Rogue Tattoo [Devlog #1]

Rogue Tattoo will support the following vanilla Baldur’s Gate 3 races:

• Dwarf

• Drow

• Elf

• Gnome

• Half-Elf

• Halfling

• Half-Orc

• Human

• Tiefling

I made a brand-new mod for vanilla races to showcase a future feature coming to pretty much most of the races in Fantastical Multiverse, so long as they have humanoid skin and not scales. Sorry, Dragonborn, Kobold, and Locathah players! I’ve been excited to share this discovery for the past month. I just didn’t want to discuss it until I was certain it could be delivered, and it was possible. At first, I was only 25% certain this would even work. If it wasn’t for the feedback asking to remove the tattoos from Shadar-kai, I likely would have overlooked this feature as originally this was just going to be a way to disable and enable the tattoo on the body.  In addition, this method is completely script-free, I'll be able to release Rogue Tattoo on Mod.io with PC, Console & Mac players.

You won’t need this mod if you’re only using Fantastical Multiverse races because Fantastical Multiverse has this feature built in. This just covers the vanilla species. Unless you plan to use a vanilla race.

Character Creation Icons: STATUS

https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/3474/images/72/72-1741162076-1607379433.png

I’m aware that body tattoos don’t have icons. It’s just the default question marks. This will likely remain this way forever. Unlike Horns, Heads, Tails, Beards & Hairs, there isn’t a way to add CC options for makeup and face tattoos, which is where the body tattoos are hosted. This is because of the way the UI handles both. The icons are being referenced in a character creation ATLAS and can be only referenced in this Atlas, as far as I can tell. From what I gathered, I can edit this, but it would overwrite any other mod that edits the same thin,g which a lot of makeup & face tattoo replacers also edit. This means I’m either overwriting their edits, or they’re going to overwrite my edits. This has resulted in me deciding not to even bother making an edit to this DDS file.

I thought about it and was looking around before I settled for no Icons. I don’t believe we’re ever going to get support for this sadly, but they’re numbered in the text for each body tattoo, so you can at least tell which one you’ve selected based on that.

The Prime Body options are tattoos that overall appear perfectly on each body and are darker, so they look like a new tattoo or recently added body paint.

Different Tattoos for Each Race?

https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/3474/images/72/72-1741162076-1204853969.png

Not currently. For me to be able to release this sooner than later, I am just releasing the foundation. It’s possible to make each race have unique tattoos for only their species by assigning the body with a new Atlas.

You could technically even go further with this method and make each subrace have unique tattoos as well.

What is a Tattoo Atlas?

https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/3474/images/72/72-1741162924-1086715177.png

In simple terms, it is a collection of pictures converted into a single DDS file. In this case, they hold all of the tattoo designs that are designed to be compatible with the body they are assigned to. They’re used so that the player can switch between them or a developer can switch between them to set them to the character preset.  This is how Larian allows the NPC to have tattoos or body markings (that aren't scars). The Gith have it enabled, which is how they have the spots on their body. Their face doesn't do this, so that's why you can use face tattoos with the Gith, but the body tattoo version overwrites their spots, sadly.

Known Issues

I spent a good bit of time during February trying to find solutions for several problems I felt I might encounter with the Fantastical Multiverse update. Here are some of the tedious known issues I’ve encountered with this method for adding body tattoos:

• If you select a body tattoo after adding a face tattoo, it will remove the face tattoo. This doesn’t happen if you select a body tattoo first and then the face tattoo; it keeps both.

• If you add piercings or anything that seems to “reset” the body, it will remove the body tattoo. I’m not sure if it’s resetting the body tattoo to its “default” since the body tattoo default is invisible. I need to do more testing with Fantastical Multiverse species, as this might just be a problem with the way I’m overwriting the presets for vanilla species.

• If you don’t set up the default body tattoo on the preset, the body tattoo won’t load in-game. This is something I’m currently working on for the vanilla species.

• If you don’t make a patch or add the tattoo color options, they won’t show up at all. This seems to be the case even if I hit see all skin color,s which is not the norm.