What makes units able to ride on horses?

[Malachus]

I tried to give some greek cavalry units an officer (not captain), but when the game loaded, these cavalry units had the officer... but he was standing on a horse, not riding one. Is there a simple fix to this or not?

[hoggy]

You need to give him a cavalry animation in descr_model_battle. It sounds like you've taken a ground unit and made him a cavalry officer.

[Bwian]

You need to change the skeleton used in descr_model_battle to one from a cavalry unit. The model is OK...it will work on a horse....you just need to give it a horse-riding skeleton. The animations will follow ;)

[Kraxis]

So if I copy the
"skeleton_horse fs_hc_swordsman"
to the various standardbearers and officers it should be fixed? Or am I missing something here?

[Malachus]

OK, thanks for the help guys. One more question, what if I wanted to make a standard infantry unit able to ride a horse, is there such an easy fix too or do I have to do more?

[Kraxis]

Apparently it wasn't as easy as I thought.

I copied the said line from the general to first the greek standardbearer then an early centurion. But neither worked (CTD) when I added them to a cavalry unit.

Should I add the entire four lines? What am I doing wrong here?

[Bwian]

skeleton_horse ??????

Don't think that should be anything to do with it!

No...to make a mounted standard bearer ( I assume that is your intention ) you are going to have to make a new entry into the descr_model_battle text file. Copy the basic details of the standard bearer, and give it a new name.

Then change THIS NEW UNIT to use a horseman skeleton. You also have to set up all the other text files to define it's combat stats and tell it what horse model to use. Once the rider model is using skeleton and animations from a mounted unit, he will sit and ride the horse correctly.

Leave the horse skeletons alone!

You need to define this as a new unit, or else EVERY standard bearer will be posed as if he were sitting on a horse...and that will look just plain ODD!

[Kraxis]

Aha... I just thought the game would place him on an appropriate horse like it does with the captains. There doesn't seem to be any other differences between the two.

But I don't get the point about stats, there isn't any references to any other officers using specific stats, and I have heard (from Jerome I think) they used the unit's stats but had 2HP.
So it isn't enough to create this new mounted standardbearer in the descr_model_battle, I need to change other things? I think you confused me there.

[Kraxis]

Interesting results...

I used the greek cavalry as a template.

I copied the model_flexi and the sprites (can't have it look like infantry from afar) from the greek cavalry to this new model.
That was effective in creating a working model. Sadly now he has merged with the horse, feet jutting out underneath. Funny sight really.

So what did I do wrong and where do I need to go. Give me the newbie tour.

But honestly do I need to create a new model for each horsetype? I mean Greek Cavalry has light horse, Macedonian and Companions are heavy and of course the cataphracts are just that. There is no 'auto'-fit like with the captains?

[The Stranger]

if you want to give horses or other mounted units a officer just go to desc_model_battle, than copy the fc_hc_swordsman, and the rest of the fc's and paste it under the hc_flagbearer of what it is and whoila a mounted officer works for all but the egyptian officer but i don't know why.

[The Stranger]

skeleton_horse ??????

Don't think that should be anything to do with it!

No...to make a mounted standard bearer ( I assume that is your intention ) you are going to have to make a new entry into the descr_model_battle text file. Copy the basic details of the standard bearer, and give it a new name.

Then change THIS NEW UNIT to use a horseman skeleton. You also have to set up all the other text files to define it's combat stats and tell it what horse model to use. Once the rider model is using skeleton and animations from a mounted unit, he will sit and ride the horse correctly.

Leave the horse skeletons alone!

You need to define this as a new unit, or else EVERY standard bearer will be posed as if he were sitting on a horse...and that will look just plain ODD!

no you don't DON"T FOLLOW HIS INSTRUCTIONS, this is far to complex. do it the easy way and

go to desc_models_battle

go to the officer you want like greek standard bearewr

and you'll see

the name
....
fc_standardbearer
than past this underneath it
fc_hc_swordsmen

if you want more
go to a general copy all it fc's but the first and paste that under the fc_standardbearer it works for all but the egyptian standard

[The Stranger]

this way you can have camel, horse, chariot and elephant mounted standard bearers and ofcourse the normal ones

[Kraxis]

But that was what I did initially... and that didn't work. CTD...

If I understand you correctly that is.
You say I should add the line for the horse skeleton from the general? Or just as a skeleton?

[EDIT]
Found the problem... Every line in the mounted skeletons need to be added. Add one or two and the game will CTD. Now my mounted standard bearer works. Sadly he is not holding his standard upright, and sometimes it passes through the horse's neck. I guess it is better than nothing, but it is not as good as I hoped.

[EDIT2]
Setback!
It doesn't appear that the greek officer and the roman early centurion are compatible with the mounts. They become those 'centaurs' I mentioned earlier. In fact the greek officer is quite funny to watch as he goes into the combat stance with the shield in front of him (right into the neck of the horse). So obviously something needs to be done about this as the standard bearer wasn't up to specs either.

[Kraxis]

So nobody has created a Decurion (just mounted a centurion)?

The eastern musicians are great for cavalry, but I would love to mount some kind of officer for the western factions as well since the standards aren't too great (they work but the standard droops and acts a little strange at times).

[Bwian]

I am not at all clear what you are doing with this.....

1) What skeleton are you using for the RIDER. This is the only skeleton you should be changing. The horses ALL use the same skeleton.

2) With the standard bearer...if you make him mounted, and use a cavalry rider skeleton, he naturally will be using his standard as a 'spear' or whatever. To really make that work as you want it to, you are going to have to either change the model so the standard and arm are not animated and remain fixed in position.... or else design a completely new rider animation to make him do what you want.

This is one of the limitations of using the stock skeletons for things they weren't really designed for.

[Kraxis]

I'm not certain what skeleton I'm using, I just added the mountlines from the various captains and generals to the standard bearers.
He uses his sword to attack enemies but the standard droops in front of him to the point that it touches the neck of the horse, so that during combat it sometimes passes through the neck of the horse. Looks odd.
But the standard bearers are not too bad really. What I want is the roman centurions and the greek officers (of course without the shield). But when you try to mount them like I did they just stand up inside the horse creating an odd centaur.

Earlier in this thread I tried doing what you said and it turned out that it could be done, though the results were like the centurions. So I wondered if it was possible to change a few things to make the officers actually mount the horses. I just figured that I did something wrong.

So if you know how to mount officers and centurions I would love to see a paste of it.

[Epistolary Richard]

I am not at all clear what you are doing with this.....

Just to make things clear this is what Emperor Umeu 1 was saying, it's taken from a post from a very similar thread on in the twc workshop.

Ok, problem is more or less solved.

It turns out that if you want a unit to have multiple possibilities, such as on foot or mounted, you must include all the others - like elephant, chariot and camel, even if you're never going to use them. So

type roman_centurion
skeleton fs_dagger

AND

type roman_standard
skeleton fs_standard_bearer

NEEDED TO BECOME:

type roman_centurion
skeleton fs_dagger
skeleton_horse fs_hc_swordsman
skeleton_elephant fs_forest_elephant_rider
skeleton_chariot fs_chariot_sword
skeleton_camel fs_hc_swordsman

AND

type roman_standard
skeleton fs_standard_bearer
skeleton_horse fs_hc_swordsman
skeleton_elephant fs_forest_elephant_rider
skeleton_chariot fs_chariot_sword
skeleton_camel fs_hc_swordsman

[Kraxis]

Odd... I'm positive that was what I did earlier. But now it works and that was all I wanted.

Nice, now I have Decurions too... YEAH!