ArchiveXL: Suffixes and Substitutions

Summary

Published: ??? by Last documented update: Feb 18 2024 by

This page will teach you about conditional appearance switching in Cyberpunk and give you an overview of existing suffixes and substitutions.

Wait, that's not what I want!

• For a hands-on guide to Adding new items, check the corresponding pages in the Modding Guides section

• Dynamic appearances have their own guide (see ItemAdditions: Dynamic Appearances)

• There is an own page for Influencing other items

• To conditionally hide items or parts of items, check Influencing other items or ArchiveXL: Tags (especially the section about #root-entity-tags)

Why are suffixes?

Sometimes, you want to load different meshes/appearances under different circumstances. Before ArchiveXL 1.5, the only way to do that were suffixes — registering them in the .yaml, then adding one appearance for each variation in the root entity (so for 2 suffixes, you'd have 4 entries, for 3 suffixes, you'd have 8…).

Since 1.5, psiberx has made it possible to use conditionals via dynamic appearances, which require a lot less of an overhead. (Personally, I've gone from 96 entries in the root entity down to 9!)

But while the solution has changed (and improved), the problems remain and require handling.

Body genders

There are two body genders with different proportions, and you can't make them wear the same shirt (at least not without clipping). To solve that, you can do what CDPR did and have one variant per rig.

The suffix for the body is Male / Female, the ArchiveXL string substitution is {gender} and resolves to m or w.

Body types

ArchiveXL allows body modders to register a custom body tag, which can then be used for suffixes and for substitutions in dynamic variants. To learn more about this, check ArchiveXL: body mods and refits.

print(Game.GetScriptableSystemsContainer():Get("PuppetStateSystem"):GetBodyTypeSuffix(ItemID.new(), GetPlayer(), nil))

Camera modes

Sometimes, you need to hide parts of the item in first person. – for example helmets, since you don't want to have half a helmet floating in front of your face (unless you consider that immersive; most people don't).

Arm states

The arm states represent the different cyberware. For example, since you can't hire the forearms for mantis blades, you can roll up the sleeves just for this. The definitions are:

If the arm states aren't working as expected, check if the table above is outdated by comparing the names with the source code.

print(Game.GetScriptableSystemsContainer():Get("PuppetStateSystem"):GetArmsStateSuffix(ItemID.new(), GetPlayer(), nil))

Foot states

To achieve gender equality in regard to foot states, you need to use Toggleable Feet. The substitution key for dynamic appearances is feet.

If the foot states aren't working as expected, check if the table above is outdated by comparing the names with the source code.

print(Game.GetScriptableSystemsContainer():Get("PuppetStateSystem"):GetFeetStateSuffix(ItemID.new(), GetPlayer(), nil))

Conditions

Conditions are a feature of dynamic appearances . They can be used in two places:

In your .app file

Inside your .app file for appearanceAppearanceDefinition.name:

This lets you to select a different appearance based on body gender, camera state... (see the tables above).

By using conditional appearances, you can still make use of partsOverrides to use chunkmask hiding.

In your mesh_entity.ent file

Inside your mesh_entity.ent for component.name:

Substitutions

Substitutions are a feature of dynamic appearances . They can only be used inside your mesh_entity.ent.

Substitutions allow ArchiveXL to load a different mesh based on different circumstances.

Which suffixes exist?

For a list of active suffixes, check the tables above.

Disabling Suffixes

You can disable suffixes by adding the following line to your .yaml entry:

appearanceSuffixes: []

Suffix load order

1. the base appearance (with no suffix)

2. the most specific suffix collection it can find

Example:

V has a female body gender and you're in photo mode (third person camera). Your base appearance is called appearance_.

Which substitutions exist?

Since 1.8.0, ArchiveXL supports substitutions for #dynamic-appearances. You can use them in two places:

• inside mesh entity components in the fields name, depotPath and appearance

• in the .app appearances for the field name

Any placeholders will be interpolated at run-time (replaced with the correct value for your current state)!

If any of the placeholders aren't working the way you expect them, check if the table below is outdated by referring directly to the source. (Please update the wiki if that happens!)

Substitution load order

For #dynamic-appearances, you can conditionally switch out components or entire appearances by name. You can switch use any of the entries from #which-substitutions-exist

The order works as follows: