[Cosmetic] Female Elven Mages + Robes Override Skin Color

Fenghoang

Current Behavior: Female elven mages wearing large robes (i.e. Archmagi robes) have one of the innate robe colors (location value 4 - the "strap color" for armors) overriding their exposed leg skin color. For the medium robes (i.e. Robe of Vecna or Knave's Robe), the Major color (location value 2) overrides their exposed leg skin color.

Expected Behavior: Equipped armor shouldn't affect their exposed leg skin color.

Extra comments: This is actually present in BG2, as well, and only affects female elven mages AFAIK - haven't tested the shorty races. Female human mages aren't affected by this. This doesn't occur with light robes (i.e. Robes of Fire/Cold/Lightning Resistance). It affects both the ingame and the paper doll sprites.

Elven males have a similar peculiarity (unsure if it's intended or not), where their hoods take the Minor Color (location value 1) instead of the Major color (location value 2) in which the rest of the cape/robe takes. Humans (both genders) and female elves take the Major color for both the hood and cape/robe.

Cuv

This has been reported. Thank you

Fenghoang

I took some ingame comparison screenshots to make my OP a little more clear.

Using Dynaheir and Adelia (the premade Elven Mage), here's a paperdoll comparison of the different robe armor levels (Large, Medium, Small) for Female Humans vs Elves:




Here's the ingame screenshot comparison of the Robe of Archmagi for Dynaheir (Human) vs Adelia (Elf):




And here's the peculiarity with Large Robes (Robe of Archmagi) on Male Elves (Xan) vs the other genders/races (the lineup is Adelia, Dynaheir, Xan, Edwin):




Also, after searching a bit on the forums, I noticed that @Oxford_Guy ran into the same issue as well.

I, however, tested it on BG2 (GOG version with only BG2Fixpack installed - no 1pp) and ran into the same issue there. I used DTLCEP to confirm the behavior in my OP. For Large Robes (i.e. Robe of Archmagi), the color effect for Location 4 (the "strap color"/"minor trimming" for armors) overrides the exposed leg color for female elves. For Medium Robes (i.e. Vecna, Knaves, etc.), the color effect for Location 2 (the Major color) overrides the exposed leg color for female elves.

For male elves, the Minor color (Location 1) overrides the hood part of Large Robes instead of being a solid Major color for the hoodie and cape like the other race/gender combinations. Mr. Pennyway's Cosmetic Change mod displays this behavior as well in the screenshots.

Oxford_Guy

Yes, I'd reported this behaviour as well, I think it makes the female elven mages look less elegant than than should, it's only cosmetic, but I like my female mages to look stylish!

Fenghoang

Yeah, I doubt it's very high on the to-do list, but it isn't wrong to want nice things... =3

I was a little surprised that I couldn't find much info on it when I did a google search, though. I think I only found one topic on SHS and your posts from 2 months ago about it. I personally didn't run into it until a few days ago, when I was playing around with Robe of Vecna on Aerie. My CHARNAME or Edwin usually hogs Vecna and the issue wasn't glaringly obvious with Aerie's default colors plus the Robe of Archmagi, so I never noticed it before. I was playing around with DLTCEP, yesterday and today, to make Vecna look less clownish, and it became rather obvious after that.

I could work around the male elf one by either changing the color ingame or manually modifying the item file. The female elf issue, on the other hand, left me stumped. =(

Bercon

The issue is in the BAM files, so fixing isn't exactly trivial. You have to go and edit the image colors.

EDIT: As seen here, the colors are wrong and the only way to fix this is go through all affected frames and pixel by pixel change the colors. Sadly I doubt there is resources to do this for such minor graphical glitch.



For EMW the issue is only present with armor level 4 (hood), but on EFW its present in armor levels 3 and 4.
Elf Male Wizard (CEMW4**.BAM) wrong colored hood compared to Human Male Wizard (CHMW4**.BAM).
Elf Female Wizard (CEFW3**.BAM) wrong colored leg compared to Human Female Wizard (CHFW3**.BAM).
Elf Female Wizard (CEFW4**.BAM) wrong colored leg compared to Human Female Wizard (CHFW4**.BAM).

[Deleted User]

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Fenghoang

Bercon said:

The issue is in the BAM files, so fixing isn't exactly trivial. You have to go and edit the image colors.

EDIT: As seen here, the colors are wrong and the only way to fix this is go through all affected frames and pixel by pixel change the colors. Sadly I doubt there is resources to do this for such minor graphical glitch.



For EMW the issue is only present with armor level 4 (hood), but on EFW its present in armor levels 3 and 4.
Elf Male Wizard (CEMW4**.BAM) wrong colored hood compared to Human Male Wizard (CHMW4**.BAM).
Elf Female Wizard (CEFW3**.BAM) wrong colored leg compared to Human Female Wizard (CHFW3**.BAM).
Elf Female Wizard (CEFW4**.BAM) wrong colored leg compared to Human Female Wizard (CHFW4**.BAM).

I figured as much. I was hoping for a more simple solution, but I feared this was the case when I couldn't figure out how to fix it with item modding.

Didn't the original BG (non BGT/tutu) have colorless legs for the 3rd and 4th robe armor levels? I saw @Parys link a comparison with classic BG for Traveller's robe . Perhaps modifying the old sprite would be easier than the new one or maybe using one of the other Infinity game sprites. I honestly don't know if it was a problem in IWD. Correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the biggest problems with some of the older BAM files is that they lack a dual wield animation so that might be an issue.