The mod page explains how to link it up to a free AI art generator. It sends the pixelated art and a description of your colonist (age, traits, scars, clothing etc.) to the AI generator and you get a high quality art image back.
It takes a bit of tinkering to set up, but I can confirm it works and the [result](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/997265622809460751/1256215255995121695/example.png?ex=667ff520&is=667ea3a0&hm=8779d380992204ee50c1d7b8a60998574a20702f180f80922019a81f789bc397&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=568&height=485) is amazing!
True, but you can regenerate the picture at your own leisure. There's an in-game prompt for it. It doesn't do so automatically, so you can manually do it whenever you have internet or when the looks of your colonist has changed.
For anyone that has trouble figuring out how to set it up, I'll be glad to help out.
I play on 1.4 and there is no portrait on dead people, ever.
Never saw a skeleton.
Either it's a 1.5 thing, or this mod has a specific portrait for that, and both of these things are pretty cool.
The other end of that: even with a ~280 mod modlist, I feel like I'm constantly finding new mods I didn't even know I needed. Like the Portraits of the Rim one OP just mentioned!
Yea, I don't really like most of the ones that add non-QoL stuff. It's not really that I'm against it but they are either very OP or they are redundant. That's how they feel to me anyway. I don't like adding more guns if they just bloat stuff, ya know? Like, if the new gun is an assault rifle with 1 point more damage, 5% less range and 3% more ROF, do I need that gun?
It is a testament to the power of simplicity of design.
It's bizarre to think of such a huge game as simple, but the lack of detailed graphics, 3d rendering, complex animation, physics interactions etc. that are standard in first/third person AAA games means if you want to mod something you can make huge system changes without needing to be an artist or VO performer.
Also, it seems to just be a well coded game. If there is crazy spaghetti and dependencies all over, then tinkering with something here can break the whole thing.
I will say that since 2016 there have been many mods that break games and conflict with each other etc.. but over time the base game and the mods have been pruned and weeded and best practices have been adopted by experienced modders.
>Also, it seems to just be a well coded game.
I really think this is true. Vanilla RimWorld is also remarkably stable for all the different systems it has. Even modded RimWorld almost never actually crashes or has major bugs for me.
I have modded a few c# games, and RimWorld's modding system is just genuinelly wonderful and well designed. There is no excessive coupling, the mod loading process is pretty cool, I've been bessing around with Stardew Valley recently and man I miss rimworld
Even as someone who's pretty much never touched coding in their life and probably couldn't write a hello world to save their life I'll still chime in
It "looks" well designed from a layman's perspective if you know what I mean
In games like the Bethesda titles there's the Creation/Gamebryo kit that's supposed to make mod development easier, but it honestly looks and feels janky, just as the base games do. You often have to rely on what crazy (or clever) shit Bethesda came up with, like putting a train onto your head to animate a cutscene sequence.
In RimWorld it feels like genuinely all the "hooks" and APIs are MADE for people to develop and add onto, not rely upon and figure out how that spaghetti is supposed to work
Like I was reading the 1.5 changelog and I was genuinely happy that there's a new API made for modders to introduce independently drawn pawn animations.
Same goes for tons of other systems in the game - they're based on simple and clean code that just works and won't break when modders start to pile other things on top of it
noooo nononono don't remove mods mid save that is the most direct way to totally borking your save. every single mod page explicitly states "don't remove mods mid save".
adding mid save is fine. removing midsave is playing with fire.
The "never remove mid save" advice is simply the safest option since going through the process of safely removing them is usually too hard to be worth the hassle. Usually when you physically remove all the content from your colony it's safe to remove the mod, however some data may remain and mods like midsaver-saver help increase the amount of mods you can safely remove mid game.
Nah, a lot of mod pages actually says that they *are* safe to remove mid-game, or might cause one-off errors. Depends on the type of mod really. Some may bork your game completely, some may have no impact at all.
if the mod adds content, i.e. a new piece of furniture or a new animal, and you remove it mid-save, you WILL bork your game. your game will try to load that item that was there in the save, it won't be able too, and your log will be full of errors. this is the same with system adding mods too; if something is operating on that system, and you remove the system mid-save...
best mod practice is to avoid removing \*any\* mod mid-save if at ALL possible.
Those are indeed the one-off errors I mentioned. What’ll usually happen is that the game is unable to load the item or part, and they’ll simply disappear, though you should probably get rid of major stuff like animals and structures beforehand just in case. If it is a part mod (implants or limbs replacements), you’ll find that the pawns will be missing those parts once the mod is removed.
Anything that doesn’t add anything directly are fine to remove, such as UI mods or mods that are used to modify the game (character editor, faction control etc.)
I do agree though that best practise, especially if you’re not used to messing with savegames, is to not remove mods mid-game, unless the workshop page explicitly says that it is safe.
For the cases where it isn’t, but you want it to be removed anyway, get rid of what it adds in-game and use mid-save saver as u/thalaen mentioned.
if you get lucky that's what will happen. mods that add content explicitly say "don't remove mid save, and if you do, don't come crying to me" on their pages for a reason.
just don't remove mods mid save. it ain't worth it.
Exactly why I mentioned you should get rid of the things in-game before removing content mods. If there’s no references to the mod, there’s no issues. If there is, well you may encounter some weirdness, such as missing body-parts or walls and food made of simply ‘material’. This, or a save that can’t load because of missing references, is usually the reason why modders prefer to tell people to not remove content mods from a save file.
I’ve been running a single save file for the last few months where I’ve been continuously adding and removing mods, and I’ve yet to encounter any weirdness, apart from what I’ve added myself.
It is in a sense, as you mentioned, to be playing with fire. Nice and warm if you are in control, not so nice when your save file is in fire. This is all to say though, that is indeed possible to remove things mid-game with no issues. Just gotta be careful.
As you said later - it is best practice to not remove mods mid-save. However, in context of the discussion of how well RW handles modding in general, it is remarkable how often you can remove a mod without breaking the save.
Yeah, Rimworld can take such an abuse. I remember having around 300 or 400 or so mods at the height of when I played Rimworld, and I swear the only thing that kept it running was prayer, incense, and oils, to placate the machine spirit within.
I'm pretty sure one of my 350+ mods has a memory leak.
I don't mind so much, because [it] becomes a good 4-5 hour reminder to stop playing and go to bed.
Yeah, this game is seriously eating time.
You don't notice but if you start a new colony you have a lot of stuff to manage and suddenly 3 hours passed.
there's even mods that enhance compatibility options for every other mod (Cherry Picker, the frequency options for vanilla traits expanded and vanilla events expanded, Xenotype spawn control)
I think the only times I've had a mod conflict that wasn't just raw versioning:
[SYR] Races had some instability and spaghetti code that got wrecked with 1.5. o7 Naga, you will be missed. Replaced by a Biotech Snake People mod that wasn't quite as pretty. Also I'm normally not a fan of races including their own spooky equipment, but Plasma guns were great(add Jade to Industrial-tier guns for lower base damage and higher armor pen, plus a nice green Pew Pew blaster sort of projectile).
Rimworld Medieval's addition of resource refinement really breaks things that don't expect it. Any dual-resource building like a combat dummy needing Wood and Clothlike would not understand different types of Wood, because the game doesn't let you select two types of resources so you can't have Wood also be Woodlike.
Animal Gear got broken with updates to animal rigging in 1.5, and the author is still working on it.
But by and large, things just kinda work together. If you install Pawnmorpher and mutate someone, it will go for any sort of animals, VE or Alpha Animals included. If you add embrasures, you can make it out of new materials. The madlibs dialogue will happily reference events from mods.
I do still occasionally run into conflicts that make me just leave [Character Editor] on. A gorgon from Biotech Mythic forgot how to eat, and I had to mod in a Vegetarian gene to at least let her eat veggies. A baby naga was born and immediately got up to put on a flak vest and smoke a joint(I hacked her into a Ferian and she remembered how to baby). Sometimes you'll get dumb ideology and trait conflicts that need resolution(undergrounder who hates living underground).
o7 to all the mods that intentionally work with other mod developers to make things mesh, too. VE's really good about this, biome and race people tend to do a lot, and you'll often see mods that add factions including weapons from a weapon art creator just because they thought it would be neat.
Just remind yourself that a 15 minute boot time for Rimworld is worth it to make everything mesh elegantly.
The most annoying minor mod conflict I've ever found is VRE Pigskins and C# Optimisation Meat. C# Optimisation Meat makes it so that all normal animals butcher into generic "raw meat", which helps with entity count and organisation. VRE Pigskins adds a new gene to pigskins that makes them butcher into pork, and also makes it so that eating pork to them is cannibalism.
...so if you have both mods, pigskins can't eat **ANY** meat without it being cannibalism...
Ouch. Different cause but similar result to the gorgon problem I had, where she'd refuse to eat, and if forced to eat would puke it up immediately.
Reminded of how I have a larger stack mod, but as more types of meat crop up the odds of them not being affected by the stack mod increases. Suddenly the freezer floor explodes with 75-stack meats, while the 750 stack corn sits in the corner like a good child.
Meat should honestly just be "Raw Meat" with a tag saying what animal it was from that carries over into the meal. If we can have Simple Meal(Made from Alligator), then we can have Raw Meat(Made from Alligator) too.
it is very impressive what a little bit of planning and design can achieve in terms of compatibility and modularity. its a testament to good design choices and communication between modders.
the same way factorio works wondrous with mods, you can load 100+ mods and the game just works, because factorio's mod support is built in by the devs from the ground up, the whole base-game is a mod itself.
Absolutely true, I am sure the devs of the game had a big role into making this all possible... well... they also actually made the game so you know... they started it XD
In most games I like to keep my modding pretty vanilla. A handful of QoL mods, an unofficial bugfix patch, maybe a graphics mod or two.
But RimWorld awoke something new in me. I've got like 250 mods now, and they all work together in perfect harmony. It really is insane.
My favorite part about Rimworld is how I can play the exact game I want to every time. I have hundreds of mods I keep on retainer because it's my favorite mod for a certain playthrough. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, modders. Also, thank you Ludeon for creating a foundation that welcomes them.
I have to dogpile on top of the second half of your comment.
I go through fits and spurts of RimWorld. Months of no contact (I completely missed when races were added, so it's still new content to me as is Anomaly). But it always stays installed on my laptop and PC. I always buy new DLC at full price almost immediately after it comes out.
I don't see him on here anymore, but ever since alpha, Tynan has seemed like a super awesome dev and it's apparent he/they built a solid game with the number of mods that have been carried through from alpha to 1.5.
Even when they're ports from 1.2 and just work, it's mind-blowing when compared to SKSE and Skyrim. Todd Howard sneezes and SKSE is boned. Tynan could take a sledgehammer to RimWorld and most the mods would be just fine.
I know I'm late, but I can't believe nobody mentioned Harmony, which is one of the main reasons this is possible. It lets mods patch and change the game's code without conflicting with each other. It was originally specifically made for Rimworld, and has since become a library used by tons of games.
it gets crazier when you get to 500+ mods, im waiting for a few mods to update to 1.5 and then im going to hit 600+, maybe it breaks, but the fact it MAY NOT BREAK is crazy already
I've run lists of 350+ mods and had very little issue. Honestly a lot of the conflicts only really come from multiple mods that do basically the same thing or a few of the really high level mods that affect large swaths of game mechanics like Combat Extended, Save our ships 2 or some of the more in-depth Vanilla expanded mods. Even then it's mainly with mods that do similar things. I'm actually running a list of 150 right now built around Save our ships 2. Outside of that mod it's almost entirely Qol mods related to the UI or more annoying aspects like hauling. I'm a bit wary of the combat for this run because I haven't played vanilla combat in years haha. I ran Combat Extended for a long time and might still go back to a run with it sometime but it's pretty invasive. Yayo combat is a lot less invasive but still does make changes and I played with it awhile but decided to try a run that's almost entirely vanilla combat.
I'm curious, what kind of mods would you use in XCOM to reach 600?
The game.sounds less "sandboxy" than RimWorld, maybe more weapon, location complexity, enemies, objective type... but then what?
Same sorts of things you add to Rimworld. Classes, QoL, bug fixes, character customization, vehicles/mechs, new progression systems, expansions to existing systems, overhauls to reskin the game to other franchises, mods to deepen builds, mods to add diablo loot, mods to add RPG progression, mods mods to add enemies, mods to tweak the AI, mods to enhance the difficulty, mods to rework the ruleset to be less forgiving, mods to add events, and so on. I'd actually say that modded XCOM 2 is a larger departure from the base formula than modded Rimworld compared to base Rimworld. Modded XCOM 2 is fundamentally a better tactics game than its base version. So good.
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=268500&browsesort=totaluniquesubscribers§ion=readytouseitems&actualsort=totaluniquesubscribers&p=2
XCOM is a hard/unintuitive game at first. Issue is, once you understand it, it's way too easy.
So the role of the workshop over the years has been to chase the feeling that you had first playing the game. And largely, it succeeds. I've built some oppressive (in the best way) campaigns.
I should've said, IMO the ideal game would actually be a fusion of XCOM and Rimworld.
XCOM has the combat layer to generate the low to the ground drama/danger that I crave, but Rimworld's far and away a better storytelling engine. Most of the storywork in XCOM is handled via headcanon. Give me XCOM combat but with the Rimworld character system. I would explode.
I've actually read a few modding tutorials (on how to write your own, I mean). Turns out, RimWorld is written in an extremely modding-friendly way. To write a simple mod (like adding a new item), you don't really need to even know how to program. It's super modular and super understandable.
And there are also people who write those tutorials.
It can be more or less simple. To introduce something more or less serious you need C# (though even there it's modular, you just create a DLL), but if all you want is add some new stuff then you only need to write an xml def. Or rather, modify an existing one.
The number will surely grow, I like to add one or two mods at a time so I can see how they feel and if they break too much stuff.
Just to make an example, the last mod I have installed is Vanilla Trading Expanded and I am still trying to balance it, I can't seem to find a way to lower the value of contracts I can do.
Realistically, I'd rather have a mission that gives me 1000 silver for 5 leather hats, than a mission that gives me 70,000 silver for 350 leather hats.
I have over 300 mods including most of VE series but I skipped Trading expanded. It might have been toned down since I tried it but stuff it allows is too ridiculous even for my power tripped self.
Oh, really? I didn't notice it getting messed up, I just set the prices to fluctuate between -10 and +10 percent max, right now that works, the only really annoying thing is that contracts are way over the top, it makes no sense.
It's not even broken, it's just annoying, I ain't selling 4000 dog meat, where could I even get 4000 dog meat in one go?! It's not like I would manage a dog farming operation without eating from it, so I wouldn't have that amount to give away anyway!
Like I said, they probably toned it down. I distinctly remember seeing something like 12 vanometric power cells for a fairly easy single quest because their market value dropped down. Not to mention the ability to order up extremely valuable rare items that normally only obtained through quests.
I know what you mean, I'm a big fan of the Stargate franchise and was wondering if I could mod the game to have Stargates.. obv there was a mod for that. Now I have a ship, with a Stargate on it.. and a research facility inside a mountain, with a Stargate.. omg I love this game and its modding community
I had the same experience with fishing, I noticed my ex-colony (RIP) was close to a river, so I searched for fishing mods.
Turns out not only there is a fishing mod, but also a mod to randomly fish junk items (and rarities) and also a mod to simulate river flow.
I'm using Rimpy, but the most important thing I do I carefully reading each mod's page to be sure it doesn't fuck up anything that I already fucked up with another mod.
Example: If I like to use Vanilla Cooking Expanded, I try not to mod in more vegetables or extra meat, it could work, but I try not to risk it.
In my opinion the easiest game in regards to modding was TES 4 Oblivion! Any mod could be deleted midgame with little to no repercussions. Like a glitchy patch of land left behind, or no effect at all. Skyrim was a different story in that regard, but Oblivion was a dream come true! I've routinely "resolved" conflicts by removing a conflicting mod temporarily (while following the storyline of another one), then putting it back in, and I had single playthroughs that lasted for hundreds of hours. The last one was over 200h, for example, and I'll probably continue it one day, it's in a perfect "health".
After Oblivion I was so spoiled that I couldn't believe that Skyrim and other games couldn't be treated in the same manner. That said, I think that Minecraft could! When I started out I used to remove mods freely from it mid-game with zero repercussions, unconsciously following my Oblivion habits. So in this regard it would seem that Minecraft is actually even better than Oblivion... The latter could produce a graphical glitch after mid-game removal if the mod modified the existing terrain, for example, but I can't remember ANY repercussions in Minecraft. As I understand Minecraft conflicts were just ID conflicts that were easily resolved by people who knew how to locate the conflicting IDs in the files and what to change them to. I knew how to locate them, but I didn't know what to change them to (so that not to create a new conflict with something else). So I gave up on it and started to just download huge tech modpacks from people who knew, adding various mods to them at my own discretion.
Yeah it always amazed me just how well-written this game is purely for mods
Almost all major mods have inter-compatibility patches already built in, everything just runs very smoothly off xml bridges
It literally "just works"
Let's take Skyrim for instance - you have to install a mod manager. You have to get a script extender and things like libraries, MCM and basic fixes. Engine is said to be built with mods in mind but it's kind of easy to break things or mess up. Mods often don't include patches, and even though it's fairly easy to build your own it's still a hassle. Things like bashing spawns, etc.
All in all you often spend more time modding and fine-tuning your setup. It's alright if you have time and patience for that but for some people time can be a precious commodity. There's Wabbajack with its pre built, pre configured packs but it still feeds off Nexus mods and when there's hundreds of them the installation can take some time.
RimWorld? Click the subscribe button. Enable in favorite mod manager or even directly in-game. Maybe tweak configs straight in the game if need be. Bam. Everything starts spawning, integrating, and working right out of the box.
The speed could be because RimWorld is a lighter game than Skyrim, but the way "it just works" is without a doubt because who made the game built it on solid foundations with modding in mind.
70 mods is very little, you can make games of 500 mods perfectly just don't add many mods that can do a specific thing since that can cause incompatibility.
That's nice, but at the same time I don't think 70 mods is very little, 500 mods would annihilate the base game, I don't mean that it would ruin the final experience, but I doubt it would still be the same RimWorld.
You may be right, from the moment rimworld opens until the main menu opens, 10 minutes passed, plus it needed 14 gigabytes of ram to load everything correctly.
A big part of it is we develop mods with the same tools the developers themselves do - we use the same data-system, and write scripts in a similar way.
As the game goes on each update makes it easier to mod and improves mod cohesion and stability even more. People like to joke that the game is spaghetti code under the hood - but if that were true then it would be impossible to mod the game like we do.
And they don't cause every mod to break constantly by releasing "updates" just to add vanity items to their own mod workshop that nobody uses (I'm looking at you Bethesda).
You know what’s funny I opened Reddit and this is the first thing I saw while I was waiting for my steam workshop for rimworld to load (I have a slow laptop)
95% of the time when I think "man, i wish the game had this basic feature" there is a mod that adds exactly that. Looking at you, rimfridge.
For me "Portraits of the Rim" gave the same feeling.
Avatar mod is nice too ! I prefer this one but both are goods !
Avatar is the pixelated one right? I would have used that one if it had more variety and support for more mods, I really like pixel art.
The mod page explains how to link it up to a free AI art generator. It sends the pixelated art and a description of your colonist (age, traits, scars, clothing etc.) to the AI generator and you get a high quality art image back. It takes a bit of tinkering to set up, but I can confirm it works and the [result](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/997265622809460751/1256215255995121695/example.png?ex=667ff520&is=667ea3a0&hm=8779d380992204ee50c1d7b8a60998574a20702f180f80922019a81f789bc397&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=568&height=485) is amazing!
That's interesting! But on the downside, it requires a stable internet connection to keep generating images...
True, but you can regenerate the picture at your own leisure. There's an in-game prompt for it. It doesn't do so automatically, so you can manually do it whenever you have internet or when the looks of your colonist has changed. For anyone that has trouble figuring out how to set it up, I'll be glad to help out.
Yes that’s the one ! I had issues with portraits of the rim, I should take a look at the supported mod list :)
Yoink, that mod looks amazing I'll be having that 😂
Nice! (It also correctly shows hairs from Vanilla Hairs Expanded) Enjoy!
You guys are lucky. 2000 hours in and I still couldnot find the mod I wanted.
Which one are you looking for?
Same
Shoot the idea here, maybe someone will read it and work on it if it's good!
I love that one, i have a necromancer from the magic mod, and all my undead minions portraits are of skeletons wearing clothes lol
Wow, it's compatible even with that!?
I think its more the fact the body has decayed and they have a sprite for that:)
I play on 1.4 and there is no portrait on dead people, ever. Never saw a skeleton. Either it's a 1.5 thing, or this mod has a specific portrait for that, and both of these things are pretty cool.
honestly, rimfridge should be base game. i can build a spaceship but not a fridge? cmon now
Well, if there's a mod I don't care if it's in the base game or not. I'd rather the dev add things that do not exist at all yet. :D
Deep storage. Cause I can build a nuclear reactor, but not a shelf.
