Alternative to Character Editor/Prepare Carefully Mods?

[Crimson]

Is there any alternative to Character Editor? I find it's way too cheaty or easy to cheat. Even disabling those features in settings is too easy to revert.

I honestly preferred PC but it hasn't been updated in forever. I just want a basic character editor for the start of a play through and nothing that allows me to cheat.

[Astasia]

The only elements of a character you can change that might not be considered "cheating" would be cosmetic. The Ideology styling bench allows you to change hair color and style, Biotech genes allow you to change body/head shape, skin color and hair color. There are Biotech mods that add genes which swap gender as well if you want to take it a step further.

There used to be simple mods for cosmetic character changes like the "Change Mirror" mod, but those have been abandoned over time as DLC features made them obsolete. I don't know if there are many that still work in 1.4/5. Vanilla Hair Expanded still has a barber table for hair changes though if you don't have Ideology. I don't know of anything for cosmetic body/face changes.

[Mokona]

Randomize button, its automatically installed

[Crimson]

Originally posted by Astasia:

The only elements of a character you can change that might not be considered "cheating" would be cosmetic. The Ideology styling bench allows you to change hair color and style, Biotech genes allow you to change body/head shape, skin color and hair color. There are Biotech mods that add genes which swap gender as well if you want to take it a step further.

Sort of but I want a character from the drop pod that has the traits and appearance I want.

There used to be simple mods for cosmetic character changes like the "Change Mirror" mod, but those have been abandoned over time as DLC features made them obsolete. I don't know if there are many that still work in 1.4/5. Vanilla Hair Expanded still has a barber table for hair changes though if you don't have Ideology. I don't know of anything for cosmetic body/face changes.

Originally posted by Mokona:

Randomize button, its automatically installed

This is not great because it could take forever to get a character that looks like me or allows me to add traits.

[Steelfleece]

As far as I know, deactivating Character Editor from your mod list after starting a save is safe. At least, relative to deactivating Prepare Carefully after doing the same.

[Majorita]

Prepare Carefully is a bomb of a mod. DO NOT use it. Character Editor is like, as good as it gets, sorry.

Somehow no one has made anything more stable or safer than Character Editor (to my knowledge) and it is not all that great anyway and the way it randomizes stats, is, ABSOLUTELY AWFUL. Because it clearly does NOT work like the base game and can give you some pretty crazy powerful or crazy pathetic characters with little in-between.

Originally posted by Fluff:

This is not great because it could take forever to get a character that looks like me or allows me to add traits.

Eh? You want it to look like you...? I mean, good luck I guess, but the characters in Rimworld are, uh...

Originally posted by Mokona:

Randomize button, its automatically installed

Underrated comment.

This person gave you the answer.

I have no idea what you are TRYING to do you've just told us what you don't want. But anyway, whatever your goal is, remember you can also change some things in New Colony > Scenario Editor > Edit Mode to customize the way your game starts. This might be helpful if you want custom amounts of characters, items etc. to start with. Be sure you DO NOT alter the 'Player faction' as it should read New Arrivals - this is important for compatibility with DLC.

But anyway once you have that set up, you said you don't want to cheat, so it's best you use the VANILLA UI's 'Randomize' button as suggested by the above person. Hammer randomize until you get the stats you want, and given this is the Vanilla UI, it doesn't count as cheating no matter what you get. Vanilla can give you a pretty wide variety of skills and somewhat annoyingly it also tries to balance it against age & injuries from my experience.

If the game doesn't give you 'exactly' what you want, well... that's what Vanilla is all about, isn't it?

Once you're satisfied with the stats (age, traits, skills whatever) then you can open up Character Editor and customize the appearance until you are satisfied. You can change traits there too, I mean I think that's fair to do if you're trying to model a character on a specific person, mostly traits are just 'quirks' that have pros and cons anyway, so may as well get it right instead of settling for whatever the game gives you.

CE also lets you save presets, which you can then use later, which might be useful if you want to then go back and tweak the scenario.

Then you have totally legit Vanilla skills which aren't cheating in any way, and your customized appearance...

That would be my suggestion.

Alternatively, get over the whole cheating thing, Rimworld is a crazy rude game and if you are trying to do a playthrough with a selection of omnipresent characters, you'll find it constantly tries to kill off your colonists, it will always try to KILL at least one of your colonists, or capture them, and get them off the board, it WANTS to keep your colonist numbers low so it can give you new, terrible, awful colonists to take care of.

So a little bit of 'cheating' here and there to give yourself best odds of survival is completely fair in my book.

Unless you really really want to play the way the game 'intends' you to play, almost constantly swapping in new colonists and having old ones be captured or killed constantly and annoyingly.

[VitaKaninen]

If you read the comments under Character Editor there is talk of another project, but I don't know if it is currently being worked on, or if it is abandoned.

