STAR WARS

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Description
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This mod brings the iconic weapon of the Star Wars franchise to the Commonwealth. Ladies and gentlemen, the lightsaber!

*Confetti, noisemakers, applause, cat shrieking*

Ahem, right. Anyway, as said before, this mod brings the lightsaber into Fallout 4. Now, I know what you're gonna say: "But DMagnuuss, there's ALREADY a lightsaber mod!" Yes, there is, and that's cool, but for me it doesn't hit the right notes, as far as visuals and moddability. Because what I wanted out of a lightsaber mod didn't exist, I went above and beyond to make that happen, and now after 2 months of work, here we are. The mod comes replete with custom meshes, sounds, textures, and even impact effects!

So, here's the skinny: To even start faffing about with the weapon, you need to get your mitts on the hilt. You can either craft it at a Chem station, under the LIGHTSABER category, which requires Science 1 to do so, or venture to Virgil's Lab in the Glowing Sea to get the one he has. Lightsabers are also leveled on Synths and Synth Coursers, as well as Brotherhood of Steel mooks, however they're a bit uncommon. A unique version of the lightsaber, the Darksaber, also exists (as of 3.2) and can be found in Sentinel Site Prescott (named just Sentinel Site on the map), located in the Glowing Sea. The Darksaber has its own set of customization options, mostly the same as the standard lightsaber, but the sounds and blade length can't be changed.

Once you've got a working one, you can mod that sucker at a weapon workbench. The lightsaber is extensively customizable, with a choice of not three, not four, but over 20 blade colors!

The colors you can pick from are:

Red
Dark Red
Scarlet
Blue
Blue-White
Dark Blue
Green
Emerald
Cyan
Sky Blue
Orange
Purple
Amethyst
Indigo
Magenta
Pink
Lavender
Yellow
Yellow-Green
White
Amber
Rainbow
Azure
Cerulean
Teal
Turquoise
Viridian
Gold
Crimson
Plum


On top of color, you can also pick your blade's length, with 4 to pick from: standard length, long, short or small, with small provided the shortest reach. It's also great for slicing bread. As of version 2.0, you can also make your blade Precise or Compressed, which will make the blade much slimmer and increase the saber's critical strike damage. With a 1-handed hilt, you're also able to change the way you attack, so you can either lay heavy cuts on your foes or make it so you'll thrust and swipe at whatever doofus decided to pick on the dude armed with an energy sword.  Ah, but, this isn't all. On TOP of both color and blade length, you can opt to make your blade Unstable. Unstable blades come in all the colors and lengths, and do additional energy damage due to not being as restrained. There's a visual difference, as the unstable blade will have a rippling glow to it. You can also use the Black blades to give your saber a black core, or plug in a Thick blade to make the saber better able to stagger opponents. You can also make the blade shed light in whatever color you wish as well, whether or not it actually matches the blade's color.

The customization doesn't end here, no sir! You also have over 30 hilts to choose from, with more being added each update!

(Click for a nice up-close look. Be advised, the picture does not reflect how the hilts will look in-game.)

This is just a small sampling of what's available (look in the Screenshots tab for previews of others). The three on the left are my own designs, while the four on the right all hail from the Original Trilogy. The hilts come in 1 and 2-handed varieties, so you can opt to give fools a nice 2-handed whack with your new toy or buzzsaw them 1-handed. This also leads into the next bit of customization, the sounds!

On top of everything else I've mentioned, you can also change how the lightsaber sounds. The hum, ignition, retraction and swinging sounds can all be changed to suit your needs. Some hilts will change the sounds, but they won't prevent you from changing them around if you'd rather it sound different. What can't be changed are the impact sounds, since those are tied to the impact effects, however said sounds will vary depending on if you're hitting a wall/armor, or whacking the saber into a Raider's chest.

Now, all this is great and all, but "how do I make all this?" you ask? Good question, Billy! Blades of all stripes require crystals in order to craft; Normal blades require Refined crystals, while Unstable blades require Cracked crystals, and the Precise/Compressed blades require Compressed crystals, which need Refined crystals to make. All of these can be made at a chem station, under the LIGHTSABER category. How many crystals you'll need depends on the blade: Small blades require only one, Short blades require 2, standard blades require 3, and long blades require 4. Changing the sounds require nothing.

Oh yeah, one last thing. You've done all the above, but you noticed the Crystal Socket section on the lightsaber. The trunk is that, you say? Well my friend, that's the cherry on top of the customization sundae. There are three special crystals you can make and fit into the lightsaber (all three are doable at the Chem Station). These crystals, Cryogen, Radioactive and Electrical, will make the lightsaber deal cryo, radioactive or electrical damage on top of its normal damage, and affect opponents accordingly. Nothing really changes visually, but the naming will and so will its effect on enemies.