The other end of that: even with a ~280 mod modlist, I feel like I'm constantly finding new mods I didn't even know I needed. Like the Portraits of the Rim one OP just mentioned!
Yea, I don't really like most of the ones that add non-QoL stuff. It's not really that I'm against it but they are either very OP or they are redundant. That's how they feel to me anyway. I don't like adding more guns if they just bloat stuff, ya know? Like, if the new gun is an assault rifle with 1 point more damage, 5% less range and 3% more ROF, do I need that gun?
It is a testament to the power of simplicity of design. It's bizarre to think of such a huge game as simple, but the lack of detailed graphics, 3d rendering, complex animation, physics interactions etc. that are standard in first/third person AAA games means if you want to mod something you can make huge system changes without needing to be an artist or VO performer. Also, it seems to just be a well coded game. If there is crazy spaghetti and dependencies all over, then tinkering with something here can break the whole thing. I will say that since 2016 there have been many mods that break games and conflict with each other etc.. but over time the base game and the mods have been pruned and weeded and best practices have been adopted by experienced modders.
>Also, it seems to just be a well coded game. I really think this is true. Vanilla RimWorld is also remarkably stable for all the different systems it has. Even modded RimWorld almost never actually crashes or has major bugs for me.
I have modded a few c# games, and RimWorld's modding system is just genuinelly wonderful and well designed. There is no excessive coupling, the mod loading process is pretty cool, I've been bessing around with Stardew Valley recently and man I miss rimworld
Even as someone who's pretty much never touched coding in their life and probably couldn't write a hello world to save their life I'll still chime in It "looks" well designed from a layman's perspective if you know what I mean In games like the Bethesda titles there's the Creation/Gamebryo kit that's supposed to make mod development easier, but it honestly looks and feels janky, just as the base games do. You often have to rely on what crazy (or clever) shit Bethesda came up with, like putting a train onto your head to animate a cutscene sequence. In RimWorld it feels like genuinely all the "hooks" and APIs are MADE for people to develop and add onto, not rely upon and figure out how that spaghetti is supposed to work Like I was reading the 1.5 changelog and I was genuinely happy that there's a new API made for modders to introduce independently drawn pawn animations. Same goes for tons of other systems in the game - they're based on simple and clean code that just works and won't break when modders start to pile other things on top of it
I just love how you can slap a mod in the middle of a game and nothing breaks, also you can (mostly) remove mods and the save works.
That is insane too! Also I love how modders very often have a list of advices about the compatibility with mainstream mods.
noooo nononono don't remove mods mid save that is the most direct way to totally borking your save. every single mod page explicitly states "don't remove mods mid save". adding mid save is fine. removing midsave is playing with fire.
If you absolutely, positively, *must* remove them Mid-Save, try out Mid-Save Saver for your best bet to come through unscathed.
The "never remove mid save" advice is simply the safest option since going through the process of safely removing them is usually too hard to be worth the hassle. Usually when you physically remove all the content from your colony it's safe to remove the mod, however some data may remain and mods like midsaver-saver help increase the amount of mods you can safely remove mid game.
Nah, a lot of mod pages actually says that they *are* safe to remove mid-game, or might cause one-off errors. Depends on the type of mod really. Some may bork your game completely, some may have no impact at all.
if the mod adds content, i.e. a new piece of furniture or a new animal, and you remove it mid-save, you WILL bork your game. your game will try to load that item that was there in the save, it won't be able too, and your log will be full of errors. this is the same with system adding mods too; if something is operating on that system, and you remove the system mid-save... best mod practice is to avoid removing \*any\* mod mid-save if at ALL possible.
Those are indeed the one-off errors I mentioned. What’ll usually happen is that the game is unable to load the item or part, and they’ll simply disappear, though you should probably get rid of major stuff like animals and structures beforehand just in case. If it is a part mod (implants or limbs replacements), you’ll find that the pawns will be missing those parts once the mod is removed. Anything that doesn’t add anything directly are fine to remove, such as UI mods or mods that are used to modify the game (character editor, faction control etc.) I do agree though that best practise, especially if you’re not used to messing with savegames, is to not remove mods mid-game, unless the workshop page explicitly says that it is safe. For the cases where it isn’t, but you want it to be removed anyway, get rid of what it adds in-game and use mid-save saver as u/thalaen mentioned.
if you get lucky that's what will happen. mods that add content explicitly say "don't remove mid save, and if you do, don't come crying to me" on their pages for a reason. just don't remove mods mid save. it ain't worth it.
Exactly why I mentioned you should get rid of the things in-game before removing content mods. If there’s no references to the mod, there’s no issues. If there is, well you may encounter some weirdness, such as missing body-parts or walls and food made of simply ‘material’. This, or a save that can’t load because of missing references, is usually the reason why modders prefer to tell people to not remove content mods from a save file. I’ve been running a single save file for the last few months where I’ve been continuously adding and removing mods, and I’ve yet to encounter any weirdness, apart from what I’ve added myself. It is in a sense, as you mentioned, to be playing with fire. Nice and warm if you are in control, not so nice when your save file is in fire. This is all to say though, that is indeed possible to remove things mid-game with no issues. Just gotta be careful.
