things that’s been brought up a lot with Conan Exiles, both during the Early Access period and after full launch. While I personally agree that this feature would be awesome, I’m unfortunately going to have to disappoint you: This won’t be implemented.

This is a decision that we worked out at the very beginning of development. Breaking all of it down can get a bit long, but here we go:

Let’s just take one-handed swords, as an example. Every sword would need a scabbard and ideally we’d make different scabbards for each type of sword. That way players could tell at a glance what type of sword someone is walking around with. Every sword would also need a sheathed model. That’s two 3D models per sword (sheathed and unsheathed) plus the scabbard, which means 3 unique 3D models per sword. At launch there were 10 one-handed swords in the game, so a 3D artist would have to make 30 unique 3D models for one-handed swords alone.

We also need to think about how it can be placed on the body in a way that makes sense. What’s holding it in place? Is it attached to a belt? A strap? Where is it attached? Your waist? On your back? In addition to that, it needs to be there regardless of what gear/outfit you’re wearing. Does it clip outside of your outfit or is it folded into it? Do we give players an option to take it off if you don’t want to wear it? Then we can’t have it as a fixed part of the armor models and every armor needs to be made to fit under the straps. It would have to be a hard constraint for all armor sets.

Then it’s a question of how many weapons you’re going to display on your character. If I have a bow, a sword, an axe and a shield in my hotbar, do I get to see all of them on my character? We have to consider how to arrange them too. Does the shield go on top of the sword? What about the bow and the axe?

They also need to be animated to fit with the movement of the character so they don’t clip through the outfits. Every weapon needs a sheathing/unsheathing animation.

At the moment that would mean a complete rework of our gear system, the outfits, the character models, animation. Basically everything.

Some games have this feature because the developers are able to tightly control the amount of variables and moving parts. They’re able to make a fixed variety of outfits that were all built to account for sheaths, bags, etc. For a game of Conan Exiles’ scale it would mean putting a big restriction of outfit designs and cut down on the variety. We made a conscious decision when the game first entered production to not include such a feature.

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First off, I am with EngineFEAR on the game not needing those. (And while I agree those would be nice, I dont care about it.)

This is the reason which came to my mind as well. A little hilarious look might not really hurt, but I think that would be too much. :joy:
Only if weapons were equipped in character window only - like allowing two different sets of main+off hands - this idea would be able to be implemented.

So while I would totally agree on restricting the players to two different setups regarding their weapons and then having those weapons being displayed, I dont think that will ever become a reality in Conan Exiles.

If they were going to be implemented, they should be treated the same like hats. In some mmorpgs usually at least the hats (but often all smaller pieces: gloves, shoes…) may be turned invisible, so that the toons head is being shown.
Meaning: Just display them. Or give players the possibility to decide themselves wether they want certain armorparts to be shown or not; meaning more work for coders.

Also about clipping?
Weird warping trousers/skirts and hair in armor or through the whole toon. :thinking:

So just go on about the real issue with this idea in a really blunt way. (You kind of told already, but…)
Implementing this would mean too much work? (If that is true. I dont know. :see_no_evil:)

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I truly hope you realize these are all very easily accomplished, and the most complicated process I believe would be adding in the animations for the drawing and returning the weapon to it’s slot. But before I begin, I will go and point you to observe some of the mod authors in the Skyrim community, who have already tackled these sorts of questions and answered with grace.

First: They did already designed the swords and other weapons. And while you suggested they all design a look to match each and every weapon. There’s no need for that. In most of what they have already done by separating items, armor, building blocks into separate tiers. It can also be one in it’s sheaths. T1, skins, hides, and or cloth can be used with twine to hold the weapon. The T1 weapon models have already been made and can be used in creating these models, such as exposed hilts. T2 models can use leather and animal skins, with leather or thick leather. The hides, skins, leather or cloth models can share already in game assets. The models are already there. Now for T3, shaped wood or insulated can be utilized and at this point, you can use costume art work, graphic designs. These things are already there, and just the effort put in, but it’s not going to be as demanding as you suggest. Break the sheaths in into tiers, separated by what is used in it’s construction.

Now, up is the author of RaceMenu, Expired. Here’s a link as to show you what they have done.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29624 But to break it down, they had added additional sliders in which can be utilized to here in the adjustments of weapons and what positions.

Up next, another link to another author who also addressed this. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/68000
This basically allows you to place your preference to the degree of where you want your weapon to go. Now it doesn’t give you unlimited options but the choice you have are VERY satisfying.

So this will solve your entire 2nd paragraph. By following the small examples of players, like us, who have paved way, and that can be look to as examples of what to do.

Now to your third, the quick wheel is nice. Not amazing but ok. Very limited actually. Now as I suggested, these sheaths, crafted in a artisans bench, can then be equipped, to the new body slot that would have to be added in. The items in your quick wheel do NOT need to utilized, and in fact, would suggest that the quick wheel be it’s separate entity.

