Before I say anything else, please allow me to preface: Given the wall of text that follows, a lot of this will probably sound more daunting than it actually is. Even if you go out of your way to address all of the things I'm about to mention, it'll likely amount to a very small percent of your playthrough at most.
Now... Technically speaking, the dialogue files between the two versions are not 1:1, on account of the
Bathhouse signage/related dialogue
Valentine's Day event (this works very differently in the Hex Edit than it does in Gender Swap)
so you'll want to pick one at a time to use. What you can do, however, is have two separate client instances, one with each structure, and bounce between them by using 0x8f00ff's Python script to change your character's "gender" in the save file itself. I did this a number of times during this mod's development and can confirm that it is functional.
Assuming you would prefer to stick to Hex Edit as much as possible, the only things of note that will come up are:
Starting the game with Hex Edit will result in Vishnal waking you up each morning. If this is a problem, workarounds for this are a.) use the Order Symbol to either tell him to stop or have Clorica do it instead, or b.) start your game in Gender Swap and then use the aforementioned script to switch to Hex Edit after you start. (Or marry someone, or issue an order to have another villager (e.g. Pico) do it. But these options take a bit more time to get to.)
Hex Edit won't get Love Events with most of the bachelorettes, but you can still get all of the other Town Events. Once you've exhausted all of these other events, switching to Gender Swap temporarily at this point basically guarantees that you'll get said Love Events almost immediately, after which you can switch back. There's no real risk to your save in doing this, since technically speaking the game's gender checks are strictly for triggers and not concurrencies (e.g. the sign outside of the flower shop that gets a slight modification during Amber's Love Event will retain its change after reverting to Hex Edit).
Hex Edit cannot trigger the White Day event. You can switch to Gender Swap to achieve this if you want, but if you do, please make sure you complete the event before switching back. Triggering the White Day event with Gender Swap and then attempting to complete it with Hex Edit fails completely because there is another gender check that occurs when Frey gives her partner a gift. If you are not using Gender Swap when you do this, the event dialogue will not trigger and thus the event becomes impossible to complete.
If it's any consolation, I did the vast majority of my personal playthroughs in Hex Edit as well. There are minor differences in day-to-day dialogue between the two, but I personally wouldn't worry that you're missing much by preferring one over the other.
you love to see it!! when I was doing the rewrites for LPR it did cross my mind that a lot of scenes might benefit from deeper reworking than my purist approach, but it mostly started as a personal project to fix explicit misgendering so that i could get back to playing the game without having it annoy me. my biggest hang-up was just that (personally at least) it's harder to appreciate your own writing compared to enjoying someone else's, so this is actually kind of a dream mod for me...
from what I've read you do a really great job capturing the game's tone and each character's voice, excited to give it a try next time i play ✨
I appreciate the kind words. I can only hope it meets your expectations! And, as you've already encountered, it is indeed far from perfect. If you catch stuff that needs reworking, please don't hesitate to point it out.
Digressing, I think I technically started the same way you did; that is, I was originally just fixing obvious mechanical problems so that I could just play the game. But... the game was definitely showing its age, both in its rhetoric and the stereotypes it portrayed. This mod is largely an attempt at modernizing that, mostly out of personal frustration. I just hope it's not too drastic of a change.
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It's a bit of a headache trying to figure out what I'm willing to put up with and what I'm not.
I'm leaning towards the hex edit for more gender consistency, but if there's a way to have both, I'd like to.
Now... Technically speaking, the dialogue files between the two versions are not 1:1, on account of the
so you'll want to pick one at a time to use. What you can do, however, is have two separate client instances, one with each structure, and bounce between them by using 0x8f00ff's Python script to change your character's "gender" in the save file itself. I did this a number of times during this mod's development and can confirm that it is functional.
Assuming you would prefer to stick to Hex Edit as much as possible, the only things of note that will come up are:
If it's any consolation, I did the vast majority of my personal playthroughs in Hex Edit as well. There are minor differences in day-to-day dialogue between the two, but I personally wouldn't worry that you're missing much by preferring one over the other.
from what I've read you do a really great job capturing the game's tone and each character's voice, excited to give it a try next time i play ✨
Digressing, I think I technically started the same way you did; that is, I was originally just fixing obvious mechanical problems so that I could just play the game. But... the game was definitely showing its age, both in its rhetoric and the stereotypes it portrayed. This mod is largely an attempt at modernizing that, mostly out of personal frustration. I just hope it's not too drastic of a change.