What do you work with Zombie? Yeah a update would be nice! Would like to take a look at the moons. If you give me a crash cource in the tedious details you need done id be willing to do them, but something tells me that would take as long as dooing it yourself.

Without naming company names, I'm currently a software engineer working on the Service & Repair application that deals with repairing or exchanging damaged devices. It's a web based application written in Java primarily.

Learning to code this game can be incredibly simple to incredibly complicated. The easiest things to do are balancing changes as they usually entail modifying set stats in the entity files. The more complex comes into setting up ability/buff files as well as wiring all of it together including textures/icons and strings.

If you want to play around with any of the files, feel free to do so. I'm not married to any of the current stats and would be willing to change things up for balance so long as the change is meant to support or enhance a races play style.

What I've learned with the plague is the AI is much more willing to build multiple capital ships when their respective levels are higher. It makes playing the plague more challenging because of their effectiveness. Though I will be looking at their stats as I found something interesting in their Growth buffs that I'm not sure I originally intended that may help with their overall strength.

Basically I wanted lots of capital ships with plague that are easily replaced as their levels are easier to grow. This should mean their stats are overall the weakest in the game/level.

I'll look at the upgrade levels required on the rogue tree. A couple of questions though...

What difficulty was the Plague?

Did you research the Extortion Techs? These are all meant to help with their weak economy. Also the Cyber techs are free money stealing from the other factions...

Yup, editing stats is easy, used to do it a year or two ago. If i come up with some ideas that could make the factions stand out better i might give it a shot, and see how it works out.

That sorted the issue...it all works fine and shows the correct info on higher level versions of the powers now. Thanks very much.

How abouth this song for one of hypercorps tracks Zombie?

Its music related to the resident evil movies, who revolves around an evil megacorp and its research - if you dont know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrnR0XQrD40&feature=related

or this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENKkwYVX4J8

or this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqbGaBm09hM&feature=related

I find the music fitting in itself and also its the symbolism offcource, Umbrella Corporation would make a mean hypercorp.

What's the timeframe/plan for making this compliant with 1.31?

Zombie besides converting the audio file into OGG placing it in the mods music directory and editing gameinfo/soundmusic with a new line and a new count, what do i need to do to say get a new music track playing for hypercorp? Is there anything i havent understood here, maybe the error lies in the name of the files. Could you just type in what i need to do if its not too much work.

Im thinking the problem may lie in what i name the file, or a reference somewhere that need to be edited. /shrugs

I won't be releasing for 1.31 as the devs have already publicly stated there will likely be another hotfix. I'm looking at possibly releasing sometime after this occurs.

No need to edit anything new. The way I setup the races is to template in the existing sound entries so everything is already pre-wired in the correct sounddata and entity files.

The files that can be overridden currently are:

Hyp 1.ogg (Misc)
Hyp 2.ogg (Misc)
Hyp 3.ogg (Misc)
Hyp 4.ogg (Misc)

Hyp Announcement.ogg

Hyp Opening.ogg

Hyp Quiet.ogg

Hyp Theme.ogg

I'm currently using generic sounds for battle, trouble and scare themes but wouldn't mind replacing those out too.

Which theme of music does your sound file fit into?

Ooo... I find this music really good, plus I really like these movies too.

Strange i didnt get the music then hmm. Must have slipped up somewhere, what you just said i allready did pretty much. Ill get it to work, prob just slipped up somewhere.

Good, so we can use this for hypercorp then? I have the music files allready in ogg format but im looking for something that is maybe a little longer, meaning: extended versions or something to last longer than 2 minutes. 

As for which theme, ehrr like generic music playing while there is not combat going on i reckon. hehe. I think the descriptions are pretty self explenatory.

edit: you want me to tinker with it and upload it to you IF i manage to work it out or you just want me to send you the music files so you can do it?

That would be awesome if you want to take a crack at it.

I added a folder in dropbox for you to put any files you want to share.

Good stuff, ill give it a go then. Might add some other sound stuff if i manage anything decent. Will let you know!

I deployed some new files to the dropbox including the Moon prototype. It only works for Hypercorp and is only put together to show the mechanics in place. The upgrades and weapons are just to test the mechanics currently and aren't intended to show the final upgrades available.

I also have a test version of the alien battleship. It only shows up in plasma storms and can be captured by any ship with the capture neutral ability (i.e. colony ships or scouts depending on race).

It would probably make more sense to only allow colony ships to have this ability though regardless of race.

Nice stuff. Yeah i agree, it should require a specialist team, and since sins dont support that i reckon limiting it to colony ships will do instead of every joe out there beeing able to do so.

Been trying to post for 2 hours now grrr.

Loved the moon, excellent concept there. Havent found the alien starship yet but ill get to it.

By the way: regarding moons.

1: How many planets will have them, only the starter planets or more?

2: Will you be able to build a starbase in addition to a moonbase in a single grav well?

So i did manage to get some music into the mod but i am really clueless as to what  music files do what. For instance first i tried changing out Hyp 1.ogg (Misc) and then played a game for like 25 mins without hearing anything, then i switched out hyp 2-3-4 aswell, and still didnt hear anything. Then i switched out Hyp Opening and still no darn music (i mean my music not the original, that was still there:D) so finally i switched out hyp opening/quiet and announcement and BEHOLD: finally i got music when i started a new game. Lalala. So uhm, how exactly does this music system work? At first i figured that the 1/2/3/4 was music that was randomly played, that opening was for when you first started, quiet was for no enemyes in sight/no battle type and announcement i had no clue but there must be some other deciding factor after what i just saw, so: what is it?? Why could i not hear any music first?

found some voices that you can take a look at, put it in the dropbox folder. Maybe some of them can be used for something.

