The Character Modding thread

[Woody Man]

I thought we might set up a nice megathread to cut up the character files and entries in EU:Rome and see what we can make of them.

I myself will be modding my Roman alter-ego into the game


Post what you know here!

 

[Eldar]

It is a great idea! I'm a beginner in mooding (I tried some in EU3...) and I maybe want to explore the possibility of moding in this Character system!

Gabriel

 

[Woody Man]

Install directory\Europa Universalis - Rome\history\characters

Well, the main character files seem to be stuck here, I'll grab one and pull it apart as best we can

name = "Publius Valerius Laevinus"
military = 5
charisma = 4
finesse = 4
birth_province = 93
add_trait = lazy
wealth_change = 10000
loyalty_change = 50
popularity_change = 30
culture = roman
religion = roman_pantheon
employer_country = ROM
family_name = "Valerii"

425.1.1 = { birth = 425.1.1 }
# 474 - Consul
503.1.1 = { death = 503.1.1 }

Well, pretty much everything is fairly obvious, though I'm interested to see whether "x_change" does anything interesting in terms of wealth loyalty or popularity, or whether they're just straight stats (Which is very likely)

Family names can be found in Install directory\Europa Universalis - Rome\common\families

First names etc can be found in Install directory\Europa Universalis - Rome\common\cultures.txt

 

[monsterfurby]

Concerning characters, I noticed that the trait icons are stored seperately.. I wonder if that makes it possibly to add completely new traits..

 

[Woody Man]

Concerning characters, I noticed that the trait icons are stored seperately.. I wonder if that makes it possibly to add completely new traits..

I would guess so, EU3 was very flexible, and just a flick around the inner files of EU:Rome shows the same thing, the traits.txt file seems fairly open..

 

[Woody Man]

Right, so I'll try and create me as a Roman, namely Lucius Octavius Silvagensus

The first thing I'm going to do is to create the family, I create a new text file and call it silvagensii.txt and place it in the families folder. Then I put prestige = 10 into the text file and save it. That should create the family. This way I can keep my line separate from the Octavian line.

I then open cultures.txt and place Silvagensus as a nickname in between Scipio and Strabo, which should keep everything neat and alphabetical, this hopefully should mean that the Octavius Silvagensus is passed down to his sons and daughters.


Now to build the character himself

I create a new textfile in the characters folder, titled 600001 - lucius_octavius_silvagensus.txt

name = "Lucius Octavius Silvagensus"
military = 7
charisma = 7
finesse = 5
birth_province = 93
add_trait = lustful
wealth_change = 500
loyalty_change = 60
popularity_change = 40
culture = roman
religion = roman_pantheon
employer_country = ROM
family_name = "silvagensii"

454.3.9 = { birth = 454.3.9 }

And that should give us this;

No, all we need to work out is the portraits, he looks a little old for twenty

 

[orwell]

I believe the portraits are generated within the engine from a wide selection of textures to make the face. I think Johan said something like 4 billion combinations are possible.

 

[Horachte]

You did not specify anything like a CK DNA. Does it mean that when you reload, you get a different picture? If so, how to generate fixed portraits (as i.e. in Hannibal's and Ceasar's case)?

 

[Woody Man]

You did not specify anything like a CK DNA. Does it mean that when you reload, you get a different picture? If so, how to generate fixed portraits (as i.e. in Hannibal's and Ceasar's case)?

There is none, I've tested multiple new games, and they generate different faces, my new chap looks very different to the one in the screenshot, so at the moment, I'm not sure if it can be influenced as in Hannibal or Caesar..

 

[gauffa]

There is none, I've tested multiple new games, and they generate different faces, my new chap looks very different to the one in the screenshot, so at the moment, I'm not sure if it can be influenced as in Hannibal or Caesar..

When you look at characters in the savegame file each character has a DNA string. This might be applicable to characters in the 'characters' folder as well.

 

[Woody Man]

When you look at characters in the savegame file each character has a DNA string. This might be applicable to characters in the 'characters' folder as well.

Ahh it is, thank you gauffa!

name = "Gaius Julius Caesar"
military = 7
charisma = 7
finesse = 8
birth_province = 93
add_trait = tactician
wealth_change = 500
loyalty_change = 70
popularity_change = 50
culture = roman
religion = roman_pantheon
employer_country = ROM
family_name = "Julii"
dna = "abbbbbbbb"

Well, it is there, whether we can do anything with it remains to be seen!

 

[gauffa]

Ahh it is, thank you gauffa!



Well, it is there, whether we can do anything with it remains to be seen!