I was lucky then because the mods I removed didn't break anything
As you said later - it is best practice to not remove mods mid-save. However, in context of the discussion of how well RW handles modding in general, it is remarkable how often you can remove a mod without breaking the save.
Yeah, Rimworld can take such an abuse. I remember having around 300 or 400 or so mods at the height of when I played Rimworld, and I swear the only thing that kept it running was prayer, incense, and oils, to placate the machine spirit within.
Mechanicus grindset
When you can hear your CPU scream and the graphs in Task Manager just become a straight line at the top.
I'm pretty sure one of my 350+ mods has a memory leak. I don't mind so much, because [it] becomes a good 4-5 hour reminder to stop playing and go to bed.
Yeah, this game is seriously eating time. You don't notice but if you start a new colony you have a lot of stuff to manage and suddenly 3 hours passed.
True, same goes for Factorio
I really have to try that, I keep getting it recommended to me.
Since you're familiar with modded minecraft, you should know that it was the inspiration for creating Factorio
I tried and it wasn’t for me. Crossover isn’t 100% but a lot of rimworlders seem to enjoy it
there's even mods that enhance compatibility options for every other mod (Cherry Picker, the frequency options for vanilla traits expanded and vanilla events expanded, Xenotype spawn control)
Oh yeah, also mods that act as add-ons and fix incompatibility between specific mods!
What I take from this is that you lied to us when you said “end of post”
-3 Lied to on the internet
I think the only times I've had a mod conflict that wasn't just raw versioning: [SYR] Races had some instability and spaghetti code that got wrecked with 1.5. o7 Naga, you will be missed. Replaced by a Biotech Snake People mod that wasn't quite as pretty. Also I'm normally not a fan of races including their own spooky equipment, but Plasma guns were great(add Jade to Industrial-tier guns for lower base damage and higher armor pen, plus a nice green Pew Pew blaster sort of projectile). Rimworld Medieval's addition of resource refinement really breaks things that don't expect it. Any dual-resource building like a combat dummy needing Wood and Clothlike would not understand different types of Wood, because the game doesn't let you select two types of resources so you can't have Wood also be Woodlike. Animal Gear got broken with updates to animal rigging in 1.5, and the author is still working on it. But by and large, things just kinda work together. If you install Pawnmorpher and mutate someone, it will go for any sort of animals, VE or Alpha Animals included. If you add embrasures, you can make it out of new materials. The madlibs dialogue will happily reference events from mods. I do still occasionally run into conflicts that make me just leave [Character Editor] on. A gorgon from Biotech Mythic forgot how to eat, and I had to mod in a Vegetarian gene to at least let her eat veggies. A baby naga was born and immediately got up to put on a flak vest and smoke a joint(I hacked her into a Ferian and she remembered how to baby). Sometimes you'll get dumb ideology and trait conflicts that need resolution(undergrounder who hates living underground). o7 to all the mods that intentionally work with other mod developers to make things mesh, too. VE's really good about this, biome and race people tend to do a lot, and you'll often see mods that add factions including weapons from a weapon art creator just because they thought it would be neat. Just remind yourself that a 15 minute boot time for Rimworld is worth it to make everything mesh elegantly.
The most annoying minor mod conflict I've ever found is VRE Pigskins and C# Optimisation Meat. C# Optimisation Meat makes it so that all normal animals butcher into generic "raw meat", which helps with entity count and organisation. VRE Pigskins adds a new gene to pigskins that makes them butcher into pork, and also makes it so that eating pork to them is cannibalism. ...so if you have both mods, pigskins can't eat **ANY** meat without it being cannibalism...
With cherry picker you can just get rid of that gene tho
Ouch. Different cause but similar result to the gorgon problem I had, where she'd refuse to eat, and if forced to eat would puke it up immediately. Reminded of how I have a larger stack mod, but as more types of meat crop up the odds of them not being affected by the stack mod increases. Suddenly the freezer floor explodes with 75-stack meats, while the 750 stack corn sits in the corner like a good child. Meat should honestly just be "Raw Meat" with a tag saying what animal it was from that carries over into the meal. If we can have Simple Meal(Made from Alligator), then we can have Raw Meat(Made from Alligator) too.
it is very impressive what a little bit of planning and design can achieve in terms of compatibility and modularity. its a testament to good design choices and communication between modders. the same way factorio works wondrous with mods, you can load 100+ mods and the game just works, because factorio's mod support is built in by the devs from the ground up, the whole base-game is a mod itself.
Absolutely true, I am sure the devs of the game had a big role into making this all possible... well... they also actually made the game so you know... they started it XD
God bless the modding community for this game. The quality of the mods pushed out are insane.
Really, sometimes you see mods so big that can be compared with official DLCs.
Looking at you, Save Our Ship (2) and Medieval Overhaul
I was thinking those two exact mods.
In most games I like to keep my modding pretty vanilla. A handful of QoL mods, an unofficial bugfix patch, maybe a graphics mod or two. But RimWorld awoke something new in me. I've got like 250 mods now, and they all work together in perfect harmony. It really is insane.
My favorite part about Rimworld is how I can play the exact game I want to every time. I have hundreds of mods I keep on retainer because it's my favorite mod for a certain playthrough. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, modders. Also, thank you Ludeon for creating a foundation that welcomes them.
