Character screen portrait reverts on every load game

ArtHistorian

Hello community,

as the title says, my custom portrait on the character screen (the 'Large' one) keeps on changing back to match the small portrait from the right-hand menu.

These are two different custom portraits, both definitely compatible in terms of size and file type (24bit BMP). When I set them up through the 'Customize' option, both work fine. When I load the save game, the small one behaves correctly and remains whatever I set it to be--but it also replaces the large one in the character screen.

Your help would be much appreciated, since I've spent much time on getting the right combo of portraits on two characters, and constantly modifying their appearance to the right source image really breaks the immersion...

Gusinda

Hi @ArtHistorian, I know what it is like spending time getting the portraits just right . Ihad a similiar problem with one of my games. Not sure if you are using any UI mods, but I found that if I set each portraits with EEKeeper, they stayed in place throughout the game. No harm in giving it a try...

Gus

ArtHistorian

Hi @Gusinda, thanks for sharing your solution! I tried setting the portraits in EEKeeper, and the problem persists: the small image gets used instead of the large one on the character screen.

Curiously, the EEKeeper shows the large image as I set it (different to the small profile pic), but the game still loads the small one in both places.

Gusinda

@ArtHistorian, you could also look at the naming convention used. I use to have NameL/NameM in 1.3, but I remember someone writing the may be a problem in 2.x so I then changed to use all lowercase (nameL/nameM).

I am currently using Lefreut's excellent UI and use the Portrait Picker which will filter portraits based on name, so the naming convention used is now f#nameL and m#nameL etc...

Hopefully a convention change will fix the prob.

Gus

Grond0

The game certainly struggles to deal with portrait names that start with a capital letter. If that's the case with you then I would suggest changing that - if you want to keep the same name, but just change the capitalisation then move the portrait to another folder and back again to make sure the changed name is properly registered.

ArtHistorian

Thanks for your replies @Gusinda and @Grond0 -- I followed your tips with name conventions and portrait swap, but the problem persists.

I used 7-letter small caps namexxxL.bmp and namexxxM.bmp --and still 'M' replaces 'L' on character screen after loading.

Very bizarre game behaviour.

Should I mention that I first created the characters in a multiplayer game, and then exported them into single player? Does this make a difference?

Grond0

Take a look at this post ArtHistorian
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/7461/here-s-how-to-use-custom-portraits/p1

I think your problem may be that the game uses the small portraits for the sidebar on the main screen and the medium portraits for the character record screen. The large portraits are not used in game at all, but only during character creation. I suspect therefore that you may have better luck if you change your naming conventions to S and M rather than M and L.

ArtHistorian

@Grond0 !

Many thanks, that was it!

I know it sounds silly, but I was about to give up on my game since the characters were built around the portraits...

(So for anyone else that might be as crazy about this, the trick is to have the 'M' portraits for the character screen, and 'S' portraits for the sidebar.)