Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-6752454-20180128054043

Hey everyone,

Been doing some off-and-on work on a SporeWiki-themed mod for Stellaris. With Stellaris 2.0 coming out next month, I've been revisiting the idea. The idea of the mod is to create custom a custom setting with species and empires from the SporeWiki fiction universe. The long term goal is to expand the mod into a total conversion galaxy scenario, with custom starts and galactic events loosely based on SporeWiki canon.

At this point I've currently got custom species portraits and custom pre-scripted empires working, with rough plans on how to organize the structure and development of the mod. At this current stage we're sticking largely with vanilla parts, so things like species traits and government civics will be the same as vanilla spore for now. Things like cities and, most importantly, ships are a little more complicated so at this stage they are using those available in base Stellaris.

However, with the base structure set-up and some test examples set up using my own empires I'm ready to start taking in requests to be added to the mod. Your fiction should have a page for its species and/or Empire to provide reference. Requests should reflect your empire's canon.

Portraits
With some time and most likely support from the more artistic of us on the Wiki we might be able to support animated portraits. For now we'll be sticking to simpler static images. If you have the models, you can create both male and female portraits with any appearance variations you wish. (Clothed versions of your species are preferred but not mandatory, if your species even wears clothes.) For the purpose of aesthetic consistency I'm preferring the usage of Spore models, rather than fan art made in external software.

You can create these images yourself using the rules below (preferred), or give me a species png to make them myself. Priority will be given to those who make their own image.

To create an appropriate portrait image:
 * Take a picture of your species with a transparent background in Spore's editor. Your creature should be facing forward and to the right with a camera angle roughly level with the species.
 * Crop the image to remove empty space and some of the lower body. There's some flexibility based on physiology, but it should cut off between the waist and upper legs (or nearest equivalent).
 * Ensure that the no part of the body is cut off along the left and right sides of the image. There is no width restrictions, so make it as wide as necessary.
 * Scale your portrait to be around 250-300px in height. You can make it a short or tall as fitting, but going too far above 300px will result in the top of your portrait being cut-off by the game.
 * The image should be in a .dds format, but to send it anything without loss-y compression is fine (i.e. no JPEGs).

Empires
We're not doing too much deeper customization yet, so at this time creating a pre-scripted empire for the mod is effectively the same as creating a normal Stellaris empire. At this initial stage can only have one starting species (or two with special civics), so include only your main species. As well, all empires will start at early spacefaring level so you may wish to change your request to fit that point in their history if desired.

If you have the game you can submit a request by creating an empire with desired set-up, and sending me its entry from your empire designs file. On Windows its default location is at \Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\user_empire_designs.txt.

Otherwise, you can submit a request with the following information. For information on these values, see the Stellaris wiki: https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com
 * Empire name:
 * Empire adjective:
 * Ship prefix:
 * Species name:
 * Species name plural:
 * Species adjective:
 * Species name List: (if unfamiliar, leave blank and I will select an appropriate default)
 * Species traits: (Up to five traits with a net cost of up to two points, see wiki for details)
 * Room appearace: (if unfamiliar, leave blank and I will select an appropriate default)
 * Advisor voice type: (if unfamiliar, leave blank and I will select an appropriate default)
 * Authority: (Democratic, Oligarchic, Dictatorship, Imperial, Hive mind, Machine consciousness)
 * Civics: (Two required, see wiki for details)
 * Ethics: (Three points, see wiki for details)
 * Homeworld/capital name:
 * Homeworld/capital class: (Arid, Desert, Savannah, Alpine, Arctic, Tundra, Continental, Ocean, Tropical. Special classes such as Tomb and Gaia may be granted under special conditions)
 * Homeworld/capital system:
 * Ship graphical culture: (if unfamiliar, leave blank and I will select an appropriate default)
 * City graphical culture: (if unfamiliar, leave blank and I will select an appropriate default)
 * Flag: (provide an icon, background and the up to two colours from available options. If unfamiliar, link a flag or emblem and I will attempt to recreate it)
 * Leader gender:
 * Leader name:
 * Leader title: (male/female options available)
 * Heir title: (if applicable)

That's a bit of a wall, but if you're interested in requesting to be included just send me a reply with the necessary info. If you want to help in the mod, also let me know. 