3 Questions about Armor Recolors

[jimmyThePipe]

1: When you're just making a recolor of an item (ie: turning Elven Helmet from Gold to Silver), should you make a Normal Map or keep the game default? It's just a recolor and not altering the material so is there any point redoing the Normal Map? (I still have trouble with these.)

 

2: Is it better to replace the game's Elven Helmet, or make a new Helmet so that the user can have both in the game. And doing this do you need to copy-paste the game's Mesh and Normal Map, or is there a way for two objects to make use of the vanilla ones?

 

3: Building on question 3; is it difficult to make an esp file so there is a chance the NPCs and Shopkeepers might have this new Helmet or might still have the original helmet?

 

(4: Not really a recolor question, but what happens if the user installs the mod, gets the second helmet and uninstalls; could this cause a junk data problem?

 

I noticed when you uninstall an item with Fortify enchantment that the user gets the levels added permanently even after the item is gone. Is there a way to code around this?)

[Pronam]

1. No need to change the normal map! That's the beauty of it! Although Silver and Gold are two shiny sorts.. but you could change that at the .NIF at nifskope without messing with the normal map. If you're creating a new item don't forget to include it in the folder though.

 

2. A new helmet, there are a lot of replaces so that way you're sure your helmet will always be in correctly.

 

3. Not at all, be sure not to add them directly though but by using a script, that way you'll have a better chance your items will be added successfully compared to other shops. If you want to have it leveled like the others you'd have to change the leveled list (VendorArmorLightHelm)...Or choose to to use replace the original item, then you'll not have to do that. changing leveled lists is again something that could pose problems...

 

4. It'll not crash but they'll get the famous yellow diamond of the missing mesh. If it's a replacement it should go back using the normal/old one, but it is an non-existing basic-object..so more could happen.

 

Maybe a dispel-spell on the player could help out. But when you state that at uninstall the player has to remove the helmet first you should be out of trouble..they should think twice...other than that..you could code a thing as your .esp is disabled anyway....

[jimmyThePipe]

Okay, thank you for the advice! I made a second item, and can equip between old and new which is cool. I switched from Elven to Glass and there aren't any shops that sell Glass (?), so I might add it to the VendorArmorLight leveled lists. I also have the correct NPCs spawning wearing either the old or new or both which is really cool.

 

I have a question about the Leveled List scripting though: I have it run once but should it be running continously? Also what happens if the mod is removed after the user saves, is the item record permanently added to the list?

 

Begin GameMode
Short RunOnce

If (RunOnce != 1)
AddToLeveledList LL0LootArmorLight6Glass100 BlueGlassCuirass 20 1
AddToLeveledList LL0NPCArmorLightBoots100 BlueGlassCuirass 20 1
... repeat 7X for all Glass Curiass lists.
Message "New Armor added"
Set RunOnce to 1
EndIf

End

[Pronam]

Put short RunOnce at the beginning of the script, it has to be declared there.

 

Scriptname

Variables

Mode-Blocks

EndBlocks

 

The item is probably still added to the list but it'll contain nothing, so it might turn into yellow heads......

It'll not run anymore after you've run it, this is the shortest way to add that to a script. You could create a little line of dialogue. That being part of a quest, you could both add the item to the list and add another line of dialogue that'll remove it again.