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Modder's "Get-an-Answer" Thread

Modder's "Get-an-Answer" Thread

Answers from Modders, for Modders who "Ask a Question"

This is the place to ask and recieve specific modding (mod making) questions and answers. If you have a mod making question, post it here.

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Remember--specific questions, specific answers.  Only respond to the ones you can help solve.  Also, feel free to amplify, clarify, suggest alternatives to or correct answers seen here if such actions are merited and help provide a real solution. No flaming, insults or put downs here in the answers or other posts please.

Thanks in advance for your help and cooperation.  The reason for the rigid rules here is those this thread becomes a usable resource in the future to new people looking for answers.

NOTE: If an answer resolves your issue, please share it here.  These answers will help others coming along later too.  Karma is a great way to respond to people providing help without clogging the thread or bombing their forum mailbox here. Thanks!

 

OTHER SINS HELPFUL MODDING LINKS*

*Links are updated when requested.





The Soase Idiot's Guide

Confused?  No idea where to even start?

Determined to work at it?

This is the place!

 


 

 
   

Sins Modding Wiki

ZombieRus's Eclipse Wizardry

 

     


Tutorials

MyFist0's full modding site.

Emphasis on modeling  and

texturing.                            

 

 

 




                    

REBELLION MODDING TOPICS

Rebellion Modding Q & A

Mesh Editing

Changing Diplomacy Files to Rebellion

IT REALLY HURTS MY BRAIN--HOW TO START

An Idiot's Guide To Getting Started

MyFist0's Modding Megasite!

MOD DOWNLOADS

ZombieRus5's Mod Yard

Directory of Planet Mods

STEAM

STEAM Sins Forums

DEVELOPERS

Sins Developer Journals Forum 2007 to Present

REFERENCE FILES

Research Modifier List

MyFist0's Exported Models & Files

Modifier List

Harpo's Converted Sins Reference Files 2011

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

3dS Texturing Toool & Tips

Ship Fleet Calculator

SoaSE Eclipse Plugin Project

Mesh Resizing Tool--courtesy of the Reqiuem team.

Harpo's Sins Utility Package -- Dropbox

The Sins Optimization Project (TSOP)

Artificial Unintelligence (Mod and AI info)

Sins Data Converter by BCXtreme

EXPLANATIONS & DISCUSSIONS

Rebellion Updates by Blair Frazier

How to Add a Fourth Race

User-updatable Ship Reference Chart

Sins Modding Dictionary

Adding phase Effects to other weapon types

Culture, Explanation/Discussion

Weapons, Explanation/Discusion

Shield Mitigation & Armor, Explanation/Discussion-1

Shield Mitigation & Armor, Explanation/Discussion -2

Graphic Chart of Sin's Counters

Annotated Guide to the Developer.exe

In-Game Map Creator

Weapons Banks & DPS

Combat Mechanics

Rebellion Shield Mitigation & Focus Fire testing

PARTICLE FORGE

Particle Forge Help Thread

GALAXY FORGE

Adding Artifacts

Working Template Examples

SemazRalan's Template Guide

Pirates Base Start Template

SOUND RESOURCES

[SFX] Black Sun SFX/Music Resource for Modders

MODELING & TEXTURING--SOFTIMAGE XSI, 3DS MAX

XSI Texturing, Tutorial

3dS Model Exporter

3DS Max Rigging, Texturing & Exporting, Guide

Modding/Modelling/Texturing/Converting, Tutorials

WIKI'S

Sins of a Solar Empire Official Wiki

 

7,606,503 views 2,761 replies
Reply #1826 Top

That fx stuff being a solid color often occurs to me after alt tabbing. I guess the game unloads and then can't reload resources correctly because interns.

+1 Loading…
Reply #1827 Top

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 1823
Also curious what file controls the spawning of dust clouds and asteroid doodads, and if it's possible to increase the amount and determine a min/max radius.

Each planet entity defines some of the dust/asteroid parameters, and I think they have their own files somewhere (not entity files, can't remember their name) that gives some other options for them. I haven't looked at them much father in depth beyond a few planet mods have used them to add things like moons.

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 1825
Some people have asked me, "Lavo, why don't you use the debug features of the dev exe?" or "While ShowErrors doesn't work well, why not enable logging?" before, and the possibility of this picture occurring again is why.

Well, if you start out using before you make a mod, you should catch the errors before they get to that size.  ;)

Reply #1828 Top

I did some looking and found DustClouds.renderDef, which looks like it directly calls textures and not particles (looks like those huge cloud textures I have somewhere will be handy) and AsteroidDef.asteroidDef, though the distances aren't the same as every other distance number in the game.