No problem. I know for CK someone made a DNA editor that would generate the appearance of the character for you based on the DNA and then you could simply put the appearance that appealed to you in the savegame file for your character. I don't know if that's something practical for the current system if it actually has several billion combinations.

 

[Daidoji Kaneda]

DNA seems composed of 9 elements: there are 9 different DDS files: backgroung, cheeks, chin, ears, eyes, hair, mouth, neck and nose. If you open these files with say photoshop (with the DDS plugin) you would see 16 differents elements in the picture. So DNA should consist of a combination of the different elements given as 16 should translate in 1 to F (hex code). Only the order remains to be found (which shouldn't be too hard).

 

[unmerged(12709)]

I just added in my entire FAMILY!

Granted, not to fuck up the womans names, I used the closest ones to my families real names. (due to the roman naming system after the father.)

Thomasus Englandius Occasus, along with Peterius Englandius Occasus, Claudia Englandius, Servilia Englandius.... etc etc

I made the Englandius family, and included my parents, grand parents (on both sides), and my sisters, their husbands, and kids. I also gave myself a wife (just so my lineage could go on in case I dont make consul).

Luckily, my dad managed to gain the consulship for... 20 years in a row, then he lost ONE battle, and my character actually stole it from him :rofl: sorry dad.

Then my first year.. I declared a dictatorship. Its hilarious, because its something I'd probably do. I swear, this game knows who I am, my character is lustful, an original_thinker, and other traits.

Though it gave me a "everyone thinks your dumb = dumb" trait. I guess it makes sense, most of my friends don't understand what I say (not because I'm dumb, but unfortunately because they don't have a historical trainer or worldview I have, but it lends them to think I make crazy claims. (Like my claim to say that I'd prefer worldwide global nuclear profilation compared to a no-nuke world.) * caveat, thats because I believe it is almost 100% impossible to stop the flow of technology, and that if its banned, SOMEONE will make it, and theres a power equiliberium that must be mantained!

 

[Woody Man]

Hello, here is how dna works:

Each character has a dna string. These are either generated at random, or scripted in the character files under history/characters/*.txt

For example, Caesar (100390 - Gaius_Julius_Ceasar.txt)) has:
dna = "abbbbbbbb"
where each letter symbolizes a part of the portrait in order:
BACKGROUND, NECK, EARS, CHEEKS, EYES, NOSE, CHIN, HAIR, MOUTH

There is only one background, so that is always "a" at the moment. The reason the others are all "b" is just that the artist painted the famous people first and then added other parts. a is always the first in a sprite strip, b the next etc.

DNA of children is calculated from mother/father + some random (or backwards in a complicated way if you scripted the child, and not the parents for example).

The actual face pieces are defined in "interface/portraits.gfx"

You specify each facepart per culture. Like this for persian mouths:

spriteType = {
	name = "GFX_persia_female_mouth"
	texturefile = "gfx\\characters\\persia_female\\mouth.tga"
	noOfFrames = 16
	norefcount = yes
}

notice noOfFrames specifies how many individual pieces are in this strip.

Then you tie up a whole set for a culture like this:

portraitType = {
	name = "PORTRAIT_germangfx_male"
	background = "GFX_character_background"
	hair   = "GFX_german_hair"
	mouth  = "GFX_german_mouth"
	chin   = "GFX_chin"
	nose   = "GFX_nose"
	eyes   = "GFX_german_eyes"
	cheeks = "GFX_german_cheeks"
	ears   = "GFX_ears"
	neck   = "GFX_german_neck"
}

Notice that the name is made up of culture name and suffixed with gender and that each part is specifying what spriteType to use. If a culture doesnt exist the game will fall back to a roman look.

Feel free to spread this to the mod forum if you want.

Podcat was amazingly kind enough to give us this for DNA!


I'm currently opening the .dds files with Photoshop and the dds plugin..

 

[SirGrotius]

Auspicious stuff!

 

[PanzerWilly]

Not everyday that you hear a plug for nuclear weapons. Refreshing.

On topic: My characters, in game, all seem to look alike. I don't know about the four billion combinations thing. Seems like there is about fifteen different faces that get reused. Romans have short hair and Gauls have long hair.

 

[Woody Man]

Not everyday that you hear a plug for nuclear weapons. Refreshing.

On topic: My characters, in game, all seem to look alike. I don't know about the four billion combinations thing. Seems like there is about fifteen different faces that get reused. Romans have short hair and Gauls have long hair.

Hm you may have had bad luck, each face part has quite a few variations, so there are a lot of different combinations.

Romans will never have long hair, since it is part of the barbarian gfx set, and vice versa