Recently Timeslip (The guy behind the EXE Optimizer) came up with a handy tool that lets you define console command macros and bind them to unused keys. On top of that, it's all handled via a .dll (there's an exe, but it's only for editing settings).

He's since put out specialized versions of the Macro .dll that instead of issuing console commands, issue mouseclicks instead. The first is a simple on/off switch for a 2 second repeating cycle of mouseclicks, useful for leveling up magic skills. The second one was one he'd whipped up at my request, one that has a seperate keystroke for Chop, Slash, and Thrust.

The reason I wanted to do this, is that while I've always liked the idea behind Combat Enhanced, I've never been able to master the art of moving to choose my attack type. Because of my lack of skills, I'm hopelessly addicted to "Always Use Best Attack", and I've never had the fun of Combat Enhanced.

However, when Timeslip put out this new tool, I figured that it might be able to help my lack of skill. Now that I can choose my attack by pressing a specific key (or in my case, a mousebutton mapped to that key), I can now Chop/Slash/Thrust at will, and the player character doesn't have to move very much at all (there's a tiny amount of movement involved when using these new attack keys, but not enough to make much difference).

The catch is, these attacks don't register with ACE, and I was wondering if there were a way around that. The simplest solution would be if there were some sort of console command that the macro .dll could issue that'd set a variable to tell ACE what attack is being performed, but I wouldn't even know where to begin to look to try to figure it out for myself.

Any suggestions?

My guess is that the movement is a bit too small. If he increased the amount of time the movement key was pressed, it might work better.

Perhaps, but then it comes back to the problem that I end up with the character moving while I'm trying to do combat. If I could handle using movement in combat to choose my attacks, I wouldn't need Timeslip's macro program in the first place.

So I take it that there isn't any sort of variable that can be set from the console that'd simulate ACE's normal attack type detection?

If that's the case, I guess my next question would be how hard would it be to put one in?

While I may be able to get that in an update to Combat Enhanced (well, an add-on), I'm still puzzling out the scripts. See if the macro can get the character can do maybe two more frames of movement, I've found that when detecting movement, a tiny bit more helps.


If not, give me time to figure out this all.

I think Timeslip said he's going to be away from the net for a few days, but I'll ask.

Ok. Timeslip put out another version that had more movement, and ACE still isn't registering the different types of attacks, as far as I can tell.

At this point, I think setting a variable via a console command that Timeslip's macro .dll issues is going to be the only way to get the two to work together.

Let me know if you ever get it puzzled out, Cid88. Thanks in advance.

Just found out that Timeslip's console command macros get entered at a speed of one character per animation frame. In other words, it's not feasable to issue a console command in conjuction with an attack.

So this little idea is pretty much dead in the water, unless someone figures out a way to get the part of the Morrowind Enhanced executable that watches for the movement keystrokes to watch for other keystrokes as well. It'd probably be trivial for Aerelorn to add, but I wouldn't want to pester him and distract him from his paying job.