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About this mod
Disable some or all of the cosmetic "chameleon" effects from chameleon armor and stealth boys, while keeping the stealth bonus. Turn off the transparency to get back your aim but remain invisible to everyone else!
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Chameleon Effect Adjustments
PLEASE NOTE
Installing this mod while your character is already crouched may lead to unpredictable behavior that may permanently and adversely affect your game. Please be sure to make a persistent save (rather than a quick save) before installing and please be sure your character is standing in that save.
Have you ever found yourself using stealth technology to sneak around the Commonwealth like an invisible boss, only to discover when you reach your assassination target that your favorite pistol with the reflex sights or iron sights is next to worthless because of course the sights are invisible too, even to you?
If you have and if you're anything like me, you might have tried to go with it for a bit, maybe briefly considered giving up on the whole awesome stealth strategy, but ultimately decided "hey there's got to be a mod that fixes this, right?" Because let's be honest it's super annoying, and making the game more fun is what mods are for.
What it does
Things that make you invisible, like stealth boys and chameleon armor, activate what the game files refer to as the Chameleon effect, which is the actual part where your character becomes invisible. There is actually a separate effect that can confer the same stealth bonus, meaning it's possible to remove the part where you appear invisible, but keep the bonus. Or, in other words, you can be invisible to everyone else, but not to yourself. Thus, the ability to use iron sights or reflex sights is restored!
There are two ways the chameleon effect is activated - one with a timer that's used by stealth boys or any other consumables that make you temporarily invisible, and one that's "permanent" (so long as the state that activated it is active) which is used by chameleon armor. Rather than modify the chameleon armor and stealth boy objects, this mod modifies those underlying effects directly, meaning that not only will this mod affect the vanilla sources of invisibility but should work for almost every mod that adds items that activate invisibility as well, without any conflict!
Both the "armor" and "stealth boy" chameleon effects also come with a few other effects as well, such as the change of lighting (for both), an activation sound (for both but in the case of the stealth boy it's tied to activating the consumable object, not activating the effect), or an additional animation (stealth boy effect only). This mod comes with additional options to remove any combination of those as well, in case you feel like it's a bit silly to keep them without your character becoming transparent. Or you can keep them in, if you think they're pretty awesome on their own, or if you want some sort of indication to know when you're invisible to everyone around you. In fact if you want to be invisible (because it is pretty awesome, and if you don't use sights to aim then why not keep it, right?) but don't like some of the other effects, you can just remove those and keep the invisible part in. It's totally configurable!
Fine print
(feel free to ignore unless you're interested in the very specific details of how the mod works)
Each of the two chameleon effects have three different components that can be deactivated independently of each other, and since we can ignore the case where none of those are disabled (since that's just vanilla), that means in order for this to be as configurable as I want it to be there are 63 different possible configurations, and I didn't really want to make 63 individual esp files. Instead there are 14 esl-flagged esp files - seven each for both the chameleon effects - from which at most two should ever be used at the same time (one for each effect). Although I'm not a huge fan of adding multiple plugin files in a single mod, since they've got the esl flag set at least they won't count against the esp load limit.
What it doesn't do
There is a third source of temporary invisibility in the game - rank 5 of the Sneak perk. This one works a little bit differently and I haven't cracked it yet, and considering it only lasts about half a second when you crouch I'm not entirely convinced it's worth it.
It also does not remove the activation sound from stealth boys, since that's just part of what happens when you activate that specific consumable object, rather than being part of the chameleon effect it activates.
It does not (currently) behave differently based on camera perspective (1st vs 3rd person). It might be possible without adding a lot of complexity to what I hope to keep a very simple mod, but I'm not certain.
It also does not remove the actual stealth bonus granted by any of these objects. When the chameleon status is removed from the chameleon effect, the mod replaces it with an identical stealth bonus, so it's only you that can see you.
Compatibility
I would expect conflicts for this mod to be pretty rare, honestly. Most other mods dealing with invisibility will likely modify or add items that activate the chameleon effect, rather than modify the chameleon effect itself. This means that if you use a mod that adds a new invisibility-granting item, it should work seamlessly with this mod and completely without conflict.
This mod will conflict with anything that modifies the actual chameleon effects (either the armor effect or the consumable effect). An example of this would be something that changes the sound you hear when you crouch while wearing chameleon armor, or that changes the lighting change in some way.
In general it's always a good idea to run FO4Edit whenever you're adding any new plugin/masters files (.esp, .esl, or .esm) to be certain you don't have any unexpected conflicts, but for the most part using this mod should be very safe.
Known Issues
Several folks have reported strange and broken behavior when installed with a save in which your character is already crouched and that persists even after standing. My guess is the issue is specific to the armor component of the mod and the culprit is either disabling the activation/deactivation sound or the lighting change (or both), either or both of which I suspect orphan a script (when already crouched) that suddenly doesn't know how or when to terminate. I don't currently know anything about actual scripting for FO4 and although I'd like to learn, I don't currently have a timeline for doing so. I think there may be tools out there to clean up orphaned scripts which might help, otherwise to fix:
- Uninstall the mod
- Revert to save from before installing the mod
- Make sure your character is standing
- Reinstall the mod
Thanks to peterjanb and tacitus59 for reporting the issue.
Installation
PLEASE NOTE
To avoid breaking your game, please make sure you have a persistent save (not a quick save) before installing and please be sure your character is STANDING when you install.
Configuration for a FOMOD installer is included with the mod, so if you use a mod-manager it should be as straightforward as any other mod. Just select which effects you want removed and you should be set.
If you don't use a mod manager, first unpack the mod file using the archive extractor of your choice, then pick at most ONE .esp file from each of the ChameleonEffectArmor and ChameleonEffectStealthBoy folders, and move or copy them into your game's data folder.
Files are sorted into individual folders describing what the contents of each on do and do not remove. It's sort of a poor-man's FOMOD, I hope it's helpful.
Future Plans
In the future I hope to add an MCM menu so individual pieces can be disabled and enabled on the fly with a single plugin file. I've never done something like that before though and I don't have a huge amount of free time, so no promises in terms of when that will happen.
Additionally I think it may be possible to have the effect behave differently based on camera perspective (1st vs 3rd person), but it'll take some digging to know for sure.
Contributing
Pull requests are welcome! Feel free to submit a pull request to trench8891/chameleon-effect-adjustments on github.
Permissions
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2020 trench8891
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to freakeunt for their work addressing the problem, which gave me a jumping off point for my own solution.