BattleTech

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Yabo

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YaboKBDJ

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About this mod

Anime-style portraits generated by NovelAI. Replaces most pilots and NPCs. 2 new company icons included.

Requirements
Permissions and credits
This is a purely cosmetic mod; no changes have been made to the gameplay.


Animechwarrior for MechWarrior 5 here


Requirements:

ModTek
-Hard requirement. This mod is built and tested on ModTek 3.1.11, but any up-to-date version should work. 

Commander Portrait Loader
-Soft requirement but highly recommended. Without CPL, your player character, generic pilots (non ronin/backer) and the big four* (Behemoth, Dekker, Glitch, Medusa) will still use vanilla portraits. If you’re fine with that, you can safely discard the CommanderPortraitLoader folder within the main file.
*Career mode won’t have this problem with those four, only campaign mode does.




Compatibility with major modpacks:
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By default, Animechwarrior will load after the core module for these modpacks:
XAI BattleTech 3025 (XAI)
BattleTech Extended 3025-3061 (BT_Extended)
Battletech Revised (BTR-Core)
BattleTech 3025 Hyades Rim (Hyades Rim)
Battletech Advanced 3062 (BT Advanced Core)
RogueTech (RogueTech Core)

However, I cannot guarantee that it works (well) with BTA and RT* since I never tested them, nor do I have any idea on how either of these mods works.
*Ravenlash made a guide on how to make Animechwarrior work with RT in a pinned post
, along with other helpful resources.

This mod should functionally play nice with Hyades Rim, but there is no specific support at this moment, meaning that any new portraits/illustrations in that mod will stay as is.

BEX, BTR and XAI are confirmed to be compatible. I have tested it on XAI 2.16 with a full campaign walkthrough and a few flashpoints covering all DLCs; it’s also briefly tested on BEX and BTR.




Description:

Portraits for vanilla game pilots* and NPCs**, along with a few illustrations***, are replaced with anime style artworks. I generated all the artworks with NovelAI, handpicked them for the most aesthetically pleasing and consistent feel I managed to get.

*Excluding those wearing neurohelmets: 13 generic mechwarriors, 6 generic great house mechwarriors and the Bounty Hunter. They do not appear as hireable pilots and I think they blend in pretty well with the rest of the world turning anime.
**The Argo crew (Darius, Farah, Sumire, Yang) have less aggressive redesigns to fit better with the 3d models you’ll be seeing a lot. Two major characters from Arano Restoration, on the other hand, look pretty different from their vanilla counterparts despite having 3d models hanging around during the campaign.
***38 in total, mostly event illustrations that involves people.


On generic pilots:

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The generic pilots (non ronin/backer) will only use the 33 portraits with helmets (whose file names start with amwbt_generic), and not the gender specific ones. 

I wasn’t able to assign gender to PortraitPreset files, and every generic pilot will use custom portraits from the same pool, regardless of their gender. My workaround is to have the pool consist of only gender ambiguous portraits. You are expected to utilize Battletech Save Editor to choose specific portraits for your pilots; please refer to this article.

Ronins and Kickstarter backers do not have such problems, although you can also change their portraits to you liking following the same guide.




Files explained:


There are 3 folders in the main download, Animechwarrior - HBS Battletech Edition.zip. Drag and drop them to BATTLETECH\Mods, leave out the ones you don’t need/want.

-Animechwarrior_AnimePortraitsNovelAI
Core module. Note that without CPL and the below module, hireable generic pilots won’t have their portraits replaced.

-CommanderPortraitLoader
Requires Commander Portrait Loader. On top of making the above feature work, this will also provide new CPL portraits for you to use.

-MissionControl
Requires Mission Control. This will directly overwrite portrait files in the MissionControl folder. Before you do that, make sure there is a backup of BATTLETECH\Mods\MissionControl\sprites\Portraits; you can simply keep the MissionControl download file as a backup.



Installing/Uninstalling:


It is perfectly safe to add or remove this mod at any point of your playthrough.

However, if you have customized a pilot in any way (even if you made no edit to said pilot’s appearance) before installing Animechwarrior, they will always retain their old portraits. You’ll need to use a save editor to change their portraits manually; more in this article.

To uninstall:
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-Core module: delete BATTLETECH\Mods\Animechwarrior_AnimePortraitsNovelAI

-CPL module: navigate to BATTLETECH\Mods\CommanderPortraitLoader\Portraits and delete every file starting with “amwbt” (99 in total) along with guiTxrPort_Behemoth_holder_utr.png, guiTxrPort_Dekker_holder_utr.png, guiTxrPort_Glitch_holder_utr.png, guiTxrPort_Medusa_holder_utr.png.

-MissionControl module: delete everything in BATTLETECH\Mods\MissionControl\sprites\Portraits, then drag and drop your backup files. 




Additional notes:

-I did not consult any Kickstarter backers before generating the portraits for their characters in the game. If you’re a KSbacker and have any issues/suggestions on how your character is/should have been portrayed in this mod, please do get in touch with me (preferably using Nexus’s messenger system) and I’ll see what I can do.

-This mod is not lore friendly. I never managed to get an actual Battetech aesthetic from AI generated art, so we’re stuck with all sorts of wacky pilot suits, exoskeletons, RGB gamer headsets and whatnots. Characters don’t have any emblems or insignias indicating their specific factions/organizations. Officers’ uniforms have, at best, somewhat lore friendly colour patterns. Some characters barely have any resemblance of their vanilla counterparts.

-I find the art style consistency to be at an acceptable level, but your mileage may vary. Certainly nowhere close to what you would expect from handcrafted artworks under professional direction; this is from a weeb messing around with a trendy AI toy on the lowest subscription tier.

-Only 2D portraits are replaced. 3D models are not affected.

-I peek into other mods to learn how to make certain things happen; for this mod, XAI and The Big Deal Add-On might have been the biggest contributors so here’s a shoutout.