Characters ‐ Creating
Characters are the soul of this mod, and their creation is a hard but satisfactory work to do! There are two main ways to make them, the technical one, and the visual/interactive one:
Although it is not recommended, you can always make a CharacterDef XML from scratch, checking the XML specification and following the guidelines, but even if it gives a lot of freedom from the start, it is cumbersome and an error-prone process.
It is heavily recomended to use the next method if possible, as it makes a well-formed XML template for you.
It is recommended to use a pawn editing mod, such as Character Editor or Pawn Editor. Just load into the game the editor you feel more comfortable to use.
Select any pawn in any map and then start editing in until you achieve the desired result:
Then, enable the development mode and go to the debug actions menu. There, select the "Generate character template" option.
With that tool active, click on the character you have just modified.
After that, a file explorer window will automatically show you the path to a generated template file. If you open that file, you should find something like this:
From here, you can start filling all the missing entries that cannot be calculated from an in-game pawn. Most fields are pretty intuitive, but when in doubt, you can always check the character XML specification here, in this wiki.