Ok, two quick wheels, you bring up your first as always, click left joy stick to swap over to combat quick slots, and click again to non combat quick slots. These “quick switches” will only need to be changed in it’s order as you change it. So you start off, bring up your quick wheel, which starts off in non-combat, so you switch it to combat, your holstered items come up, ok, you close the wheel. Now your character is displaying that he is armed and ready to go. Understand? The combat quick wheel is the only wheel that be equipped with weapons that are in your current holster. You see now? So you craft up a long back sheath, for a pike or a two handed sword. You equip the sheath as it’s own piece of equipment slot, now from there you equip your weapon to that sheath, so it’s now added to you combat quick-wheel. I suggest we be allowed two sheaths and a holster. So One two handed, a one handed, and then a bow or daggers or, a bow with a one hand and daggers… You understand?

The question is, “Does this bring worth and value to an already awesome game?” We all know this will be an epic step in Conan, one little one for veteran players haha, But a little coin always helps to grease the wheels, and I would pay for an added extension and I’m sure many others will to.

Don’t be lazy.

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Err, I’m pretty sure that different games utilise different tech and have different technical considerations, and so even if something is simple to implement in one game, it might not be in another.

I highly doubt that the absence of these things in CE is due to laziness. Funcom has every incentive to include them if it is feasible to do so.

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You guys worked this out three years ago? Really? You guys were too busy, up til maybe just last summer, of having a stable game. Don’t act sly bro, I was there. The whole time, I know, along with many others what was going on. This “decision” needs to be revisited.

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I didn’t say they were lazy. I only said don’t be.

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Ok. Either way, I don’t think laziness comes into this, but whatever.

Everyone would want this… if possible, meaning not at the expense of all the other things, like AI improvements. Game development is about allocating time and resources, yes?

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You hit the nail on the head here. It is a matter of allocating resources and it’s a matter of how we use the tech the game was built on. Just because a modder makes something work in Skyrim doesn’t necessarily mean we can just copy what they did and hope it works in our game. :slight_smile:

We did, indeed, work this out at the beginning of the dev cycle. :slight_smile:

Personally I think it would be an awesome feature to have in the game. Unfortunately it’s just not feasible.

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Feel free to jump into the UE4 dev kit to show us how easy this is.

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ok thanks @Kwalya i will visit that place sometime.
(managed to find 1 gold dust item on an npc thrall so far) :slight_smile:

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With things like this, it’s something that needs to be done at the start of the process when the character rig gets made. You gotta stick a bunch of nodes all over the skeleton to any possible spot an equipped item will be visible; and it’s got to be done early because you need to make sure it won’t effect stuff like the bone weights when you rig a model to the skeleton.

Going through and attaching the weapons to those nodes and making sure they’re all aligned properly is actually an extremely time consuming process and I fully understand why Funcom opted to focus on other things at the start of production. I’ve been following this ever since they teased a new conan game and didn’t fully announce CE yet, times were really tight for them then.

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There are plenty of games such as elder scrolls skyrim, world.of warcraft, and even runescape that have a vast array of weapons, weapon models, designs, and types. As well as a maaaaassssive array of types of armor, armor models and organizations. All of these games and many more have been able to implement thing like sheathing weapons without any problems.
Actually there are a lot of things the funcom programmers say can’t work, won’t work, or are straight up impossible that many other game developers find trivial. I don’t know where funcom screwed up with the game engine that they can’t seem to keep it from crashing, let along add anything to givr the game some sense of finishing touches… but its wrong

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Hey Jens, nice that you came up with this answer, its refreshing to see devs communicating often with us. Now I wanna ask you something, you said about 3D artist would have to create a sheated model for any weapon, whats the problem with that? Aren’t you guys paid for this? :stuck_out_tongue:

Jokes apart, I understand these would cause some issues like clipping in armor while movement and emotes, but I’m sure this would be minimal for players to care because this is a so desired feature that a clipping here or there wouldn’t be annoying for most of the playerbase.

And there is the numbers of weapons that would be shown, I say, let it be visible the last weapon used on hands, for exemple, you are with a sword and shield out, after the fight finishes, you sheat them, and those will be shown sheated on the character, you pull out a spear, the moment you sheat it, thats the one it will be shown, pulled out a bow, sheating it only the bow will be shown.

I think this wouldn’t cause much clipping problems as it is only one (or two in the case of dualwielding) weapon(s) sheated. GW2 has that, and its an eye candy.

I understand this requires a bit work for the 3D artists, but hey, we all vote for everything that would spice up more the game for immersion sake! Unless the team at FC doesn’t expect CE to live long, I hope you guys consider at some point adding that, I would gladly pay for a DLC like this, and gotta be honest, I would buy all the other DLC’s at once because of this as I haven’t bought none for the reason Im waiting to see if the game will become from “very good” to “fantastic” ^^ , but take your time, continue with this frequent interaction with the community and most of us won’t ever abandon the Exiled Lands :), keep the good work!

PS: A quiver skin shown in the character when bow pulled out wouldn’t hurt either. :wink:

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FUNCOM you know I love ya, but, to support some ideas refer to my recent post perhaps?