Team Nessassity Mods - Veiled Realms Re-Unveiled, Now In Full Colour With Pictures And A Comprehensible Checklist! Who Are You And What Have You Done With The Real Princess, Impostor! (Patreon)

IT'S MARCH! HI! Well, it's almost April at this point but officially it's still March so I'll take it!

As promised, today's Monthly Mod Report is going to be a progress summary on Veiled Realms, what's done, what's being currently worked on, what's left and, tentatively, what we are hoping to add in the post-release future!

There's a lot to cover so how about we let all this ado know what we think of it? WITHOUT FURTHER YOU-KNOW-WHAT!

Veiled Realms

OH! Speaking of, I should probably mention this first! The work-in-progress mod previously known as "Veiled Realms: Court of Blood" has been renamed to simply "Veiled Realms".

Now... why does it matter? That's a bit of a long story, but since you're here, I would assume scrolling down endless walls of text is your single most favourite pastime. So because I aim to please, I have one coming up just for you! <3

When I first started working on Veiled Realms, beginning with early drafts written prior to CK3's release, my only real Paradox modding experience had been with Stellaris. So I made a lot of assumptions when planning VR's development, expecting to have similar functionality and need to operate within similar limitations as well.

Of course, as I mentioned in a previous Report, I had to adjust my expectations somewhat to the new environment. But even then, there were a lot of CK3-specific things I hadn't experienced. Yet. But having familiarised myself with them more since then, I can say that probably the biggest standout feature that is completely missing from Stellaris is the ability to create custom Game Rules and allow players to configure them before starting a new game.

Likewise, when development started, Veiled Realms, or rather the project that would become it, was still very much meant to be relatively small in scope, a way for me to instead explore complexity within a limited framework. Ultimately, the plan was to release something basic, quick and compact that could be fleshed out and added onto later. But as you know by now, that... humble ambition has since then not only grown, but also come to involve Team Nessassity members and associates other than myself. After a while, Veiled Realms could no longer be considered just an educational pet-project, and ultimately ended up becoming a full-blown Team Nessassity endeavour, drawing upon the disparate talents of our members to accomplish something far greater than I could ever have hoped to do alone!

So what does it have to do with dropping the subtitle? How long am I going to go on talking about everything but that? What are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? Does life have meaning? Does death?

I... don't think I can answer most of those questions, but I can at least tell you this:

Just as my knowledge on CK3 modding and the amount and quality of resources going into it have increased, so could the quaint little Court of Blood no longer encompass everything I realised might be possible in the long term.

Some time ago, I teased the possibility that if Court of Blood worked out, I might consider covering other kinds of supernatural menace - sorcery, spirits, fae; human fears give rise to countless wonderful myths to draw inspiration from!

That is not to say that I suddenly decided to put all of that in Veiled Realms, not at all. In fact, I cannot even promise that I ever will - Veiled Realms, as it is planned to release and for the foreseeable future afterwards, is still all about vampires.

However, what has changed is mostly the way I have come to see potential "franchise" development in CK3 versus Stellaris. In Stellaris, it's not possible to make mods very... modular. What is an isn't included in the content the user experiences is entirely up to us, but we cannot always control what they can access, opt in or out of. In order to give users options regarding particularly divisive features, overriding patches have to be created and maintained; something we try to avoid whenever possible as it adds excess workload and distracts us from the core mods themselves. Likewise, whenever we want to cover different topics within a given "franchise", like MEC for example, we usually dedicate separate mods to each of them, so that players may pick the things they want to engage with and not have to clutter their game with things irrelevant to their chosen theme.

Howeverer, in Crusader Kings 3, many of those issues are greatly diminished by the virtue of moddable Game Rules being available and very easy to work with. I've had some opportunities to experiment with them in the course of working on Basic Nessassities: Happy Heraldry, and I've learned that there is almost nothing that cannot be done with them, as long as the potential options can be presented as a simple multiple choice.

Do you want vampires in your game to carry a telltale pallor or be indistinguishable from regular mortals? Maybe you don't want bloodsucking undead in your game's mythology at all, and only wish to play with, say... pixies or whatever we come up with in the future? Don't want it? Turn it off! Want to change how something works (to a reasonable extent)? We can always add an option to do so without making you install a "no supernatural wanderers patch" or something like that.

