Lethargie's editable patch generatorA meta-mod which provides easy control over factions: portraits, colors, Ships, names, etc... for both players and mod makersHello, I'm proud to present something a bit different from the usual mod. This is an executable program that will generate a mod according to your choice! The editable part are quite limited right now but once this version has shown itself to be stable, I will be able to add tons of nice option.
The current version allow you to edit all the factions portraits, ships (frequency still pending), name and color in any way you want. You can also save your edit and share them in a way that do not requires others to have the same modlist
What is special about this?:This is a meta-mod, a program that generate a customized mod for you. This can affect all mods that you currently have if you want. Any modification made by mod to the vanilla faction will be kept, but any and all faction (including mod-added) will have their Portraits/colors/name/etc.. affected.
Do not worry, no edit are made to the other mods and the resulting patch can be activated/deactivated just like any other mods.
Why would I want this?:Look at the use case further in this post. If this calls to you, then the question is answered. If you do not see yet a use, but could see one if some features were added, feel free to say so. If you see absolutely no use ever, well so be it, you dont need to install all the mods everyone does.
Feel free to write your suggestion in this thread!
This is the
download link:
Latest version 0_0_5_0facultative:
A modification List to try!It modify the look of the Hegemony and TriTachyon. Can be used on ongoing save, but you get full look with new save. Read Use case 5 for more info.
Initial Setup
No matter what is your personal use case, you need to do the very quick and easy initial setup:
- Download the executable. (click on the link on this post)
- Extract it somewhere. (remember, this is not a mod, its a tool that will make one)
- Start EditorInterface.exe
- Out of the 3 buttons, click on "Explore Starsector Directory"
Explore Starsector directory
This might seem like a big window, but there really isn't much to do here.
- Click on select path to find the folder containing your starsector executable. It should be saved the next time you use the tool
- Click on Explore Directory this will populate your mod list
- Mod start activated/deactivated according to your current Starsector mod setting. If you make some change in mod activation and want to come back to that, click here
- This is your mod list, depending on your use case you might want to skip some mod or activate some before you edit. Click on the checkbox to activate/skip any one
- Mod description
- Click on Directory setup complete to finish setup and go back to the main menu
That's it! you can now select any use case example to proceed
Final thing you need to do all the time
Once you have made the modifications you wanted according to your use case, you need to generate the actual mod file. This is really simple, you just need to click on
Write mod to disk on the main menu.
- Click on Select path to select the folder where all your file will be written. Right now this folder MUST BE EMPTY, this is to minimize risk of accident. If you forgot to empty it, and empty it while LEPG is running, click on cancel then come back on this page, it should register the changes
- This button takes you back to the main menu
- This is the list of the files that will be written to your new mod folder
- click on WriteMod to write your mod to the disk. You should get a confirmation window once it succeed
- Don't forget to activate your new mod when you start Starsector!
Use Case 1: Player that use portraits pack and/or player that use faction mod
You got a nice portraits pack like for example the excellent
Interesting Portraits pack by Interestio, but you also use some nice faction mod like the ever good
Legacy of Argneisis by Gwyvern. Alas, the faction added does not include any of the nice portraits from your pack. Or maybe some vanilla portraits clash with your sense of esthetic. Whatever the problem, now you can make any faction have the portraits YOU want.
- Make the initial setup, make sure all the mod you will want in your playthrougth are activated
- In the main menu, click on Edit portraits
Edit portraits
- This is the list of all faction that will be in your game. Some might be weird, this is normal, some mod makes special factions that don't appear in game, do not worry about them. Click on any faction that you want to edit here. Those marked with a red or yellow Icon are those you have already modified
- These are the parts of the faction that are editable/readable for now. Values are just single values that describe the faction. For edit you got a female portraits and male portraits tab. These should be self explanatory
- This is the list of items present in the selected faction
- This is the list of available items that can be added to the faction. They are grouped by source mod
- These are the buttons that makes the work, you can add a portraits from those available, Remove or Clear all from the current faction and reset the items to the original list without your modification
- This button takes you back to the main menu when you are done
In the linked image for example, I have added a portrait from the Interesting portrait pack to the female portraits of the Reparation Society faction of Legacy of Argneisis. I have done so by selecting the faction, selecting the portrait and clicking add. You can see by the red mark that I have also made modification to the Sindriat Diktat vanilla faction before this.
