Possible QoL mods

[darkekun]

TLDR: I'm posting QoL concepts for mods and thoughts on how to make them. Weighing in with community on direction and viability.

 

 

So there are a number of small QoL things for the game that I think are mostly viable, so I'm posting them here along with a possible way to make a mod provide that benefit. I've played with some values and merged some json files to get my install mostly working well, but I'm not super well versed enough to understand these options without fiddling with them, so a little direction might be useful. I'll look into it myself as well, but I'm no expert, so I wanted to make a major post including what I'm trying and seeing if the community has thoughts or an understanding of solutions that could lead to some wins in this regard. Feel free to replay and say what can and can't be done, or how you would try to make it work... or that everything I'm thinking is wrong and I should feel bad.

 

 

Invisible head and face items:

-Possible solution: Mod that creates craftable "invisible" items with item mod slots, which ought to be possible as there are already some "invisible" items in game either by glitch or intention. Could implement for all slots as well, making any slot "hideable". Unsure on the difficulty of adding items to the game and crafting menu, but there has been some progress on unlinking appearance effects, so making an existing set invisible is probably more likely, or according to stamina.

Reusable throwing knives:

-Possible solution: Mod such that "thrown knife" never leaves inventory, treating the equipped knife as an infinite stack of throwing knives of that quality. Could treat thrown knife attack somewhat like a melee attack in that it can be done infinitely. Or might be able to just have each knife create a duplicate in inventory when thrown?

Slowed timing for cut-in comments:

-Possible solution: There should be a value for time progression on those dialogue events in a configuration file already, right? If we could just edit that time value to higher than half a second, that'd be great. If its not a value in one of the ini or json files, then it may be more complicated.

Remove lvl cap / Change pts per lvl:

-Possible solution: This is something that also should be able to manage in some sort of configuration file, and there's already cheatengine tables that allow you to edit the values, so making a mod for it shouldn't be out of the question.

Removable weapon/armor mods:

-Possible solution: I know there is a perk that gives you back your mods on an item when you scrap it, so maybe there is a way to trigger the mod return effect by clicking on the item mod itself or when you replace it with another item mod. An alternative idea is making any mod you buy grant its schematic, so you can craft as many as you want with materials, but I don't know how difficult it is to add items to the crafting menu. Maybe there's a way to make the mods behave like cyberware, or like the menus to equip items themselves.

Editable appearance after start:

-Possible solution: There might be a way to make the character creator menu come up again, lettin you make the changes you want and then going back to you character. If that's possible it could be mapped as an option to the mirror in V's apartment or to the ripperdoc menu. It could also be made the effect of a purchasable item at the ripperdoc, much like the perk point respec token.

Change weapon appearance:

-Possible solution: Weapons are built on templates, and if there were a way to make a weapon of a certain model cycle through the different cosmetic looks corresponding to each 3D model. Not sure if this is viable since the 3D model and the raster skin might be hard coded to each other in the game database rather than linked during play. If it can be pulled off there might be hope for cycling clothing colors as well.

Refresh shop inventories:

-Possible solution: Shops change their inventory over time and refresh according to character level, so there may be a way to make that effect happen with a menu button of some sort. If there is a way to make that refresh function happen on demand rather than over time, there may be the problem if it cycling all the shops and not just the one you are shopping at. It'd be nice if it could be mapped to a dialogue option at the shopkeeper appended at the bottom that says "what else you got?", but that's making it even more advanced.

I understand some of these might not be possible until proper modding tools are released, but some should be a matter of just finding where the right config value is and fiddling with it, or making an existing in-game function call happen on-demand rather than on only specific conditions. If anyone has a better/alternate solution that can create a similar effect with much less effort, or knows where to start on any of these ideas, please post in response... but please try to offer thoughts in good faith. I'll smirk and snicker at snide comments, but I'm aiming to find constructive solutions.

[darkekun]

Tried some things to help get into the right mindset for examining files and digging into the console and that tables. Put on a wide colored visor, skipped a meal, and tried sitting on the floor with some garbage littered around me. Felt very much in theme but it did not help my technical skills at all. So not the edge and now I have to clean up this mess.