Sinperium Sinperium

Modder's "Get-an-Answer" Thread

Modder's "Get-an-Answer" Thread

Answers from Modders, for Modders who "Ask a Question"

This is the place to ask and recieve specific modding (mod making) questions and answers. If you have a mod making question, post it here.

If your question involves long snippets of entity files and the like, please don't paste the entire file contents here but put them at the incredibly easy to use http://pastebin.com and then provide the link to your paste in your question posted here.

Please do limit  "just comments" here to brief posts please.  If you don't know the answer or can't point to help--don't post.  Please note that a random, uninformed guess isn't an actual answer.  

You can refer people to another source--IF it actually helps answer their question.  This could be in the form of links, outside sites, specific modding-useful programs, direction towards another post or poster, etc., etc.

Remember--specific questions, specific answers.  Only respond to the ones you can help solve.  Also, feel free to amplify, clarify, suggest alternatives to or correct answers seen here if such actions are merited and help provide a real solution. No flaming, insults or put downs here in the answers or other posts please.

Thanks in advance for your help and cooperation.  The reason for the rigid rules here is those this thread becomes a usable resource in the future to new people looking for answers.

NOTE: If an answer resolves your issue, please share it here.  These answers will help others coming along later too.  Karma is a great way to respond to people providing help without clogging the thread or bombing their forum mailbox here. Thanks!

 

OTHER SINS HELPFUL MODDING LINKS*

*Links are updated when requested.





The Soase Idiot's Guide

Confused?  No idea where to even start?

Determined to work at it?

This is the place!

 


 

 
   

Sins Modding Wiki

ZombieRus's Eclipse Wizardry

 

     


Tutorials

MyFist0's full modding site.

Emphasis on modeling  and

texturing.                            

 

 

 




                    

REBELLION MODDING TOPICS

Rebellion Modding Q & A

Mesh Editing

Changing Diplomacy Files to Rebellion

IT REALLY HURTS MY BRAIN--HOW TO START

An Idiot's Guide To Getting Started

MyFist0's Modding Megasite!

MOD DOWNLOADS

ZombieRus5's Mod Yard

Directory of Planet Mods

STEAM

STEAM Sins Forums

DEVELOPERS

Sins Developer Journals Forum 2007 to Present

REFERENCE FILES

Research Modifier List

MyFist0's Exported Models & Files

Modifier List

Harpo's Converted Sins Reference Files 2011

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

3dS Texturing Toool & Tips

Ship Fleet Calculator

SoaSE Eclipse Plugin Project

Mesh Resizing Tool--courtesy of the Reqiuem team.

Harpo's Sins Utility Package -- Dropbox

The Sins Optimization Project (TSOP)

Artificial Unintelligence (Mod and AI info)

Sins Data Converter by BCXtreme

EXPLANATIONS & DISCUSSIONS

Rebellion Updates by Blair Frazier

How to Add a Fourth Race

User-updatable Ship Reference Chart

Sins Modding Dictionary

Adding phase Effects to other weapon types

Culture, Explanation/Discussion

Weapons, Explanation/Discusion

Shield Mitigation & Armor, Explanation/Discussion-1

Shield Mitigation & Armor, Explanation/Discussion -2

Graphic Chart of Sin's Counters

Annotated Guide to the Developer.exe

In-Game Map Creator

Weapons Banks & DPS

Combat Mechanics

Rebellion Shield Mitigation & Focus Fire testing

PARTICLE FORGE

Particle Forge Help Thread

GALAXY FORGE

Adding Artifacts

Working Template Examples

SemazRalan's Template Guide

Pirates Base Start Template

SOUND RESOURCES

[SFX] Black Sun SFX/Music Resource for Modders

MODELING & TEXTURING--SOFTIMAGE XSI, 3DS MAX

XSI Texturing, Tutorial

3dS Model Exporter

3DS Max Rigging, Texturing & Exporting, Guide

Modding/Modelling/Texturing/Converting, Tutorials

WIKI'S

Sins of a Solar Empire Official Wiki

 

7,618,692 views 2,761 replies
Reply #901 Top

         iv'e been trying to remove the "bright white cloud" around the stars in "mid solar system view" im not talking about the glow directly around the star , our on the surface of the star. but the white cloud that goes over the star when you zoom in and out. it also dims when you put a planet between your prospective and a sun.  its a bit of an eye strain and give me  head aches.  

         i have tried some of the fowling files, im ether doing something wrong or i have the wrong file. (Cloud.dds, brightcenter.dds, lightcorona.dds, kay-smoothing.tga , and almost all tga/dds files associated with stars ) i also tried running the game with several different Pipeline Effect root and Mesh root files taken out of the games directory and i still can't seem to locate the appropriate file.

         to reduce eye strain and head aches i did the "galaxy cloud mod", also reduced the brightness and added transparency  to the "zoomed out" star images in the ICON_planet file. that helped a lot but the stars in mid solar system view is just too bright for me.

