Sins Plus and Balknight's Graphics. The way the game should have been released?

from Sins Forums
First of let me say, i like this game a lot, and have played it for countless, and i mean COUNTLESS hours. But there's something i don't quite understand.

Sins Plus (by Uzii) has 11 different planet types, with each one being a little box of excitement to find and colonize.
One person, Uzii did most of the work on the mod, with credits given to others for planet skins and whatnot, but I must say, just little things like a couple extra planets make this game so much fun all over again. It's a shame that i can only play it against pitiful AI.

Balknight's Graphics Mod makes the vanilla effects look downright pathetic. I mean, this guy did an amazing job with particles and effects. I'm sure a full development studio could have done what they did in a couple months, but with a couplehundred manhours adding up to a week of departmental work.

These are just my two personal favorites, because i like the gameplay mechanics of the vanilla game, and these two mods don't attempt to edit that (too much).

Most mods that i've seen in other games, change the way the games look, such as battlefield having desert combat mod, or homeworld adding extra ships, but i have never seen a game overhauled so nicely by a few select people, in a way that has nothing to do with "taste," it's just so much better in every way.

I guess what i'm saying, is that thanks to the amazing modders in this community, many which i havent mentioned, (i mean Balknight's working on another civ, and there's this guy overhaulin the game with 3 new civs, but that's off on a tangent...) I feel like Sins of A Solar Empire could be so much funner if these aspects were included so that they could be played against other online players seamlessly, without having to get a whole group of people to get the exact same merged package that i created out of my own preference.

Thank you devs, and modders. This game is AWESOMEE, but what do you guys think?

Adama_Repack_V1.0
40,463 views 21 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Nice job putting these 2 essential mods together in a neat package Adama. I love the Sins Plus mod because it improves the game to make it a little deeper, which is something it needs. I like the Balknight's Graphics because it makes the game look much much better in so many ways especially how the frigate factory and cap ship factory glow to show that they are in action.

I believe this must be put into the regular game because it is just extremely essential.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Most mods that i've seen in other games, change the way the games look, such as battlefield having desert combat mod, or homeworld adding extra ships, but i have never seen a game overhauled so nicely by a few select people, in a way that has nothing to do with "taste," it's just so much better in every way.
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Better in every way? Says who? Some people would like Sins to be more simple, while some would like it to be more complex. It has all to do with "taste".

Now for some good feedback of my own. An official mod package download, which could be downloaded from the update page, would be very nice. This package would have the most up-to-date version of the best mods, and the best part, the player would have the option to choose which mods to install, and also which ones to uninstall. All of this should be done with great ease. Sort of like the X2 and X3 games have done it.

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I sent the OP a private message about this, but I thought others might like to hear the answer. Is there a way to combine these two mods so they can both be used? I'd love to do that, and then have my 3 friends who I play this game with do the same thing, and hopefully we could play online with both mods enabled! Thanks!
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
What I did is take the package for bail knights mod (minus the game info folder) and pasted it into the sins plus folder with the other folders, overwriting the common files(this leaves the new planet files etc. Its soooo good :)
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I really dislike it when people describe mods as "the way the game should have been". Personally, I like the game just as it is out of the box. The mods are nice if you want 'em (I use Balknight's graphics mod) but to say it's how the game "should have been" is a bit arrogant if you ask me.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
are you talking about Bailknight`s Graphic Mod, or is this something different?

(refered to as balknights a couple of times, just want to make sure people who are not familar with it can find it)
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I'm talking about Balknight's, and I already did compile them both together, and got a bunch of people online playing the mix. I will give a link on this page when i edit the package with a readme.

I'm assuming that it's okay with the orginal mod creators, because they did release it to the public, but I'll pm just to be sure.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I'm assuming that it's okay with the orginal mod creators, because they did release it to the public, but I'll pm just to be sure.
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Well, you should have PM'd first -- some people can be picky about things like that -- but I imagine combining the two mods, with appropriate credit being given, isn't something any reasonable person could complain about.

Alas, people aren't always reasonable.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
What I did is take the package for bail knights mod (minus the game info folder) and pasted it into the sins plus folder with the other folders, overwriting the common files(this leaves the new planet files etc. Its soooo good
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Is it really this easy? I haven't tied yet and am going to when I get off work, and I really hope it's this simple. EDIT after saw new posts: sweet, please do post the amalgamated mod when you have it!

As for "the way it should have been", yeah it's both a matter of taste and hardware. Part of Sins' wide appeal is that I can play it nicely even on my fairly old machine and still get good performance, so having super upgraded graphics, however nice they may be, may not be for everything.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Here's the URL Balknight's GFX + Sins Plus by Uzii. Adama repack v1.0
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CommanderAdama, well done and very much appreciated.

