[BUG] Historical Characters - Candidate Art Sets Not Working

Benjin

Hi there, I was just messing around with the "historical_characters" db table and wanted to give the characters who do not have unique art sets new ones to better distinguish them (e.g. Key "105" - "Marcus Licinius Crassus", gaul_rome ("Rome", Caesar in Gaul campaign) has a generic appearance. I wanted to try and give him the art_set "Lepidus_EE" as a test). But, for some reason, I noticed that their newly designated art sets would not spawn with them. Instead, they are always given a generic general appearance.

So, being curious, I tested this without any mods whatsoever on the other campaigns looking for vanilla spawnable candidate historical characters and the same thing happened for all of them. For example, I waited hundreds of turns as Rome in the Grand Campaign to get to the spawning window for "Gaius Julius Caesar" in the candidates tab, and when he finally did spawn he was not using the "Caesar_General" art set that was designated to him.

I know this probably cannot be fixed for the coming patch on the 9th due to time constraints and this report is rather short notice, but perhaps this could be fixed in a potential update afterwards? Because of this bug, I'm not surprised that people don't notice historical characters pop up in their games - the ones who are supposed to receive unique appearances (e.g. Hannibal Barca, Scipio Africanus, Julius Caesar) are not spawning correctly through the recruitable candidates tab.

Whiskeyjack_5691#3558

Noticed that myself too, during my Carthage campaign. Hannibal Barca showed up as a generic general, and I actually thought it must be a different Hannibal.

MarcusIuniusBrutus

I think you must adjust a table, that special characters like lepidus can be used in all campaigns. But im not sure...

Campaign_characters_art_table perhaps?

Benjin

MarcusIuniusBrutus said:

I think you must adjust a table, that special characters like lepidus can be used in all campaigns. But im not sure...

Campaign_characters_art_table perhaps?

Only if you want to add a new character, but I wasn't trying to put the actual character "Lepidus" into Caesar in Gaul, I was just assigning his art_set_id, "Lepidus_EE", to a historical character named "Marcus Licinius Crassus" whose spawning_window_start is at the very beginning of the campaign so is quick to test.

In the "historical_characters" table, after entering an art_set_id from the "campaign_character_arts_tables" to the column "art_set" in a row for a single historical character, the spawned historical character should simply use that designated appearance ingame no matter which campaign it was intended for. It only seems to work if a character is spawned through a payload, like Marcus Antonius after researching the "Adopt Marc Antony" tech (e.g. if you replace the "Mark_Antony_EE" art_set_id for the "gaul_rome" version of Marcus Antonius with any other, it will work and he looks like whatever art_set_id you've assigned to him).

MarcusIuniusBrutus

Example:

general Boduognatus_General False True gaul_only


Art Set "Boduognatus" is only for Gaul, perhaps you must change that to all campaigns, if you want to use this art set in other campaigns?

general Lepidus_EE False True main_emperor

If you want to use him in CiG, the art set must include CiG in my opinion.

Benjin

MarcusIuniusBrutus said:

Example:

general Boduognatus_General False True gaul_only


Art Set "Boduognatus" is only for Gaul, perhaps you must change that to all campaigns, if you want to use this art set in other campaigns?

general Lepidus_EE False True main_emperor

If you want to use him in CiG, the art set must include CiG in my opinion.

In three years of modding I've never seen such a table before, and I don't think one exists (if it does exist, let me know which one it is). Except for a historical character trying to spawn in the candidate window, I've never had an issue assigning whatever art_set_id I want to any faction or campaign before (e.g. I can assign Zenobia's art_set to Octavian's if I wanted to). To test out your theory, I just tried to give the Caesar in Gaul historical character "Marcus Licinius Crassus" an art_set that only belongs in Caesar in Gaul (Boduognatus_General), and he still got a generic Roman general art set after spawning in the recruitable candidates tab.

So, I still definitely think that there is an issue with the historical_character's not spawning their assigned art_sets in the recruitable candidates tab (it works for payloads though). Like I said before, it even happens for the vanilla historical characters - such as "Gaius Julius Caesar" and, like Whiskeyjack_5691 mentioned, with "Hannibal Barca" as well - with mods turned off, and CA intended for them to get those unique appearances judging by the contents of that table. Whatever the reason, something's not right here.

MarcusIuniusBrutus

As i´m modding since 2015 and have made several faction unit mods with new generals for some factions, i know you must make an entry in the campaign_character_art_sets_table, as without it won´t appear in the campaign.

I usually make an entry in the "faction" row and Boudicca, which appears in campaign definitely, has an entry there.

caesar_gen and lepidus_ee have no one there, that could be the problem.

