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This project is probably going against established RimWorld lore by introducing something that has popped up now and again, yet has never been implemented in this fashion as far as I remember.

Humanoid Alien Races


While working on a Warhammer 40k Mod I ran into difficulties designing a custom Eldar race, since their lifespan is >1000 years, but obviously they came in greyhaired and riddled with disease due to being 10x over the human lifespawn when entering the world.

Trying to circumvent this original problem, I've started to create my own framework for not only implementing the very human-like Eldar, but for creating visuals for entirely new humanoid lifeforms.

Since I've seen people discussing Alien Races around here, I now intend to release my framework to the public so that everybody can create their own Humanoid Aliens.

Want to create a Mass Effect Mod starring Asari? Well, here you go:

(http://i28i.imgup.net/Asarif0d5.png)

Want to go bananas and fend off/play as centaurs? Knock yourself out:

(http://p44i.imgup.net/Centaurs647e.png)

It might also be useful for creating stuff like human mutants if you don't want to break the lore completely, or if you just want to switch out the base human textures.

Features
Note that this framework ist only concerned with graphics.


Custom Skin Colors
Pretty self explanatory. Have fun creating a race of red demons or greenskinned tree-people. So far they are based on a ColorGenerator (like Items). There may be more sophisticated ways, but for my needs this is sufficient.

Custom Hair
Custom colors based on a ColorGenerator. Also let's you decide at which average age your race should get grey hair or define them as hairless.
   
Custom Head & Body Graphics
Can be separately modified, as seen in the screenshots above. Heads are chosen randomly for now, a selection by gender will probably be implemented soon. Bodies are chosen according to BodyType, so Custom Backstories are (among other things) helpful for specifying the exact look of any pawn.

Additional Tweaks
Enables use of PawnKind-based backstory categories. This helps if you want to create a faction with specific pawn appearances based on background (e.g. traders are thin, warriors are all Hulks).

Set Gender distribution. Useful for creating an all male / female race.


How does it work?
I'm detouring the Genspawn.Spawn methods. The base pawn is generated as usual, picked up at the last second before entering the game world and converted into my custom alien pawn class.

Compability
I haven't done enough testing yet. However it should be compatible with all mods as long as they don't detour the same methods.

Release Plans
Right now the Assembly needs some cleanup and I want to create proper documentation for use by modders. Afterwards I will realese both the base DLL for modders that are just interested in the graphical aspect and the Source for people who want to implement additional features for their pawns.


Acknowledgements
Killface (and by proxy joaonunes & Simon; Fluffy): The Injection Method is based on their awesome mods.

Haplo: The basic framework for creating a Subclass of Pawns and updating their graphics is inspired by the AIPawns and Robots from his mod.


Finally, this is what drove me to start this mod in the first place.

(http://z37i.imgup.net/Battle0825.png)

Eldar of Alatoic fighting against a combined Gretchin/Orkboy/Orknob horde.
I'm also looking forward to releasing this Warhammer 40k themed expansion.

Will happily looking at that.

Thx for the (future) sharing

Definitely going to look into this.

As someone who would really benefit from it, I applaud your efforts.

I also gave a hearty chuckle at those centaurs  ;D. They look like alpacas.

Yeah, I hastily put them together in like 5 min just to check if the code works, it's basically just a male body pinned on a deer  ;)

unless my username didn't give it away, I STRONGLY support this :P Adding in an Eldar race and maybe getting some Dark Reapers would be beyond amazing. Loving all the WIP and released race mods so far for this alpha :D