Alrighty, I went ahead and did that until all of the hardpoints on the Ruin were oriented correctly according to the ingame displays. However, the ship was still firing at the left side from the right side. I figured I just needed to reload the game, so I did that. And it works! Yaaaay! It has been well over a month since I first put this ship into the game... and so many endless hours of energy put into trying to fix those bloody hardpoints.

This doesn't solve the reason why it happens but at least I know how to re-orient the hardpoints now. Thank you sir, I shall now try to fix the Hysteria next. I won't be able to have the angular launchers I was hoping so much for... but having it work at all will be a good place to start getting this trainwreck under control.

Yeah, you don't actually need to reload the game, just build/spawn another version of the ship. Existing ships will see the mesh points change with the show mesh locations, but it seems it doesn't like to move particle spawners on pre-existing entities.

My only guess is that if you only modeled half the ship and then duplicated/rotated the second half to get the symmetry, the nulls might be using the original position value to determine the rotations (hence why they were exactly 180 x degrees off, because that is what you flipped the base model with, and why your forward facing weapons weren't affected). But yes, being able to fix them is the most important thing.

Also I edited my last post with a few thoughts on your other errors.

I don't think the engine has changed very much since vanilla, so if removing fighter trails at some point caused an error I wouldn't be surprised if that was still the case.

I do mirror half of the mesh through Symmetry, but the nulls are different. Those were copied if I call, though some may have been mirrored as well, at least on the Hysteria. How can it be possible that their orientations would be broken as a result of that? And, some of the Hysteria's hardpoints are mangled even though those were just hand copied. To be sure, I even removed instancing from all of the nulls (which has never caused a problem in any of my previous ships) but this didn't seem to matter.

I wonder if ConvertXSI is reacting to some value I don't see just by looking at the hardpoints in max/XSI?

Curiously enough, the hardpoints on the Hysteria maintain their angled settings, but those get reversed and start pointing downwards. It is so incredibly weird. Out of the dozens of ships I've put into the game, only these two have ever given me this kind of an issue. I've had other issues, sure, but they were all a result of XSI. Stuff like having to point the tangent UV to what it was already pointing to so ships weren't turn into a creamy white mess ingame. I've heard that XSI 2010 can cause issues with ConvertXSI, though? I don't have an option of using an older version because I run Windows 7.

Hmm, well the fact that its always 180 degrees of the intended direction still seems to me to be from duplicating and rotating the mesh, but I can really say what you did to make that a problem on just these two ships. Did you do the nulls in max or xsi?

Well I'm using Windows 7 64 but I'm using XSI 2009 (at least I think it is, its version 7.5 I think).

Really? I think I tried to install an older version previously but it didn't work for some reason. Hmmm.

I did the nulls in 3ds max. I only use XSI extremely briefly, just to get the models ready for exporting to XSI. Re-apply tangent to itself, delete unused material, remove unused clips, freeze mesh before all of that... aaand export.

/edit

Are you unable to enforce AF with the dev exe? Obviously, you cannot record without anisotropic filtering... everything always turns into a blurry mess. I sure hope replays work with this.

/edit 2

No, I think RadeonPro is just broken for some reason. Well, I did load a replay of the dev exe in regular sins, and the dev changes (e.g. instant build) definitely do not work and thus the replay doesn't work. Oh well...

/e 3

I gave up trying to figure out why stuff in the dev exe looked so blurry and just went ahead with my standard routine of recording games in the normal exe. The lag from projectiles in Anahn vs UD is exceptionally high... I can only imagine how many projectiles are flying around with fleets of Leviathans stacked on each other. I need to reduce their numbers much further than their current caps.

The reform fleet bug severely impedes the Undead's ability to fight. Since they're all shorter ranged than the Anahn, they have to get up and close... but constantly lose their "lead" ship, and reform incessently. The end result is Undead fleets 4x the strength of Anahn ones dying to said Anahn fleets without ever laying a finger on them. Utterly terrible. I'll have to try to fix the dev exe's blurriness or this is going to take forever.

