You would have to set up a panel of triggers too of course- but that was my point: player location+damage detection= quite a few interesting new possible triggers. If you're worried about hard coded animation IDs, PCs almost always use a comparison check when evaluating any number- as in:
If Animation ID# = "5",
then jump to (play animation)
else
do something else.
It is probably as simple as modifying a single byte (5 in above example) in the game.exe to change which animation # is played for any given trigger. Hence why I say it should be easy to hot-swap animations with a memory hook.
For instance, I'm assuming Ex's memory hooking could remove the player's ability to directly trigger an "examined" animation and instead, initiate the "examined" animation whenever Ex decides certain criteria are met (player location, damage,equipment etc). When Ex detects that a trigger criteria-set is matched, it would hot-swap the number checked for in the PC's animation # "evaluation" and initiate a "false examined" event. Thus allowing Ex to play any animation when it detects the appropriate triggers. You could theoretically swap an endless number of animations in a loop through a single SoM trigger.
If each animation is loaded into a specific table "slot", instead of being looked up each time they are triggered, you could just juggle animations in/out of any particular memory slot instead of swapping the 'evaluation' number.
Actually, unlike NPCs, enemies can be set to face the player even before they are "examined". They don't have a "turn left/right" when examined trigger, but an attack animation can be designed to make them turn toward the player when the player gents near BEFORE they are examined. That seems more real to me than if they don't react UNTIL the player examines them.
If Animation ID# = "5",
then jump to (play animation)
else
do something else.
It is probably as simple as modifying a single byte (5 in above example) in the game.exe to change which animation # is played for any given trigger. Hence why I say it should be easy to hot-swap animations with a memory hook.
For instance, I'm assuming Ex's memory hooking could remove the player's ability to directly trigger an "examined" animation and instead, initiate the "examined" animation whenever Ex decides certain criteria are met (player location, damage,equipment etc). When Ex detects that a trigger criteria-set is matched, it would hot-swap the number checked for in the PC's animation # "evaluation" and initiate a "false examined" event. Thus allowing Ex to play any animation when it detects the appropriate triggers. You could theoretically swap an endless number of animations in a loop through a single SoM trigger.
If each animation is loaded into a specific table "slot", instead of being looked up each time they are triggered, you could just juggle animations in/out of any particular memory slot instead of swapping the 'evaluation' number.
Actually, unlike NPCs, enemies can be set to face the player even before they are "examined". They don't have a "turn left/right" when examined trigger, but an attack animation can be designed to make them turn toward the player when the player gents near BEFORE they are examined. That seems more real to me than if they don't react UNTIL the player examines them.