LE [Scripting, ck and effects] Help and opinion on Umbra's enchantment

[FrankFamily]

tldr => just scroll down to the technical problems to solve and give me a hand!

 

You may know one of my current projects is Umbra and i've started thinking about the enchantment. Simple soul trapping is boring, i want to make something that reflects the behaviour Umbra should have according to the lore, i.e. the thing likes souls and it slowly takes control of the wielder (this of course only to certain degree and as much beneficial as possible, nobody wants a sword to destroy their characters)

 

So, my idea or the user experience i want to create is two simultaneous systems, hunger and possession.

 

Hunger is short-term and directly affects the charge of the weapon (which can also be forced charged with soulgems). The reason is umbra wouldn't fill your soul gems if he/she is hungry, so you first feed the sword then the sword feeds your soulgems. So the charge bar would turn into the hunger bar. Ideally some of the engravings on the blade could glow only when the sword is satiated.

 

Possession is long-term, is basically a kill-count, the more you kill with it the more umbra bounds to you, unlocking new/better effects and also adding some passive effects to the wielder itself. This would be indicated by kill count messages every X kills or when a milestone is achieved and the effects change, as well as the actual sword description which should reflect the current effects with their magnitudes and everything.

The high tier effects of umbra could be absorbing health/magicka/stamina, maybe a way to release the spirit within the blade?

The passive effects applied to the player as a result of this Possession should be beneficial globaly otherwise you wouldn't use it, but should have some compensated detrimental effects i think, any ideas? Should they be permanent or only active while Umbra is equipped?

 

So, the technical problems to solve, ideally not involving skse because after all is a weapon mod. Any ideas you have about any of them, please do tell.

 

1./ Have the glowing mesh activate only while the sword is statiated (charge above X%). Not sure if there is any way without using stuff like http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37481/? that i'd prefer to not need. If the glow mesh was the enchantments art then i think it should show only when the weapon has any charge, but doesn't update mid-equip and i'd like to have control of the threshold above which is shows. Is not massively important, just cool.

 

2./ Have the item's description show current effects and change dynamically as these evolve. I can think of you ways to do it:

 

a) One magic effect of each type with a base magnitude and using <mag> and <dur>. When possession increases have a perk/s increase their magnitude/duration via conditioned "Mod Spell Magnitude" (works for enchantments too right?), If i want to have multiple steps then i'd need multiple perk entries. Never tried something like this so not sure if it will work. Is scriptless and, if it works, much more "solid" since what is displayed is the real magnitude.

 

b) Multiple magic effecs of each type with different magnitudes and conditions similar to what dawnguard axe has, keep track of the magnitudes and display them in a single "description" magic effect or the item itself with text replacement globals.

 

The problem comes (in either method) if i want some of the effects to not be present at all in the beginning and then appear when they are unlocked because, afaik, the enchantment will grab the description from all the magic effects ignoring their conditions. Maybe i could work the description completely on the script side as a string and use some text replacement, does alias name text replacement works in item/magic effect descriptions?

 

Or just display "absorbs 0 health" until it's unlocked which looks kind of broken. Or have all the effects since the beginning but the high tier ones at very low magnitude.