How can we fix this basic-bitch clothing system?

[VenomousOuroboros]

Whether you're approaching this from an adult mods angle, or a purely innocent "I want to be who I want to be in an RPG" angle, let's all acknowledge:

How your character dresses is a major portion of that.

In Fallout 4 and Skyrim, we had so many goddamn clothing slots, you could layer belts with extra belts, kneepads over high socks, underwear under shorts WITH a skirt on top of it, a bra with a shirt with a vest with separate sleeves with elbowpads with gloves, a necklace and a facemask and a hat or helmet, ALL AT ONCE!

In Starfield?

Nope.  Suit, hat.  Go fuck yourself.

 

I, for one, find this intolerable.

Still, I recognize that we're stuck in a tight spot.  Creating a whole new clothing framework would mean developing individual clothing items from the ground up, then creating a SPID-like distributor to provide and apply these to every NPC in the game.  AT THE SAME TIME, a new UI would have to be designed to be able to select clothing items for these separate slots.

Am I saying that we need as open of a slot system as FO4 or Skyrim?  No, not at all.  But even Cyberpunk allowed for shoes, pants, shirts, jackets, masks, and hats.  And 90% of the chances you got to see your character in third-person, they were in a beginning or ending sequence with A PREARRANGED OUTFIT ANYWAY.

So, Bethesda could only have the most meager of excuses for whittling this aspect of their "RPG" down so much, and I'm not really willing to hear it.

 

The ultimate (set of) question(s) after this little tirade is:

-What would it take to reinvent a clothing framework for Starfield?

-Am I the only one who deeply desires such a thing?

-Would other modders take it up, and start generating their own articles of clothing to fit into it? (I'm pretty sure this would be a resounding YES)

[AngrySunTheory]

One thing is for sure; if we're ever going to see a mod like Devious Devices in Starfield, you're going to need a whole new framework to go with it. The lack of a slot system to support individual clothing pieces for arms, legs and torsos just isn't going to work for the purposes of a mod like that. So, I have no doubt that someone is eventually going to work on the framework problem and that could serve all sorts of future mods for clothing (of the restraining kind, and otherwise). I'm not sure if the related UI issue could be fixed by piggybacking off of something like StarUI, or if the overhaul would have to be more significant than that. Either way, it could be a heavy lift in terms of level of effort.
 
I would absolutely love to see a mod that made outfits more modular and more diverse throughout the NPC population though, outside of the adult context. The idea that your NPCs have a choice between Space Clothes #1 or Space Clothes #2 makes sense in the UC capital city of New Atlantis. But someplace like Neon? I should be seeing all kinds of crazy crap in the Astral Lounge.

[robert_d_negro]

4 hours ago, AngrySunTheory said:

 
I would absolutely love to see a mod that made outfits more modular and more diverse throughout the NPC population though, outside of the adult context. The idea that your NPCs have a choice between Space Clothes #1 or Space Clothes #2 makes sense in the UC capital city of New Atlantis. But someplace like Neon? I should be seeing all kinds of crazy crap in the Astral Lounge.

 

i have to remind you that npc´s dont visit lounges or any other bars/shops... for example, the astral lounge has scripted dancers that dance 24/7 and has missions givers that sit/stand in the lounge 24/7, they dont interact with each other they just wait for you on their spot cyberpunk style - we dont have a gangster/boss in neon finish his evening at the astral lounge before going back to his place routine so u can meet different npcs in different time zones, thats not how the game is designed. the question is why create a framework for clothing for dead npcs in a dead world?

 

i searched for ai mods in skyrim and from my understanding the enhancing ai mods there expand on the already created ai system in the game. starfield does not seem to have an ai system - so you would have to create that one too...

 

in a state like this the modding community cant even get out if its bed

[MysticDaedra]

On 9/9/2023 at 5:55 AM, VenomousOuroboros said:

Whether you're approaching this from an adult mods angle, or a purely innocent "I want to be who I want to be in an RPG" angle, let's all acknowledge:

How your character dresses is a major portion of that.

