Weapon Upgrades

[Sargent Q]

The "judgement" of this thread coming from me is about the whole idea.  Not how you want to put it in.  Despite what Ribbed said,  There is very few unused dev weapons and a insane amount of High tier craftables and legendary's available to us.  I really really do not want even longer load times whenever I'm booting up the game to kick a  AFKer.  Also I don't want to see anymore power creep in the game.  Its gone high enough.

[Terath]

So I'm very new to this, but just opening the brf files in resources with openbrf i applied a uniform colour to some weapons, and imo they look amazing and took a few seconds, should i upload images or something, to show what the items can look like from this?

them being very easy to do isn't the problem here. the amount of times you'd have to do that 'very easy thing' is very, very high, considering you want to add modifiers for most craftable, high tier or other items.

on top of that, color uniform isn't very reliable. it does nothing but add a color filter on to the item, and can very easily ruin a weapon's otherwise good texture. color uniform also takes the place of the model's OpenBRF shading options, making it impossible to both have a uniform color and things like ambient occlusion or tuned colors.

that, and it would fill all of the BRF's by way too much with way too many items. people seem to forget that most items have LODs (level(s) of detail), which also take up spots in the BRF.

let's say that a weapon has the base model, and 3 LOD's, like so:

Spoiler

[Image: 2ce217d2c4.png]
[Image: a2b40e4b86.png]

this is pretty much standard. now, with 3 different recolors + those LODs, those 4 just became 16 separate model variations for 1 item.

Spoiler

[Image: e8ab4b1617.png]
[Image: 935defece7.png]

edit: this is also what color uniform looks like, albiet saturated. puts a filter on the whole thing.

see the problem? to do this to that many items and have that many models in the BRF's is downright insane. you could argue that you could make the recolors of the items use the base model's LODs, but AFAIK, that isn't possible due to how OpenBRF manages things (seeing as .lod[1,2,3, etc.] is applied through the .lod attached to the model name in openbrf and not through the actual code of the mod). you could also say to lower the amount of LODs in the game, but that would be harder on older PC's and be kinda silly to remove LODs to make room for color uniformed models.

uniform color is a nice idea, but no, wouldn't work. even if you did do all of it, I doubt it'd be brought in due to how long the load times would be and unreliability of uniform color.

[Ribbed]

I doubt it'd be brought in due to how long the load times would be and unreliability of uniform color.

Not to mention a complete waste of time and effort since bannerlord is coming soon.

I do think some kind of upgrade system like this should be implemented in the bannerlord port(if its made) even if variations aren't available. Also who knows, it's likely the bannerlord model's will be handled a lot differently and hopefully make variations a more realistic possibility.

[TerrorBite]

But an argument is invalid if 'the way i put it' makes it no longer an issue anymore. you can't call this feature not worth implementing due to effort if it doesn't have to require much, and this goes for every argument.

Now you're saying that more weapons should not be added, but isn't the reason more weapons are always being added partially due to the top tier legendary's being massed over time? This feature would decrease the number of them in the game each time one is consumed, so in the long term this would assist this issue, not make it worse.

The load time increase is the reason why we wouldn't want to go overboard in this. However for this feature to work well, not many items need to be added. If there are let's say 1500 item equivalents that must be loaded during textures in loading screen, for this feature to make a massive impact on the game, just 50 items could do it, for ~12 items per class. I'll do loading time tests and try to work out how much longer it might be.

Those 4 swords using 16 model variations is the same propotion to other models though, assuming 1 upgrade per weapon on 4 legendary's, this is not a big deal.
Hold on, i'll get numbers and then modify this post more.
Also, i'd like to know what people would think about those uniform colours as upgrade legendary's, imo those look amazing, even if they are lower quality or w/e (ill look into specifics soon), and using the uniform colours that are less extreme they look even better than those you posted.

[Ribbed]

you can't call this feature not worth implementing due to effort if it doesn't have to require much, and this goes for every argument.

The model variations aren't a lot no, but this idea would require a balancing system on the upgrades as well as an entire new tab on the website managing said upgrades.

[Looter]

I honestly see no reason for a color reskin of the method being suggested, it looks ugly. Instead of recoloring models terror, make new ones if you want more variety. Also to item upgrading, no, previous reasons stated by other.

[TerrorBite]

If you want to save time, it could just be a crafting option available from level 1 of any crafting type. The balancing of ~50 items would not be that hard, because it is only going to be set up relative to the item above it, and it doesn't always have to be a viable choice, because people may want it for its looks as well.
However, many will be easy, im not top tier so im unfamiliar with many items, so this example may be a little off, but lets say twigs upgrade requiring 2x twigs for an extra 2 dmg, or 2 dragons breath for an extra 1 speed rating. The idea here is that the upgrade will not make it as good as the next best weapon, but will just make it look very unique, and be better than the standard.

They look ugly because the colours are too different, ill upload something better soon.

[TerrorBite]

Multiple tests got me similar results
~12 seconds loading until it starts loading textures
~41 second of loading textures for 1500 models?

increase of 50 models should increase the time by ~1.37s assuming linearity at ^ is correct.

Instead of taking ~53 seconds it will take ~54.4 seconds.

Given the magnitude of the change this will make to the mod, this is a relatively minor time difference.
Now assuming each model has multiple LOD's, an increase of 50 models i'd expect would increase the number of LOD's by roughly the same proportion as all other models, so it should not delay the loading time any more.

[Terath]

But an argument is invalid if 'the way i put it' makes it no longer an issue anymore. you can't call this feature not worth implementing due to effort if it doesn't have to require much, and this goes for every argument.

i mean, as long as you're willing to put forth the effort, shoot for the moon. also never said it wasn't worth implementing, i said it would take way too much effort for current model people to handle.

Now you're saying that more weapons should not be added, but isn't the reason more weapons are always being added partially due to the top tier legendary's being massed over time? This feature would decrease the number of them in the game each time one is consumed, so in the long term this would assist this issue, not make it worse.

never said that more weapons shouldn't be added, I said that it would fill the BRFs.

Those 4 swords using 16 model variations is the same propotion to other models though, assuming 1 upgrade per weapon on 4 legendary's, this is not a big deal.
Hold on, i'll get numbers and then modify this post more.
Also, i'd like to know what people would think about those uniform colours as upgrade legendary's, imo those look amazing, even if they are lower quality or w/e (ill look into specifics soon), and using the uniform colours that are less extreme they look even better than those you posted.

while they may look good to you, i can assure you that simple recolors will get shot down immediately if you offered them to the developers. it doesn't matter how good you think they look, it's considered lazy and pretty unprofessional to use recolors, and is seen as half-assed. if you're suggesting to add that, it's a pretty solid no (and not just from me). easy? yes. worth it? no.

also, if you're referring to ribbed on all accounts, just ignore post and move on :\

[TerrorBite]

Well as an item upgrade, for it to look slightly different due to the uniform colour, couldn't it look good enough for the mod? I'll post images soon to show you what I mean.
If it doesn't, I guess the next issue would be editing the actual items slightly but in a way you notice the difference of course. With 50 items would this be a large task?