I thought the computerized voice could fit well for archailect, also the signal could work well as prob most of their communication are done different than through normal language.

Were some other cool there too ,like the "we gotta nuke em now" would fit perfectly to a siege cruiser.

Id like to see a mix of piraty+cybernetic sounding voice for the pirates. Havent found that combo yet though. So maybe someone has to voice act it and then do a little work on it hehe.

Also added the two res evil songs. Strange thing is one of them got shorter when i converted it. /shrugs. I added some non converted versions aswell. The program i had couldent do one of them and the other somehow ended up shorter. In case you want to take a look.

 Now if you could teach me how to get descriptions into the game i wouldent mind writing the descriptions for hypercorp cap abilities.

Hey, if we are are doing requests for music, can we have Running Wilds Under Jolly Roger as battle music?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZUN6-JwwMA&feature=related

Also, we all need AIM or similar, totally so I can spam you *eyeroll*. Nah, more seriously, looking forward to trying out moons and such when I get the time. Just a question though, with the Arch and Alliance races in 'place.' Those completely don't work do they?

Initially the starter planets will have them.

I'm thinking about having them randomly occur on other planets or gas giants too, just need to work out how the random chance stuff works.

Not without changing how many starbases are allowed in a gravity well. For example look in PlanetTerranHome.entity at the following line.

maxStarBaseCountPerPlayer 1

I wish it was max count and type per player which would open up more modding possibilities to differentiate races.

There's mood settings I haven't fully figured out that control when certain music is played during the game.

The announcement is explicitly set so it's more of a guarantee I would assume.

If you look in the music sounddata file you'll see these entries:

    actionLevel 0.4
    actionRange 0.4
    emotionLevel 0.2
    emotionRange 0.8

if you look in the PlayerHyp.entity you'll see these entries:

musicThemeData
    musicThemeCount 7
    musicTheme "MUSIC_HYP_THEME_1"
    musicTheme "MUSIC_HYP_QUIET_1"
    musicTheme "MUSIC_HYP_MISC_1"
    musicTheme "MUSIC_HYP_MISC_2"
    musicTheme "MUSIC_BATTLE_7"
    musicTheme "MUSIC_BATTLE_13"
    musicTheme "MUSIC_TROUBLE_4"
    scareThemeCount 2
    musicTheme "MUSIC_BATTLE_7"
    musicTheme "MUSIC_BATTLE_13"
    announcementCount 1
    musicTheme "MUSIC_HYP_ANNOUNCEMENT"

Cool, will be checking these out today.

I'll put my string template that I use to generate the string info's in the dropbox.

It's a simple format using bar delimited format to keep the name and description easily edited. For example:

Ability|Hyp||NanoSwarm|Nano Swarm|A description about nano swarm.

This gets converted into two String Info entries that look like

StringInfo
    ID "IDS_ABILITY_HYP_NANOSWARM_NAME"
    Value "Nano Swarm"
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_ABILITY_HYP_NANOSWARM_DESCRIPTION"
    Value "A description about nano swarm."

Let me check that out. I think Rogue has the same issue as Hypercorp in that it's using generic battle music.

I use windows live messenger if you have it or xfire (same name).

Right, you have access to my internal build. I had stripped out these races from the final builds in previous release as they are unfinished and mainly just in a concept phase.

No offense but i think that song is not very fitting for background music for a mod. I for one would get a headache listening to it, and now i dont mind turning off the music if i dont like a song but i think that a more instrumental, calmer kind of music do alot better in this role. The guy screams out the text and even though the text is somewhat piratish i dont feel the music is. This is just my oppinion offcource. If Zombie likes it then by all means go ahead, but it is somewhat reminding of the good ol 9000 that catered some attention.

Well the good thing is that i now know how to edit music atleast, and im guessing editing sounds is pretty similiar so i can atleast help with that. I just wish i knew why i didnt get the music at first, its so annoying not knowing the factors. Ill start on the descriptions next, and once i got a draft ill send it over to you zombie so you can take a look at it. By the way if you put the music in, let me know how it worked out for you and what files you replaced exactly. I would like to develop hehe.

Lol, that was humorous. Got caught converting stuff to ogg and not really paying attention to where it went for the tracks. I still need to listen to the tract but it sounds like it may suffer similarly to over playback.

Good to see my sly attempt at humour was well received!

By the way Zombie, the nano adaption cap ship ability gives 15% damage reduction, 25% phase missile block lasts for 20 sec with a cooldown of 45 and its a lvl 6 ability. Do this ability have hidden effects or is it really underpowered?

Also ill be done with my 1 rudimentary attempt at descriptions in 20 mins would be nice if you could look em over real quick and let me know if im on the right path, there will offcource be changes, better sentences/grammar. Something i will entirely replace prob etc.

Ill put it in the dropbox folder. for now it will just be in wordpad format, as i wont put it in til im finished.

Okay 1 draft is out, now this was done in 10 mins lol. But all in all it didnt work out so bad, i just need feedback on if my way of seeing it walk hand in hand alongside yours of if one chases the other around with a broom. If you think its okay ill draft some more ideas and add it to the file you posted by tomorrow.

It just really sucks right now. I haven't rebalanced much on abilities yet, but I'll tweak this one up alot.