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[mod] [Stellaris] Kagami Species


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Well, I appreciate your sympathy (and welcome your requests--it's so easy to add individual portraits, I generally welcome them so long as they're thematically related). 

 

Actually, discussing the matter has gotten me thinking about what was a crude, secondary fix, though I'm not sure how to implement it: a unique civic trait that makes your starting leader "permanent". So, in effect, the combination of immortality and elections based on mortality, but a little more elegant. I wonder if such a thing is possible--it's a little out-of-character for some of the pre-made empires (like the Taimanin--obviously, if a Taimanin died, he/she ought to be replaced with another), but it wouldn't be the worse fix. I just wonder if there's an easy way to implement it (since the successor system is such a goddamn labyrinthine nightmare). 

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Well, looking through the trait list has a few of the traits with "immortal_leaders = yes", including the Utopia specific Chosen trait. A starting event that fires perhaps to grant a modified trait?

 

You can have immortal leaders (the 'Makai Kishi' trait was originally that, I modified it though).

 

The issue is that for everything but Imperial governments, that would still see the leader be periodically replaced on some time scale (which is broken). I'm wondering if you can create a trait that does away with that entirely (let's assume that the democratic traits of your Empire are reflected elsewhere--replacing your leader with another randomly generated individual does not a democracy make). I don't want to limit players into using Imperial systems either. 

 

That I'm less convinced is possible. 

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The problem with that is that if you take away the elections, the Democratic system plays exactly like every other system. It would make more sense if your planetary leaders were randomly "elected", as to say generated and assigned without your choice, that way you could have a Democratic Dictatorship. Its more of a problem of the game then anything you could account for.

 

I'd say just say screw it to non imperial governments and call it a willing limitation of the mod, as harsh as that sounds. I really enjoy this mod and would hate to see it die because of a janky engine.

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The problem with that is that if you take away the elections, the Democratic system plays exactly like every other system. It would make more sense if your planetary leaders were randomly "elected", as to say generated and assigned without your choice, that way you could have a Democratic Dictatorship. Its more of a problem of the game then anything you could account for.

 

I'd say just say screw it to non imperial governments and call it a willing limitation of the mod, as harsh as that sounds. I really enjoy this mod and would hate to see it die because of a janky engine.

 

That's not entirely accurate. The authority system independent of leaders doesn't play exactly the same whether it's democratic, oligarchic, etc.--because they have different trait allowances. Hive minds have a unique form of authority. Fanatic authoritarians can't have certain ethics, nor can they adopt certain civics, and have specific authorities. Democracies can't take other civics either. All that happens even if your ruler lives forever and wins every election. I think that matters as much, or more, than whatever randomly generated NPC serves as head-of-state and how long before they are replaced again (or you spend influence points to try and prevent that). The actual NPC ruler is just a randomly generated name attached to some leader traits--in what is a 99% cosmetic overhaul mod, aside from the (broken) appearance of said ruler, that really doesn't matter much you see. 

 

So I don't like that solution. It'd be more palatable if the Imperial authority system wasn't also graphically broken, but it is, so I don't really care to impose even more limitations for the sake of a half-broken, so-called fix. When I ran into this issue for the first time, I thought a solution would be forthcoming, and that it was simply something that I, as an unexperienced and fairly poor modder, simply didn't know. Except the solution never came. Even after an experienced modder have given their valuable time and effort, for which I am thankful, and...found no solution either. Static portrait mods, in general, are kind of rare--and every one I've found has a broken authority succession system as well (or more likely, they simply default to whatever species, usually human, they were built on). I guess that weighs in favor of the non-specific portrait art path that ReMeDy originally took. Except 1) that literally defeats all of the non-asset ripping work the mod consisted of 2) it's still bugged (portrait art is automatically modified).

