LE Full customizable armor mod

[shencereys]

I propose a mod that would allow you to create armor in a number of different "Styles" that would effectively let you choose the appearance of the item as you craft it.

 

For example you could use the "Glass Armor" recipe to create a set of armor that shares the recipe and stats of Glass Armor, but replaces the model with one of several choices. You could for example create a set of glass armor with the appearance of Hide Armor, or Studded Armor, allowing you full customizablity of your character's appearance.

 

The same could apply to weapons, as well.

 

I realize this would be difficult, because currently if an armor's appearance is replaced with another (see the wealth of 'nocturnal robe replacer' mods out there if you're curious how this works) it applies a blanket policy to all NPCs as well. Without some kind of workaround the result would be something like this:

 

-Mark crafts a set of glass armor with the appearance of hide armor

-The mod then replaces the appearance of glass armor with hide armor for Mark, so his glass armor looks like hide

Problem: every npc Mark meets from then on who happens to be wearing glass armor would appear to be wearing hide

 

This could be inconvenient for players, who, after a few custom-crafts, wouldn't be able to tell who's wearing what anymore.

 

My proposed workaround would be to have the mod then create a new type of armor instead of replacing the model of the target type. To return to our example, if Mark creates a set of glass armor that looks like hide, it creates a new file, instead of replacing the old one. For simplicity's sake we'll call the default glass armor mesh Glass.mesh and the default hide armor Hide.mesh

 

Rather than replacing all the glass.mesh files with hide.mesh, would it be possible for the mod to create a new armor category in the wearable database, say GlassToHide.file with the hide.mesh appearance?

 

If it was possible, there still would be issues with including these new items in the smithing improvement database and associating these new items with enchanting, but the proposed crafting supermod would ideally be able to cope with this as well, making newly player-created gloves behave like regular gloves when it comes to smith improvement and available enchants.

 

Sadly I lack the technical expertise to do it, but I'm sure there's some of you out there with code cajones big enough to make it happen.

[answerme]

I like this. But i think it would be easier to make more variants of the same armor just like the steel armor. And maybe all armor types for every armor would be nice as well, like some light version steel armor that uses just a chainmail part instead of the thick breastplate.

[Velandor]

this reminds me a little the "Tools of armor and weaponsmithing" mod for oblivion, wich allowed the player to change the skin of an armor to another of the same class, it created a new file like you say :D

 

I like your idea :)