Regardless I have nearly two hours of raw .avi files I am now starting to go through. I expect a return of 1-3 minutes of usable footage. Some of it I expect to be really good for the narration parts of part 1. I also recorded some more civil war stuff in hopes of patching the holes in my previous recordings. I can record without the Undead being finished because the timeline for this recording is Black Sun: Bloodstone Jordan and not actually the Salvation/TOA timeline, so the third-gen Undead fleet is mostly low tier stuff. I can start adding in the seriously mean ships when I get to part 2 of the video, which will basically be a max tech brawl.

I still intend to put in the Xy`Kranasha and at least a few Templar ships, as well as hopefully the Zelconian ships I have. Chances are I'll merge the Templar/Zelconian into one race as per their alliance, and since I won't be able to model other than a handful of their ships.

I don't know how difficult Xy will be to model, but I think their SFX shouldn't be too bad.

Normally I wouldn't bring something so major up for public scrutiny, but ultimately as you will be a part of my audience I think it is best I seek your input on this matter.

I had always planned to upload Episode 1 to youtube when it's finished. However, the barbaric copyright zealotry of companies like Sony and various Western twits makes my music selection exceptionally more difficult than it needs to be. They will flag/censor videos for less than a few seconds of audio that is merely similar to something they supposedly represent, which covers an astoundingly broad spectrum. Additionally, the arbitrary 15 minute limit is proving to be rather irritating. I planned to split the video into 2 parts - any more and I'd be looking at way too many individual uploads to make the project really "Episode 1" anymore. I don't plan to make an Episode 2 or any further installations, I plan to drop modding after I am done with this video. But I'd like to make the video be as much as it can be. If I limit the video to only 30 minutes I will probably be unable to demonstrate all of the work I've put into it, and I am limited in what kind of storytelling I can use to convey what I am able to show.

There are a few alternatives available, ones free of youtube's automated censorship checksum garbage and arbitrary length limits (seriously, 2gb but only 15 minutes? I can fit over an hour of 1080p footage into 2gb easily...). I can, of course, use my private FTP, and provide the source x264 file. I can also use megaupload's video streaming service, and potentially archive.org as well. Our host has a streaming service but its quality was never really that great, and its bandwidth seems to be insufficient for this kind of material.

With nearly 1400 videos on youtube as it is I am tired of having to constantly dispute flag troll bots that just randomly flag videos to steal ad revenue, and I am very tired of the 15 minute limit. So, my question is, would you mind if I steered away from those limitations and sought other means of bringing this video media to you?

I may go with youtube anyways, because I have a huge library of resources that are not covered by copyright trolls and can be freely uploaded, but in the event I want to use something that will get the video censored in some country I would rather have the freedom to use it than worry about costing some guy his five mansions and thirty wives.

/e I'll decide what to do when I have all of the recordings for Part 1 ready. If I can pull this off without needing to use some weird hosting alternative I'll be surprised...

I will always regard this piece as one of my all-time favorites.

/edit 42

I have completed a significant portion of the Undead v Anahn portion of part 1 of the video. There's not much else I can do until I start adding more ships. The rest of part 1 is going to require CGI work. It is unlikely I will be able to do this CGI work, and thus I expect at least one more massive revision.

I am using one piece of music I know youtube will flag, but I don't think it will get censored. In that case I am not too concerned currently.

With the big ingame portions of part 1 out of the way I need to start setting my sights on how I'm going to fill the gaps, the parts intended to be filled with CGI. I only have extremely basic 3d skills, and no experience in animation or effects whatsoever.

I discovered the cause and resolution to the hardpoint flipping issue.

It seems that mirroring hardpoints in 3ds max causes something to go funky in XSI. I don't know how, or why, but the following steps caused the hardpoints to become correct in sins with a re-conversion.

- First, selecting all of the hardpoints that are incorrectly oriented in sins (but incidentally correctly mirrored in 3ds max/XSI, this is the weird part), make them unique. This doesn't fix the problem, but we do this in case our next actions effect previous, otherwise functional hardpoints.

- Reset Transforms.

