modding on a weaker system

from Sins Forums

Ive been playing sins on single player for a while and while i get annilalated on mp ive recently come across the forums and am interested in modding the game with some of the things ive seen here.

My system however is somewhat old and only has 1gb ram, hence i play on lower graphical settings.

Ive never added a mod to a game before so i would like some basic advice from people who know a thing or two about it.

Simple things like: installation, how to get the mod running, system requirements, that kind of thing.

Also ive noticed that some of the mods ive seen dont seem to get updated with the newer patches, so if i downloaded a newer patch would the mod still work? And if i wanted to play a mp game how could i go back to regualr sins for that game?

Thank you for your input

modding
4,198 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Hmm thats quit a lot at once. Well to "install" a mod download it and unpack it to your mod folder. You can find the path for your mod folder by going to the options menu in the game, then mods and then show path. Notice that the appdata folder is hidden and will need to be shown. Start the game when you have put the mod in the folder and go to options and then mods. Now the mod should showup in the list and then you can enable it.

For making your own mod you can read the documentation from the forgetools 3 package. The particle forge and galaxy forge can still be used, but all else is outdated. In order to get some updated reference files copy the gameinfo folder from you install folder over to your mod folder and use harpos bintotext converter. You can get it from his utility thread in this forum. Some things in the documentation is a little outdated, but it gives a good introduction to how you do some basic modding for sins.

I hope this will help you in getting started and if you have any questions just ask ^^

 ~ gruntmaster1

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

grunt answered a couple a questions, I'll pick up the rest.

Some mods do require better specs then Sins itself, but these req's probably won't be posted because testing wasn't done to determine their minimum specs(they're mods after all). These are moslty mods that increase the graphics of the game and I can only think of 'Bailknight's Graphics Mod' but the graphics improvements from that mod are used a few others as well. You'll still be able to play the mod, but things will just slow down and turn into a slideshow quicker. Also, some mods have ship models and textures of a higher quality then original sins, this may reduce game performance as well.

Old mods do many times get broken when a new patch is released. To avoid this you can either make an archive of the old sins version by right clicking the game and using Impulse's archive function. Or you can download a tool called 'Hapro's Mod Updater' which automaticly updates mod files to the same parameters that the new version of sins uses. Be warned, Harpo's editor does not work perfectly, as pretty much no program does, it also only works with certain versions of sins(1.01+, I think), so you can't update a mod that is from 1.05. 

Hope that answers the rest!

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

as myles suggested, the mod updater ONLY works with sins 1.15+/entrenchment 1.01+ to the current version and is intended as a reletivley quick way for mods to be updated to the latest patch, but the mod updater also has all of my released utilities in the rar.

as far as converting very old mods ie pre version 1.15 there is a lot more than just the entity files changed so the problems get so large that the quick way is for a PERSON to manually read through the files and make the same changes to a fresh copy of the reference files for the sins version that they have.

installing mods

assuming you have sins 1.181/entrenchment 1.041,  the Mods NEED to be placed here for xp
C:\Documents and Settings\'user name'\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a
Solar Empire\Mods-v1.181
C:\Documents and Settings\'user name'\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a
Solar Empire\Mods-entrenchment v1.041

or here for vista/windows 7
C:\Users\'user name'\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-v1.181
C:\Users\'user name'\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment
v1.041


NOTE the first two folders after the 'user name' are hidden , so to see them you must first
click on 'tools' then 'folder options', then 'view', then click on 'show hidden files& folders'
then click ok, then you will be able to browse your want to the folder. I suggest when you find
the folder that you create a shortcut to it on the desktop

NOTE 2 the 'user name' in the above paths is your WINDOWS login user name, eg Administrator

harpo

 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

SoA 2 has been constructed almost entirely on low end systems. With the goal of "if your computer can run sins then you can run SoA 2". While i have a dual core laptop with 4 gigs of ram, its video chipset well to put it mildly SUCKS. I rate it about equal to an old gforce 6600. I can play games like supreme commander, but i have to nerf all settings to low, and the newest stuff... forget it. it aint happening.

My big rig is pretty much industrial art, and virtually useless for anything other than web surfing, and playing sins. I keep it because most of my modding programs dont work well in vista, or my laptop (as you will find out if you run vista). Its an amd sempron 3100+, 1 gig of ram, and a gforce 6600gt video card.

You will have to keep most of your texture settings at medium, or low with 1 gig of ram. The advantage of modding on a low end system is that if the mod works well on your rig it will run excellent on a higher end system.

 

Here is an interesting site if you want to tweak your old box, and get some more speed from it http://www.blackviper.com/

Dont mess around with your settings if you dont know what you are doing.