Reply #1829 Top

Quoting Seleuceia, reply 1824

Look at the Synergy ability...it has a target filter that makes use of the IsPsi thing....

If you made only the pirate faction(s) Psi (you'd have to change Advent and then synergy, not too hard) then you could do things that specifically target them...

For example, you could make an AoE like armistice that only affects psi ships....or allow a player to "bribe" ships/planets, but only those that are psi...

Not that you couldn't do the above with complicated buffs, but IsPsi is easier....whether it works for you depends on what exactly you need and how much jerry rigging you are willing to do...it isn't perfect and does not directly solve your problem but I figured I'd mention it since it may provide some work arounds....

Thanks.  Doesn't give me everything I'd want but what I may be able to do do is have Psi and non-psi pirate ships/planets.

Worth checking into.

Reply #1830 Top

Re-posting this here so it doesn't get buried, has anyone else here experience the every single ship and structure being invisible glitch? I've had it reported for SoGE before, and I have personally experienced one single time. This glitch, and the "all ships of X faction being a single solid color" glitch, which I have personally never seen, are baffling me as I have absolutely no idea how and why they occur; they did not happen on Entrenchment, or in the case of the latter, not this frequently.

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 1827
Well, if you start out using before you make a mod, you should catch the errors before they get to that size.

That doesn't hold when you purposely do stuff that makes the game throw a fit, such as forcing the game to accept Trinity style maps and doing AI only research. Though in my case I inherited a mod that came with one a many errors. :P

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 1826
That fx stuff being a solid color often occurs to me after alt tabbing. I guess the game unloads and then can't reload resources correctly because interns.

Happens to you, but with particles rather than ships, and after alt tabbing? That's really interesting to see.

Reply #1831 Top

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 1830
Re-posting this here so it doesn't get buried, has anyone else here experience the every single ship and structure being invisible glitch? I've had it reported for SoGE before, and I have personally experienced one single time. This glitch, and the "all ships of X faction being a single solid color" glitch, which I have personally never seen, are baffling me as I have absolutely no idea how and why they occur; they did not happen on Entrenchment, or in the case of the latter, not this frequently.

We used to get this in Requiem quite a lot. For the invisible I think it had something to do with a custom shader we had in from Bailknights becoming out of date, so people who already had a prior version of the mod had to delete that version. Though perhaps another thing caused it too, I remember getting that a lot.

As far as I can tell the solid color thing, when not due to a missing CL texture, is memory related. Sometimes adjusting the graphics settings or restarting the game fixes it.

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 1830
That doesn't hold when you purposely do stuff that makes the game throw a fit, such as forcing the game to accept Trinity style maps and doing AI only research. Though in my case I inherited a mod that came with one a many errors.

I know. I would just question if it really is worth it using those trinity style maps. Forgive me if I've forgotten what your problem with them is, but if they're that big of a hassle I think it would be worth while either scaling your planets back down to normal (with maybe a minimod to have them as they are now) or redesign all the maps to use your current scale. My offer from long ago to rig up a script for you still stands.

And AI only research only gives you a few errors on starting the game, hardly anything that will give you a 2+ GB log file.  ;)

Reply #1832 Top

Quoting Lavo_2, reply 1830


Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 1826That fx stuff being a solid color often occurs to me after alt tabbing. I guess the game unloads and then can't reload resources correctly because interns.

Happens to you, but with particles rather than ships, and after alt tabbing? That's really interesting to see.

It has happened with ships before just not nearly as frequently. Rebellion also reduced how often this seems to happen.

Reply #1833 Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 1831
I know. I would just question if it really is worth it using those trinity style maps. Forgive me if I've forgotten what your problem with them is, but if they're that big of a hassle I think it would be worth while either scaling your planets back down to normal (with maybe a minimod to have them as they are now) or redesign all the maps to use your current scale.

Well, this thread is a year old and is partially forgotten, but it still holds.

Speaking of logs, I do have a version of the mod where maps are non-existent, and only a single Rebellion-compliant map is loaded. I've booted up the game with ShowErrors when I need to go bug squishing, and it's done the job well. I enjoy posting things some people find absurd.

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 1831
We used to get this in Requiem quite a lot. For the invisible I think it had something to do with a custom shader we had in from Bailknights becoming out of date, so people who already had a prior version of the mod had to delete that version. Though perhaps another thing caused it too, I remember getting that a lot.

Quoting IskatuMesk, reply 1832
It has happened with ships before just not nearly as frequently. Rebellion also reduced how often this seems to happen.

Now this is the strange part, I didn't experience these invisibility issues until after porting to Rebellion.

