GRM R-1.7 FOR RETRIBUTION NOW AVAILABLE!
The GRM Universe now has a Wiki!
https://sites.google.com/view/stellar-codex/home
What IS Gauntlet's Race Mod?Gauntlet's Race Mod is the premier custom race mod for Galactic Civilizations 3 and also provides an array of additional content to improve your game experience. There are versions of GRM for both Crusade and non-Crusade, however the non-Crusade version will generally go unsupported.GRM Offers30+ Custom Ship Styles that the AI will use!40+ Custom Races50+ Ship Appearances15+ Minor Races (who start with some colony ships!)100+ Race Portraits100+ Backgrounds200+ Race Logos600+ Citizen Portraits
Replaces the Anomalies and greatly increases their diversity and coolness!Replaces all Mercenaries from the BazaarReplaces the Mines and Bazaar modelsReplaces the Pirate models and grants them a few starting ships!Adds additional Abilities!Adds additional Starting Ship Combos! KNOWN ISSUES and USE1) If you use this mod for your own ships/races/etc. a brief credit to this mod is appreciated. 2) Turn ship-trails off, I use engines as parts in turrets and hulls, it can be distracting.3) If you experience performance issues, it is most likely the result of the heavy use of animations in any/all of my ship models, or otherwise GC3's general issues. If you experience issues, I recommend either playing with less total races, less races utilizing the ship sets, or otherwise upgrading your PC. 4) Under no circumstances may you upload any of these ship designs or factions to Steam.THANK YOUPlease reach out and report any glitches/bugs, any ships with clipping or other issues. Also it would be great, if you end up adding to the designs using the custom components, for you to share them with the community! Please credit the mod if you do!Special thanks to: Horemvore for his helpful attitude and Diplomacy UI mod!R3bel02 for one of his logos. JP193 for submitting a design via the contest.Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more!
DOWNLOAD THE MOD HERE!
Installation instructions here:
SHOWCASE VIDEOS
Quick aside... GRM seems compatible with 3.81 Probably just some very minor UI conflicts.
Small progress report... compatibility work is done for 3.9 and Villains DLC. Working on a shipset and then I'll release.
The new shipset is for a Terran corporation called "Indri-Tech".
Indri-Tech is a bit of a hodge-podge conglomerate and due to it's good relationship with the Terran Sovereignty has special permission to operate independently of the government.
Indri-Tech has begun producing some interesting ship designs, whilst also having access to the military hardware of "Sovereign State Industries", the civilian subsidiary transport company "We Haul", and aging designs from the recently bankrupt and purchased "On The Mark" manufacturing (OTM).
We-Haul's premier freighter, perfectly capable of fulfilling any contract.
The Hammerhead is Indri-Tech's heavy fighter frame of choice when quality is a must-have!
Borrowing design elements from proven ships from Sovereign State Industries, and applying an eye for stealth and speed, the Shadow Sight and other variant destroyers given Indri-Tech a unique edge in the market-space.
Working on:
Testing:
I'd be very interested to hear what people would want to see next from GRM and no... don't say "more shipsets" lol... don't worry, I'll always plug away at that... If you do care about a particular shipset that feels "lacking" point it out to me!
Wonderful work -- as always!
Thank you! Update almost ready!
People, arthropods, squids, and robots... lend me your data collectors...
I present GRM R-1.5, now compatible with GC 3.9 and adding a new shipset and faction, the Indri-Tech (INC).
This is my 29th shipset... and when you add the mercenaries, bazaar, anomalies, and resource mines, I think it's fair to say it's 30 shipsets... and I must confess, it is very likely my last.
Would you like to take a trip down memory lane with me?
I began with Galactic Civilizations with GC2 back when I was in college... and being a bit of a creative type, I immediately fell in love with the ship editor. Probably because when I was a pre-teen I would draw spaceships and alien races on index cards and give them hypothetical stats and attributes and make little card games out of it for my friends... so finally given an opportunity and a tool that would allow me to do so and share that work... well I couldn't resist.
Thus GRM was born. You can still see the ol' GC2 version out there... and boy... does it look dated lol... using screen caps from Doctor Who episodes?! But hey, that's 2007 for yah.
I loved working on GRM back then, and it really taught me a thing or two about modding and basic graphic editing. Eventually time moved on, and the mod quietly became abandoned. I never bought Twilight of the Arnor, even though I was very excited for it's custom tech tree editor... (least that is what I remember being advertised). I moved on... and for modding, I dabbled with Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, etc. I graduated college, I entered the mediocrity that is the American workforce... but I never forgot GRM and the excitement I felt every time I saw the number of downloads tick up!