 

If I could turn the ruler system into simply another symbol of your Empire, like choosing your flag background colors and insignia, I absolutely would at this point. That's how tired I am of trying to fix this and only succeeding in breaking everything else.  :D

 

So I suppose i'm not sure where this mod will go next. Maybe this just isn't workable. Stellaris makes modding in an Elder Scrolls game look like child's play, maybe it's just not something that can be done, and certainly not by me. Don't misunderstand, I do appreciate the thought you've put into the solution you've suggested, but I don't think I'd adopt them for the reasons I've just outlined. Maybe this is destined to just become an art asset pack for someone who can, in fact, make the system work--I can't even modify ReMeDy's original configuration files much or everything breaks. This would be different if I could start from scratch, but literally every attempt I've made in that area has ended in failure. 

 

Hmm, that was a bit of a downer, wasn't it? That's the thing about modding--sometimes you find a problem you can't fix, and if it happens early enough, and affects everything across the board, then giving up is a reasonable option.  :blush:

 

EDIT: Or, and here's a thought--I can include instructions in the mod how to edit your save file to fix the problems manually by parsing through code in your save...

 

 

....and hope that you don't corrupt your save file...

 

 

...and hope that the in-game engine doesn't "auto-correct" (lovingly break) your modification fix every time you load.

 

 

:D  :D

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So, after doing a little experimenting this afternoon, I found out some very interesting things.

 

Yes, those issues have no identify-able solution (in fact, the base game will regularly change non-modified leaders appearances beyond what it's supposed to--so hair style instead of just attire for humans). Paradox has baked these problems into the system.

 

But unzipping a save file, and modifying the "gamestate" file with Wordpad++....is not that hard. And at least for ruler identity data--basically five lines of data that determines the ruler's name and appearance--is quite easy (relatively speaking). 

 

Even more encouragingly, you can take that data and add it to the generated heir apparent (where there was no such data)....and the game accepts it (if done properly--if done incorrectly, the game crashes on loading). And the changes seem to persist.

 

So as laughable a solution as that may appear...it may not be entirely nonviable. I'm going to do some further experimentation, but it's basically something that you could explain with just a few instructions in the mod's readme file. 

 

Stay tuned, I guess? 

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Okay. v1.02 uploaded, with ~301 portraits, including Tamanin Yukikaze. I've also included a (fairly) simple way to manual correct erroneous portraits in the readme (and first post)--as long as you're comfortable with a very small amount of code editing (and remember to back up your save) I highly recommend it...not being able to have a particular portrait for your ruler kind of defeats the point of this mod in the first place. 

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I just discovered this mod yesterday and you update it today? Thank you for your efforts! I generally shy away from anime artwork mods, since they are generally an amalgamation of completely different series and the different artist styles usually clash and make it too jarring to look at, especially when ingame they are suppose to be "similar". It is a big bonus that most assets comes from Lilith VNs!

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I'm glad you're enjoying it--actually, I would've updated it sooner (as I included more portraits) but I spent the last month bashing my head against the wall trying to fix the ruler portrait bug until I decided just to give instructions how to fix it on a case-by-case basis. 

 

I'm glad the art assets look (mostly) consistent. More than 90% of them are either the work of Kagami Hirotaka (hence the name) or Mizushima Oonari. Mizushima Oonari (his name is often rendered with a star between the surname and given name) was an artist employed by publisher Bishop to create very "Kagami-looking" heroines in their eroge by imitating his style--towards the end of Kagami's work with Bishop, the two would often divide the heroines of the game up between them (his tendency to use rounder eyes, versus Kagami's more angular, "angrier" eyes, makes him look a lot like Kagami's early work circa 2005, when he broke out onto the scene with Taimanin Asagi). In any case, you can eventually pick their work apart, but it still looks very consistent. 

 

Additionally, Kagami by himself doesn't have enough work to make this mod function effectively (ReMeDy started with ~50 portraits, a few of them, while from Lilith games, were not Kagami characters). Plus I like Bishop's VNs: for starters, their heroines wear a much wider variety of clothes than Lilith games, and there tend to be more of them (4 to 6) per game. Speaking of which, if there's a character from a particular Lilith/Bishop VN you'd like to see who isn't represented, feel free to request them. They just need to either have some at least adequate sprite art (visual novels before 2005 are very hard to use, because their 2D sprites are both hard to find and woefully low-resolution), or suitable artwork against a solid background. 