Benjin

MarcusIuniusBrutus said:

As i´m modding since 2015 and have made several faction unit mods with new generals for some factions, i know you must make an entry in the campaign_character_art_sets_table, as without it won´t appear in the campaign.

I usually make an entry in the "faction" row and Boudicca, which appears in campaign definitely, has an entry there.

caesar_gen and lepidus_ee have no one there, that could be the problem.

Ah, that's the table you meant. Unfortunately no, that's still not the problem for the issue I'm addressing for multiple reasons:

• The historical_characters' "art_set" column is the thing that's supposed to exactly define what appearance the spawned historical character gets, so it should overrule the "campaign_character_art_sets_tables" - which it actually does but only when a historical character is received via a payload (e.g. through an event, political incident etc). So, in some capacity it does work, but not through the candidate tab which is the issue I'm reporting - it's supposed to work for the candidate's tab and it's not working at the moment.
  
• There are entries for "Caesar_General" and "Lepidus_EE" in the "campaign_character_art_sets_tables". Granted, "Lepidus_EE" falls under the group "main_emperor" (Imperator Augustus), but "Caesar_General" also falls under the group "main_emp_gaul", which includes Caesar in Gaul. I didn't just test the historical_character table's art_set column with "Lepidus_EE" by the way, I also tested it with "Caesar_General" and "Mark_Antony_EE" - both of who fall under the Caesar in Gaul group and both of who did not display for any of the Caesar in Gaul spawnable historical characters in the candidate tab I assigned them to while testing.
  
• In vanilla, none of the historical characters - even with their assigned art_sets being a part of the campaign group that they're playing in - still only receive generic appearances specific to their culture or faction when spawning in the candidates tab.
  

I presume you only need to use the "campaign_character_art_sets_tables" if you're making a startpos with historical characters on them or if you want them to show for a faction's generic general appearance line-up, but not for spawnable characters. You haven't said how your Boudicca "appeared", by the way. Was she a part of an event? A starting position? I doubt she spawned in the candidates window unless you just made her appearance a part of the generic line of that faction's appearances which spawn for any character.

Anyway, just to fully confirm that that's not the issue and eliminate it as a possibility, I did what you've suggested - I added "Lepidus_EE" to the "gaul_only" group, and also added it to the "gaul_rome" faction table. I have also given the spawnable historical character in Caesar in Gaul the "Lepidus_EE" art_set. He still does not appear with the "Lepidus_EE" art_set once spawned into the candidates tab. I also tried with the "is_custom" box ticked, still it didn't work as displayed in this image on the top left.

MarcusIuniusBrutus

She spawns via historic character table...

https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/8534yy/boudica_added_with_desert_kingdom_patch/

Benjin

MarcusIuniusBrutus said:

She spawns via historic character table...

https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/8534yy/boudica_added_with_desert_kingdom_patch/

No, she doesn't! In the "historical_characters" table, her "spawning_window_start" and "spawning_window_end" entries are both set to "1", meaning she can't directly spawn through that table as a recruitable candidate. She actually spawns via an event that triggers a "SPAWN_AGENT" payload for the "main_emperor" and "main_rome" campaigns (check the "cdir_events_incident_payloads" table for "female_leader_boudica_rom" and "_emp" entries - that is how she spawns). Like I have said many times already, the "SPAWN_AGENT" payload actually spawns with the correct art set for a historical character, and since Boudica spawns through a payload, her correct appearance - "FemGen_Boudica" - shows, so that part is definitely working. I am not saying that that doesn't work here, so bringing up Boudica's spawn via payload showing her correct appearance is completely irrelevant here.

However, if she were to spawn as a potential recruitable candidate using the "spawning_window_start" and "spawning_window_end" with entries say "400" - "450" respectfully, I guarantee you that she would not spawn with her "FemGen_Boudica" art set because the feature is not working correctly. That is the issue I am trying to communicate here. Since most historical characters are supposed to spawn that way, it's a visual bug that needs fixing.

MarcusIuniusBrutus

I have made a history chara mod preancestral, which i deleted completely with the Beta unfortunately.

Spawndate 481 is 272 BC, 681 would be 72 BC.

I have added entries in the historic character table and then in export_historic_characters.lua.

It worked fine with normal general art sets.

So somewhere is a entry for lepidus_ee and others missing.

When you hover over "art set id" in historical_character_table in assembly kit, you can read:

"depends on campaign_character_art_sets.art_sets_id

looks up values from campaign_character_art_sets.art_sets_id"

antioxos_iii

The issue still exists. Noticed that it doesn't work even for spawned characters. I've made a mod with historical generals, created art_set_ids, assigned them to the generals in the historical_characters_tables. The characters are spawned with correct names and traits but still with generic appearance... It's very annoying, it means so many hours of work for nothing...