Overview

Have you seen the insidious, sleek portraits from Silfae's "Animated Portraits - The Hidden Eye" mod? Do you long to steer the unwitting masses with up-to-date gameplay elements and play the Global Earth Order as originally designed? Then this mod is for you!

There are other mods which contain these portraits, so why should you choose this one? None of the others update the special Grand Illusion gameplay, but this one does! Please enjoy my translation of Silfae's custom empire into modern Stellaris.

Changes

All gameplay features from the original mod are upgraded to be fully compatible with Stellaris 3.8 "Gemini," the latest version when this was written. Updates include:

Renamed cities to "Sleek Reptilian" so there isn't confusion with the built-in Reptilian cities
Remove duplication in room selector, allow it to always be chosen
Allow portraits to be randomly selected
Add a namelist for SLRPTLN (necessary for randomized species to get names)
Fix mesh definitions to use the correctly-named animations (slreptilian uses reptilian_04)
Fix portrait selectors so male/female reptilians aren't considered different phenotypes
Update clothing selection for Pops - your Pops will wear clothing based on their jobs
Update hair selection for Pops - reduce duplication
Rebuild special Rogue Servitor-like gameplay for balancing your ruler Pops versus the unwitting slaves
- Rebuild special Pop happiness mechanics to have clearer if/else code, use the country modifier for all bonuses (as opposed to iterating all the Pops)
- Update game events for setting up custom origin, including using set_update_modifiers_batch for some performance gains
- Convert "Parasitic Evolution" into an origin instead of a civic (including graphics for the selection screen and icon)
- As with the original civic, Origin: Parasitic Evolution is not available for the AI
Update all custom negative traits to work with modern Stellaris
- Traits use up-to-date-modifiers
- Most of the BIOLOGICAL traits are now available to use on LITHOIDs too
- These traits were originally designed as advanced traits, which means you must have Evolutionary Mastery to use them
Update pre-scripted empire
- Now uses the new Origin: Parasitic Evolution (requires Utopia)
- Now has Civic: Shadow Council to replace the civic which became the origin
- Can randomly spawn
You can use Silfae's custom Sleek Reptilian portraits (mixed, just Reptilians, or just "Humans") for your own empires without any DLC requirements
The Sleek Reptilians are part of the Reptilian species class (since Stellaris 3.8)
Support being able to choose a single-gender species (since Stellaris 3.2)

Compatibility

Compatible with any mod that does not add the same portraits or art assets.

The Launcher will tell you that some mods are outdated - that is because the dependencies are both out of date with the game's version number. This mod overwrites and replaces all incompatible code so that the portrait mod will function as originally designed. You can safely ignore the out-of-date warning for the dependency mods.

Built for Stellaris version 3.8 "Gemini." Not compatible with achievements.

Dependencies

In order for this mod to function, you must install these two mods and load them before this one:

Animated Portraits - The Hidden Eye by Silfae
Silfae's city sets updated by Nozeminer

When to Install

This mod should be added before the game has started. If you remove it from a game in progress, your game may have graphical problems if any species was using the custom portraits or city graphics.

Known Issues

This mod overwrites the corresponding species class added by "Silfae's city sets updated" so that it will not be available for use. Expect to see one line in error.log like this:

[23:27:00][game_singleobjectdatabase.h:165]: Object with key: Silfae-ThirdEye already exists, using the one at  file: common/species_classes/zz_silfae_cities_slreptilian_exclude.txt line: 2

Changelog

1.0.0 Initial version
1.1.0 Add missing fleet names, add government random names, fix missing localisation
1.2.0 Update for compatibility with Stellaris version 3.1 "Lem"
- Add new localisation keys introduced in 3.1
2.0.0 Update for compatibility with Stellaris version 3.2 "Herbert"
- Apply new mono-gender portrait rules
- More Pop clothing selector refinements
- New "Mineral Deficient" negative trait for lithoids
2.0.1 Fix improper species-level portrait selector syntax for non-male "human" portraits
2.0.2 Don't break the base game diplomacy rooms - fix is to name the new file to load before the built-in file
2.0.3 Minor tweaks
- Portrait selectors based on job category, not pop category - my goal is for the Pop portraits to be based on the job, not the Pop's stratum
- No longer ignore portrait duplication for the pre-scripted empire
- Don't randomize the all-Reptilian or all-"Human" portrait groups
2.0.4 Allow players to pick the all-Reptilian or all-"Human" portrait groups - it is intended only that the AI cannot randomly choose those two groups
3.0.0 Update for compatibility with Stellaris version 3.3 "Libra"
- Integrate base game script changes
- Use a shared set of triggers for job-based clothing
4.0.0 Update for Stellaris version 3.4 "Cepheus"
- Add a useful description to Civic: Geneticists
- Update shared triggers
- Minor localisation enhancements (spelling, grammar, use dynamic loc commands)
- All static text moved to localisation (random empire names, name lists, species names, prescripted empire)
4.1.0 Further enhancements for Stellaris version 3.4 "Cepheus"
- Fix improper formatting for armies and sequential fleets
- Add slave cost adjustments for the custom traits
5.0.0 Update for Stellaris version 3.6 "Orion" (and changes from version 3.5 "Fornax")
- Minor namelist updates
- Update hair to attachment
- Update custom traits to follow new gene-modding rules and also be weighted for assembly chance
- Ensure Sleek Reptilian "humanoid" attachments are named "Hairstyle"
- Update empire random names based on changes from Stellaris version 3.6 "Orion"
5.0.1 Further empire random name updates - primarily using species adjectives instead species singular nouns, matching changes in the base game
6.0.0 Update for Stellaris version 3.7 "Canis Minor"
- Update shared triggers for Pop portraits
- Remove global flag
- Add compatibility trigger has_slreptilian_portraits_revisited_active
7.0.0 Update for Stellaris version 3.8 "Gemini"
- Sleek Reptilians are now part of the Reptilian species class (thanks to changes by Paradox, this is no longer mod-unfriendly)
- Update prescripted empire to use the new prescripted ruler class and trait system
- Update shared triggers

Source Code

Hosted on GitHub.

Development Notes

It is best to clone this repository into <Stellaris User's Directory>/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/mod, and then make a connection to the mod folder via a *.mod file's path property. That will ensure the game can see the files, and also that CWTools will parse them. Also note that the README.md file exists in the mod directory but is symbolically linked in the root directory.

Special Thanks

I was inspired to extend the original mod when I saw Endugu's expansion of Silfae's Animated Xirmian Portraits. Modular mods that require downloading the original mod(s) help give credit where credit is due.

An extra special thanks to Silfae for creating and sharing so many detailed, animated portraits for the community.