Is there are mod or guide that makes adding a new race to the game easier? I tried doing it myself by editing the races and description gd files, and everything seemed to be going perfectly until the description disappeared leaving instead a weird code lmao, and since I didn't have a clue what I was doing in the first place, I have no idea why that happened or how to fix it.
Viewing post in Modding ideas and requests
Your description of your problem is not useful as it does not contain specific enough descriptions or copies of the files.
Adding new races is one of the more challenging tasks even if you aren't putting it in a mod yourself. There have been the occasional mod that have tried to add a new race, but most fell apart before they shared anything. I've heard that Aric's mod was planning to add new races, but I haven't looked into their method yet.
You will need to be decently familiar with gdscript to understand the syntax that you must adhere to. If you are not familiar with programming, then I recommend using online interactive tutorials for Python to learn the basics as it is a very similar language. You will also want to use the Debug mod, as it provides more feedback than simply crashing when things go wrong. Even if you did everything else right, you can easily get problems by using a simple editor like Windows Notepad or using spaces instead of tabs.
races.gd is the core file for races, but the critical code that uses it is constructor.gd. If your race uses any attributes besides existing ones, then you will need to change description.gd. If you want your race to be found while exploring then you need to edit explorationregions.gd. If you want to add a racial ability, then you will need to track down the file relevant what you want to change.
NOTE: if you are editing files directly and you Apply or Reset your mods, then it will erase all of your changes. Either make backups of your changed files, use the mod system to apply your changes, or do your work on files that are not in a program file.
So to be a little more specific, I added a new race (halfkin sheep) into the races.gd file by copying the other halfkin races and making changes where necessary and, as far as that goes, it was a success, it shows up in the menu's as intended.
Where I first ran into an issue was the description because the sheep race has a unique tail, horns, ears etc... and because I added them into the race file but not anywhere else it would say in the description the usual blue eyes, blond hair etc... but when it came to the tail/ears/horn, it would say something like "error could not find... yada yada", so next I went into the description.gd file, and in there I added into the tail/ears/horn section the unique descriptions for my sheep character by using the other listings as a template. This is where the problem arose. Now, no matter which race I select, it says [GDScript:1636] instead of the normal description of characters.
I hope that explained it better,
Indeed that is a little bit better, as I know what that code represents. Though I can't tell you specifically how or where you managed to do it as I am not aware of any easy ways to accomplish that.
I don't know if you will understand what this means. [GDScript:1636] is what you get when you convert an object reference to a string in the godot engine. Data types like null, numbers, arrays, and dictionaries all convert cleanly to strings, but references to things like person objects simply produce those basically useless codes.
Edit: after a little bit of tinkering, I would guess that a typo is causing a description function to crash. Not sure of how that managed to convert to a code similar to a object reference. But you need the Debug mod.
I thought I'd chime in again to let you know that I tried again, and everything seems to be working perfectly now! Thank you so much for your help! It must've just been a simple typing error that I couldn't spot in my tired state last night as you suggested. I only touched the races and descriptions gd files again because I'm not really interested in seeing sheep anywhere else in the game world. The only reason I started messing about with this was because I wanted Ancilla from Monster Girl Dreams as my starting servant lol.
I'm not really interested in giving her a special power either, well, I don't even know how the abilities are given out so I just copied the fairy's ability (the description) for my sheep because it "doubles the daily base stress dissipation" and I feel that would work we'll for a fluffy, cuddly sheep lol. Not to mention one of the options with Ancilla in MGD is actually just to relax with her. So again, thanks a bunch!
P.S - is it fine to keep playing on the debug version of the exe or should I switch back to the normal exe? Thanks again.
As stated above, racial abilities are implemented in the relevant code, which for fairies is the end of day in Mansion.gd.
Generally, I have recommended against people playing using the debug mod because if an error occurs then the may game will continue playing and can be saved, which can cause permanent data corruption. However, recent investigations have revealed that some errors can still occur without crashing the game in non-debug mode leading to similar problems. As your changes are quite small and vanilla is very stable, it should not be a problem either way. Though if you do, I would recommend leaving the terminal somewhere slightly visible so that you can spot error messages before saving.
As a side note, there is a Bugfix mod that fixes many of the remaining errors, though applying it will erase your changes (see above) and version 6 was recently released so it's still possible that it adds new errors.
Ah right, well I'm definitely not touching that, don't see a need too and don't want to break anything.
And all right, maybe I'll just keep the debug exe then, we'll see.
I do have the bugfix mod, actually! I have that, the random portraits mod, portrait pack editor, and then portrait/body packs, but that's all.