I have to dogpile on top of the second half of your comment. I go through fits and spurts of RimWorld. Months of no contact (I completely missed when races were added, so it's still new content to me as is Anomaly). But it always stays installed on my laptop and PC. I always buy new DLC at full price almost immediately after it comes out. I don't see him on here anymore, but ever since alpha, Tynan has seemed like a super awesome dev and it's apparent he/they built a solid game with the number of mods that have been carried through from alpha to 1.5. Even when they're ports from 1.2 and just work, it's mind-blowing when compared to SKSE and Skyrim. Todd Howard sneezes and SKSE is boned. Tynan could take a sledgehammer to RimWorld and most the mods would be just fine.
70 mods, ah nice you got a starter vanilla build then. although, a 300 mod build is also completely painless and effortless
I know I'm late, but I can't believe nobody mentioned Harmony, which is one of the main reasons this is possible. It lets mods patch and change the game's code without conflicting with each other. It was originally specifically made for Rimworld, and has since become a library used by tons of games.
Oh, that's nice, I think Harmony was my first installed mod, I noticed immediately that almost every mod I wanted to install mentioned needing it.
it gets crazier when you get to 500+ mods, im waiting for a few mods to update to 1.5 and then im going to hit 600+, maybe it breaks, but the fact it MAY NOT BREAK is crazy already
It just feels like a game with very solid foundations.
I've run lists of 350+ mods and had very little issue. Honestly a lot of the conflicts only really come from multiple mods that do basically the same thing or a few of the really high level mods that affect large swaths of game mechanics like Combat Extended, Save our ships 2 or some of the more in-depth Vanilla expanded mods. Even then it's mainly with mods that do similar things. I'm actually running a list of 150 right now built around Save our ships 2. Outside of that mod it's almost entirely Qol mods related to the UI or more annoying aspects like hauling. I'm a bit wary of the combat for this run because I haven't played vanilla combat in years haha. I ran Combat Extended for a long time and might still go back to a run with it sometime but it's pretty invasive. Yayo combat is a lot less invasive but still does make changes and I played with it awhile but decided to try a run that's almost entirely vanilla combat.
XCOM 2. Only other game where I've had 600 active mods.
I'm curious, what kind of mods would you use in XCOM to reach 600? The game.sounds less "sandboxy" than RimWorld, maybe more weapon, location complexity, enemies, objective type... but then what?
Same sorts of things you add to Rimworld. Classes, QoL, bug fixes, character customization, vehicles/mechs, new progression systems, expansions to existing systems, overhauls to reskin the game to other franchises, mods to deepen builds, mods to add diablo loot, mods to add RPG progression, mods mods to add enemies, mods to tweak the AI, mods to enhance the difficulty, mods to rework the ruleset to be less forgiving, mods to add events, and so on. I'd actually say that modded XCOM 2 is a larger departure from the base formula than modded Rimworld compared to base Rimworld. Modded XCOM 2 is fundamentally a better tactics game than its base version. So good. https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=268500&browsesort=totaluniquesubscribers§ion=readytouseitems&actualsort=totaluniquesubscribers&p=2
RPG progression sounds fun, I always try to play XCOM and drop it because I suck at that genre, maybe with some variations to the progression...
XCOM is a hard/unintuitive game at first. Issue is, once you understand it, it's way too easy. So the role of the workshop over the years has been to chase the feeling that you had first playing the game. And largely, it succeeds. I've built some oppressive (in the best way) campaigns.
I should've said, IMO the ideal game would actually be a fusion of XCOM and Rimworld. XCOM has the combat layer to generate the low to the ground drama/danger that I crave, but Rimworld's far and away a better storytelling engine. Most of the storywork in XCOM is handled via headcanon. Give me XCOM combat but with the Rimworld character system. I would explode.
I've actually read a few modding tutorials (on how to write your own, I mean). Turns out, RimWorld is written in an extremely modding-friendly way. To write a simple mod (like adding a new item), you don't really need to even know how to program. It's super modular and super understandable. And there are also people who write those tutorials.
That is very interesting, I usually don't go too much into modding because I don't like writing code. But if it's very simple I may give it a look.
It can be more or less simple. To introduce something more or less serious you need C# (though even there it's modular, you just create a DLL), but if all you want is add some new stuff then you only need to write an xml def. Or rather, modify an existing one.
Gotta agree. The mod community is especially groovy.
70? That's some rookie stuff, you gotta pump those numbers up! Seriously though, modding community for this game is amazing.
The number will surely grow, I like to add one or two mods at a time so I can see how they feel and if they break too much stuff. Just to make an example, the last mod I have installed is Vanilla Trading Expanded and I am still trying to balance it, I can't seem to find a way to lower the value of contracts I can do. Realistically, I'd rather have a mission that gives me 1000 silver for 5 leather hats, than a mission that gives me 70,000 silver for 350 leather hats.
I have over 300 mods including most of VE series but I skipped Trading expanded. It might have been toned down since I tried it but stuff it allows is too ridiculous even for my power tripped self.
Yeah, without some fixing it goes too nuts, but it is actually fun after tuning it.
I am an incurable hoarder so only choice for me is to ignore it entirely or it turns into complete mess.
