Improved Melee Combat Overhaul (IMCO)
This project has three main goals:
1- Change almost all weapons animations to achieve faster, more fluid, fun, and more complex (tech wise) combat, allowing some advanced techniques only avalaible thanks to early animation cancel.
2- Add more uniqueness to weapons in the same category changing some of it base stats and the interaction with affinities. Now affinities interact with weapons weight, and weight interacts with a forgotten and hidden gameplay mechanic: Weapon Weight Rate.
3- Give a reason to go light weight, making it being a build class on it own. Now going light weight opens new gameplay tech not avalaible if going mid or heavy.
WARNINGS:
-> VANILLA GAME GETS EASIER, due to better mobility and faster attack animations. It is advisable to merge it with other mod that adds difficulty levels. I will also add an special difficulty mode later, when I finish tweaking animations.
.-> DO NOT PLAY ONLINE WITH IT, you can be banned etc etc.
NEW!!: Finally I uploaded the overall game overhaul mod, based on IMCO, called Elden Ring: Tarnished´s Edition. So, you can either use IMCO alone to play vanilla game with combat overhaul, or go full overhaul with the all other changes. ERTE gameplay is fully functional, but map edits are still in a very early stage, If you want to try it I suggest to start a fresh run and continue the adventure following the ongoing maps updates that will be released weekly.
Detailed Changes:
NEW!!: Improved Melee Ashes of War: Few AoW have been altered in consonance with the rest of the mod. Now they are faster, can be cancelled earlier, and have few added propierties like block frames or i-frames.
NEW!!: Revamped Parries: Now all parries active frames windows match the parry animations. Faster start up for all of them. All start ups have been adjusted to 3 frames but the Buckler Shield one that is 4 frames. Buckler Shield has 1 additional start up frame compared with the rest of parries but it active frames window lasts longer (7 frames vs 6 frames for the rest of parries). Warning: You will probably have to relearn the timings, but once learned, you will notice the parries are easier to perform now and have more uses.
NEW!!: Overhauled bows and crossbows. The scope of this mod is not range weapons, but bows felt so horrible that I felt I had to tweak it. Now they work in the same way as rest of weapons, with early cancel added propierties.
NEW!!: Added basic Timed Block/Deflect mechanic. Now if you press block right before the enemy attack hits you, you will score a Timed Block that grants you some benefits: 0% stamina dmg, and reduced physical and elemental dmg. The amount of reduced physical and elemental dmg depends on the weapon you are wielding. Lighter weapons have the worse values and heavier weapons and shields the better ones. This makes you decide if you are going for a tank build blocking based, or a glass cannon dashing based with Timed Block as a clutch resource when your stamina gets drained due to constant attacking.
– Sekiro Dash replace Light Rolls. Additionally, added quick cancels to Sekiro dashes that allow new mobility cancel tech:
> Side stepping: lock on an enemy and dash laterally. Whilst dashing, you can cancel the side step into a quick attack at any moment during the animation.
> Double dashing: cancel the end of the forward dash or any side step into another dash or side step quickly.
NEW!!: Added Weight Load feature to Sekiro Dashes. Now the timing for dash cancelling depends on your equip load. The lower the equip load, the earlier and faster you can cancel your dashes into another dash (and backsteps into another backstep or dash). It doesnt affect medium and heavy rolls, nor the timing to cancel into attacks. This means that if you want maximum mobility, you have to commit to very low weight load, although you still can use dashes even with moderate equip load if you invest into stamina and still are light weight.
– Added i-frames to Backstep and Crouch animations (stand alone version only, not in ERR add-on). Now you can use crouch animation to evade attacks. Backstep animation also grants you brief invincibility.
– Added quick cancel to Backstep and Crouch animations. Now you can both lounge forward and roll attack from idle position if you quick cancel the Backstep or the Crouch animations into it corresponding cancel attacks.
– Added Knife Throw cancel tech. Now you can cancel attacks and dash animations with a knife throw, like in Ninja Gaiden 2.
NEW!!: Knife throw animation speed has been highly increased, and you can cancel the throw animation even earlier.
– Added Weight Rate param mechanic. In vanilla game this param is set to 0 value for all weapons, so its unused. Weight Rate can set how fast animations cancel into each other, so a higher WR means slower attacks chains and viceversa, creating a diferentiation based on weight for each weapon inside the same category. For example a Shotel will cancel earlier/feel faster than a Bandit Curved sword, even though both are curved swords and share most animations.
– Added weight interaction with Affinities. Heavy and Quality affinites increase weight and Weight Rate, Keen and Occult affinites decrease them. This means infusing with Heavy or Quality makes the weapon heavier and slower, and infusing with Keen or Occult makes the weapon lighter and faster, BUT it also interacts with other params to balance this, so the heavier the weapon, the harder it hits (higher Poise Damage, higher Stamina Damage) and the better defense (higher Guard Boost and Physical Absorption when blocking). The opposite is true for Keen and Occult affinities: lower poise dmg, lower stamina dmg, lower defense (lower guard boost and physical absorption). It also affects stamina bar drain, so the heavier it is, the more stamina each attack takes.
NEW!!: Affinities now also interact with Guard Repel, so the heavier the weapon, the easier it will repel enemies attacks, and vice versa. It also affect Attack Repel, so the heavier the weapon, the less prone to be repeled, and vice versa. Lastly, added interaction between affinities and Criticals Attack Rate, so the lighter the weapon, the more critical dmg it inflicts, and vice versa.
– Early attacks cancel. Almost all attacks animations (for the already revisited weapons, that is) can be cancelled into other actions right after the active hit frames. Depending on Weight Rate param of the weapon, It could be cancelled earlier or later. Each weapon has it own distint Weight Rate value within a range between 0 and 1. The higher the value, the slower the attack chains.
– Added free dodge cancel. Now you can dodge/dash cancel attack animations at most of it frames, being the wind up or the recovery ones. Cancelling hit frames is not allowed though, so you still have to time your attacks, but with way more leniency than when playing vanilla ER.
– Added the possibility to perform Feint Attacks. You can use the doddge cancel to feint charged R2 attacks, cancelling them during the charge animation, or any other attack, dodge cancelling it wind up.
– Quick weapon swap: Now you can swap weapons as fast as you can press the weapon swap button.
– Some attack animations have been sped up. Specially noticiable with Thrusting Swords, Curved Swords, Daggers, Katanas, small Axes, and Whips.
– Revisited shields. I want to make them more interesting/strategic to use. Currently physical absorption has been reduced on most of them but Guard Boost has been improved. Infusing shields also modifies their guard boost and phys absorption. More changes and fine tuning in future updates.
Installation:
Use Mode Engine 2:
http://github.com/soulsmods/ModEngine2.git
Just put the regulation.bin file inside the folder >mod, and the c0000.anibnd.dcx and the c0000_a00_hi.anibnd.dcx files inside the >mod>chr folder, overwriting the files that were already there. If you dont have a >chr folder inside >mod one, just create it or paste the one its already in the zip file.
Of course you can use UXM but unless you also plan to mod the files, the Mod Engine 2 method is the simplest and fastest one.
