Editing worldmodels on the fly?

[Vernoctus]

Hello! What I've been trying to do is create a single melee weapon model that can take on different appearances depending on what item a player has equipped in Pointshop 2. Right now, all I'm trying to do is allow them to choose between several colors of lightsaber, which will only require the skin to be edited.

It works fine for the person who is holding the saber, it always appears to be the right color in both first person and third person modes, but to anyone else who is looking at them it appears to be the default color that I specify.

    local Melee = self.Owner //Code removed here because you have to pay for it. It just 
                             //returns the name of the item in the player's "Melee" slot
    if Melee == nil then
        self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 5 //The default skin, same as the starting one.
        self.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 5
    else
        if Melee == "Red Lightsaber" then
            self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 4
            self.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 4
        elseif Melee == "Blue Lightsaber" then
            self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 0
            self.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 0   
        elseif Melee == "Green Lightsaber" then
            self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 1
            self.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 1       
        elseif Melee == "Purple Lightsaber" then
            self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 3
            self.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 3
        end
    end

This is the code I have written to make it change skins, and as stated above it only works for the player actually holding the saber. It's located inside the SWEP:Think() function. I've thrown everything I can think of trying to get it to work, but I just can't get it. Any help you could provide would be appreciated.

[Clavus]

I can't really go too in-depth, but are you sure that all the other clients actually 'know' the user bought it and execute the code? I imagine the server should check the buy status, then set a networked variable on the SWEP or something to synchronize the state between all clients.

[Vernoctus]

I tested a few things with the networked variables but couldn't really get it to work. I'll take another stab at it and see what I can get. I think I see what you're getting at here, and I hadn't really thought of that. Let me give it a go and get back to you.

[Vernoctus]

Still no dice. It works the same as before. Here's what I have now:

function SWEP:Think()
    if SERVER then
        local Melee = //snip
        if Melee == nil then
            self:SetNWString("Type", "Yellow")
        else
            if Melee == "Red Lightsaber" then
                self:SetNWString("Type", "Red")
            elseif Melee == "Blue Lightsaber" then
                self:SetNWString("Type", "Blue")
            elseif Melee == "Green Lightsaber" then
                self:SetNWString("Type", "Green")   
            elseif Melee == "Purple Lightsaber" then
                self:SetNWString("Type", "Purple")
            end
        end
    end


    local Type = self:GetNWString("Type")
    if Type == nil or Type == "Yellow" then
        self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 5
        self.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 5
    else
        if Type == "Red" then
            self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 4
            self.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 4
        elseif Type == "Blue" then
            self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 0
            self.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 0   
        elseif Type == "Green" then
            self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 1
            self.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 1       
        elseif Type == "Purple" then
            self.VElements["SaberY"].skin = 3
            self.WElements["SaberY"] = 3

        end
    end
end

Once again with that same bit of code snipped out. I'm not massively experienced in LUA coding, and NW variables are not something I've used before. Still, it's functioning properly on the client side of things as before, so I assume I did it correctly.

EDIT: Using a pre-set variable I was able to determine that pointshop 2 doesn't seem to be causing this issue. I simply set a variable to blue and then set the weapon code to change all the lightsaber colors to blue if that variable was equal to blue, and I got the same result as before. All the lightsabers appeared blue to the people holding them, and yellow (default) to everyone else.

[Clavus]

Check if the model:SetSkin function in the SWEP:DrawWorldModel part of the base code is actually called on those other clients. Work back from there.

[Vernoctus]

I'm not really sure if I'm testing this right, but it does seem to be calling on the other clients and I'm not really sure where to go from there.

I don't really want to keep bothering you with this, it's definitely starting to seem as though my LUA skills simply aren't up to the task. I don't suppose you maybe have an example weapon laying around I could look at as a last ditch effort?

EDIT: Oh, something I forgot to mention, I CAN change it completely successfully but only if I do so in the initial variable setup for the weapon. So

SWEP.WElements = {
            ["SaberY"] = { type = "Model", model = "models/sgg/starwars/weapons/w_saber_4.mdl", bone = "ValveBiped.Bip01_R_Hand", rel = "", pos = Vector(3.5, 0.5, -6), angle = Angle(80.649, -153.118, 180), size = Vector(1, 1, 1), color = Color(255, 255, 255, 255), surpresslightning = false, material = "", skin = 5, bodygroup = {} }
    }

SWEP.WElements["SaberY"].skin = 0

The above code works successfully, and properly changes the skin for all players. However, this doesn't help because I can't get self.Owner from this point. It's not until I start trying to put this code inside a function, like Think() that it ceases to work properly.