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I am wondering how many assets are exclusively for Admirials and Generals? As of right now in Stellaris, I believe there is generally very few situations that call for to have more then 1 or 2 Admirals or Generals each at any one time. Depending on the numbers it probably makes them underutilized compared to others roles and you should think about having them pull double duty and appear were appropriate in other roles too?

 

I don't know if the meta might one day change to encourage the usage of more Admirals and Generals. But right now, especially how land combat is, I don't see the point of having more then 1 general for your doomstack army and 1 admiral for your doomstack navy along with maybe a spare for emergency situation/secondary front.

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I am wondering how many assets are exclusively for Admirials and Generals? As of right now in Stellaris, I believe there is generally very few situations that call for to have more then 1 or 2 Admirals or Generals each at any one time. Depending on the numbers it probably makes them underutilized compared to others roles and you should think about having them pull double duty and appear were appropriate in other roles too?

 

I don't know if the meta might one day change to encourage the usage of more Admirals and Generals. But right now, especially how land combat is, I don't see the point of having more then 1 general for your doomstack army and 1 admiral for your doomstack navy along with maybe a spare for emergency situation/secondary front.

 

It is incredibly difficult to justify having more than one general and more than one admiral in the game (without modding out the leader caps, which are a stupid, "game play mechanic that is totally unjustifiable in the narrative" type thing anyway). And, in fact, there are not very many admirals of either gender. 

 

There are a lot of general characters (arguably even rarer than admirals) because so many VN characters where either some sort of army-style uniform, or are visibly carrying some kind of weapon in their portrait artwork (that makes the most amount of sense if they were a general, though still not very much) or wearing a combat uniform (like all the Taimanin). Pretty much every Prison Battleship character wears a military uniform of some kind which would feel at home more on a spaceship than in an army formation, so almost all of them (of either gender) are admirals--there are just way more ninjas than prison officers.

 

However, this does mean you're less likely to see repeats when you're choosing your admirals and generals from the recruiting pool, which is a minor positive. Likewise, it was thematically clashing to make a ninja suit-wearing Asagi, for example, a governor when there was already artwork of her in the governor pool in somewhat appropriate attire for the role (her principal outfit). As I've gone on, I've begun modifying my initial criteria for scientist artwork to include characters in white and light blue competition swimsuits just because they looked sort of like white uniforms and there were just not enough school nurse/doctor/scientist characters (and you're likely to have ~4 scientists at any given time). There are basically just compromises that I have to be further flexible with. However, at +300 portraits, I am running out of games to take characters of (I've more or less harvested every Lilith game, except the new Taimanin Asagi-themed online card game, and left a handful of Bishop titles). 

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I'm not sure if this is a clientside issue or not, but it seems I still get portraits that are alot smaller than they are supposed to be. Like a quarter of the size of normal portraits.

 

So they're not proportional to the UI itself? That's a new one.

 

What resolution do you play at, and with what UI scaling options? Also, can you post a screenshot with the issue? 

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For scaling, i have it at 1.0, my UI is at 1360 by 768, changing the UI scale doesn;t work, i already tried. And i reinstalled the mod too, ran it by itself so it couldnt conflict with anything.

 

post-283628-0-86226500-1502315055_thumb.jpg

 

You can even see Yukikazi is the correct size, a few of them are.

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Of the top of my head, the Yukikaze portrait was one of the originals done by ReMeDy, but the others were additions (so, I guess you would have this issue for ~250 of ~300 portraits). But I'm using the same templates he is (and the same Adobe Photoshop, though I don't know if he had CS2), and the new portraits are the same dimensions and bit depth (though mine are a little larger...280 kb versus 210 kb, I did tend to use higher quality art). 

 

You've probably already tried it, but have you run the game at a different resolution? I suspect it won't help but I want to rule it out--I ran the game at your resolution, with UI scaling of 1.0, and though everything was blurry and illegible (given I have a native 3860x2160 monitor, that's to be expected), the portraits were the right size. 

 

Weirdly, no one else has reported this being an issue yet, so maybe it's something unique to your setup (I hope no one else has reported it yet). Are you using AMD or Nvidia? 

 

 

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I did. Everything was blurry and absolutely eye searing at like 800 by 600 but almost everyone was the wrong size still. I'm using a Nvidia, although this CPU has had a rough life cycle. My GPU is at best barely functional.