- Then, reset pivots while effecting Pivots only. Now, re-orient them by rotating with Pivot Center active. This will allow you to mass rotate without going one-by-one (some of my ships have 60+ guns per side, unrealistic to do this with CTS as serve as mine at this point).

Convert per usual.

This fixed the Razzador for me.

As to why this happens at all, I suspect it's yet another XSI-related issue. 3ds max and XSI both claim the hardpoints are correct, but I think somewhere between XSI and ConvertXSI.exe some information is either getting transmitted or not getting transmitted due to mirror, even though mirror does not attach any modifiers, and even though the objects mirrored were not instanced. This could also be a byproduct of using the FBX format to crosswalk between the applications. In either case, I was able to fix a ship without manually re-orienting everything via text. My poor, poor hands thank me for this one blessing.

/e Part 1 recordings entirely completed. CGI is all that remains. By God I'll finish this fight if it kills me.

/e 2

Xy`Kranasha ships are giving incredible difficulty in starting with. I was not expecting to have such a hard time getting this race started with. If I can't make progress here Black Sun goes nowhere. My motivation dwindles every passing day. I cannot afford delays..

I have decided that I will re-record all currently recorded part 1 material, or at least most of it, at the final stages of the project. I am not happy with the current recordings. This will likely mean the project will take slightly longer to complete, but the end product will be of higher quality if and only if I can get good recordings. Recording has turned out to be extremely challenging.

I have two Zelconian ships ingame and a few Xy`Kranasha have been added since the last update. They are not 100% rigged but I am focused on modeling work.

Attempts were made at the Warlord flagship, but the game's poly limit is too severe for it. At this point I am too lazy to attempt trying to split it into a particle mesh when I have so much else on my plate to deal with. Maybe at the end of the project. The Khendarva Fortress, however, is indeed ingame and partly functional.

The sound directory for the mod has grown to 300 files with the source directories containing 3 times this. There are 80 entity files, and 400mb worth of mesh data. The textures directory contains 231 files, only 10 or so of which are used for the ships and the rest for particles.

The Project Folder for Black Sun, containing scale sheet files, music, and sound effects is 3gb in size. An alternate folder, containing the raw models, is 400mb with 179 items.

I have gutted about half the game's default textures, necessary for the project to be able to start.

One thing I wish I could have done is have custom skyboxes. High fidelity, high detail sky boxes. Alas, one of many things I cannot do anything about. I do plan to look into intensifying the number of dust fields and asteroids for part 1, though, if I have enough motivation to do so by then.

I am taking this opportunity to make another pass at the Anahn death explosions in an effort to rid them of that red glow.

It would appear that Particle Forge does not support my new video card. Unless there is something else I have missed, as that is the only thing that has changed since I last used it. I've gone through the whole compatibility routine, restarting and such and the program still refuses to start completely. When I attempt to maximize it, nothing happens. The taskbar preview thing shows nothing. Meanwhile, it perpetually harvests ram until the cows come home. I've tried different installations of the program, different versions, no dice.

(e/ Reinstalling directx/.net had no effect.)

Would it not be poetic if the action I took to save Black Sun instead killed it?

An alternative if you are good with CGI/video editting is to record in the greenscreen mode of the dev.exe.

That... is very unfortunate. Maybe post in the get an answer thread about it?

How do you access this exactly?

If it's a newer card (like the ATI 6xxx line), Iskatu is probably best off asking the devs about it, as odds are it's an issue with the program itself.

It's a 6970. If this is truly a compatibility issue then I am most likely screwed and this project will die.

Unfortunately I am far from a good video/CGI editor and I couldn't sync anything to the movement in the game.

If I wasn't such a slow worker I could have had the project finished weeks/months before I needed to replace that video card. I slacked off way too much and now it's probably too late to pull out of this mess. I will keep trying to fix the problems, but I'm not holding my breath.

Render [e] -> Show Greenscreen [b]. More info in my annotated guide to the Dev.exe of course, but here's an example.

How many more particles do you need?

Three races worth, and I intended to revise a lot of the existing content again.

...