As of Version 3.1, Visible Weapons support has been added! Most hilts now have apparel versions that can be crafted at a Chem Station under the Lightsaber Holster category, as well as empty holster models for D-ringed lightsabers and the prequel-style Covertec clip. For full functionality, you need to have Visible Weapons installed. Once you have an apparel hilt made you can link it to your lightsaber using the Visible Weapons Config item in your inventory. There are some limitations, though: As Visible Weapons looks at the base ID of a weapon, you can't have multiple lightsabers linked to different holsters. Linking a crafted lightsaber to a holster means any other crafted lightsabers will use that holster, and the same goes for lightsabers retrieved from Synths. Also, you have to manually re-link your lightsaber to a holster, as there isn't any sort of dynamic reassignment function in this mod or in Visible Weapons itself that changes the holster to match the hilt you've selected. If all that sounds like a headache for you, not to worry; the lightsaber is set up to be compatible with Classic Holstered Weapons, which I'd personally recommend over Visible Weapons as it doesn't suffer from the aforementioned limitations in Visible Weapons, but you can use whatever you like.

Ok, I think that covers it. So go out, find or make yourself a lightsaber and have fun!

!!NOTICE!!

How the lightsaber's glow looks is entirely dependent on how bloom is handled in your game, and varies depending on the environment and time of day. It's passable with the vanilla bloom, though some colors will look more like butts than others, and if bloom is turned off, then you'll just have white sticks. Ideally the glow would look as it do in most of my screenshots, hence I recommend an ENB of some sort to make the bloom less butts so you can has nice, more realistic-looking glows. ENBs that add other lighting effects to bloom (like anamorphic flares, etc) might interfere/look icky, so give it a go, see how it looks with your preset and make adjustments if necessary. I personally use a rather barebones ENB fitted with Natural Bloom.


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F.A.Q
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Can be found here. This covers a lot of simple, common problems, so be sure to read it in full before posting questions or bug reports.

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Future Plans
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• Custom animations. Unlike the custom animations addon mod by wer123456, the planned animations will take after Jedi Outcast's stance system, meaning you'll have three "forms" to choose from, as well as a separate form for lightstaffs. The three "forms" will be equivalent to the Fast, Medium and Slow styles from JO; Fast will allow you to make quick swipes and cuts, infinitely chainable and may also invoke the deflection perk, making it ideal for deflecting shots in combat. Slow will focus on brute force; swings are slow and telegraphed, but hit like a bus if they connect. Medium will strike a balance between the two; swings will be of moderate speed and power, with the ability to chain attacks like the Fast style. No fancy acrobatics or flourishes will be implemented. There may also be two more styles, Quick and Heavy, which if implemented would be intermediaries between Fast and Medium (for Quick) and Medium and Slow (for Heavy). Heavy, at the very least, would marry the chainability of Medium with the speed and power of Slow.
  

• Saber trails/fanning.
  

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Installation
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Drop that sucker into your Data folder, or download with NMM/Vortex, then activate via NMM/Mod Organizer or the ingame mod menu. If using Vortex, make sure that once the mod is enabled that it's been deployed.

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Uninstallation
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Deactivate the mod from the in-game mods menu, or via NMM/Mod Organizer/Vortex/Wrye Bash. Delete the .esp and BA2 files if you want to completely wipe the mod.

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Known Issues
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•Putting the weapon away in 3rd person causes the ignition sound to play instead of the shutoff. This unfortunately is an issue with the vanilla game, so there's not much I can do to resolve it. The problem lies either with the 3rd person unequip animations, or with the game's sound engine. In the former case this bug could be resolved by modifying the animations, but if it's in the game's engine[/color], that would make it nigh-impossible to fix.

•Wielding the lightsaber 2-handed results in you holding it like a baseball bat when idle, meaning your player (or NPCs) will rest the blade in their hand. Or not, if using the small blade. There's really nothing for 2-handed swords in the vanilla game, that I know of, so this is another issue that boils down to vanilla guff and can only be fixed with custom animations

•The lights have some quirks. A saber with a light attached will always be lit when the saber's dropped, or if it's in the mitts of a follower. But, I added a Null light so you can use this if your follower being lit like a Christmas tree bugs you, and you don't mind a lack of light.



LET IT BE KNOWN THIS MOD SHALL NOT BE COPIED AND PASTED ELSEWHERE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR (ME). DOING SO WITHOUT PERMISSION MAY RESULT IN FREQUENT RASHES, HEAD COLDS, ANTIDAEPHOBIA, WEIGHT GAIN, DEMONIC HARD DRIVE POSSESSION, BAD GAS, AND A SUDDEN LOVE FOR JUSTIN BIEBER. IF YOU ALREADY ARE A FAN OF JUSTIN BIEBER, YOUR CDS WILL TURN INTO JAR JAR BINKS AND MP3S WILL PLAY NOTHING BUT PREQUEL ANAKIN QUOTES.