Help with species mods

[RAIC]

I am relatively new to stellaris and encountered the problem that no mod that adds species to an existing cathegory (like humanoid in contrast to creating a new one) works. Like at all.
The closest I get to getting anything to work is SE humans in which they all go bald for some reason. I tried remaking the mod with the ingame tool to have a correct path and version but to no avail. Is there some framework mod I don't know about that everybody takes for obvious so it isn't even mentioned anywhere anymore? Or is it something else entirely that I'm missing?

[Arcess]

In older versions of the game, you had to overwrite the entire species class, which made compatibility a mess.

 

Now you can add portrait groups to existing species classes easily, but you have to write code for that. Using old code will make a mess.

 

See SE - Restyled (biased, I know :P) for an example.

[RAIC]

12 hours ago, Arcess said:

In older versions of the game, you had to overwrite the entire species class, which made compatibility a mess.

 

Now you can add portrait groups to existing species classes easily, but you have to write code for that. Using old code will make a mess.

 

See SE - Restyled (biased, I know :P) for an example.

I am not trying to create new mods. My problem is that nothing I download works.
SE being one of them.

[Arcess]

Don't use outdated mods then.

[RAIC]

Current ones don't work either.

[Arcess]

Examples? No, SE Humans is NOT current.

[RAIC]

Pretty much every one on the first few pages of the stellaris thread. The only ones I got to work are Sexy Xenos (not current) and Vanilla Framework (current).

[Armchair]

The reason why a lot of species mods don't put their portraits within the pre-existing species classes is it can create compatibility headaches for users that are trying to install a bunch of different species mods.

 

Let's say one author wants to put their new species within the existing Mammal portrait group.  So they'll have a new definition for MAM class that includes all of the old Mam01, Mam02, Mam03, Mam04, etc and also adds "AuthorA_SexyMammal".

 

Then the user also installs sexy mammals from another author.  That second author will have done the same thing, except their new definition of MAM appends their "AuthorB_SexyMammal" to the portrait list.

 

The problem is that you can only have one definition for MAM.  Each mod has its new definition of MAM that references its own new material but is completely blind to what may have been added by other mods.  The definition that takes priority is defined by your mod load order.  In order to have both working simultaneously, the end user will need to get their hands dirty and write a new definition of MAM that references the content added by both mods.  You can take a look at the assorted definitions in vanilla framework's "PATCH FOLDER" to get an idea of what that looks like.

 

A lot of users don't want to write anything extra.  They just want to throw a bunch of mods into a mod list and go.  Mod authors know that, and that's why generally they define their new species within unique species classes in order to prevent conflicts between their mod and other mods.  One of the more frequent places where authors can't do that is when they're trying to define new portraits for robots since they need to add their new portraits to the pre-existing ROBOT definition if they want their work to be visible in game when players create robots.

[RAIC]

That's useful information, however, that does not explain why they won't work if I have no other mods enabled. I spend about 4 hours troubleshooting before I even considered posting anything here.

[Arcess]

21 hours ago, Armchair said:

The reason why a lot of species mods don't put their portraits within the pre-existing species classes is it can create compatibility headaches for users that are trying to install a bunch of different species mods.

 

Let's say one author wants to put their new species within the existing Mammal portrait group.  So they'll have a new definition for MAM class that includes all of the old Mam01, Mam02, Mam03, Mam04, etc and also adds "AuthorA_SexyMammal".

 

Then the user also installs sexy mammals from another author.  That second author will have done the same thing, except their new definition of MAM appends their "AuthorB_SexyMammal" to the portrait list.

 

The problem is that you can only have one definition for MAM.  Each mod has its new definition of MAM that references its own new material but is completely blind to what may have been added by other mods.  The definition that takes priority is defined by your mod load order.  In order to have both working simultaneously, the end user will need to get their hands dirty and write a new definition of MAM that references the content added by both mods.  You can take a look at the assorted definitions in vanilla framework's "PATCH FOLDER" to get an idea of what that looks like.

 

A lot of users don't want to write anything extra.  They just want to throw a bunch of mods into a mod list and go.  Mod authors know that, and that's why generally they define their new species within unique species classes in order to prevent conflicts between their mod and other mods.  One of the more frequent places where authors can't do that is when they're trying to define new portraits for robots since they need to add their new portraits to the pre-existing ROBOT definition if they want their work to be visible in game when players create robots.

All of this was true until 3.8.

 

Now you have a stripped down definition with just your new portrait group(s), and the game will add them to existing species classes.

 

Mods that previously redefined the species class will now have to update their code or they will end up a total mess of duplicated portraits during empire creation.

 

Also, "not working" is quite vague, and gives no clue about what went wrong.

[RAIC]

59 minutes ago, Arcess said:

All of this was true until 3.8.

 

Now you have a stripped down definition with just your new portrait group(s), and the game will add them to existing species classes.

 

Mods that previously redefined the species class will now have to update their code or they will end up a total mess of duplicated portraits during empire creation.

 

Also, "not working" is quite vague, and gives no clue about what went wrong.

If I knew what was going wrong, I would have told you.
They are simply not doing anything as far as I can tell.
 

Anyway, I think I figured it out now.
The old mods that still do something with portraits all define new classes, which still seems to work just fine but the ones that use existing classes don't work.
Thanks for your help.