I have a very crappy laptop. Can barely run starcraft. But I have it running particle forge now. I foresee great, great anguish in my future.

/edit

YEEAAAAHHH

I have set up teamview on the laptop and suddenly this doesn't seem so bad.

I plan to revise a huge amount of the Anahn muzzle flashes. Muzzle flashes are difficult to make indeed, and I am not pleased with the current ones. I am not sure why they seem so difficult to make look proper. I want something similar to real life battleship cannons, but that doesn't seem possible. Maybe if I was a texture artist...

That Anahn ship looks even nicer ingame than in the renders you previously posted.

Quick question - in anyone's experience, does the Overtime damage type seem to cause a bigger performance hit than Backloaded? I am using Overtime for at least 90% of the weapons in my mod and am starting to become curious why I suffer such a huge performance hit in big fights. This may just be unavoidable due to having an i7 and the game being single-threaded, but... well, if this is a potential cause, I could try to change some of the faster weapons back to backloaded. The problem is, of course, I hate volley weapons doing all of their damage at once, usually a second or two after the last projectile hits. But I'm starting to wonder if this could potentially be massively increasing the cpu hit of big fights.

I'm also curious if there's any particular part of a particle system that may cause a significantly larger performance hit than the others. I have a lot of flashbeam weapons and it seems the more of those that are up the worse the hit.

Also, I've done a re-recording of the entire civil war part of part 1 and am now content with the new recordings.

I don't know, but the dev.exe can identify which specific particle effects are taking up the most resources. From my annotated guide.

[b]Overlay Menu: [j] - Show Particles Status: Brings up a large window in the upper left below FPS and in front of all the previous commands. Shows a lot of statistics about individual particle effects, including which ones are actively being rendered, a count of the current particle and simulation pool, which particles are using the most memory, and the total number of each specific particles both on screen and generated gamewide. Somewhat overlaps show effects status but since the window background is partly transparent they should be useable together.

Well, memory isn't a concern (yet). I'll have to check soon if it shows cpu usage.

/edit

Particle forge has magically stopped working on the laptop despite never doing anything but using it on the laptop since I put it on there in the first place. Progress on the project halts as a result.

/edit

LOLOLOL I FIGURED OUT WHY IT DOESN'T WORK

ParticleForge corrupts its own settings! !

ahahaha, with two very low-end Anahn ships firing there's peaks of like 160 particle instances just for their shells. I guess I need to raise the projectile speed.

Scarily, the game seems to be rendering particles well outside of the render range. I'm getting hits for the Razzador missiles and tons of Oblivion muzzle flashes - those are shooting at a scout all the way across the map. There's only one of two possible explanations... either the game doesn't cull particles or the overlay picks them up anyway.

Now that I've fixed the particle editor I'm going to pass through the Undead particles and see about getting this thing finished before the cows come home.

 /e

I am retarded.

/e 2

Received what may be the last outsourced vocal lines for the composition.

/e 3

Composited and finalized The Lost Fleet, ch2 of act 1. Another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

/e 4

I took my first go post second revision of the Undead p1 section. It appears that even with my test settings that balancing will be difficult, and the Undead need to be more complete to finish this portion. However, my revision process has definitely helped stem the colossal lag I was getting. 2v2 is entirely watchable now.

What UD ships need to be added? Ones I haven't even designed yet. I need a middleground between the fleet-massacring Ruin and the relatively frail Tyranny and Wormwood. I also need to play around with the roletypes to encourage a more diverse UD fleet as currently they make way too many Wormwoods and this makes their reform fleet issues a living hell. Ha! Puns.

/e 5

I'm managing my coverage of the Diablo 3 beta so I am a bit occupied for a short time.

I have gone through my second UD recording session I did a while ago (that I felt would need new ships to complete), but it actually turned out to be really good. As in, a lot better than what I was hoping for. Part 1's Undead recordings are virtually finished. Some minor stuff would need to be recorded to patch the holes... but nothing very significant.

