[Stellaris] Kagami Species 1.13

INTRODUCTION

Having survived the calamities brought on by man's inhumanity to his fellow man, Earth's human survivors sought to rebuild their society on their homeworld and beyond. Was it the collapse of the Universal Federation brought on by brutal prison revolts? Or the unending war between mankind and bloodthirsty demons? Whatever the case, it has ironically left "man" disproportionately young, female, bosomy and ruthless. Calling themselves "Kagami" they might still bring that inhumanity upon the stars. 

 

NON-FLAVOR TEXT INTRODUCTION

 

This mod is pretty simple, befitting a first-time STELLARIS modder: it adds a custom human-style species with static portraits for use in STELLARIS, alongside a number of prescripted empires. Almost all the artistic assets are from visual novels, web and graphic art by Kagami Hirotaka (alias KAGAMI), particularly his artwork for visual  novels by eroge companies LILITH and BISHOP, along with Mizushima☆Oonari and other Japanese artists known for their work with Kagami...and a few easter eggs thrown in for fun. 

 

As such, the species has what I'd consider a fairly consistent across-the-board style lacking in other "anime-style" species graphic packs, despite its limitations. 

 

WARNING

 

This is an species graphic pack that directly utilizes art assets from, primarily, erotic visual novel games. Even though I did not utilize the nude 2D artwork that every single female protagonist features in the pack does include, for reasons mentions below, it should be considered "NOT SAFE FOR WORK". To paraphrase the mod's original creator, you should expect enormous breasts, cavernous cleavage, engorged nipples and even occasional female nudity. If this offends you, don't use this mod.

 

HISTORY

 

So, for some history: this idea wasn't mine originally, nor do I intend to take lone credit for it. The genesis for a species graphic pack using KAGAMI's portrait work for LILITH titles came from ReMeDy on the LoversLab Adult Modding Community (the only place this mod should be distributed for the time being). ReMeDy began this as a spin-off concept from another series of "anime-style" portrait packs, with 59 different portraits, the majority of them implemented in-game via the code as, appropriately called the "Lilith Species". Struck by the simple elegance (and being a fan of the art style), I approached ReMeDy about it and upon learning that he'd moved on from STELLARIS to other PARADOX INTERACTIVE titles, asked his permission to expand upon it and, potentially, distribute it on LoversLab, which he gave. This mod was a far more realistic project for a struggling STELLARIS modder than my other ideas, in particular desire for a Ctarl-Ctarl Species and Empire from the popular anime OUTLAW STAR, and the idea is ReMeDy's--without him, you wouldn't be reading this. Some of his code is still in the mod, which I'll refer to later.

 

INSTALLATION

 

Extract the contents of the archive into your DOCUMENTS/PARADOX INTERACTIVE/STELLARIS/MOD folder. There should be two items: a 'Kagami' folder, and a Kagami.mod file. Activate this like any other mod in the STELLARIS launcher, listed under the Mods tab as 'Kagami Humans'. Chose one of the pre-made empires (listed below, though they'll be hard to miss with their ruler portraits) or create a new empire and select 'Kagami' in the 'Appearance' menu under 'Species' (and also the Kagami namelist). This mod should not conflict with any other mod, nor require any other mod, as it relies on either base game assets or the mod files itself. Finally, if you encounter strangely small portraits in gameplay, check that your graphic quality under 'Settings' is either 'Medium' or 'High'.

Finally, it is completely necessary to delete any prior version of this mod you have installed if you are updating. Simply overwriting/merging the mod asset folder will almost certainly leave conflict files that will cause crashes upon loading. 

 

IMPLEMENTATION/ISSUES

 

The mod is (mostly) simple: expand on ReMeDy's original concept and address one of its primary issues, graphic asset repeats, alongside a lack of character role-specific portraits and male character portraits. To do this, it uses mor ethan three hundred unique portraits from several dozen LILITH and BISHOP visual novel characters. There remains a lack of male portraits which can only partially be explained away by entertaining "flavor text" means, and character role categorization will raise the percentage of male graphic repeats further. I considered this a worthwhile trade-off, as demonstrated by the female graphic assets: more than a dozen distinct female ruler portraits, graphically distinct from female leader portraits (scientists, governors, admirals and generals), and with acceptable overlap with planetary population (or "pops") portraits. 

A few methods were done to accomplish this: first, repeat use of character portraits in distinct clothing. STELLARIS has a surprising level of distinction between separate pools for gender-specific static character portraits (at least five as mentioned above), along with a non-gender-specific pop pool.

