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Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 06 May 2018, 09:06
by Utis
Hello!
Is there a way to change your own face and hair in OpenMW after you have started your character? The general recommendation seems to be to use 'enableracemenu' on the console. But in OpenMW this resets the character to level 1 no matter what.

I tried to edit the save file directly, by changing the the string referencing the head model. But unless the length is exactly the same (like changing "some_head_01" to "some_head_02", I get an error about a wrong sub record when loading the save file. (Which does surprise me a bit as I was expecting the string to be null terminated.)

Is there a way around this? When starting a char, I have a hard time caring about its appearance. Only when the story has started and an idea about my char slowly unfolds do I get an idea how he's supposed to look.

On this occassion: Many thanks to the developers for OpenMW. It's really making me quite happy to replay that game!

Re: Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 08 May 2018, 15:59
by heilkitty
Utis wrote: 06 May 2018, 09:06 The general recommendation seems to be to use 'enableracemenu' on the console. But in OpenMW this resets the character to level 1 no matter what.
That's a bug, I guess.

Re: Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 08 May 2018, 16:08
by akortunov
heilkitty wrote: 08 May 2018, 15:59 That's a bug, I guess.
Original game behaves in the similar way - does not keep player stats.

Re: Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 08 May 2018, 16:58
by Jemolk
akortunov wrote: 08 May 2018, 16:08
heilkitty wrote: 08 May 2018, 15:59 That's a bug, I guess.
Original game behaves in the similar way - does not keep player stats.
No, the original game absolutely does keep player stats, at least when you don't change the character's race. You can change the head and hair within the race menu just fine while retaining stats. The issue sounds like we're not doing that here. I can test soon if no one else manages first.

Re: Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 08 May 2018, 17:21
by akortunov
Jemolk wrote: 08 May 2018, 16:58 No, the original game absolutely does keep player stats, at least when you don't change the character's race.
Maybe only if you do not touch player race. But enableracemenu is very bugged in vanilla game, so it is a quite hard to tell how it intended to work.
For example, I can not provide a reasonable explanation of such thing:
Screenshot_20180508_201528.png

Re: Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 08 May 2018, 18:13
by heilkitty
Haven't encountered such outrageous bugs, TBH. Unless you did `enableracemenu` more than once per session, it worked OKish.

Re: Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 08 May 2018, 23:42
by Jemolk
heilkitty wrote: 08 May 2018, 18:13 Haven't encountered such outrageous bugs, TBH. Unless you did `enableracemenu` more than once per session, it worked OKish.
If I did enableracemenu more than once per game launch from desktop in the vanilla engine, I'd have to forcibly end the program because everything would bug out and the game would continuously cycle through name, race, class, birthsign, etc. menus indefinitely and not even let me close the game.

Re: Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 09 May 2018, 09:12
by Utis
Yeah, I guess the way 'enableracemenu' worked in the vanilla game, using it as an option to change appearance is probably an unintended side effect that is based on a bug. And OpenMW is correct.

(EDIT: Or not? OpenMW's enableracemenu does share that trait with vanilla Morrowind's that you don't get into the class selection if you use it for the first time after launching the game.)

Would be nice to have a proper option to change appearance, though. I'm probably not the only one who only cares about his character after playing for a while.

Until then: Could somebody enlighten me a bit about the save file format? If I change the string referencing head or hair to another string of different length, I get an error like this:

Image

This only happens if the string is of a different length. If it's referencing a head that doesn't exist, the file loads normally and I just get a (creepy) character without face. If it's a valid reference (changing "some_head_01" to "some_head_02") it works as intended and I get another head.

Re: Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 09 May 2018, 12:56
by AnyOldName3
The saves are a binary format, not a text format, so it's likely that a lot of things have pointers (e.g. 'the next record starts 52 bytes from here'). If you want to swap out a string for one of a different length, you might find that there's a field somewhere immediately before it that contains its length, and that's the only thing you need to change, or you might find that there are a zillion things which need changing to the point that it's not worth the effort.

Re: Changing Character Appearance

Posted: 09 May 2018, 13:30
by psi29a
Or just modify the name, but keep the length (use a space or _)