Thanks! DF itself actually had this problem until an update last summer where they palletized everything, and I updated my mod to take advantage of that feature the same way vanilla does. I imagine most of the mods you're talking about are older than that update, so they're still doing it the old way, and either there's a lot of spritework to do because they weren't lazy like me and just modified vanilla graphics or they haven't gotten around to it.

Congratulations on being one of the few to code your mod in such a way that all the weapons, clothing, and armor are actually visible on the character by using the original weapon sprites and making them work with any modded material added to the game. Many of these other mods are unusable because I can't see the weapon or armor, and I don't want to pretend it exists. Plus, I added extra metals to my game, and I want everything to work; otherwise, the mod's incomplete, in my opinion.