» Tue Jan 28, 2014 2:02 pm Will player models be allowed to be mod-ed inside the game, player side? That is, will I be able to replace a default player model that was made by zenimax, with a custom model made by myself/or any other model maker person, in blender or 3dsmax. One of the most fun parts of skyrim was replacing the dull default models with higher poly, custom made skins, less...ahem...clothed...versions, shinier armors, or even total replacement or fan made custom armors.
That is, will player models be locked or not? Will collision be server or player side?
Why i'm asking this is because I have encountered the issue of game publishers locking the player models in mmo's because the games had world collision calculated on the player side, based on the model's hitboxes, which allowed it to be replaced by something different, like say a pink square box, allowing passage or jumping through/over some places where a normal player would get otherwise repelled/stuck, which of course then led to a series of exploits like doing the whole dungeon by crawling under the map or outside the walls, bypassing every mob along the way and making a beeline for the treasure chest at the end of the map, because, even if the monsters did detect you, they would be unable to touch you or shoot at you, since for them you were outside the map/walls, and they would just get stuck with their faces planted against said wall, trying to get to you, even tho it was impossible.
A cure for this was for game companies to lock the game content to the default models and their hitboxes, but that just ruins the fun of modding the player model alltogether, which, at least from my oblivion, fallout series, and skyrim experiences, was one of the fun aspects of gameplay. God knows how many days i've wasted just trying out new armor mods on the nexus.
Also, will there be an option to get "unstuck" in the eventuality that by some rare occurance I get stuck inside a rock or in a tree, or in a hole I can't jump out of, even if i'm using the default player model? That is, without some drastic measure like teleporting out to the nearest town/shrine which would ruin my whole quest. No game is colission error-proof perfect.
That being said, I would like to see a server side calculated collision with the world environment, where the calculated hitboxes of the player remain the same, no matter what the model and skin attached to it looks like.
For example, if i wanted to mod my daedric 1handed sword to look like thunderfury from warcraft, which compared to any 1 handed swords is FREAKIN HUGE, it's taller/larger then the player alltogether, the server should not take into consideration the model of the thunderfury, which would have a huge reach/range, but rather it would see that the player has a 1handed daedric sword equipped, ignoring the visual model alltogether, and calculating the sword's reach to it's default range for said object.
That applies to any armor as well.
How will invisibility shader be handled in a replacer situation? In some games replacing a shader file of the model skin would result in totally visible stealthy characters painted with the "shoot me first before i get to backstab you" all over their model, ruining any intentional stealth play against other players.
That is, an enemy player should remain invisible to another player if he so desires, even if his model skin was intentionally replaced with a photoshoped version filled with screaming pungent easy to target colors.
And if I want to apply/change the player model, it should be installed the in same way it was in skyrim/oblivion, via esm/esp/Bsa and mod manager.
I like the esp/bsa system because it can be applied to a wide range of things, including customized UI's, replacing or adding any sort of graphical elements, improving overall gameplay or changing settings.
If there's going to be any sort of UI customization, I would like to see them packed in easy installable -drag and drop in the data folder after un-archiving-style of packaging, with an easy to acces list of installed mods where i can enable and disable mods as I please (similar to the warcraft mod page after login screen, but compared to that one, accesible before login/or even offline). Esp/bsa combo allows exactly for that so it should be kept as the modding system, even if this is a MMO.
