Dynamic Armor Variants

Overview

This framework makes it possible for armor items to dynamically take on different appearances by swapping their armor addons. This removes the need to make completely separate armor items for things like raised and lowered hoods, which practically speaking, should be part of the same item. It also allows for setting up conditions to make those changes automatic, for the player character as well as NPCs. My Dynamic Lowered Hoods mod demonstrates how these features can be used.

Add-ons

In addition to the SKSE plugin, the FOMOD installer contains these optional add-ons:

UIExtensions Menu - Adds a menu that you can use to customize armor variants for yourself or NPCs. Requires UIExtensions and MCM Helper.

Hidden Equipment - Adds simple variants to all circlets, helmets, backpacks, and cloaks that allows them to be hidden. This addon is not usable by itself and is recommended to be used alongside the UIExtensions Menu.

Config Creation

Configs are located in 'Data\SKSE\Plugins\DynamicArmorVariants'. Refer to the JSON Schema for a full description of the specification. There are also some examples available.

Much like how the game finds BSA and INI files, config files for Dynamic Armor Variants will get loaded if their filename matches a plugin in your load order. They will also be loaded in the same order, and if there are any conflicts between them, the later-loading config will win.

The specification primarily consists of an array of variants and an array of states. variants describe which armor addons can be swapped, and states configure the conditions for when variants should change automatically.

The name field of each variant is its unique identifier. This field is always required. It is recommended that you use some prefix or the name of your mod in order to prevent accidental collisions. If the same name appears multiple times in different configs, their data will be merged together. Any fields which directly conflict and cannot be merged will decide the conflict winner based on your load order.

The displayName field is a name for the variant that can be displayed to the player. It is required to define this field at least once for each variant. This is used by the UIExtensions Menu to create menu items. Make sure to use a Scaleform translation string here (beginning with '$') so that your mod can be localized to different languages.

The linkTo field causes the current variant to be "linked" to a separately defined variant. This makes its armor addon replacements take precedence over those defined by the linked variant. For example, i