Then one day, Galactic Civilizations 3 and Stellaris were announced. I did a lot of research, and ultimately, as a game... Stellaris was far more appealing to me from a gaming standpoint... but I saw how creatively limiting the ship design would be, and perhaps with more than a little nostalgia hitting me... I bought Galactic Civ 3.
Ohhhh 2015... you held such promise! GC3 was new, there were promises of mod-support on Steam, and I just KNEW that GRM would be THE source for awesome ships again! In part, I decided to start GRM again as a learning experience in self-promotion... I decided to upload YouTube videos, I rigourously patrolled the forum here and on Nexus (and tried to do Steam as well), I gave out my email for customer support (I'm trying to help someone today even!)... etc.
Some of it was a great success... some of it less so (Okay I'm no YouTube star and I'm lazy lol). I learned from the experience.
Some of it was a failure though. Mod support never came... and the remnants of that broken promise lie forgotten in tiny corners of the floor, having been swept away by exciting prospects... that also never truly materialized...
Most of these were delivered on in some form... all of them are flawed, and several are so lacking that honestly... someone should be giving me some money back (Map Editor).
It's not really that important, it's not really a big deal, but these false starts and half-promises, as well as the continuing limits of the game (really? Two ability points? That's it???)... ultimately convinced me that I either had to take the mod to a new level and do more than just ships, or, reduce my commitment to creative quality and load everything up on Steam... with each race being a lot more generic.
I chose quality over popularity... and for a long while... it was Worth it.
GRM was doing so well, that I even had the gumption to redo whole shipsets, re-save every single ship to remove the Floating Animation I had PAINSTAKINGLY ADDED TO EVERY SHIP that no-one EVER thanked me for... and start getting hot and heavy about ability modding and the like!
I even got on Patreon and started getting paid (I've been paid roughly 120$ for my GRM work) Good times!
(I still don't know how I should ever pay taxes on that... Pssst don't tell anyone!)
Then there was the great Wheel Debacle... and then the great Food Debacle, the Durantium Shortages (which continue to this day), and even the Star Shrinking... events that didn't directly affect me or the mod, but largely agitated the player-base.
Then the fleet editor came out... and I was excited to finally be able to offer my work through Steam, I was going to maintain the mod, but surely I could keep things going and reach a broader audience.
Then the Fleet Editor was bugged... and incomplete... and it STAYED INCOMPLETE. It broke my heart... but I'm stubborn, and I try to be a completionist... so I stayed off Steam (again) and doubled down on the mod. That was probably a mistake.
But life went on...
Or did it? I don't mind sharing, that around this time, my personal life took some serious hits... and the past two years has been less than ideal... and unfortunately the mod has suffered (Hey shit happens, we all gotta take our hits now and again). I've had trouble focusing, and the continuing need to update the mod for the pettiest of changes, began to wear very thin... and I'm not going to lie... while I appreciate the new ship parts somewhat... the Star Control DLC has especially felt like a lazy cash grab to me. Oh, and most of those ship parts are so low-res texture-wise I consider them off-limits and nigh-useless.
So we come to today. GRM, if I'm very generous, has 200 followers (hard to tell, more likely it's 150) who still download the updates. The great work lies incomplete, with not EVERY shipset having it's own unique drones, star bases, or flavor text... but in many ways my offerings have been very thorough, with continual expansion of citizen portraits, recolored logos, backgrounds, abilities, technologies, and ship variants... I don't know how much people really use the custom ship parts, but I put a good deal of effort in creating creative parts, even without any clear purpose (the Cryo Chamber, Hot Rod Engine, and Sparkly Power Core come to mind).
It's ultimately a much larger, more ambitious, and more successful project than the original GRM... and it allowed me to share some of my personal vision for a Space Opera universe... going so far as to get me off my ass and to build the wiki.
So I'm proud of the work I've done... and while I hope to continue updating the mod for compatibility... and who knows... maybe new ships and sets will get made one day... I think it's only fair to reflect and acknowledge that the mod has run it's course.
Therefore... this mod is in sunset mode, don't expect much from me going forward... and...
THANK YOU
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Scaling errors on ships off the shoulder of Larsenex. I've watched a great wheel gleam in the sky and disappear before the hyper-gates. I've witnessed the departure of Horemvores and Nasseluses, whilst AegisWolves roam and the great Jabberjaw howls, but Deathwynd cannot be found. All these modders will be lost in time... like tears in the rain. Time to die."
