I did have a great video on environment cubes but I searched and search, no go

So, is your EnvCube texture 256x256 now?

it should be 6 frames, 1 for each side of the cube. Best to just try and paint the existing file and keep its format I think.

A good example of what the environmentcube does

Well, I confirmed for a fact that XSI 2012 exports don't work (or at least not with my pipeline/changes). I'm pretty sure that, if it's just the order that got changed, that it was related to how the material information was conveyed.

Now, I'm currently trying to figure out why sins keeps crashing 30 seconds - a minute in, regardless of races, new games, or saves. I thought it was the corvette roletype not existing, but I added that back in, and it's still exploding.

SZ0 > Alright, when I get to textures I'll try grayscaling the first channel, copying it to the other 2, then inverting that for the alpha and will see what happens.

myfist0 >

Alright, pretty standard fare for what I expected. I was more curious if the entire mesh would just vanish because the "origin" (aka the center of the model) was not in camera view. This is a huge problem in other games, like blizzard games, that cull regardless of other meshes or parts on the screen if the origin leaves the camera.

For tangents, I just assign the tangent map to the same UV's generated through max. It isn't perfect, but it does look a lot better in rebellion. I also figured out how to get hard edge smoothing going on, so no more broken smoothing. Progress!

The texture animation limit I'm referring to is the limit that texture animation-based particles seem to run into if the frame count exceeds a certain number. I've tried having some exceptionally large texture sheets run through particles but it always seemed like after a certain # of frames they roll back and freak out. I haven't tried with Rebellion yet, though. I'll have a look at the txt and give it another shot sometime.

The channels are all already gray scale. What I do is make a standard normal map with an alpha, make an inverted version as well, change them both from RGBA to Greyscale then the original back to RGBA. This removes all colour info so everything is effectively grey scale but with the extra channels needed. Copy the inverted grey scaled normal map to the alpha channel only of the original and save as dds.

Another way, perhaps the original way, is to copy the red channel to the alpha, then duplicate the green to be the red and blue, so effectively you have 3 green channels and the red as an alpha. All blue info will be lost, though I suppose you could blend the blue and green with a screen filter or something, then insert that as your R,G & B channels.

Which ever way you find easiest I guess.

Well, by grayscale I meant.... butts.

At some point I'll give this a shot and massacre the trial of Filter Forge for textures.

Meanwhile, I am curious if I am lump all 4 roletypes of the Envoy, Colony ship, starbase builder, and siege onto one ship to free up slots for non-AI behavior intermingled ships.

/e

Well, giving the scout 7 roletypes ended in unceremonious crashes.

/e 2

Oh. The AI doesn't read roletypes, at least not exclusively. It also reads statCountType. This puts a real dent in my plans.

You could lump the colony, starbase builder, and siege ship, together for a human player easily, use the FrigateSiege statcounttype so the AI will use it as a siege ship, and using 3 NotOnPage frigate slots, make an envoy, colony ship, and star base builder for the AI's exclusive use, which would free up 3 slots for you to use.

Oh really, do the NotOnPage frigates count towards the AI statcounttype build list? That is some very, very useful information. I will test this ASAP.

Yes, and the AI can build not on page frigates too. So if you don't want them actually built you need to lock them out with cost or unobtainable research.

Though to note, the AI needs ships with the FrigateScout, FrigateSiege, and FrigateColony statCountType in order to function properly. Envoys and FrigateStarBaseConstructor aren't necessary, however it's been noted that the AI does not work too well when you give another ship a starbase building ability and the appropriate frigateRoleType.

So technically, I can bypass the buildspace limitations altogether and give the AI-controlled factions an unlimited ship build list?

Oh hell yes. Progress in America, brothers.

Not unlimited, unfortunately, NotOnPage frigates are limited to a total of 9, just like regular pages, and 3 slots are taken up by constructors and cargo ships. Though that still leaves you 6 slots to work with.

I believe putting ships with a FrigateSiege or FrigateAntiModule statCountType, forget which of the two, likes to crash the game.

Yes, its 256x256. However, I'm not sure what you mean by frames. Is that six separate 256x256 texture for each side or what?

If you open 1, you will see 1 texture with 6 squares lined up horizontally, UVed to a cube. This tries to match the skybox texture which is spherical but is strictly for the reflections. Different programs put the cube UVs in different locations. I did have the one for XSI but I cant find it. Here is another example.