You should consider creating your own thread so you can keep this updated as new versions of these mods appear.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I really dislike it when people describe mods as "the way the game should have been". Personally, I like the game just as it is out of the box. The mods are nice if you want 'em (I use Balknight's graphics mod) but to say it's how the game "should have been" is a bit arrogant if you ask me.
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To be a little fair to me, i never stated that it was in fact the way it should have released. The title was meant to provoke conversation, as it is a forum, and i don't use it as a medium normally use forums as a means to convey my arrogance.

After playing a lot of the repack, i see that there is something to be said about the inherent simplicity of the game before modding.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Is anyone else having an issue with this? For some reason it doesn't seem to include Uzii's new planet types when I run this mod -I've explored several maps and the only new thing I've seen is Space Junk.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
You need to use Random maps. The existing ones aren't overhauled to use the regular planets.

Ideally, they would just add these two mods to the next patch :)
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
I have been using only random maps, actually. And what's bizarre is that the first map I did with Uzii's mod had all kinds of barren, paradise, toxic, etc. planets. Now three maps in (using ONLY Uzii's mod now) I've seen at most two or three space junks. Is the chance for them to appear really low, or does it only work on large or huge random maps? I'm confounded by this.

EDIT: Scratch that, I think I noobed it up with how I extracted them, and the mods just weren't loading at all, so I was playing vanilla (though that doesn't explain how the space junk showed up...huh). Anyway, now I'm getting a minidump when I load up this combo mod, and some errors when it's extracting.

UPDATE 2: There does seem to be a corruption in the merge mod Adama provided, because I did my own merge and didn't have any problems.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Here's the URLBalknight's GFX + Sins Plus by Uzii. Adama repack v1.0
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That URL does not work.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
I have been using only random maps, actually. And what's bizarre is that the first map I did with Uzii's mod had all kinds of barren, paradise, toxic, etc. planets. Now three maps in (using ONLY Uzii's mod now) I've seen at most two or three space junks. Is the chance for them to appear really low, or does it only work on large or huge random maps? I'm confounded by this.EDIT: Scratch that, I think I noobed it up with how I extracted them, and the mods just weren't loading at all, so I was playing vanilla (though that doesn't explain how the space junk showed up...huh). Anyway, now I'm getting a minidump when I load up this combo mod, and some errors when it's extracting.UPDATE 2: There does seem to be a corruption in the merge mod Adama provided, because I did my own merge and didn't have any problems.
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Space Junk is already in the vanilla game, that explains it :P Sins just adds ship graveyards not space junk.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
Space Junk is already in the vanilla game, that explains it Sins just adds ship graveyards not space junk.
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Ha, that's what I get for playing with a mod so early into the game, I didn't even notice :) In any case, I do think there's something wrong with the merge mod linked to above.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
I'm assuming that it's okay with the orginal mod creators, because they did release it to the public, but I'll pm just to be sure.
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Well, you should have PM'd first -- some people can be picky about things like that -- but I imagine combining the two mods, with appropriate credit being given, isn't something any reasonable person could complain about.Alas, people aren't always reasonable.
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There's nothing wrong with mashing two mods together (or more) on your machine. What's wrong is taking two or more mods, putting them together, and then releasing them under your name without the original authors' permission, or worse, without crediting them.

But in all seriousness I think the community here is too mature for stuff like this to ever happen.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
I have to disagree with the OP.

As far as variety of planets goes, that's a balance issue and complexity issue. It's always easy to say, after the game is released, more should've been included, but you have to remember that developers have to consider time and money, as well as fun and variety - sometimes sacrifices have to be made. And all those extra planets, are they really balanced? I mean maybe the couple of hundred people that downloaded the mod find them just fine, but what would happen if you were to put it in the game - we may very well see a huge number of "nurf!" and "buff!" threads popup for all those extra planets.

Balknight made a great mod, I use it myself, but again, this is a performance issue. IC & SD made it clear from the beginning that the game will be highly scalable, and very much playable on low-end systems. Now, with Balknight's mod, on my e6600 PC, with 2gb, and a 8800gtx, I had a slowdown when two large fleets met, I imagine if there was another fleet or two of the same size the game would become unplayable. This kinda thing never happened b4 I installed the mod. Now I still use it because this kinda situation doesn't often present itself (i'm still playing medium maps) but it's something to consider nonetheless.

I will admit this though, if the game was released with 2-3 more planets types, and a bit more rich effects, it would've been better w/o impacting neither performance nor balance in significant way, but then we might not have had Balknight's mod or even Uzii's mod. And again, we don't know why the decision was made for those two things to be as they are but I'm sure it wasn't because the developers were lazy...*

"You know man, seems like the effects for this Tec gauss gun could use a bit more "bang!""
"Nah, forget it. Just give me a cold one, open up a bag of Doritos and let's watch some Colbert Report"

:D

*Not saying that you said they were lazy, just making a point.