Any way to start a two player game and control both sides?

from Sins Forums

I don't think there's a way to start a new game and control both sides of it. 

If not, I wish there was, and think there should be. 

There are some ships/abilities/structures/etc that I just don't bother with during multiplayer because I have no idea how effective they are, and it costs - possibly the game - to find out.

One example is the Vasari's overseer ship (I think) ability that can delay enemies trying to phase jump to one of your systems.

How much does it delay an incoming fleet?  Is the relationship one overseer delays one incoming enemy ship, or will one overseer in the system delay the whole fleet slightly?  Does the effect stack with multiple overseers?  Is there a cap on the effect?

I'm not asking those questions in order to receive answers, but just to illustrate the usefulness there would be in being able to create a map in galaxy forge containing different ships/structures/abilities/scenarios you wanted to test, and then to be able to control both sides of the engagement.  

Sins is chock full of questions like those I listed about the overseer ship that you can't really find out unless you try something in a game, or unless someone tells you about it. 

Being able to make a custom map and control both sides of it would be a great way for people to get these questions answered for themselves. 

So does anyone know any way of doing this? 

And if not, is there any possibility of having this capability added to the game? 

Thanks.

 

 

6,303 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Quick answer:

Whilst ostensibly there for modding, the Dev.exe provides much of this functionality. Assuming you are up to date, it's in the sins base install directory.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Awesome!!

I never would've discovered that, as I've never so much as ran Dev.exe. 

Thanks a lot for the tip.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Actually, it looks like I spoke too soon.  

When you said Dev.exe I figured you were referring to either sinsofasolarempiredev.exe, or sinsofasolarempireentrenchmentdev.exe.

However, when I run the latter...What I get seems to just be normal sins, except it runs windowed and appears to keep a log file.  

So am I mistaken on what .exe I need to run for this?

Whether or not I'm mistaken on the file to run, could you tell me a little about how I would achieve what I'm wanting to (controlling two players at once, or something akin to it) by running this file?  

I realize that it might be difficult to walk someone through, so I'm not asking you to hold my hand and lay it all out. 

But if you could point me in the general direction, or refer me to a guide of some sort that'd fill me in, I'd appreciate it.

I tried googling "sins of a solar empire mod tutorial," figuring such a thing would help since the dev.exe is a modders tool I take it, but the only download link I found to such a tutorial was broken. 

 

 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, sorry about the abruptness of the response, it was like 2am

http://sinsmodding.dreamhosters.com/index.php?title=Developer_Exe

Read through that and what I'm about to say will make a lot more sense. 

I'll give a basic rundown, but just play around with the dev.exe it's pretty explicit about all it's functions, and there are lots of them, these should get you going though.

You want to start a normal singleplayer game (using the dev.exe obviously), for your purposes most of the settings don't really matter.
 
Once your in the game press Ctrl+Shift+.(Period).

Firstly, to disable the AI from the root menu press a, e, a, b, c.
This will disable the enemy player AI, as well as Autocast and Auto Attack (which helps for setting up opposing fleets in a gravwell). Oh and something that i really need to add to that wiki ,(comma) lets you go back a menu level.

Second, Spawning ships, again from the root menu press, a, f.
then it's very much decided by what you want to spawn and for who.

Third, changing players, root menu, a,d,a 

The last thing thats could be of interest is, from the root menu, c, a, q. 
This will put on the screen two black text windows, in the top right is weapon analysis, essentially when a ship is selected it shows how much damage it SHOULD be doing, and how much damage it IS doing. The other window, is a bit more complex, but will let you see what buffs are on a ship, buffs are the files that apply ALL the effects from ship abilities, for your overseer example if you see multiple copies of the same buff, then the effects stack.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

A slightly more straight-forward method would be to use a second computer.  I've used my laptop and desktop to set up games vs myself many times (usually testing to see if a mod can work in multiplayer or not).  Of course, that's probably not an option for everyone, so I'd assume that Terraziel's suggestion is more generally useful.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Fantastic.

Thank you very much for your detailed response.

Having a way to do this is really, really awesome.

Thanks again.