Equippable Darth Bandon Armor

[Mephiles550 227]

I've always wanted to be able to wear Darth Bandon's robes in Kotor, especially since the armor on his corpse was just a lame combat suit reskin. There are actually several mods out there that make it possible to wear his armor. Problem is, not a single one of them works. At least, not for Kotor, and not without replacing anything or being buggy in general. TSL hasn't been to problematic in the past.

 

I don't have this problem for TSL because there is an armor variant, which is the armored flight suit model I never use, that I replace with the Bandon armor model and I don't recall having transparency issues. I don't really know for sure though, as that was a couple years ago since I last tried to mod the armor into TSL.

 

As for Kotor, I've never managed to get the armor to work the way I've wanted to, so I decided to give it a try now. The mod I used was the most well known Bandon armor mod, This was the best I've gotten towards making the model actually work without replacing an already existing model.

 

Actually, the best results I've had were having both my PC's head showing on the armor, but the head would vanish once I entered a new module. I didn't take any screens of that though, and I'm not sure how to replicate it again. 

 

This doesn't even take into account transparency issues. TXI files never seem to work all of the time, as some modules will make the armor transparent while some don't. In fact, the transparency issue is probably the second biggest problem I've got. Say I replace some standard robe model with the Bandon armor model, which I've done before; after having to copy and rename missing essential model files that were already missing from the mod in the first place, the armor textures always come off as transparent. I'm not going to turn off any alpha shaders. That just makes the armor look butt-ugly, but the TXI files don't seem to be doing anything.

 

I'm pretty sure that the only way to get the results I want is through some tinkering with the appearance ands heads 2da files. The modifications I've done to said files are what you see above you. I don't have  the edited files anymore. I deleted them along with the Bandon mod files and went back to my backup 2da files instead. I used the "test" row, the second row, as my base for the mod's appearance.

 

I'd prefer the armor to be stand alone and not replace anything, but if need be, I can replace the Star Forge robes model or maybe even the Iridonian yellow space suit model from Manaan if the head won't present an issue. If someone could guide me as to how I could add this armor properly in the game without transparency, and preferably without replacing anything... 

 

 

[Kexikus 995]

I've been thinking about how to add Bandons armor as a unique armor without replacing something else, and the only thing I came up with is to make it a disguise item. And since you want to keep your head, you'd have add the head to the model and then make one disguise item for every player head in the game. And then use a script to give the player the correct version, if that's possible... And the armor would have to be for the player only in that case... So that's not really a great solution but I think it'd work.

 

Or is it possible to have a disguise item only replace either the body or the helmet?

[DarthParametric 3,784]

The Jolee's robe for TSL mod I did went the disguise for every head route, including companions. If you had an NPC or other dialogue way to get it, you could presumably script it.

[Antonia 5]

Or is it possible to have a disguise item only replace either the body or the helmet?

Strictly speaking, any time you replace a body, you're going to get a new head as defined by the default head column of appearance.2da

 

There's ways to work around it though.

 

Not to toot my own horn too loudly or anything, but that's basically how my armband works. I too ran into a situation where I got tired of needing new lines in all the 2da files and specific items for specific characters etc, so in my case, one item covers pretty much any possible default disguise and head combo the game will support.

 

http://deadlystream.com/forum/files/file/808-kks-disguise-armband/

 

If all you want is to do one for Bandon's armor, you'd need to make a script that applies his appearance as a disguise effect, but then uses the DuplicateHeadAppearance function to put back the head you wanted to keep. Since you need someone to duplicate, what I do to solve this problem with the armband is first create a dummy character at the module's starting location, then duplicate the (N)PC''s head to that dummy, apply the disguise effect, then duplicate the dummy's head back to the (N)PC before deleting the dummy.

 

Also note that this function does sometimes do some slightly twitchy things. For example, I'm pretty sure once you change a head with the duplicate function, applying a disguise won't alter that head again (unless the disguise has a built-in head), and the effects get a weird sort of pseudo-permanence which will sometimes get canceled after some cut scenes, but often not..

 

Anyways... if you want any more technical info, let me know. The armband will work fine to run around in Bandon armor as a disguise effect) if you wanna just go that route, or of course you could make an item based on the same idea for just that specifically.

 

-Kitt

[Mephiles550 227]

Thank you all for your help and suggestions. For now, I'm just going to make my current PC's head as the one in use for the mod's entry in the appearance.2da. If I start a new game with a different male head, I'll just change the number. Until I find a better, more permanent fix that doesn't involve having to edit files each time or needing additional items besides the armor itself equipped to get it to work, this will do for now.

 

I'm using this mod as a template now. It's much easier to work with than other Bandon-style armor mods. No transparency issues as well.