The Gods Are Real [ALPHA]

The Gods Are Real

PLEASE NOTE: This mod is in very early alpha development.

Major balancing and core systems are still actively being worked on. Expect rough edges, incomplete mechanics, and possible save-data instability while the mod evolves.

The next version will likely reset favor values to zero for all pawns. I am currently working on another project, but the next major task for The Gods Are Real is a favor reset and cleanup pass.

Mod Overview

The Gods Are Real introduces a dynamic, per-pawn favor system that brings your ideology's deities to life. Devotion is no longer just flavor text; it is a measurable, shifting resource that affects a pawn's standing with the divine.

Important Notes

This mod is centered around gods. If your current ideology does not include a god, most of the mod's mechanics will be effectively disabled.

You are not generally meant to know exact individual or ideology favor scores during normal gameplay. These values can be viewed with debug mode enabled, but the favor system is mostly intended to be tracked internally and reflected through gameplay effects.

Key Mechanics

Favor System: Pawns are tracked on a favor scale ranging from -100 to 100.

Active Worship: Pawns can gain favor through rituals, ideology-based thoughts, prayer, quests, and more planned sources.

Divine Touch: A dynamic Hediff system reflects a pawn's current divine standing, providing gameplay-impacting consequences based on devotion. Currently, only one example Hediff is implemented.

Passive Decay: Favor is fleeting. Without active worship, it naturally drifts back toward zero over time.

Technical Focus

Performance-Conscious Design: Built with efficiency in mind, using direct lookups and careful data handling to avoid unnecessary overhead in frequently used code paths.

Deep RimWorld Integration: Designed to hook into core RimWorld and Ideology systems so divine favor feels like part of the game rather than a bolted-on meter.

Self-Cleaning Data: Includes automated data cleanup to help prevent stale pawn records and unnecessary save-file bloat.

Roadmap

More divine boons and event-based consequences for extreme favor levels.

Expanded mod settings so players can tune decay and gain rates to their preferred balance.

Continued refinement based on testing, bug reports, and community feedback.

Source Code & Contributions

Contributors are welcome. Development progress is available here:
https://github.com/JoyfulReaper/TheGodsAreReal

License: BSD 2-Clause

Development Disclosure: Built by an experienced C# developer. AI tools were used for drafting, refactoring, and documentation assistance, but the design, code review, testing, debugging, release decisions, and maintenance are mine. Harmony patches and gameplay changes are reviewed against RimWorld/Verse behavior before release.