LE Realistic Armor Damage and Repair System

[PopTartZombie]

RADARS for short :P

 

I would love to see someone incorporate armor scarring with deep sword hit marks on the metal as well as pieces falling off such as glove plates, spikes, helmet pieces, shoulder plates, etc (nothing becoming skimpy or... revealing but realistic if your breastplate gets knocked off, i'm pretty sure on most armors there's cloth under the plate.). Also including a simple repairing system at a workbench or forge, or both, involving re-crafting, for example, a plate piece on your iron gloves gets smacked off, simply acquire an iron ingot(or what ever the requirements for repairing would be, up to the modder on that one) then get to a forge and recreate that piece then go to the work bench and apply that piece of missing armor. Also the damage to the armor would depend on the type of weapon used against you (i have no idea how to incorporate magic, maybe scold the metal or leather a bit?) but in full, this mod with all of those basic ideas would be quite wonderful to see on the nexus for anyone to enjoy.

Edited May 5, 2012 by PopTartZombie

[Saratje]

I would love to see someone incorporate armor scarring with deep sword hit marks on the metal as well as pieces falling off such as glove plates, spikes, helmet pieces, shoulder plates, etc (nothing becoming skimpy or... revealing but realistic if your breastplate gets knocked off, i'm pretty sure on most armors there's cloth under the plate.). Also including a simple repairing system at a workbench or forge, or both, involving re-crafting, for example, a plate piece on your iron gloves gets smacked off, simply acquire an iron ingot(or what ever the requirements for repairing would be, up to the modder on that one) then get to a forge and recreate that piece then go to the work bench and apply that piece of missing armor. Also the damage to the armor would depend on the type of weapon used against you (i have no idea how to incorporate magic, maybe scold the metal or leather a bit?) but in full, this mod with all of those basic ideas would be quite wonderful to see on the nexus for anyone to enjoy.

 

These are modifications that take a huge amount of effort. Modding best compared to working on a house in reallife:

 

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• Changing appearance (Texturing): It's like painting your house all over again. While the house stays the same shape, it has a new colour. Transparency is often texturing also: compare it to replacing a wooden wall with one of really clear glass. Texturing is not too time intense.
  
• Making a new item (Modeling): It is the same as building a whole new house. You can build it after a plan or drawing, but you still got to get all the planks, the windows, the carpet, the rivets and screw and hammer them all into place. This takes a lot of time to do.
  
• Changing how important things work (Hard-coding, Heavy scripting): This is like reinventing architecture! Here, you no longer want a reallife house built on the floor but you want it to float in the air, with a propeller and really high-tech floating helium balloons, for real. Either a brilliant scientist, or a whole think-tank need to first invent how this can be done, before that floating house can be built. This takes months or years, or never happens.
  

 

You're essentially asking for someone to re-invent the house architecture, to redefine what a house is, or in this case how Skyrim works. Those requests usually do not get fulfilled, or even replied to as the modders who can do this know it's a huge mountain of a task.

 

The point is, in the long run people make such mods anyway, along with a load of other features like chopping off limbs, getting scars and burns right there where you got hit, being able to break your sword in battle, etc. Or, if we're lucky Bethesda makes that a feature someday. Stuff like that though probably happens months to years from now (maybe by the time when TES6 is released!). And often only because a newer installment of TES has such a feature which can then be re-engineered into older TES games by looking at the code.

 

Maybe someone will raise their arm and do it! But I think that chance is tiny. Sorry to burst the bubble like this, but I hope you understand a bit what you're asking for now. :) :thumbsup:

Edited May 5, 2012 by Saratje

[SLuckyD]

I am conflicted with Saratje's answer... it contains a lot of truth, but takes it to a possibly unfounded extreme. I LOVE the idea of reinstating the nix'd "Repair" aspect from Oblivion (I never got far into the FO series, so dunno if they had that). The closest thing in Skyrim is to recharge magic weapons.. but that was already there; and just isn't the same as having enemies do more damage during prolonged battles, or equipment negligence on Player's part.

 

While I used to think relatively LITTLE about the repair system in Oblivion... having it removed altogether in Skyrim was a GREAT disappointment. Due to its level of realism and lack thereof, the Obliv repairing annoyed me as you can't ADD metal back to a sword and expect it not to snap (I've formally studied real-life metallurgy). You could replace the blade altogether, but not repair it.. so this kind of thing needed work, in my opinion. But to remove it from the game entirely??? ESPECIALLY with all the new and phenomenal accoutrements involved in metallurgy (smelting, forge, etc etc)... a HUGE surprise to me.

 

I agree that implementing this kind of request is a big and ambitious project. But personally, I know what it would take to DO it and HOW... and for talented and motivated individuals it shouldn't be too difficult, or take years. People already create replacers/addons which show skin... so that isn't really an issue regarding what's seen should a piece of the armor go missing. The easiest way I foresee this being done is to have however many levels of 'damaged' armor/item; which would be scripted to replace the previous automatically after some sort of trigger. It'd most likely be done in a quest, which is constantly (yet non-intrusively) running in the background to reflect real-time action/damage.

 

You'd have the 'new' armor first... after X amount of Player-sustained damage, or Y number of hits taken (possibly linked to amount of damage to make it better), it'd trigger the next 'version' of the armor to appear in Player's Inventory and auto-equip it... removing the 'new' armor. This would progress until reaching a critical point in which the armor would just fall off Player into a pile of recyclable resources on the ground (I'm all about being "green"... even in Skyrim! heheheh). Additionally, the chunks that are hacked off during the interim could be salvaged as well, shuld Player survive the combat and remember to pick them up afterwards. When repairing, the better versions would replace the damaged ones... depending on how much repair is done (time, frequency, materials, etc).

 

I would do this myself, except I haven't learned the Skyrim ways to skinned meshes, behavior graphs, havok animations, and all else which accompanies objects which are worn/equipped by Player. The scripting I could do now... but I'd have to spend a bunch of time learning how to perpetrate the necessary Niffery; something I was procrastinating with. So if anyone is able to create the different meshes, I'd be willing to give the scripting a try. HOWEVER... be warned that I already have a few mods that are still in progress, and the amount of time I would spend on this would not only be limited, but the start of which delayed until I get my existing mods to what I consider acceptable levels. That said: the scripting, theoretically, would be minimal compared to the time it would take to get the actual meshes in-game... and to look realistic/pretty enough to pull off the entire concept. (perhaps that's just my non-meshing self underestimating those who are 'pros' at doing such things)

 

Personally, I think this would be an EXTREMELY VALUABLE asset to the game (and the entire series.. for future releases). So any mesh-making-mo-fo's out there wanna get ONE piece of armor and turn it into say... 3 more levels of damaged-ness... I'll work on the code to make it possible... eventually heheh. Once we get THAT to work... it's only a matter of creating more damaged meshes for other items, then attaching the scripting to it.

[PopTartZombie]

SLuckyD you pretty much read my mind.

 

I just noticed that this forum layout is identical to gamersfirst's forums.