Reply #1834 Top

I had it all the time in diplomacy. I also had a bug that caused animated textures to lose their alpha maps (you can actually see this in some of the explosions on the final Emperor battle in Salvation), this also occurred from alt tabbing. It definitely happens a lot less with Rebellion. Stuff vanishes or loses texture hooks maybe once every 30-40 tests now.

 

Oh, I recall that starting a new game after playing/testing one game also aggravates the problem. I usually close the game and restart it to reload changes (the dev exe is too laggy for my performance testing) so I very rarely run more than one game during a session.

 

/edit

To test this in Rebellion, for my latest internal demo I repeatedly relaunched long games with very high unit counts (for the project) and the bug did not ever occur.

Reply #1835 Top

So I've been toying around with some simple mods lately (just changing numbers in the entity files) and I was wondering if it was possible to upgrade the titan so much so that is get's all of it's abilities at max level?

If I remember correctly the max level is 10, and I vaguely remember that not being enough to get all the abilities, at least not to their highest level..

Is there an entity file or something I can tweak so that the titan either gets more upgrade points per level, or so that is can continue leveling even after 10? (After looking a little more the 10 level limit is hardcoded it seems)

Or is that built into the game? Can I get around that limit somehow? make some of the abilities free?

I've looked, but I can't find any relevant information on titan ability modding, everything seems to be about changing them around..



Thanks for your time
 

Reply #1836 Top

Short answer is NO....you can't change the max level (which is 10) nor can you change the number of ability points earned per level.....

HOWEVER, you do have some other options....you could set the 3 abilities and 3 upgrades (HP, DPS, and AM) to have only three levels instead of four...combined with the ultimate (which you would leave as having two levels), that would give you exactly 20 "upgrades", meaning everything could be filled...

You also could do a combination of removing some levels and "replacing" some upgrades with a "5th passive" that is researchable and in essence upgrades the titans HP, DPS, and/or AM....

Take your pick and more details can be provided...

Reply #1837 Top

Sounds to me like having the passive upgrades made to have 3 levels vs 4 would be the easier choice..

I'm already toying with the entity files and I assume that is where I need to tweak some more in order for that to work?

Care to provide a simple step by step? what lines I need to modify to do what and such? 

Reply #1838 Top

I don't have an installation to look at currently so I will do my best...

The files you will need to tweak will be the titan upgrade entities (in GameInfo)...IIRC they have names like TitanUpgradeSTUFF or something like that....in each file there will be a "count" that tells the game how many levels there are (for that upgrade) and consequently how many times it needs to "search" the file for data (where each search gives it the stats for a single level)...you need to change this from 4 to 3 and then you need to delete the fourth level...

This does NOT need to be done for the levels corresponding to titan ultimate abilities (which have 2 levels)...it will need to be done for the other 6 upgrades for each titan....an alternative would be to do it for only 3 of the upgrades (pick either the ability ones or non-ability ones) but to reduce the number of levels from 4 to 2....take your pick...

For balancing purposes, you may want to change the values granted by each level...for the "passive" upgrades (like HP, DPS, AM) you can do that in the titan upgrade entity itself....for the ability upgrades, you will need to hunt down the actual ability entities (and buff entities) and change them as necessary....you may also want to change the maxNumberLevels (or something like that) in the abilities from 4 to 3 (or 2, depending on how/if you reduce the levels for those upgrades)....

 

Reply #1839 Top

I am having an issue with in-map templates now.

I am trying to create some multiple-group maps that provide specific units based on the race type of the player owning the planet.  Instead, no units at all get placed there.

I have edited pre-Rebellion templates that worked to no avail and have used the Rebellion version of Galaxy Forge and still no results.

Any suggestions?

Here's a simple example (showing just between the "planet items" and "default template" sections).  I've also tried this template in-line with the actual planet entry or at the map end under templates--no go either way.

 

planetItems
templateName ""
subTemplates 0
groups 6
group
           condition
                type "PlanetOwnerIsRaceNormalStart"
                param "TechLoyalist"
           owner "PlanetOwner"
           colonizeChance 0.000000
           items 1
           item "Tech:CapitalShip:Colony"
group
           condition
                type "PlanetOwnerIsRaceNormalStart"
                param "TechRebel"
           owner "PlanetOwner"
           colonizeChance 0.000000
           items 1
           item "Tech:CapitalShip:Colony"
group
           condition
                type "PlanetOwnerIsRaceNormalStart"
                param "PsiLoyalist"
           owner "PlanetOwner"
           colonizeChance 0.000000
           items 1
           item "Psi:CapitalShip:Colony"
group
          condition
               type "PlanetOwnerIsRaceNormalStart"
               param "PsiRebel"
          owner "PlanetOwner"
          colonizeChance 0.000000
          items 1
          item "Psi:CapitalShip:Colony"
group
          condition
               type "PlanetOwnerIsRaceNormalStart"
               param "PhaseLoyalist"
          owner "PlanetOwner"
          colonizeChance 0.000000
          items 1
          item "Phase:CapitalShip:Colony"
group
          condition
               type "PlanetOwnerIsRaceNormalStart"
               param "PhaseRebel"
          owner "PlanetOwner"
          colonizeChance 0.000000
          items 1
          item "Phase:CapitalShip:Colony"
spawnProbability 1.000000
useDefaultTemplate FALSE