PS: See you in Galactic Civ 4?
I believe that all I can say to this is...
Thank you Gauntlet (and to Horem as well), not only for providing a lot of entertainment and memories that your mods gave me, but in the ways of modding.
Thank you for all the hard, time-consuming work that you did.
Thank you for loosing the Daleks upon the GalCiv universe, as well as the many other highly entertaining opponents and foils.
Thank you for your reworking of governments, events, anomilies, mercs and ideology (although I must confess that I never agreed, with you about how EVERYTHING had to have some shade of grey, it was still to good to good for me to ignore, curse you ).
I hope that SD will learn from and apply the lessons that GC3 could teach them on GC4 and that I will see you there.
While I have not been playing GC3 much lately (your right, life does have a habit of intruding, doesn't it?), I have not called it quits yet (I am also a bit stubborn that way), I still look forward to many more attempts to find the answer the age-old question - who would win - the Daleks or the Borg?
Thank You Gauntlet!!
I've been looking forward to a new GRM release that I could start playing GC3 again. I've tried to play without the mod and it just seemed bland.
Now to download it!
Again, thanks for all the work you have put into this. I have an inkling of the effort, time, and creative genius that it takes to do something like this (I lack all three).
Great post, Gauntlet. And great mod, as always.
Hmmm.
Hmmm. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head with these. And as you said, not to knock Stardock--because we love them and their effort and the game they produced... I hope they don't take personally the constructive criticism but learn from where they fell short so that GCIV is even better--and delivers on its promises.
I'm not so sure. You've done a service to the GCIII community and, in my opinion, to Stardock. Sometimes it's hard to let go, especially when the promises continue and seem sincere (and likely were--but just never materialized). I admire you for sticking with it. I did not--though I like to think I would have... (My family went from me, my wife, and a dog to us plus three kids over the course of this game's development. We went from renters to homeowners. We've had medical emergencies, deaths in the family... like you said, stuff happens.)
For me, modding the game had to go on the back burner. But I'm pleased you pursued your vision for your mod to the extent it was possible.
Gauntlet & Friends
have you improved the AI or is the retrib AI better now , I have not checked or updated the game since 3.4 so I am far behind .. just asking if its worth it and what improvements would justify updating - yes there is a durantium shortage
thank you for your hard work and patience
JJ
For what it's worth, I think, like $50 of that $120 came from me (I've been on your Patreon since the beginning), and I haven't downloaded a version of the mod in about a year and a half. I just respected the hell out of the hustle and loved the mod. But re-loading the mod every single time there was an update—I just don't have that kind of time anymore. I'm too fucking old. I hate to criticize the devs for updating the game so consistently, but wasn't there a way to do any of this so it didn't completely break every mod, every single update?
I think this officially ends the GC3 cycle for me, too. I can't believe this game has been out for four years. I can't believe how much cognitive energy I spent thinking about this game. What a weird experience.
It is genuinely sad for me to see how dispiriting this was for you. I always respected the way you could maintain a chipper attitude in the face of a pretty consistent deluge of half-fulfilled promises and wasted potential. I have been in love with Galactic Civilizations for 17 years. There is no piece of art, no game, no media of any kind to which I have devoted more of my time and attention than the Galactic Civilizations series. I guess I'm holding them to an unfair standard. I played the game for a couple hundred hours, so I must have gotten my money's worth, right? I don't know how it's possible, but I've never been more disappointed by a product of any kind. I just always held this series and Stardock in such high regard. It's a tough position for them, but the game never made it beyond "good" for me, and I guess I just assumed it would be more than that.
What a weird experience this has been.
Anyway, man, you did phenomenal work. You deserved a bigger audience.
Hey there! Thank you for the kind words!
I never try to be salty or for that matter chipper... I just try to be exactingly fair. But when saying goodbye to something I loved for a long time, it felt necessary to include some of the frustration that defined my experience.
That being said, I share your feelings about GC3 ultimately it did not stand up to my expectations. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, most of them pretty reasonable (we do tend to put these things on pedestals). I've now circled back on Stellaris after leaving it alone since just after it's release and I'm finding that to be a far more "complete" experience... but I already miss designing ships!