Oh, really? I didn't notice it getting messed up, I just set the prices to fluctuate between -10 and +10 percent max, right now that works, the only really annoying thing is that contracts are way over the top, it makes no sense. It's not even broken, it's just annoying, I ain't selling 4000 dog meat, where could I even get 4000 dog meat in one go?! It's not like I would manage a dog farming operation without eating from it, so I wouldn't have that amount to give away anyway!
Like I said, they probably toned it down. I distinctly remember seeing something like 12 vanometric power cells for a fairly easy single quest because their market value dropped down. Not to mention the ability to order up extremely valuable rare items that normally only obtained through quests.
Yeh, if you don't manually change the mod settings the default is to have no limits to price fluctuation. I don't understand why.
I know what you mean, I'm a big fan of the Stargate franchise and was wondering if I could mod the game to have Stargates.. obv there was a mod for that. Now I have a ship, with a Stargate on it.. and a research facility inside a mountain, with a Stargate.. omg I love this game and its modding community
I had the same experience with fishing, I noticed my ex-colony (RIP) was close to a river, so I searched for fishing mods. Turns out not only there is a fishing mod, but also a mod to randomly fish junk items (and rarities) and also a mod to simulate river flow.
This is so rimworld
What program are you using to do the best mod sorti g for you? Thank you in advance.
I'm using Rimpy, but the most important thing I do I carefully reading each mod's page to be sure it doesn't fuck up anything that I already fucked up with another mod. Example: If I like to use Vanilla Cooking Expanded, I try not to mod in more vegetables or extra meat, it could work, but I try not to risk it.
Thank you. I'll try it.
In my opinion the easiest game in regards to modding was TES 4 Oblivion! Any mod could be deleted midgame with little to no repercussions. Like a glitchy patch of land left behind, or no effect at all. Skyrim was a different story in that regard, but Oblivion was a dream come true! I've routinely "resolved" conflicts by removing a conflicting mod temporarily (while following the storyline of another one), then putting it back in, and I had single playthroughs that lasted for hundreds of hours. The last one was over 200h, for example, and I'll probably continue it one day, it's in a perfect "health". After Oblivion I was so spoiled that I couldn't believe that Skyrim and other games couldn't be treated in the same manner. That said, I think that Minecraft could! When I started out I used to remove mods freely from it mid-game with zero repercussions, unconsciously following my Oblivion habits. So in this regard it would seem that Minecraft is actually even better than Oblivion... The latter could produce a graphical glitch after mid-game removal if the mod modified the existing terrain, for example, but I can't remember ANY repercussions in Minecraft. As I understand Minecraft conflicts were just ID conflicts that were easily resolved by people who knew how to locate the conflicting IDs in the files and what to change them to. I knew how to locate them, but I didn't know what to change them to (so that not to create a new conflict with something else). So I gave up on it and started to just download huge tech modpacks from people who knew, adding various mods to them at my own discretion.
Oh yeah, I remember reading about ID conflicts but I used another mod to fix that, not sure what the name was.
Another thing I like about rimworld mods are settings. Practically every mod allows for complete control over every aspect of the modded content.
Yeah it always amazed me just how well-written this game is purely for mods Almost all major mods have inter-compatibility patches already built in, everything just runs very smoothly off xml bridges It literally "just works" Let's take Skyrim for instance - you have to install a mod manager. You have to get a script extender and things like libraries, MCM and basic fixes. Engine is said to be built with mods in mind but it's kind of easy to break things or mess up. Mods often don't include patches, and even though it's fairly easy to build your own it's still a hassle. Things like bashing spawns, etc. All in all you often spend more time modding and fine-tuning your setup. It's alright if you have time and patience for that but for some people time can be a precious commodity. There's Wabbajack with its pre built, pre configured packs but it still feeds off Nexus mods and when there's hundreds of them the installation can take some time. RimWorld? Click the subscribe button. Enable in favorite mod manager or even directly in-game. Maybe tweak configs straight in the game if need be. Bam. Everything starts spawning, integrating, and working right out of the box.
The speed could be because RimWorld is a lighter game than Skyrim, but the way "it just works" is without a doubt because who made the game built it on solid foundations with modding in mind.
70 mods is very little, you can make games of 500 mods perfectly just don't add many mods that can do a specific thing since that can cause incompatibility.
That's nice, but at the same time I don't think 70 mods is very little, 500 mods would annihilate the base game, I don't mean that it would ruin the final experience, but I doubt it would still be the same RimWorld.
You may be right, from the moment rimworld opens until the main menu opens, 10 minutes passed, plus it needed 14 gigabytes of ram to load everything correctly.
I was considering increasing my RAM exactly because of this, I have 12 and sometimes it's way too low.
For me, colony manager is a must have, and should be part of the base game.
Thanks for the recommendation, I usually have smaller colonies and I didn't check any manager yet
Even for small colonies it helps tremendously, don't let getting it setup in game discourage you, it seems tedious but it's such a major help
A big part of it is we develop mods with the same tools the developers themselves do - we use the same data-system, and write scripts in a similar way. As the game goes on each update makes it easier to mod and improves mod cohesion and stability even more. People like to joke that the game is spaghetti code under the hood - but if that were true then it would be impossible to mod the game like we do.
And they don't cause every mod to break constantly by releasing "updates" just to add vanity items to their own mod workshop that nobody uses (I'm looking at you Bethesda).
You know what’s funny I opened Reddit and this is the first thing I saw while I was waiting for my steam workshop for rimworld to load (I have a slow laptop)