 

For demonstration, take the character Yatsu Murasaki from the popular TAIMANIN ASAGI franchise: multiple distinct portraits of her are available in this mod, with those in her ninja attire being in the general pool, those in her teacher outfit being in the scientist pool, those in her school uniform being in the pop pool, and so forth. This was repeated across many dozen characters of both genders: character wearing school uniforms going into general pops (excluding those with a military-look about them), characters wearing business suits going into governors, characters wearing nurse or doctor dress going into scientists, characters wearing combat attire going into generals (or occasionally admirals). Characters in bikinis and lingerie (when they appear, believe it or not quite a few did not make the cut) were put in general pops, along with characters in "civilian dress", whereas characters in cheerleading outfits (all from BISHOP titles) were usually made admirals (as a matter of necessity).

 

Rulers (the portrait you pick when creating your empire and, when your ruler is replaced, is drawn from a specific pool) were selected by the female and male leads of various visual novels (or otherwise distinguished individuals). As you might expect, aside from the actual heroins like Igawa Asagi or Cara Cromwell, this also includes the most dominant or otherwise bustiest female protagonist in a title where a faceless male player character was otherwise unsuitable. There's also a few "cameo" rulers from both ReMeDy and myself, purely out of whimsy (see if you can find which two). This goes to another issue: until someone proves otherwise, I'm going to state this as an authoritative fact--in STELLARIS, with a custom static portrait species, you can either have a A) portraits organized by leader role or B ) portraits mostly (though not fully) compatible with the succession and election system in STELLARIS. If you want ( A ), all successors, heir or elected, will look like the generic specices portrait (presently Lieri from KANGOKU SENKAN). If you want ( B ), all portraits will be randomized across all non-ruling leaders. The "solution" for this problem probably doesn't exist--as this mod is primarily a graphical asset mod, trying to find one was my top priority; unfortunately, even in unmodded STELLARIS, the game will often break elected or heir leaders by changing some aspect of their appearance unintentionally (in addition to their attire), and the game was never intended to function entirely on static portraits. With that in mind, I've included a relatively simple, fast way to modify your save file in the below section, FIXING RULER PORTRAITS. Until PARADOX INTERACTIVE completely overhauls their portrait allocation system (which I'm not expecting), that might be the best fix there ever is. There is also a smaller issue, brought to my attention by helpful testers: as character portraits are defined by phenotype, and not clothing, the Kagami species shows up as not wearing clothes (like certain alien portrait sets included in the game). I'm not sure if there's any way to fool the game into treating the species as wearing clothing, but that only seems to matter for certain clothing related insults in diplomatic dialog. Additionally, it seems that players running the game with graphics quality settings of 'Low' encounter almost all portraits (all of them over 200 kb in size) being oddly reduced in visible size, possibly as a memory saving measure. This can be fixed by raising quality to 'Medium' or 'High', as previously noted. I believe this is the 'small portrait' glitch previously noted by users. Until I can find some way to automatically compress more than 300 portraits to a smaller size (rather than remaking each graphic and hoping I can get them under sized), changing graphics settings may be the only solution.

 

The overall result, while far from perfect, is generally workable: accepting the reappearance of Asagi or any character in multiple wardrobes for multiple roles, you should see few female repeats (generally on the same level of repetition you'd get with the base game's portrait assets for a given species), and graphic art fitting the leader in question. For those who actually enjoy my attempts at fiction, I've included multiple, prescripted empires in the style of BISHOP and LILITH games including the militaristic Sovereign Sol Federation, the benevolent Intersolar Union, the brutal Makai Dynasty, the valorous Taimanin Authority, and the collectivist vampiric Sanguine Hive and more! All five, of course, draw from the same portraits, and are disproportionately female, like a extreme version of the post-Second World War Soviet Union. All five also make use of the custom "Kagami" name list (based on the "Hum4" name list) and at least one of the new traits, "Well Endowed" and "Makai Kishi". Both of these new species traits are subject to change (and balancing) and mostly intended to make the prescripted empires a little more distinct. With version 1.06, I've also added two major "features" the first being unique slavery assets, based portrait artwork in certain lingerie, with collars, maid outfits, and of course BDSM attire. There are now four unique categories of slave artwork: labor (generally "slavish" looking clothes, if that makes sense), domestic (maid outfits), war thralls (variation of the general leader pool) and consumption (...basically naked, because you'd probably strip them before you ate them, you nasty aliens). This is the preliminary implementation of it, so there's not much variation, but if the response warrants it I'll gradually add to it. 

