[ALPHA] PirateMod v0.3

from Sins Forums

http://germanlearner.com/uploads/PirateMod.zip

This is just a VERY basic release at this point. What PiratesMod does is makes it that there is another race,
called pirates. This race will play/plays quite differently than the other two classes. First off, pirates
can't capture new planets and they can't build ships. What they must do is capture ships.

If you build a Pirate Scout Frigate and research the BOARDING PARTY ability then the frigate will be able to
capture other ships after 8 seconds when it uses this ability. As you upgrade the ability the antimatter cost
and the distance you can use boarding party will increase. The Pirate scout is faster and has better armor
than the normal one but to survive you'll have to play hit and run until you can "acquire" enough of a navy.
BOARDING PARTY CAN NOT BE AUTOMATED!!! I did this intentionally. I want the player to control the main Scout
because later on you'll have only one!

You can also research phase cloaking, the ability to get more money from scuttling ships, etc. ALL research
requires no crystal and ore. Pirates are all about money. If they want something researched they can just "buy"
a scientist that will do it for them! Pirates can also research the ability to jump faster. I thought this goes
hand in hand with their hit and run tactics. They are all about speed....speed and loot...hmm...speed, loot
and winches!

(remember, you get money for taking out trading ships too! How nice and piratey is that!)
---------------------------------------------------------
ALL COSTS AND BUILD TIMES, ETC RIGHT NOW ARE SHORT BECAUSE OF TESTING. I DIDN"T FEEL LIKE WAITING FOR EVERYTHING!!!
PLEASE DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT THEM, THIS IS JUST THE ALPHA VERSION AND IT'LL BE RIGHT IN LATER EDITIONS


Everything is VERY basic like I said, I just started this today but I wanted to at least show you all what I am
going for. I want something that plays completely different than the other races. Pirates are naturally hit
and runners and I thought this was a good idea. I will be making it that pirates are good at getting money but
since everything they do only uses money I will have to balance it out so they don't get too much. Also, right now
you can build as many Scouts as you want.....which means you can run in and assimlate LOTS of things. I only have
this in there for testing. Later on I am going to limit the number....maybe to even one ship.

I will be releasing updates of this every couple days. If you know of any abilities you'd like to see them have,
let me know.

THINGS I WILL BE ADDING:
-Pirates get the ability to spy, reveal map, etc
-Pirates will be able to use an ability to slow the jump speeds of ships
-Pirates will be able to cause chaos with other players economies
-And some other things....I forgot to write them all down and my head hurts...

Sometimes the mod crashes the game. Not sure why it does it. I have checked, doublechecked, and triplechecked everything. If you are able to figure out why it crashes please let me know. Sometimes it does it right away, other times it lets me play for quite a while....no idea...

 

Rob

http://germanlearner.com/uploads/PirateMod.zip

modding
7,371 views 19 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
From what you've mentioned this looks very nice. Making a Pirate mod crossed my mind the other day, but after think about all the different things I'd have to change, I was put off. Got a small addon cooking at the mo instead.

Might try this tomorrow when I get a chance.

I do have one question though which I'm trying to figure out myself. How did you add new research? I'm pretty sure I covered everything, but could you give a quick list of how you did it? I've added the strings, icons, and the research file itself, but it wouldn't show up. If you can't help I'll post a new thread, but I was hoping you could give me a hand. Cheers.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
you could make it into a borg-pirate mod, by changing the textures of the pirate vessels you get to use at start (not all pirates) to have green/glow streaks across them and maybe each time a vessel is assimilated, you spawn a new vessel of the appropriate type with green streaks :).

the story behind the mod would be something like:

A borg scout (had to be really low mass) with a new device was able to make a phase space rift and enter the dimension where the tec exist. It was unfortunate to enter a system occupied by 5 pirates bases and fought hard, but eventually only assimilated a hand full before being destroyed. The assimilated pirates retreated.

your role is to expand the borg empire in this dimension and possibly find a way to get in touch with the borg from the delta quandrant for help in assimilating the advent to learn a lot more about advents psi ability and use it. The final goal is to possibly learn about the threat that follows the vasari and if possible assimilate that threat, to do this it might be necessary to assimilate the vasari.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
-deleted
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I wasn't sure if I wanted togo with something named Borg...because then everyone would think Startrek and I was just throwing this together to learn how to mod things. I picked pirates because they are already in the game and alot of the abiltiies in game can be used for them as well. With pirates you can add a new rac to thegame without changing the overall theme of the game. (of course, by adding pirates I wouldn't have to skin new ships too! I suck at skinning!)

But if the pirates work out then who knows, maybe using the code it can be easily changed to Borg
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
From what you've mentioned this looks very nice. Making a Pirate mod crossed my mind the other day, but after think about all the different things I'd have to change, I was put off. Got a small addon cooking at the mo instead. Might try this tomorrow when I get a chance.I do have one question though which I'm trying to figure out myself. How did you add new research? I'm pretty sure I covered everything, but could you give a quick list of how you did it? I've added the strings, icons, and the research file itself, but it wouldn't show up. If you can't help I'll post a new thread, but I was hoping you could give me a hand. Cheers.
End of quote




The research was added like so....