To make a new map like above, make a cube in xsi and UV it to one of the environment cube textures. Flip or move the uvs till the edges match, keep track and post the findings.

I will do one tonight and make a new post.

Hmm, interesting, I opened up the green skybox (I think thats cube4) and I only saw one square. I'll check the others later today.

Okay so, I'm working on this buff chain, and something baffling is happening. I'm getting the window below, followed by a minidump after I hit cancel or continue. This happens in a specific point in the buff chain, when the SPAWN buff hits it's time limit. Edit: In order, the files are (paste link here): BUFF_SUPERCAPITAL_CAPOFFOUR_COUNTER_I, BUFF_SUPERCAPITAL_CAPOFFOUR_COUNTER_II, BUFF_SUPERCAPITAL_CAPOFFOUR_COUNTER_III, BUFF_SUPERCAPITAL_CAPOFFOUR_COUNTER_IV, BUFF_SUPERCAPITAL_CAPOFFOUR_DISABLECONSTRUCTION, BUFF_SUPERCAPITAL_ALLINDEPENDANCE_PLANET, BUFF_SUPERCAPITAL_ALLINDEPENDANCE_SPAWN, ABILITY_BUILDSUPERCAPITAL_ALLINDEPENDANCE.

Sinperium moonlighting as a coder on your mod Lavo?

No, he isn't. Though it would be interesting to see him working as a coder, albeit not near something that can be easily broken...

 Have others repro'd this weirdness?

Well. Like I was telling the guys in TS, I've been trying to pinpoint that odd crash. It's not throwing any errors, just minidumping. I think I've narrowed it down to the Gameplay.Constants file which, if memory serves correctly, gave me issues in Salvation, too.

I've only changed the damage values (they are all 1.0 now) and the income from population, and the AI retreat threshold down to 0.01. The game crashes within 30 seconds to a minute or so - I would swear it has something to do with them discovering planets with scouts, but I don't really know for sure. It crashes on all of my saves in about the same time anyways. I thought it was due to the AI profile changes I had made (all tac structures/research and ship building with no mines) but restoring the defaults didn't fix anything. I think I also changed the critical hit sounds to use nothing.

Could any of these easily crash?

Are there any statCountTypes or RoleTypes (for frigates) that you are not using?  Did you change the construction frigates or their spawn times?

As far as I can tell, the AI stuff is all accounted for. Without the gameplay.constants file there is never any crashes (at least none I've run into), but the second I re-enable my changes it goes back to constantly crashing.

I see some of the construction frigate files in here, but I don't know if/what I changed on them. Do they have relationships with the constants file?

Little did I know when I developed that monstrosity of a buff chain that it would it lead to an error that shouldn't officially exist. That's extremely bizarre, considering I don't think Sins has ever required the CD to be in the drive. Binary decay seems a nice answer at this point...

Your other super capital abilities work fine though, right?

Post your gameplay.constants file so we can have a look at it...it is very possible there's just a typo somewhere...

www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/deepthroatgazelle/Gameplay.constants

There you go. Straight from India with love.

You have no idea...

They do, for the most part... The cap of four version, as previously mentioned, is giving some serious issues; recently a bad bug was found with all the others, related to the "build time" simulation I put in, and a solution for that was finally found yesterday. Edit: Seems the cap of four version, with some slight tweaking, is working now... Sins never ceases to confuse and bewilder me.

Some things I've noticed IskatuMesk:

For "allegianceEnemyMaxLossRate", you simply have a value of "0"...try making that value "0.0000000000", giving it the same number of digits as the original value....

A similar thing with "baseTaxRatePerPopulation"....may want the value to be "1.000" instead of just "1"...

Likewise for all your allegiances (use "3.00" instead of 3)...

I wouldn't be worried about your damage tables, I've never had a problem so long as all of them had at least 2 digits so I doubt you need to change those...

Very good chance the problem is here :  "NumCriticalHitEffectSoundIDs 3"

If the game is crashing every time a ship engages in combat (which for new games would correspond to when scout ships start losing shields and taking hull damage), this may be why...either set the Num to 0 or actually put sound files there....I'm not sure if this is actually a problem but it could be so might as well change it...

Last but not least, make sure your file ends with a blank line if it doesn't already...probably not a problem, but it never hurts to check....