Weapon Customization

[Brokenbone]

The weapon customization which was once available in BG only did changes to model parts 1, 2 and 3, and the ability to do tinting. It never did VFX stuff, which I think some people are fearful of in their examples. The VFX stuff would be like, "green dripping acid" or "frosty white sparks" and all that sort of stuff.

It works (worked) on pretty much any weapon you can name, and I believe it permitted cycling through absolutely every model we have available in the haks. Here's a rough estimate that probably 80%+ of the appearances are "perfectly normal for fantasy weapons", but it's all going to be a matter of taste, right? Some of the models though were kind of dramatically different from other models within a family. This was mostly true in the "club" category, where you could cycle from a rough wooden club looking thing, to a bone with glowing runes, to a broken-off bottle, to a plank with a nail through it. Not kidding about those models, some are hilarious, and would be very funny to have for some kind of slum gang NPCs.

Not putting words into paazin's mouth, but I had the impression some appearances might somehow almost be "deceptive" whether looking more frightening or less than they maybe should. If you had a club +1, maybe changing it to a broken bottle appearance would be frowned upon, for example, it looks like a piece of trash and the fact that it actually is meant to be a masterwork and enchanted bludgeon, just doesn't fit some peoples' taste, reasonably enough.

That said, lots of appearances aren't "deceptive", you might start off with an axe that has a half-moon looking blade, very swoopy, but perhaps prefer one that looks more squared off. Or you have a longsword with an ugly batwing crossguard, and figure a plainer crossbar looking thing, of some color or other, would overall "fit" some kind of look and feel you were going for with a character. Yes, our PCs are dress up dolls in a way, there's RP, there's combat, and there's dressup all involved in the game.

I guess though that paazin has sort of invited "technical help" at this point though, right? If someone (or some team of someones) cares to cycle through all weapon appearances and write down little notes of potentially ridiculous ones, and gets the scripts shown to them to potentially edit out these as valid possibilities... well, good things might happen. Get three people together for like, blunts, slashers and piercers and get cycling through appearances (with the strong hint that clubs are the main one I can think of as a "catchall for weird appearances").

I suppose slapping a higher pricetag on customization could be another thing to discourage just messing around all day with the system (not charging 1gp per change, maybe more like a % of the weapon's value... so still cheap for cheap stuff, but a big investment if you're changing your 2500gp weapon).

Do have to remember though that in the pallette, there's really not that many looks and feels likely to be available in a given module. Like if there's a "longsword +1", chances are it has the generic description of "this blade doesn't bear the hallmarks of any maker" and they probably all look the exact same, whether found in an Elven knight's tomb, a hobgoblin war camp, in the underdark, wherever.

I'll say for my personal part, I really did enjoy the customizer thing. I wanted my half-orc to use a brutal looking battleaxe, the start merchant one looked boring, but I jumped for joy when I was able to change the look to something that looked like a bloody meat cleaver... still a "big, obvious axe" look, but it gave a big flavor difference to me than something that looked, say, like a dwarven staple. "Rhaggot got big throat-choppa" as opposed to "Axes high!"

[oldgrayrogue]

Exactly BB -- I'm not talking about Final Fantasy looking options here so please everyone chill. But what is the harm to letting someone choose one guard or hilt over another, or the rounded axe over the square one? This is exactly what our toons would do when perusing a smith's wares -- they would pick the weapon that is most appealing to them for both look and functionality. I frankly don't see the issue others have with it. It certainly beats having many different models in the vendors to choose from.

[NESchampion]

Exactly BB -- I'm not talking about Final Fantasy looking options here so please everyone chill. But what is the harm to letting someone choose one guard or hilt over another, or the rounded axe over the square one? This is exactly what our toons would do when perusing a smith's wares -- they would pick the weapon that is most appealing to them for both look and functionality. I frankly don't see the issue others have with it. It certainly beats having many different models in the vendors to choose from.

I agree entirely. There's no restriction on making your clothes look like fancy ones, don't see why there should be one for weapons given the flavor it can add. If Jim wants an ornate looking rapier and Rugdush wants a cudgel that looks like a tree stump then I think that's awesome and enhances RP.

[paazin]

Like before: If someone would be willing to go through the weapon models and select out "mundane" vs "fancy" ones, I'd be quite willing to add that into a custom "weapon modification" merchant.

That's just the difficulty in all of it.

[paazin]

Is anyone still interested in doing this? It would require going through all the weapon models in the toolset and categorizing them for each weapon type.

[oldgrayrogue]

I am -- and will -- sorry been busy with the holidays

[thinkpig]

ogr, i will pitch in too, lets get together and split the weapons up or something

[puny]

if its mostly scrolling through and look for things that looks to cool, i could pitch in some effort as well.

if its something sily complicated im not sure i could help

[Brokenbone]

http://www.alandfaraway.org/node/2129

I saw a ticket opened for this... is there still a need to identify (to edit out) "silly appearances" like the rare laser/tron looking shields or broken bottle and farm tool type clubs, to assist? In looking at this months ago, it's almost certain to me that "Clubs" were the absolute weirdest stuff and might be 80% of the taste-problem, if there's even viewed to be a problem that "((Don't pick something highly magical looking or of a massively different shape than starting point without DM okay, i.e., broken bottles or glowing shields)) in a dialogue might hint? The dialogues in tailors are pretty OOC anyhow, telling a guy "next appearance" or "previous appearance" 15-20 times.

[paazin]

There isn't. Now it's just all coding work.

[AcadiusLost]

Not sure if it's an issue worth considering or not, but many of the weapon parts (1,2,3) are not interchangeable, so you can easily end up with a small to large "gap" between guard and blade, for example. I expect most people would just keep experimenting until they'd gotten a combination that looks OK, but some pretty bizarre combinations could come out of such a system. If we actually wanted to code around those incompatible combinations, the workload would increase significantly.