 

Also, in case this isn't clear: this mod is NOT an endorsement of slavery. I don't endorse slavery any more than the developer does, in fact, probably less considering I almost never use it. But for those of you who do use the game mechanic, go nuts. Along with slavery specific graphics, I've included "Gender Policy" under the Policies option, with three possible options. The default for Kagami is "General Recruitment", which should cause a female-to-male recruitment ratio of 80:20 (pending adjustment, intended to reflect aforementioned sexual imbalance i.e. the way higher numbers of female portraits). The next option is "All-Female Leadership" which should do exactly what it sounds like with the leader pool, and "Quota System", which will recruit equal numbers of male and female leaders. 

 

FIXING RULER PORTRAITS

 

Thank PARADOX INTERACTIVE for their, frankly, insane and largely obscured system of portrait selection for any ruler you don't start the game with. Fortunately, the effects of the glitch (a ruler, or the ruler's heir, having the generic species appearance) are actually easy to fix, only needs to be done once per inaugeration/coronation, and can take less than a minute with a little experience.

 

You need:

 

- A way to open ZIP files (I strongly suggest Window 10's own tool built into explorer, 7ZIP won't recompress the files correctly without crashing.)
- A way to edit STELLARIS save files (Notepad++ is the standard, though Notepad might work)
- A backup of your save (in case one of the above doesn't work), the name of the ruler/heir with the bug, and the name of the portrait you want to assign it (check KAGAMI/GFX/MODELS/PORTRAITS/HIROTAKA)

 

After backing up your save file, enable Windows to show file extensions. Change the save file's extension from *.SAV (the game's own format) to *.ZIP (the name will be the date of the game). Open it, copy the gamestate file (ignore the meta file) to another location and open it in Notepad++. Search for your ruler (or heir) by name, and insert the following under the line "agenda=", with both the start and end brackets and above "roles".

		design={			
			gender=female			
			name=""			
			portrait=""			
			texture=0			
			hair=0			
			clothes=0		
		}

Enter the name as appropriate, and your portrait entry (e.g. "asagi2"). It's possible that the entries will be there, but the portrait line will be blank (just fill in then). If you want to change the name, make sure to change the first_name and second_name entries to match. You may notice that what you're doing is adding missing design portrait data identical to what your ruler SHOULD have because of that annoying bug. Save the file, copy and paste it back into the zip file (overwriting the unmodified gamestate file), and then change the extension back to *.SAV. Open the save (if done correctly, it should load normally--otherwise the save will probably crash around 10%). It's actually easier than it sounds, and will actually let you set the name and appearance of your leaders in a simple, non-insane fashion.

 

CREDITS AND RULES

 

First off, this mod is completely free. It should never be paid for, using existing art assets from commercial releases. Likewise, PLEASE DO NOT distribute this mod under any circumstances! This is more temporary request, as it is my first STELLARIS mod (and a rather crude one at that), and once I'm feeling a little more confident on my work that situation may change. PLEASE DO NOT modify and distribute this (whether or not you claim it as your own work). If you'd like to add a custom portrait for your own use, by all means, but do not distribute the mod with any changes. Sorry to be so pushy about that.

 

As stated above, credit for the original concept goes to ReMeDy, and all art assets are property of their games and other media of origin, primarily LILITH and BISHOP. Thanks also goes out to Nessa at the same forums for a great deal of help with configuration coding.

 

FUTURE UPDATES/FIXES

 

Likely (and possibly immediate) updates will include more portrats (I simply picked this moment to release the mod, it is far from complete but adequate as a modest first effort). I can think of at least two VNs I did not rip for portraits, and will be moving onto next which would add approximately a dozen portraits. I may also do some further cleanup of specific portraits (though in some cases, it's an unavoidable limitation of the original material). Other custom traits appropriate to the pack. 

 

I'd like to create a unique eroge-themed twist on slavery as well (mostly for comedic value), but I don't know how to implement it without changing slavery for all species.

 

UNLIKELY FUTURE UPDATES

 

Possibly a fix for the heir portrait generation issue. Probably not. Likewise, a way to trigger the game to "see" the portraits as having clothing, and not just phenotypes.

 

LILITH and BISHOP visual novels include separate art for clothing, bodies, eyes, and mouths. As such, it should be possible for a competent modder to implement separate character portrait elements (and even animated portraits) like the base game. Imagine it, Sakura wearing Kiryuu Kaede's school uniform, with Naomi Evans's hair, blinking every so often! Too bad I'll never be able to do it.

 

For further details, implementation, and possible issues, consult the readme!