They have that on live already, and it is called ornamentation. I haven't actually used it myself since I quit before it was added, but I think the idea of it is fairly simple. You basically get an ornamentation item that has the icon and model of the graphics you want your current weapon to look like. Then you combine your weapon in the ornamentation container and it changes the look permanently to the new icon and model.
I have looked into adding them a couple times, but there are a couple of things that make them a bit complicated to add. Adding an icon field and model field to the inventory table wouldn't be too bad. It would probably need to be added to the corpse blob as well, which does complicate things a bit. But, the most complicated part is that I don't know how to deal with the actual combines yet. The ornamentations don't actually have a model number on them for the new look, only the icon of it. I am guessing that means we would rely on a combine script that has a list of every model that is associated with each ornamentation, and then use that to populate the inventory table field for the new look and icon.
***Edit***
Actually, it looks like they now include the model ID in newer ornamentions from Live based on what I see on the 13th floor website. Here is an example of one of the older ones:
http://eqitems.13th-floor.org/itemraw.php?id=40692
As you can see, the idfile is IT63, which is just the generic model for a bag looking model. I searched my DB and all of the ornamentions I have are IT63 as seen here:
Code:
mysql> SELECT id, Name, idfile FROM items WHERE name LIKE "%Ornamentation%";
+--------+--------------------------------------+--------+
| id | Name | idfile |
+--------+--------------------------------------+--------+
| 40623 | Rallosian Blade Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40624 | Rallosian Club Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40625 | Rallosian Dagger Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40626 | Rallosian Spear Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40627 | Rallosian Staff Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40639 | Rallosian Claw Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40640 | Ornamentation Stripping Tool | IT63 |
| 40661 | Draconic Hammer Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40662 | Draconic Great Hammer Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40663 | Draconic Blade Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40664 | Draconic Great Blade Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40665 | Draconic Dagger Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40666 | Draconic Spear Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40667 | Draconic Fist Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40692 | Tunarian Staff Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40694 | Tunarian Blade Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40696 | Tunarian Dagger Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40697 | Tunarian Spear Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40736 | Riftseeker Hammer Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40740 | Riftseeker Short Spear Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40742 | Riftseeker Claw Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 40772 | Discordant Dagger Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 41966 | Guktan Machete Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100110 | Shield of Valor Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100111 | Buckler of Valor Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100112 | Shield of Fire Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100113 | Buckler of Fire Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100114 | Shield of Ice Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100115 | Buckler of Ice Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100116 | Shield of Earth Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100117 | Buckler of Earth Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100118 | Shield of Air Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100119 | Buckler of Air Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100120 | Prismatic Shield Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100121 | Prismatic Buckler Ornamentation | IT63 |
| 100122 | Were-Orc Bone Shield Ornamentation | IT63 |
+--------+--------------------------------------+--------+
But, I just searched 13th floor for a random newer ornamentation and this one shows the correct model of IT10781:
http://eqitems.13th-floor.org/itemraw.php?id=124290
I didn't check any others, but I assume they switched to simplify things on their end a bit. I notice they have a charm file entry for the container to have a script associated with it. In this case it is ITEMTransfigShield, but it is different for different ones. I assume that they used to use the scripts to deal with the combine to make it take over the model of the current item.
So, maybe I can do an items table update and see just how many items use the old way of setting the model by script. If it isn't too many, we can probably just make a list of what model IDs they are supposed to be and add a query to update everyone's DB to have the correct model that matches those older ornamentations. Then, it would be much easier to implement ornamentations.
One minor problem is that not all DBs will have all of the old ornamentations, and some may have custom items using those IDs, so I am not quite sure which way is the best to deal with the SQL for that. Most likely, people would need to check their DB before running any update queries to fix the older ornamentations models. I could just leave that up to each admin to do and put the query to fix them in a post or something. If it was added to the SVN, it could potentially break items for people who aren't careful. Maybe just making a warning about that would be good enough though.
Either way, I think this will require a change of the corpse blob struct data that will break any existing corpses that have items. I would probably have to hold off on working on this until that blob has been removed. I have been working on removing that blob anyway, so if I can get that done, I might be able to do ornamentations after that when I have time.
Once the ornamention code is in place, we could even have quest commands that could let you update the model of any item on a character at any time without needing to do the ornamentation combine. This would allow you to do exactly what you are wanting, Hunter.
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