That means the new UD ships I have created would become part 2 ships, meaning that another huge chunk of work (making new UD content to show) is already dealt with. This completes a significant portion of the project, or at least it will when I make sounds/SFX for the remaining incomplete Undead material. But, modelling-wise, the Undead are finished. Forever. Unless I manage to make the Incubus or update the Crusader, but the latter is child's play compared to the difficulty of the new stuff.

The Undead portion of Part 1 is the second final portion of part 1, followed by the Memory dialogue sequence - which has been finished for quite some time now. Other than CGI material, an extremely difficult to fill music slot, and some minor polishing, Part 1 is nearly totally finished. Part 2 in comparison is not going to be as hard to make. The hardest parts will be modeling Xy`Kranasha ships, and doing all of their ingame content. The latter is just time, but the former will surely prove to be a truly significant challenge. The rest of it, though.. voice acting... music... easy. I've already done all of Xul`Amon's takes.

I can feel the taste of victory on the tip of my tongue. I've only but reach out and take it. Black Sun... is nearing completion. At long last. My work is almost over.

It is true that this video will not do the work justice. I may never even be able to get a good Ruby Cannon recording, and I never could scrounge together the mental fortitude to make abilities for all of the Anahn ships that needed them. But this project is nearly over. A few more weeks of work at least, sure.. but the biggest portions are starting to tumble one by one. Four years... is almost over.

While it's a bit sad you seem to be nearing the end of your time modding Sins, I'm glad you've been able to get a bit of what you wanted out of it. Can't wait to see the video.

My Xy implementation and testing is going according to plan.

About half the race remains to be modeled, polished, or otherwise brought into the game. Three of the ships I need to create are already made in their own way;

- I was donated a few models in the past from a friend of mine and one of these is getting mangled into a Xy fighter slowly but surely.

- I will polish my old Heraa model and use it for the heavy MRF fighter equivalent. This completes the Xy fighters.

- I have the Titan GK variant to polish up and bring into the game as the first Xy supership type (comparable to the Dementia, Crusader, ect.) that it will have normal access to.

These three things I hope to finish today alone.

The more I test the more I wonder how the computer AI for this game ever made it to release like it is. There is so much blatantly broken with it, the AI is not even capable of playing a normal game on a tiny map much less manage itself across large ones. The AI's control/assessment issues on top of reform fleet really makes this very difficult. At least I'm almost done and the pain will soon end.

However, my trials as a whole are not likely to end with ingame work. The gentleman who was supposed to be helping me in CGI stuff has been too busy to even start on it yet. Although this was not an unexpected outcome, it will hurt the delivery and completion of the project as I will have to enter the alien world of rendering and animation to create the base content I need to complete the composition. This will need to happen soon.

Under a month now, if things keep on track. If I can focus, three weeks maybe, for ingame material to be finished minus recording time polishing. I am almost ready to begin making preliminary test recordings for the Xy.

I finished the Undead minus some stuff for the Crusader, creating large-type explosion sfx/particles. Following this, I need to finish the Fortress, Great Knight, and Emperor-class for the Anahn. Of those three ships, only the Emperor isn't ingame and virutally finished statistically. The Knight is one of the early ships from over a year ago (christ) that hasn't been finished yet. It just needs its effects polished up. The Fortress is about 90% finished, needing some impact effects I haven't gotten to yet. The Emperor's model needs to be finished, but I've run into design difficulties for a change and don't know where to place secondary/tiertary guns. Then I need to make cannon abilities for the Fortress and Emperor. I forget how to even do that. I suppose copy-paste the ruby cannon and change some stuff around.

I reduced my fighter counts ingame and started heavily restricting logistics/tactical slots to tighten the grip on performance. Though the dev exe just seems to perform much worse in general and I have to do recording in the normal exe anyways.

/e

I have devised a new plan.

I am going to finish all existing material to the best of my ability, and all ships that are modeled but not ingame will be finished and added. Then I will begin recording immediately. This project has gone on long enough, and it's nigh time to end it.

I would still like to see this as a downlodable mod.  You did put this in Modding, which, I will note, usually means you are going to make this a mod for other people to play.

Or you're asking for advice or other support about modding, which is what has gone on in this topic.