Armour customisation (Patreon)

While the dragon creator will be the flagship creative feature in the game, customisation in general is something we plan to include for several aspects of the game, including the human character and their armour. The new armour model is now at a stage where we need to consider how this should be done, so I spent part of this week working out the armour customisation system.

There are many aspects to take into consideration, such as making it deep but not too complicated, realistic but still fantasy, technical limitations and optimisation. At first I was considering doing a layered system like they have in Kingdom Come Deliverance, where you start with a cloth/gambeson layer, and then chain mail, and then plate, but there are some drawbacks to this that I didn't like. It also puts some constraints on the designs and makes the armour look very traditional medieval, which is good for a game like KCD where this is one of their main selling points, but we want some more flexibility.

Instead, I decided to have a single base layer that consists of cloth, chain mail, scales and whatever else that isn't a hard armour piece. Then you can equip individual pieces of armor on top for the torso, shoulders, upper arms, elbows, lower arms, hands, upper legs, knees, lower legs, feet and of course head. Colors, patterns and material properties (for example how shiny the metal is) can be chosen for different sections with fabric, leather, metal and so on. So you pick a cool base layer, populate it with different armour pieces and pick the colors, patterns and material properties to get the look you're going for. It's conceptually simple but allows for a lot of flexibility to let you assemble your ultimate dragon riding armour.