 

Well, we can rule out an AMD driver issue with DDS files, and I assume you don't run into anything like this with normal, non-static species graphic sets, right?

 

I wonder if maybe the art assets over 210 kb are over-stressing your GPU and this is a way to compensate, but that's very speculative on my part. It's extremely hard to diagnose when I can't replicate it on my own setup. 

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No, i've never had this happen for any other portrait pack, even other packs with pictures as the pop pic. Not too apocalyptic, honestly, i just have to imagine Asagi as really smol.

 

Size is literally the only thing I have to go for it now. Every DDS file I made was encoded in the only way I knew how to get it recognized by Stellaris (though apparently compared to CK, Stellaris is super friendly about it). You can probably guess that I don't want to think much about individually re-encoding 250 graphic portraits.

 

Worst of all, you can't open a DDS file in Photoshop in such a manner that you can alter it and re-save it. The background transparency, among other things, will be lost. You need to do it from scratch (in my case, a Photoshop template).

 

But of course, I don't want to give up either. Can you load up a static portrait mod pack you have installed that doesn't have this issue, and tell me the average size of the files? At least maybe I can rule that out. It has to be a static portrait back, not a dynamic portrait pack like the Asari mod, Dark Elf mod, etc. 

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Well, I guess your GPU doesn't like DDS files over 220 kb :( ....this is the first time I've ever heard about this happening in a mod. I was actually planning, in the future, to gradually replace many of those original ReMeDy portraits with higher quality versions which would probably increase their size too. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finally got through a save of Stellaris as Intersolar Union, it seem some Pops appear much more compared to others, generally those that have multiple pops outfits (ie. One extreme sample on a 16 size planet, I saw 3 "serika" Pops grow on there), but that's probably RNG at its best as usual. A lot of the male prison officers annoying appeared as the only recuritable Scientists that play through when I wanted to hire, Is there a way to change the generation chance of the leaders gender?

 

I don't think I have seen Asuka outside of her ninja outfit now I think about it. I also haven't seen some characters ingame like Maya Cordelia, Alicia Viewstream or Cara Cromwell besides their Pops version. Are they starting leader/Pops only?

 

Was there anything in the Aug 18 update?

 

Overall though I am quite pleased about this mod. It definitely offered enough visual variety, especially considering they are static fixed portraits with no interchangeability of the outfits or hair styles. All while offering a good consistent style and look that generally anime mods lack. Its a shame that this mod will likely never reach steam workshop, unless somebody manages to do interchangeable bodies and cut out the bikini, lingerie, and otherwise clothes that show aerolas.

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Finally got through a save of Stellaris as Intersolar Union, it seem some Pops appear much more compared to others, generally those that have multiple pops outfits (ie. One extreme sample on a 16 size planet, I saw 3 "serika" Pops grow on there), but that's probably RNG at its best as usual. A lot of the male prison officers annoying appeared as the only recuritable Scientists that play through when I wanted to hire, Is there a way to change the generation chance of the leaders gender?

 

I don't think I have seen Asuka outside of her ninja outfit now I think about it. I also haven't seen some characters ingame like Maya Cordelia, Alicia Viewstream or Cara Cromwell besides their Pops version. Are they starting leader/Pops only?

 

Was there anything in the Aug 18 update?

 

Overall though I am quite pleased about this mod. It definitely offered enough visual variety, especially considering they are static fixed portraits with no interchangeability of the outfits or hair styles. All while offering a good consistent style and look that generally anime mods lack. Its a shame that this mod will likely never reach steam workshop, unless somebody manages to do interchangeable bodies and cut out the bikini, lingerie, and otherwise clothes that show aerolas.

 

I'm glad you were able to complete a game without any major fuck-ups. Did you happen to use my instructions to correct bugged new leaders? It'd be good to know how easy it was to implement such a nonstandard procedure.