I look forward to GC4 and I'm already excited for the changes that Brad has mentioned (though none of these are guaranteed). I'm holding out hope that we'll somehow be able to import ship designs and I won't necessarily have to rebuild 2000+ hours from scratch lol!
Anywho... thank you very much for your patronage and we'll see what the future brings!
Nice work but yeah the modding part of GC3 is just a mess.The workshop is just a nightmare with a million ships not organized.
Gauntlet,
Thank you for the work you've done. This was a lot of fun for me last August. The choices were a bit overwhelming but it was like an overhaul almost, at least in terms of the setting/fiction.
Thanks for your mod. I have been playing quite a bit and your work is top quality. I may send you a PM about a custom race if that's possible.
Quick note... working on an update. It won't include any shipsets, but will update some files, clean up some typos, and add some new backgrounds, race pics, and add citizen pictures to a lot of races that only have one.
Yay! Now just need to find some time to start playing GalCiv again.
Gauntlet's Race Mod at Galactic Civilizations III Nexus - Mods and community
New version is uploaded R-1.6
This version is plugging some of the gaps in GRM by doing the following:
All in all, it's a solid if un-sexy update.
PS: The Wiki has received some love, particularly, you will find new entries for the "Lesser Worlds" and "Renowned Locales" pages, and very minor edits to the timeline.
Hey Gauntlet,
Thank you for the serious effort and great mod. I had it installed ages ago and with older version and it worked great. With the new updated version I can't seem to get the mod to work. It's no error on your part, It's the absolute TERRIBLE (sorry stardock) mod selection in the game menu. I have downloaded all your files and placed them in the appropriate folders and get no indication in game to play the mod. Am I completely blind or is there a trick to getting any mod to work?
On a side not do you or anyone know what ever happened to the Star Trek mod that was done long ago? It was a massive mod that was fun to play over the vanilla version. Has anyone picked up from there or is it left in the past?
And on more note, I did contribute on the nexus site, that cost Canadian dollars as well... again thanks to you and all that put work into this.
1) Thank you for contribution, that's awesome, very much appreciated.
2) The Star Trek mod you are thinking of is most likely GST and you can contact Horemvore, he has a thread and I believe he hosts his mod separate from nexus or any particular mod hosting site.
3) There isn't really a trick to installing... if you placed everything in the right folders... all you do in-game is make sure "mods enabled" is checked in your game settings and restart the game.
Common problems is usually not replacing the right files in the game's directories (and they are not super-important to 95% of the content)... even if you mostly screwed up installing, you'd still see new ship designs and new portraits/etc. and the like.
Feel free to post more detail/screens/etc. or email me/PM me as you see fit and I'll help as much as I can.
My guess is to run the re-sync command on the main menu screen or try deleting the pref ini.
I've tried the re-sync command early on, would deleting the pref ini cause problems or would it make a new one? is it a hidden file?
So I am confused as to how mods work or which ones are active. The only button I have concerning mods is the re-sync button. Other than that there is no indication of anything.
Okay... so firstly, there is only one way a mod is "inactive" or "active" ... and that is, does the mod exist and is the mod located in your mods directory. That's it currently.
This is a typical file path for the GC Mods directory.
C:\Users\Gauntlet\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods
A lot of custom data though, such as ship files, factions, logos, etc. are located inside folders here:
C:\Users\Gauntlet\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\
Step 1
GRM has two folders that need their CONTENTS dumped into two places. The first is "For your My Games - GalCiv 3 Crusade Directory"
Dump all the contents of that into C:\Users\Gauntlet\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\
This will add in mods, logos, portraits, ships, etc. Ideally, you have uninstalled any previous versions of GRM, but if prompted to replace a file... say YES. (Uninstalling by the way, means manually deleting all of these same files... which is why I've VERY thoroughly named every single file).
Step 2
The second folder is "For your Game Directory" and the contents must be dumped into your GC game's installation directory. Typically, this would look like this:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Galactic Civilizations III
Dump the contents there, and be certain to say "YES" when prompted to replace a file.
Step 3
Open the game, and make sure that in the settings menu "Mods Enabled" is checked. You will then need to restart the game.
If you screw up Step 1, nothing will work. If you screw up Step 2, Custom mercenaries will not work, but everything else will. If you screw up Step 3, you will still see many custom factions and ship designs, but won't be able to properly load shipsets, and all sorts of cool content will be inactive.
Hope that helps.
PS: Pref Ini will recreate if you delete it... worth a shot... all you'll lose is hotkeys and settings preferences.
@ Crom - My thread is here.
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