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About this mod
Now includes a small Creation Kit plugin to prevent the transparent effect. Also, a console hotkey to remove the visual chameleon effect when aiming a weapon, without affecting stealth.
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Updates
- 29/09/23: Now checks the player is in 1st person before removing the chameleon effect. Also removed a macro.
- 15/06/24: Added a tiny, optional plugin made in the Creation Kit that prevents the character from becoming fully transparent.
NEW PLUGIN
Now that the Creation Kit has been released for Starfield, we can edit the REFL data for the Chameleon effect directly, which was not possible before. I have made a very simple change here, and altered the effect so that it is a membrane (surface) effect instead of replacing the skin of your character. You can still tell when Chameleon is in use thanks to the surface effect, but it does not obscure your character or weapon. In third person, it looks as follows.
This is purely visual and does not negatively affect your stealth at all. It will affect both the player and all NPCs that use Chameleon (i.e. certain followers) but will not affect Void Form, as that would also negate the Void Form ability of some Starborn enemies.
This was made as a small esm plugin, so will not count towards your full master plugin limit. The game can handle over 4,000 small plugins.
The old hotkey approach is still here if you want it, see below. But for the plugin alone, you don't need to bother with the editing your ini files section and can stop reading here.
DESCRIPTION
This is a "bug" that predates Starfield itself by quite some years. Since Fallout 4 it's been almost impossible to use a weapon with iron sights or reflex sights while wearing armor that has the Chameleon effect, and in Starfield this also applies to the higher ranks of the Concealment skill; your weapon and its sights become invisible, forcing you to either guess where you're shooting or switch to third person to get your reticle back.
I've managed to find a workaround which (with some caveats) is I think worth sharing, and is certainly better than trying to shoot blindly or giving up on Chameleon items altogether. Here it is in action:
What this is doing is binding a command to a key/button of your choice to remove the visual effect, while also activating aim down sights mode. If your weapon is holstered, it will unholster it first, just like the default key for secondary attack does. There are some limitations to work around however. I cannot see a way in the console to check if the player is currently aiming down sights (the commands to do that seem to be papyrus only) so I cannot make this a true toggle like the regular button is. You will still need to use your existing secondary attack key to exit aim down sights mode. There is also, as you can see in the video, a slight delay before the Chameleon effect disappears.
However, despite the above, there may also be advantages to doing this as a simple console hotkey as I have here. Fallout 4 mods to remove the effect sometimes had unintended consequences, such as a slight loss of stealth. That won't happen with this hotkey approach, as it only affects the visual effect. [note: it also isn't a problem with the new plugin.]
EDITING YOUR INI FILES
As with all other "mods" here that use hotkeys you'll need to make/modify your StarfieldCustom.ini, as well as your hotkey ini (StarfieldConsole.ini unless you've installed another mod that changes it to something else) and these both go in your Documents\My Games\Starfield folder. You can either download the example files I have uploaded here, or make the below changes yourself.
Your StarfieldCustom.ini should have the following added to it to enable hotkeys:
[Menu]
bUseConsoleHotkeys=1
And here is what you should add to your StarfieldConsole.ini, I have mine set to mouse button 3 but you can bind it to any valid keybind that you've not defined in-game:
[Hotkeys]
Mouse3=if player.isPC1stPerson == 1; player.sme 19AFF2; endif; if player.isWeaponOut < 2; player.pa 132AF; endif; player.pa 4A57
If for some reason you wanted to bind a hotkey to toggle off aim down sights mode rather than just using your secondary attack key, player.pa 4A58 is the command for that.