That said, just because we can do something doesn't mean it's a good idea to cover every possibility. Despite our desire to make Veiled Realms modular and customisable, we still want to deliver a consistent experience within the core aspects that players do decide to keep enabled. So while there is no harm in giving users control over cosmetics/flavour/auxiliary features/maybe difficulty to a limited extent, we do not want to yield too much control to our players to the point where we can no longer meaningfully challenge or surprise them. Don't worry, we are not making a Sims 4 DLC ^^

Anyways, all of this is nice and exciting, but when do we actually get to play Veiled Realms, Princess? Are you going to keep expanding the scope and reworking the mod for all eternity?

YOU KNOW THAT'S A GOOD QUESTION! One I actually asked myself recently, and I've come to the conclusion that it was about time I reorganised the somewhat chaotic development process into something more trackable and comprehensible, and also made some hard decisions regarding what features to ship in the initial release and which would be better off spending more time in the oven on their own without holding back the rest of the project. While we still do not want to commit to a precise release date (one day I will estimate it right but that day isn't today), I hope that summarising current progress in the form of a checklist might at least give all of us some idea of what's left to do!

• Menace System & API - DONE
• Menace Basic Content - DONE (This includes passive modifiers and their effects on other parts of the mod such as success calculations for interactions, consequences of outcomes, etc.)
• Menace Events - Advanced WIP (Most effects are prepared but placeholder text is still used.)
• Vampire System & API - DONE (Script functions, reusable triggers and effects, dynamic text, etc.)
• Vampire Basic Content - DONE (All user-facing traits and passive gameplay effects like immortality, disease immunity, etc.)
• Vampire Lifestyles & Perks - DONE (Perks, their names, descriptions, lifestyle XP acquisition and ability to acquire new powers and passives from it)
• Vampire Character Interactions - Advanced WIP (This mostly refers to powers, their related scripting, balancing and text. While mostly implemented, much of the text is still missing and I'm not yet happy with balancing - it's still mostly aimed at debugging and isn't suited for immersive gameplay.)
• Vampire Feeding - Advanced WIP (Related to Interactions, feeding is special because it's largely narratively driven. The system is implemented already and a lot of text has been submitted and is pending implementation, I just need to get around to it and debug everything. Easy but time-consuming so I'm leaving this for later.)
• Vampire Mechanics for AI - Early WIP (While most content and scripting accounts for being used by AI characters, I have not enabled AI to use any of it yet or programmed it to use it properly. Roughly related to this, I also still haven't figured out how best to balance the costs, risks and payoffs of turning other characters into vampires. What is most likely to happen is that I will focus on player-facing features for the initial release and limit AI capability to a shippable minimum, to be expanded later.)
• Dhampire Mechanics and Content - Shippable (For now it's just a trait, secret and passive gameplay effects such as disease resistance, slower ageing and resistance to vampire powers, but no interactions with Menace or special narrative content yet. I've decided to leave it as is for now and come back to it post-release. The existence of Dhampires is optional via Game Rules.)
• Game Rules - Early WIP (Some, such as the ability to set how vampirism affects character appearance, are implemented and others are planned but require finalising their related features before rules for them can be added in.)
• Introducing Vampirism via Ruler Designer - DONE (Custom rulers will be able to be vampires or dhampires from the start by simply picking the appropriate traits)
• Introducing Vampirism via Events - Not Started (Immersive ways for characters to encounter vampires and contract vampirism through gameplay, this includes such things as deliberate research or chance encounters via the vanilla wanderer system. Most likely to be implement in a very primitive form at launch and fleshed out later to save time.)
• Integration with the Religious System - DONE (Based on religious family and certain doctrines, existing religions at the start of the game, including modded ones, will start with certain attitudes towards supernatural states such as immortality, vampirism and dhampirism. This somewhat mirrors Criminal/Shunned attitudes towards vanilla doctrines, but in the case of supernatural phenomena, is expressed mostly by how much the superstitious public is willing to believe in them rather than how the religious law regards them)
• Integration with Miscellaneous Vanilla Systems - Early WIP (This encompasses various mechanics such as pregnancy, disease, feasts, hunts and other "human" things that require some accounting for not-quite-human things. While I normally shy away from overriding vanilla scripts as to avoid mod conflicts and future update-related headaches, it is unfortunately unavoidable in some of the less flexibly-scripted aspects of CK3. Wherever possible I do try to implement my changes in indirect and non-invasive ways.)
• Game Concepts - Early WIP (We plan to utilise CK3's robust tooltip system and in-game encyclopaedia to communicate and explain all Veiled Realms features as clearly as possible. Team Nessassity prides itself on always striving to introduce creative new gameplay mechanics, but we do realise that sometimes it can be difficult to explain how everything works in a brief tooltip. So rest assured, we want everyone to be able to pick up and understand our mods as easily and fluidly as any vanilla features! This is mostly just a lot of text that takes a lot of time to write and insert in existing tooltips, so I'm leaving this task for last.)
• Art Assets - DONE (And on that point...)

