Just finished a campaign with about 685 mods, this one included, and had no major issues! Thanks for putting this up.

Cool, thanks for the info!

I believe Dragon is correct. 'WC_PhotoReBooth' - it breaks quite of lot of inter-mod functionality.

@Splinter
IIRC that's one of Zyspisilon's (sp.?) mods. The one that gives you posters telling you how many supplies you got and the like. They changed the date format but didn't bother to mention it.

I can't tell if it's this or 'WOTC Even More Backstories' but it seems to be both? The date of births are only showing up as JAN-01, no year listed.

ok, just tested it in the actual game and it works. in the character pool, it does not

this mod just doesn't appear to work. No one I've created in character pool has a backstory outside of 25-35, even when specified in the configs to be outside that range

Thanks :)

This mod is an optional (yet recommended) item for EMB. It is not a dependency.

If installed EMB will use this mod to set custom date ranges for certain stories.

EMB will also patch this mod to recognise 'Non-Skirmisher Hybrid' class types.

Hey Cato, you've said the patch is included in even more backstories, but AML has this mod listed as a dependancy. Is this needed, or is it included into backstories?

@Cato
No idea why, but I still have the incorrect Hybrid birth dates even though 'Even More Backstories' is installed.

The patch is included within Even More Backstories mod.

@Cato do we specifically install that Birthdates patch? or is it already in your mod?

This is due to Hybrids using custom class array [RM_Hybridsoldier].

Birthdates does not identify them as Skirmishers, thus defaulting them to regular age rules.

This mod will require an update to add compatibility. Alternatively, users of my backstory mod can use my Birthdates patch to correct this.

Hey, so, i'm using this with the Non-Skirmisher Hybrids mod, and the Hybrids can have a birthdate before 2015. Since ADVENT came into power in 2015, and both Hybrids and Skirmishers are made by ADVENT as clones, they shouldn't be able to be that old. Can i fix this myself?

I know it's a stretch but does anyone know how about going in and adding the age in parenthesis after the birthdate? Like January 1, 20XX (20)? Even if it was stagnant and didn't change with the campaign. I'm lazy and don't wanna do math and I keep forgetting when the game takes place. lol

I can't wrap my head around what I need to actually edit anything outside of .ini's. The SDK confuses the hell out of me.

Nice.

Awesome :-D

Thanks for adding that, thegrimsqueaker72

Updated to fix SPARKs to use their recruitment/creation date.

I have just the one piece of constructive criticism as well - about SPARKs and Skirmishers. SPARKs XCOM build only come online in 2035 and later (in fact XCOM is present for every born SPARK I guess?), and Skirmishers were born at the very least starting only 2015 with "unification". I dunno if there's any way to disable birthdays for them. Otherwise, great job, and I LOVE the backstories mod! It adds SO much atmosphere.

The mod never handled SPARKs and the game assigns them birthdays the same as human soldiers. I'll look into a way to change it to the creation date.

Hey, thegrimsqueaker72

I built a SPARK and it's got a birthdate in 2004...

I'm not sure if in vanilla WoTC SPARKs are assigned birthdays and/or if this mod is assigning them one as a random soldier.

I'm just wondering if it would be possible to either exclude SPARKs from getting a birthdate, or (IMO, better) assigning them their creation date (or incept date as Roy Batty would say)?

If that'd cause problems for users of this mod without Shen's Last Gift (as the SPARK class isn't defined for them) then please ignore.

Love this mod, together with Even More Backstories it's aces.

It's not really possible to hook into backstory/character generation without overrides, so I ended up using a lot of hooks, mostly UI listeners, to edit characters after they're added to the game but before you ever see the backstories

The complete list is:
X2DownloadableContentInfo.InstallNewCampaign for the barracks and initial recruits pool
UIAlert for units awarded from scanning sites and when you unlock the black market
UIResistanceReport for units added to the black market and recruit pool on supply drops
UIMissionSummary for units awarded from completing missions
strategy event listener for NewCrewNotification that only acts if the new unit is a faction soldier


As the description notes, it's also possible that a mod will add units to the game that don't go through any of these paths, in which case it won't catch them unless you also explicitly account for however the mod does it. It's up to you and what you're trying to do how much of a problem that might be. Good luck.

Hey Grim!

I'm working on a background mod (not planning on conflicting with yours -- no desire to change birthdays) and I've hit a snag that Character Pool characters appear to load their bio's *after* mine has a chance to run.

How did you avoid this? Eg, where to you hook into the game to do your stuff? Some folks have suggested I use Highlander, but I don't want to create a dependancy, and it seemed like you might have worked this problem out already.

Thanks both for your mods and your time!

Chris Woods

Yes

Do the skirmishers get a custom age range like 5-20 years old, because canon reasons?

Seems to be working fine for me, nothing broken yet. Great job!

Fantastic, thanks thegrimsqueaker72.

Updated to let the black market show scientist/engineer backstories.

After one huge session, my mod now supports and indeed recommends installing along with yours. Thanks for the port!

Great, thank you!

Now that I've checked it over more thoroughly, I see that your ini just supports vanilla bio's which is perfect.

@Cato

It doesn't reset the backgrounds, so they're compatible.

The easiest way to make our mods work together is probably to do what More Random Backstories did, which is to add another version of XComBirthdays.ini to your own mod's config folder for those backstories, as described here: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/650277509/364039531220315576/

Hello Grim. I would like to make my mod, WOTC Even More Backstories, compatible with yours if possible. https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1135224960

Main thought: Can both of our mods co-exist? My concern is your mod 'resets' the backgrounds right?

If they can co-exist, then I understand you have a config file, 'XcomBirthdays' in your mod which handles age assignment to custom bios, and this how the two mods would work together. Which leads to two options:

1) I provide you with the background index strings of my mod - I would need to DM you every time I update my mod with more bios (it's an ongoing work).

OR

2) I bundle my own version of XcomBirthdays in my mod. - However I admit I do not fully understand if this would work correctly because then your mod would have duplicate files to load.

What I want to completely avoid is requiring users to do any ini editing themselves.

And thanks for updating this one for WoTC too.