Reply #1840 Top

Quoting Sinperium, reply 1839
param "TechLoyalist"
owner "PlanetOwner"
colonizeChance 0.000000
items 2
item "Tech:CapitalShip:Colony"
item "Artifact:WormholeTravel"

I don't know if this would cause the whole template to break down, but I have found artifacts generally cannot be owned by a player. If you're going to spawn in artifacts or bonuses, I always put them in a separate group with "NoOwner".

Reply #1841 Top

Thanks Goa.  I almost tried that.  Let me delete them out and then see.  Back in a few.

I've edited the template to just have the one ship and it still produces nothing.

Does anyone have a working (in Rebellion) template example where a race condition determines which group is spawned at a planet?

The idea is to have a Vasari player have Vasari ships, Advent have Advent ones, etc. but still allow player to choose whichever race they want when they start the game.

Reply #1842 Top

Quoting Sinperium, reply 1841
Does anyone have a working (in Rebellion) template example where a race condition determines which group is spawned at a planet?

Hold on, are you trying to control what race spawns and a given planet, or what a player at planet X gets, depending on their race? Assuming the latter, I'm 90% a vanilla Sins map has this, let me look for the name... Edit: Quick Strike was like this, but for some reason the map hasn't been updated for rebellion, so the params are screwy making the map not work right.

Reply #1843 Top

Isn't that how all the default starts are set?  You determine what the player starts with based off their starting race...that's how TEC start with TEC extractors and a TEC factory (as opposed to some other race's)....

Reply #1844 Top

Here's a fixed Quick Strike with working groups, have a look at it Sinperium: http://pastebin.com/4dQ4zpT7

Reply #1845 Top

Quoting Sinperium, reply 1841

Thanks Goa.  I almost tried that.  Let me delete them out and then see.  Back in a few.

I've edited the template to just have the one ship and it still produces nothing.

Does anyone have a working (in Rebellion) template example where a race condition determines which group is spawned at a planet?

The idea is to have a Vasari player have Vasari ships, Advent have Advent ones, etc. but still allow player to choose whichever race they want when they start the game.

Do you have quickstart on? Quickstart does not automatically get what goes in normal start, you have to do a template for both normal and quick start. This isn't in a template but it lets me hard code some starting forces for each possible start and race.

http://pastebin.com/mehqHC7b

Reply #1846 Top

I have quick start off but originally the templates was for both starts--didn't work either.

Looking at Lavo's now.

I have no idea what's going on with these--our templates are the same format.  I'm going to have to look really closely here.

Reply #1847 Top

Anyone got a clue what could be causing tons of these two errors at startup?

C:\Projects\P4\SinsRebellion\main\CodeSource\Engine\DataStructures\FixedArray.h(117): assert! [i >= 0]
C:\Projects\P4\SinsRebellion\main\CodeSource\Engine\Math\RandomStream.h(79): assert! [maxV >= minV]

Reply #1848 Top

Lots of things can cause the first error, so I'd say focus on the 2nd....

Hmmm...seems like you have a situation somewhere where the "min" value is bigger than the "max" value...could be something in the gameplay.constants file (marketDef?)...could be in a planet entity (resource asteroid counts?)....could be in the asteroiddef file, you have min/max counts there as well...maybe something in the GSD (can't remember if min/max counts crop up in that anywhere)....

+1 Loading…
Reply #1849 Top

Anyone know where the code for Galaxy Travel (aka between stars) is located? I dont mean the research or artifact entities. I just want to try changing the code that actually controls the parameters of the interstellar phase jumps.

Reply #1850 Top

Quoting teeheez, reply 1849

Anyone know where the code for Galaxy Travel (aka between stars) is located? I dont mean the research or artifact entities. I just want to try changing the code that actually controls the parameters of the interstellar phase jumps.

To do what exactly? You cannot access the game's source code directly, but depending on what you want to do there are a handful of modifiers scattered about you can modify.