Thanks to the joint efforts of Nessa and Vale, Veiled Realms will ship with unique graphics and icons for Lifestyles, Alerts, Traits, Doctrines, etc. You may have seen the official Veiled Realms logo already, but there's more where that came from! In addition to new icons, we've also touched up some of the Lifestyle-related assets you may have already seen so let me show you all the things in their (tentatively, possibly pending some minor last-minute adjustments) final form!

All icons denoting Veiled Realms supernatural states and secrets are distinguished by adorable pin- Oh! Actually, it's a completely original brand new colour we have invented specifically for this mod, which we call Menacing Midnight Magenta! Totally nothing at all to do with cute, cuddly and harmless things!

The half-human, half-monster mask motif is prevalent throughout Veiled Realms. It's our representation of the concept of Menace and, fittingly enough, will be prominently displayed alongside your alerts so you can mouse over it to track your level of Menace and its current effects.

We have shown the Lifestyle card before, but it has since undergone a few enhancements. We have made it a little crisper and clearer as well as added a few more... menacing details. The shadowy figure in the background is now also more prominent but without losing any of her mystery and um... shadiness.

The Focus trees themselves look as shiny as ever and by now most of the perks are playable! Except for a couple that are still waiting for localisations and Final Numbers™!

And, of course, it wouldn't be Crusader Kings without someone somewhere objecting to the way you nibble on their spouse-cousin's neck and trying to get you burned at the stake for it. So we also have pretty doctrine icons that tell you exactly why you may have just woken up to the smell of festive BBQ!

And last but not least, my favourite thing ever! Designing this logo was both the most fun and the most suffering we've gone through in the course of VR's development so far but I could not be prouder of the results! <3 Just... please... never bring up feathers within Nessa's earshot again, it's a... sensitive subject now. It was a journey.

And with that, this will be all for this month! As I said earlier, we have not yet committed to a release deadline, but since pretty much all of the system functionality is now in place, I can at least say with some confidence that the remaining couple of milestones will be straightforward. So hopefully it's just a matter of time now.

Basic Nessassities: Happy Heraldry & Subtle Beauty

BUT in the meantime, our two other CK3 projects both received updates recently.

With the bugfixes to random generation of Coats of Arms in patch 1.3, I was finally able to replace the cumbersome and potentially save-bloaty experimental method of dummy CoA generation in Happy Heraldry with a much faster and performance-friendly native effect!
In addition, I extended the mod's manual CoA redesign tool to Primary Title and Dynasty scopes, allowing for an even greater degree of CoA customisation.

And as for Subtle Beauty, it hasn't received any new features, but I am paying close attention to new custom complexions and other beauty features being implemented by other mods, now that Ruler Designer makes it possible to add new options. I am considering reaching out to the authors of some cosmetic mods and seeing if Subtle Beauty's tools can be adapted to become aware of new makeup options.
For now, however, I am still busy with Veiled Realms so that's something I'd like to leave for later.

Oh! And speaking of things happening later, the next Stellaris expansion, Nemesis with the 3.0 "D-" ...3.0 "Richard" update accompanying it is set to come out mid-April, which is around the time I normally (at least barring delays and derps) try to post Monthly Mod Reports. So given the timing and the sudden workload the new expansions will no doubt bring with it, I am going to skip the Monthly Mod Report for April. But I hope the giantonormous updates coming to MEC and EoS will make up for its absence n_~

Until then, thank you forever ever evererverever for continuing to support and put up with us <3 I hope you're having fun playing Paradox games and are ready to have even more of it soon!