In Fallout 4 and Skyrim, we had so many goddamn clothing slots, you could layer belts with extra belts, kneepads over high socks, underwear under shorts WITH a skirt on top of it, a bra with a shirt with a vest with separate sleeves with elbowpads with gloves, a necklace and a facemask and a hat or helmet, ALL AT ONCE!

In Starfield?

None of that was available in vanilla Skyrim. A few of those things were available in a very limited fashion in Fallout 4. The vast majority of what you are talking about came as a function/feature of various mods over time. I'm 100% sure that we will see mods that add these features eventually, but it's disingenuous to imply that these were basic features of vanilla Skyrim/FO4.

[isee]

Yep, Oblivion had 8 slots, but three of those where only for rings and jewelry. Fallout 3 had 6 because they ditched rings if I'm remembering correctly. Skyrim had seven in the base game before mods came in. F04 had 2 clothing slots and 5 accessory slots in base game. Starfield's base game seemingly only uses 4.

 

But that isn't the whole story. Because extra armor slots likely already exist and are just unused. At some point they likely decided to limit the scope for their character artists and just said "Two head slots for helmet and a hat, and two body slots for a suit and casual clothing."

 

It's the benefit of them using such an old engine that has only been updated maybe four times in its life. A lot of old features still exist even if they aren't used for some reason.

 

Once we get the creation kit next year we'll be able to look and see into the numbers the clothing slots are registered to which will give us a better idea of what we are working with. Possibly even earlier with Xedit or something similar. Creating extra clothing slots if needed is one of the first things the modding community will do in general. 

 

Of all the issues halting modding currently. Like the new animation file type we'll have to decrypt, this is the one that will probably be the easiest to overcome. Well relatively easy anyway.

 

Of course I could be completely wrong. We just have no way of truly knowing or doing anything about it until next year. So I wouldn't worry until a few months after that.

[Travestea]

Yea, it's a case of we don't know what we don't know. We don't know if there's a bunch of unused equipment slots hanging around or not. We don't know if there's a robust AI system or not (Skyrim had NPCs programmed to stand in one spot and never move as well). The only things we know for sure right now are there's a new animation system and NIFs are laid out differently. We also know how determined the modding community can be at times. Ways will be found.

[BAB PEEG]

The game's been out for 2 weeks settle down.

[Miauzi]

Vor 2 Stunden sagte Travestea:

Ja, es ist so, dass wir nicht wissen, was wir nicht wissen. Wir wissen nicht, ob es noch eine Menge ungenutzter Ausrüstungsplätze gibt oder nicht. Wir wissen nicht, ob es ein robustes KI-System gibt oder nicht (Skyrim hatte NPCs so programmiert, dass sie an einer Stelle stehen und sich nie bewegen). Das Einzige, was wir derzeit sicher wissen, ist, dass es ein neues Animationssystem gibt und die NIFs anders angeordnet sind. Wir wissen auch, wie zielstrebig die Modding-Community manchmal sein kann. Es werden Wege gefunden.

 

And some old hands of mod authors have already waved at the sight of Fallout ... which means do it on your own.

Those who always rave about the power of the community ... have probably never worked on a major project themselves.

Such euphonious words come easily from their lips.

 

Why don't you start getting something out yourself?

?

[sen4mi]

I think the question here is: how we can deal with the lack of equipment slots for clothing in the game.

 

But we do not yet know how many slots are supported - we only know how many slots we have seen in use. So those equipment slots we have come to know and love will maybe be available for modders (if we can manage to agree on which slot gets used for what ... but I guess there's always going to be some modder or modder clan out there who doesn't really understand and comes up with a conflicting system while calling it the best thing ever).

 

Still... if it turns out that those extra slots do not exist - that there's no space for them in the data structures - we could come up with workarounds. (Like, we could use item crafting to fuse wardrobe items together into an outfit.)

 

But probably the biped slots still exist, even if a few of them have been hijacked for spacesuit, helmet and boost pack. (And, of course, sooner or later someone is going to make a translucent or maybe a dynamically updating force-field space suit. But getting NPCs to react to the ludicrousness might be tougher to implement.)

 

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by sen4mi
I left out a maybe