 

As you said, the RNG is the RNG. As noted in the Asari species mod, it wants to generally churn out equal numbers of both genders in the leader pool, and there's no way to alter that--it's likely something hardcoded in the game. The planetary pop pool is the one exception, since none of those portraits are identified by data, so your pops should mostly be female. Since leader generation is truly random (which means repeats never become less likely then when you start out), it's entirely possible you could go the whole game without seeing a particular scientist or governor option. You can potentially edit your save through the means I've described, though whether it's worth the effort is up to you. 

 

In the case of Maya, she has a ruler option, a governor option (her without her cloak), and a pop (no scientist, admiral or general). Lots of individual characters don't appear in a particular pool for "artistic" reasons, in an attempt to generally keep the portraits looking consistent. For who I think was supposed to be a breakout character, Asuka really doesn't have much in the way of clothing--granted Lilith heroines only get one or two outfits typically (unlike BISHOP's), but it was really just her school uniform and her ninja attire--I don't think there's a standing sprite of her in her lingerie, and that's it anyway. Asuka was done by Aoi Nagisa, not Kagami, so I wonder if that's part of the reason. 

 

(The August 18 update was just me fixing the download text. Nothing new. The next update will include more portraits and some more adjustments to traits probably, but I am starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel.) 

 

In any case, thank you for your compliments. As I said when I originally announced, it's an intriguing idea to maybe break down Kagami's art assets (and maybe Mizushima, since his art style is sometimes very close) into their individual components like a proper Stellaris art pack and even animate it, and while I could probably supply the individual components, combining them is probably something I'll never learn to do (I can barely get this working as it is)--and while it would be undeniably cool, it's hard to imagine it wouldn't look weird. That's not a good justification, but "I can not do this" is--and it's a shame. I discussed putting the basic version of this onto Steam workshop with ReMeDY, but he correctly pointed the nightmare it would probably be even after I removed anything risque (right off the bat, there goes the fighting attire for Asagi, Sakura, Ingrid, and a few others) even after I avoided putting in any nude portraits. 

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I didn't have any major problems in my play through besides the whole default species portrait. At first I tried to correct bugged new leaders, but I ended up stuck on how to make the file a .sav one again from .zip after editing so I ended up just using the default species portrait once I stop electing my starting ruler.

 

Speaking of Maya, not sure if you are looking for ideas for more prescripted empires, but if you are, I made an Empire under her rule with this flavor text that you are free to use and alter. 

 

 

After years of vicious infighting and intrique from the Neo Terrors and New Soral factions, the Universal Federation was effectively destroyed. The Fortified City of Cordelia, which maintained its neutrality during the fratricidal war, remains the only major power left to provide stability and order in the void left by the Federation. Asserting her authority over the surviving humans, the Kagami, the newly crowned Maya Cordelia intends of lead the Kagami foward under her benevolent, but firm, rule, all while attempting to guard the Kagami against their own dark impulses and self-destructive nature.

 

I haven't played the Prison Battleship series, but from what I understand, it is suppose to be a Constitutional Monarchy, but that government type doesn't exist yet in base Stellaris as far as I know, so I just settled for Philosopher King for Enlightened Monarchy as the next best thing.

 

Yeah, I imagine at this point if you were to try to make this mod acceptable for Steam workshop, it would be too butchered to be worth the effort. Too much cut content. Regardless it great work with what limitations you have to work with.

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The process is:

 

1) Change the file extension from .SAV to .ZIP

2) Unzip it (preferably using Windows 10 File Explorer)

3) Copy the Gamestate file elsewhere to edit it.

4) After editing it, copy it back into the open ZIP file, overwriting the original

5) Change the .ZIP extension back to .SAV

6) Load it like a normal save game.

 

Let me know if you happen to try this again. It's important to me that the instructions are actually clear--what seems simple to me might not be the others of course. 

 

Cordelia's Empire (the City-State of Cordelia?) might make an interesting replacement for the Intersolar Union, with a monarchial sounding title for the ruler. Not sure if they have an insignia enough, I do have Prison Battleship 2 installed, I just never played it all the way through. Currently there's a pre-scripted empire for each authority set in Utopia, which is ideal, though I haven't ruled out making more (though at some point it might seem excessive?). I also want to showcase the BISHOP eroge rulers because, frankly, their costumes are vastly nicer than the majority of LILITH heroines. 

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