Once you are done, do the
Final thing you need to do all the time and start a new game. Your modification only really takes effect on a new game. Generally, you should not add/remove mods during your playthrough. If you simply want to add a mod update that does not touch the faction files your patch modify, you should be fine. But I'm not responsible if it break something.
Example 2: Adding portraits for the player to select at the game start
This example show I have added an AI portrait from vanilla and a portrait from Legacy of Argneisis to the "your" faction. This allow me to select them for myself when I start a new game
Use Case 2: Players that want to change the colors of any faction in game
You use some nice faction mod like the ever good
Legacy of Argneisis by Gwyvern. Alas, the colors clash with your sense of esthetic. Or maybe the colors are too similars, and you cant distinguish between the reparation society and Tri-tachyon. Lets fix this
- Make the initial setup, make sure all the mod you will want in your playthrougth are activated
- In the main menu, click on Edit portraits
- Select faction on the left and select the Value tab
Edit Value
Modification are quite intuitive, click on a value and choose/write what you want. To close a color picker, just click again on the color. If you want to reset it, click on the reset icon in teal. You are given example of what the faction text and fleet will look like in game that are updated live.
Once you are done, do the
Final thing you need to do all the time and start your game. If you only do those modification, you do not need a new savegame, its 100% safe as long as you don't have another mod editing these value (which is really rare and you will be warned by a "multiple value set" tag). Modmaker can always copy these value to your mod if you want them.
Use Case 3: Modmaker that makes portraits pack and want to add compatibility to other mods
You are for example Interestio and have a nice portraits pack(
Interesting Portraits pack by Interestio). You have done all the vanilla faction, and would like players that use other faction pack to have some nice bonus. This is easy!
- Make the initial setup, you want to activate your mod, and those you intent to extend compatibility to
- In the main menu, click on Edit portraits
- Follow the instructions from User case 1 but do not clear or Remove portraits from any mod. Only add from your mod (or vanilla I guess) to the mods you are adding compatibility to
- Any faction that has a red icon next to it means you did something wrong, select it, and reset male and female portraits. Yellow is perfect
- do the Final thing you need to do all the time. Do not start the game, rather copy the .faction files you have generated to your own portrait pack folder. After this you do not need the patch folder for anything
- You are done!
Use case 4: Modmaker that makes faction and want a nice visual tool to edit portraits
You make a nice faction for your mod, like any good moder you know how to add portraits to your .faction files. But it is a bit of an annoying process, since you cant really see all the portraits you have added until you are in game. This tool can allow you to do it in a nicer way
Yo have 2 similar ways of doing it. You can create a .faction that has only the portraits field, and copy that in your own .faction file, or you can recreate your whole .faction file and replace the one in your folder. DO note that option 2 remove all comments you may have and might change the order of fields in your files (not bad for the game, but can mess with the readability).
- Make the initial setup, you want to activate your mod only. Your mod needs an initial .faction file to start. In the future I plan on allowing you to create one, but not for now
- In the main menu, click on Edit portraits
- Follow the instructions from User case 1 for your faction. If you clear or Remove portraits from your mod, you will either have to replace your file, or find in the patch file the portraits section in order to paste it in your file
- Any faction that has a red icon next to it means the patcher will write a copy of the whole file, yellow means you only get the portraits section
- do the Final thing you need to do all the time. Do not start the game obviously, but rather integrate the modification to your mod
Use case 5: When you want to share your modifications
You have the ability to save/load the modification you made as a List of modification. This means if you change your modlist, you can load your modification list and they are applied automatically. If a modified faction do not currently exist, its modification are discarded, if a resource is not available, the related modification is discarded. You can even share your modification list with someone, in fact I share a small one I made right aside the download button. The save/load button is in the bottom/left of the Edit faction panel. To use a saved modification list, just follow the same step as use case 1, but instead of doing your own modification, Load those from your file. You can always add more modifications after.
Technical: how does this work?
I need to write this
Changelog
version 1_0_0_2
Initial proof of concept, oddly numbered
version 0_0_2_0
New interface, and actual use. Low version number since we are far from finished
version 0_0_3_0
Now we can edit color and names of all factions
version 0_0_4_0
We can save and load the list of modification
version 0_0_5_0
We can edit knownShip, priority ship and ship when importing
Special thanks for Histidine and Mesotronik for helping me iron out some problem of the editor. Thanks also to Gwyvern for allowing me to show his mod in the screenshots and to Interestio for his nice portrait pack.
Author
Topic: [0.9.1a] Lethargie's Editable patch generator (Now for ship too!) (Read 5570 times)