In the player file. (In the GameInfo)
for isntance I have the pirates player file - PlayerPirates.entity

Under the research section I added - entityDefName "RESEARCHSUBJECT_ARTIFACT_GALAXYTRAVELPIRATETWO"
(This is the upgrade Pirate version of the artifact, GalaxyTravel)

Now you open up RESEARCHSUBJECT_ARTIFACT_GALAXYTRAVELPIRATETWO.entity
(I based most of the code on the Artifact version)

Inside you will see things like...

researchWindowLocation (This is where you want the icon at in the research window)
block 1
pos [ 0 , 2 ]
ResearchField "NonCombat"
Prerequisites (What prereqs you want for it, In this case they need GalaxyTravelPirate to be level 5 to unlock this)
NumResearchPrerequisites 1
ResearchPrerequisite
Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_ARTIFACT_GALAXYTRAVELPIRATE"
Level 5
MinimumArtifactLevel -1 (I tell it that it needs no artifacts)
BaseUpgradeTime 90.000000 (How long we want the upgrade base to be)
PerLevelUpgradeTime 15.000000 (Every level add this much time to upgrade)
BaseCost (The cost of the base ugrade)
credits 1600.000000
metal 0.000000
crystal 0.000000
PerLevelCostIncrease (Cost increase per level)
credits 600.000000
metal 0.000000
crystal 0.000000
Tier 0 (What tier to make it, by making it 0 it doesn't need but a single research station)
onlyWorksIfTierLabsExist FALSE
MaxNumResearchLevels 5 (How many times it can be upgraded)
priority 1.000000
researchBoolModifiers 1 (What the research changes)
researchModifier
modifierType "AllowGalaxyTravel"
researchFloatModifiers 1
researchModifier
modifierType "HyperspaceBetweenSystemSpeedAdjustment"
baseValue 0.000000
perLevelValue 0.100000
artifactPicture "ArtifactPictureGalaxyTravel"



There really much to it besides modifying the basics. Most of the "custom" code I took here and there around the different files. in the GameInfo folder of the mod if you sort it by date, you can see the ones I modified. Just take a look at them and see how they differ


Rob
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
hmm can you tell me the size of each of the sub-directories that should be in ...\mods\piratesmod\

I copied textures and mesh and its still crashing.

now it looks like
..\mods\piratesmod root directory of mod
..\mods\piratesmod\mesh\ -57,697,948 bytes, 321 files.
..\mods\piratesmod\texture\ -1,158,104,804 bytes, 875 files.
..\mods\piratesmod\gameinfo\ -1,734,249 bytes, 917 files.
..\mods\piratesmod\string\ the english.str file.

the only mod to crash from the mods I use.

it crashes when I try enabling it.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
hmm can you tell me the size of each of the sub-directories that should be in ...\mods\piratesmod\I copied textures and mesh and its still crashing.now it looks like..\mods\piratesmod root directory of mod..\mods\piratesmod\mesh\ -57,697,948 bytes, 321 files. ..\mods\piratesmod\texture\ -1,158,104,804 bytes, 875 files...\mods\piratesmod\gameinfo\ -1,734,249 bytes, 917 files...\mods\piratesmod\string\ the english.str file.the only mod to crash from the mods I use.it crashes when I try enabling it.
End of quote


Sure thing.
GameInfo = Size 1.65MB (1,734,249) On Disk 4.13Mb (4,337,664)
Mesh = Size 156MB (163,644,130) On Disk 156MB (164,376,576)
String = 540 KB (553,631) on Disk 544KB (557,056)
Textures = 1.08GB (1,161,60,708) On Disk 1.08 Gig (1,163,800,576)

Rob
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
hmm I wonder why textures size is different (which files are different), I made sure to check your files were there too.

anyway you used the mesh directory from the mod editing package, not the mesh directory from the sins directory, not sure if that would make a difference, but even changing that doesnt help.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
hmm I wonder why textures size is different (which files are different), I made sure to check your files were there too.anyway you used the mesh directory from the mod editing package, not the mesh directory from the sins directory, not sure if that would make a difference, but even changing that doesnt help.
End of quote


I just took the zip, installed it fresh, copied over the files, and it worked. Not sure what the difference is between our versions.

Is your game updated to the newest patch?

My textures is a bit biger because I have a few textures in there I am still messing with. Here are all the textures I have in mine,

http://germanlearner.com/textures.rar
(these are all the modified textures)


In total, 189 files in textures....upload willbe done 2 minutes after this post
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Im using 1.02.
I rather not download the whole texture directory sorry.
maybe I will try the next version of the mod.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Its not the whole texture directory, Like I said, it's just the ones that I changed. It's 6 files I believe, 10 meg total
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
The above texture link doesnt work (thought it might just be taking some time to upload).
The texture folder with the original link only has 5 files.

Anyway can anyone else try the original link and see if it works, I wanna know if theres anything wrong with the installation of sins.

thanks in advance.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
This mod crashes the game each time I try to enable it.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for the info on research Rob. I posted a new thread too, and it turned out to be really helpful for other things as well.

As for the mod, just tried it, but crashed on activation. I only had 5 files in my Textures folder too. Perhaps re-uploading the working copy you have might solve this.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
okay so its not my copy, most likely one texture file is missing I guess.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Ok, New rezipped version added. Please try it again. Remember to copy over your textures folder and mesh folder from your Sins installation folder.

http://germanlearner.com/uploads/PirateMod.rar
and also
http://germanlearner.com/uploads/PirateMod.zip (saw I couldn't edit my first post so I made a zip too)


Rob
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
okay doesnt crash at enabling anymore, gonna try it out a bit.

oh you can re-edit the first post in a thread via tools.

bugs:

on a random small map:
-the game crashed when first jumping to the closest planet.
-the game crashed when neutrals engaged my scouts, like a second after the first fire was exchanged. I killed 2 tec ships (enemy players scouts) beforehand, so it wasnt the first battle.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
For me it only crashes once I have boarding parties. If I do not take it I do not crash.

New: It seems to be a random combat crash. I have went 10 planets and killed them then crash or it may crash on the first one.