C3PO (Custom Character Creator - Preparation Overhaul) or Pawn Editor

[Vermillion Cardinal]

Might be harsh, but you have the option not to utilize the cheaty aspects of the mod, unless a lack of willpower is the real issue. In that case it's unfair to blame the mod; it only "cheats" as much as you abuse its features.

[UltimateTobi]

"I just want a basic character editor for the start of a play through and nothing that allows me to cheat."

That may sound harsh, but: you may want to learn and train some self-restraint. Believe me, I suffer from that as well and it's a constant improvement of oneself.

[The Blind One]

I use random plus;

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1434137894&searchtext=random+plus

It allows you to set certain requirements for your pawn. It technically isn't a cheat, it just keeps rerolling until you get what you wanted. So you could be rolling 1000 times before your ideal pawn shows up and that wouldn't be cheating technically. This little mod just makes sure you never need to roll for the other 999 results before you get to your pawn

To make it more fair you can set a max roll for attempts. So if you want something 'too specific' the mod will tell you it was not possible to roll that pawn because it literally couldn't roll it in the number of attempts set.

[The Yeen Queen]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

I use random plus;

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1434137894&searchtext=random+plus

It allows you to set certain requirements for your pawn. It technically isn't a cheat, it just keeps rerolling until you get what you wanted. So you could be rolling 1000 times before your ideal pawn shows up and that wouldn't be cheating technically. This little mod just makes sure you never need to roll for the other 999 results before you get to your pawn :lunar2019crylaughingpig:

To make it more fair you can set a max roll for attempts. So if you want something 'too specific' the mod will tell you it was not possible to roll that pawn because it literally couldn't roll it in the number of attempts set.

I mean, that kinda is cheating as it's automating and drastically reducing the time needed. BUT, I don't think whether it's cheating or not really matters. You play however is fun for you, it has no effect on anyone else's gameplay and isn't a competition, so it doesn't really matter if you play strict vanilla by the book or load down with "cheat" mods and dev mode commands.

[VitaKaninen]

There is no such thing as cheating in a single player game with unlimited modding, and no leaderboard. Play how you like.

Or are you looking down on every player who uses the save and reload feature?

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Night Foxx (She/her):

I mean, that kinda is cheating as it's automating and drastically reducing the time needed. BUT, I don't think whether it's cheating or not really matters. You play however is fun for you, it has no effect on anyone else's gameplay and isn't a competition, so it doesn't really matter if you play strict vanilla by the book or load down with "cheat" mods and dev mode commands.

I mean it's really not cheating. Yes it is automating something but automation by itself isn't necessarily cheating. Nobody is going to say that the factory is cheating because it has a machine doing the monotonous work for you. Well except the ludites perhaps.

Originally posted by VitaKaninen:

There is no such thing as cheating in a single player game with unlimited modding, and no leaderboard. Play how you like.

Or are you looking down on every player who uses the save and reload feature?

There definitely is cheating even in single player games. Some single player games literally give you access to 'cheats' in order to make the game easier for you. You cannot argue those aren't cheats. The devs even call them cheats.

That said, nobody except yourself is hurt when you cheat in single player.

The reason you get hurt when you cheat is because it trivializes the gameplay and eventually makes it boring. There's no point in any game if you can simply cheat yourself to victory. It destroys the essence of the game.

[VitaKaninen]

I think we must be defining cheating differently from each other, then.

Tynan decided how he wanted to make the game, and if anyone wants to alter that experience with a mod, then they are cheating? Because they want to play differently?

Wall lights has been the most popular mod for years now, and it has some benefits such as making rooms appear larger thus giving a mood boost by not taking up room space. They also do not slow movement when a pawn needs to walk through them or cause the game to slow down with more pathing calculations.

Has everyone been cheating all these years when they use wall lights? In the next patch, is everyone suddenly NOT a cheater simply because Tynan decided to add wall lights to the base game?

Does Tynan get to decide what constitutes cheating when he decides what to put in the base game?

What about the Biotech DLC? Are you less of a cheater if you don't use that DLC? Choosing your own genes seems a lot like using character editor to me. Just add a monetary and time cost if you like. It is already there with the Zombrella building.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by VitaKaninen:

I think we must be defining cheating differently from each other, then.

What would you call a code you enter into the game console that gives you infinite gold in a single player game other than a cheat? What if the game literally has a 'cheats' options menu that can be toggled? You refuse to call those cheats because it's a single player game?

Like I'm curious right now ... what do you call those other than cheats?

I understand your perspective and I agree that you should play as you should in single player with or without cheats. For multiplayer it matters significantly more because someone elses cheating can influence your experience of a fair game. However in both cases, cheats are objectively cheats.

I think we are possibly confusing two types of cheats here.

A cheat (noun) and too cheat (verb).

[Mokona]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Originally posted by VitaKaninen:

I think we must be defining cheating differently from each other, then.

Like I'm curious right now ... what do you call those other than cheats?

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