Reply #902 Top

Quoting loki771, reply 901
"bright white cloud"
End of loki771's quote

Could you post a screenshot of what exactly you're talking about?

Edit: Also Sinperium the Requiem servers have moved. Here's the new link for the mesh resize tool.

Reply #904 Top

Isn't that ambient or immesive lighting on the mesh face?

Reply #905 Top

Two questions I would really be interested to know the answers to.

1) When playing on large maps and long games there can be a tipping point of when the game begins to get more and more laggy. I wondered if this lag isn't helped by the fact there can be dozens/hundreds of debris and/or missiles travelling through space that never seems to disappear.

Example, missiles are approaching a target, the target manages to jump out of the Grav Well and so the missiles decide to pursue there target through interstellar space at there normal pace... also when a ship is destroyed, a certain amount of debris is released, and I can find debris from past battles which took place a while ago, do these things never disappear (especially the missiles as they may never reach there target, or take a very very long time in doing so), also could this be affecting the late game lag (taking up more resources participating in the creation of the lag?).

 

2) I tried modding a new bomber/fighter entity in to my mod ages ago, the idea was to have a small mini gunship you could dock/undock which would have more damage than fighters/bombers have more hull points (maybe shields) and travel like a scout's sort of pace, but every time my creation spawned, it behaved like a fighter/bomber in the fact it did attack runs (which I didn't want) I can't find an option to turn this off for Fighters/Bombers, anyone know how?

 

Many thanks, Ben

 

Reply #906 Top

I'm pretty sure the missles are a particle effect that has a finish condition that requires them to strike the target--so they persist until they do or a time condition is met.

Strike craft are hard coded to do target runs like that.  The only compromise is to slow them down drastically while still leaving them a high turn rate--which obviously has it's own problems.

"Uses fighter attack" as FALSE will allow you to not have it chase other strike craft but I think that's about all you can do here.

Reply #907 Top

I dont think I have seen a time condition, as far as I am aware they persist indefinately until they strike there target or where there target was destroyed. The same with debris, I believe that continues to persist, could these things contribute to late game lag?

Reply #908 Top

Of course they would contribute.  Everything in the galaxy contributes as it has to be taken into account, tracked, and calculated every second, even debris as there is a Vasari ability that absorbs debris and heals their ships.  Many times, when a game is real laggy, I'll save it, restart Sins, and reload the save file, and the game is much faster.  It's possible that all or most of these effects are not reloaded with the game.

 

I have seen missiles chase their targets out of the gravity well only to explode on their own 5 to 10 seconds later well outside of the gravity well.  Perhaps if you see them chase their target after it's jumped clear, try to follow them and see if they are in fact chasing down the phase lane or popping on their own outside of the well.

 

 

Edit:

Nice Sinperium.  Soon everyone will have animated avatars.  XD

Reply #909 Top

MechaLenin's thread made me do it.

I thought debris had a buff somewhere that makes it expire.

Reply #910 Top

Debris does go away eventually. Plus you can disable show it in the options.

 

Reply #911 Top

That might help with lag. Hmmmm.....

Reply #912 Top

Lag would probably be best helped by reducing debris counts and reducing trade ship counts (and turning off dynamic shadowing)

Reply #913 Top

what would cause a string not found error on ALL strings?

Reply #914 Top

got that fixed 

but now when picking a race the race names come up as string not founds >:(

Reply #915 Top

Ben asked me to pop-in and comment on this. Here's my 2 cents from my understanding:

Debris does vanish after a while and doesn't really hurt performance much (because you can't really interact with it, etc). Trade ships don't really have much impact at all. What tends to bog things down late game are strike craft (fighters/bombers). Each individual ship is its own entity that the game must track. When you start having hundreds/thousands of them going throughout a game, it can create issues. 

We've optimized these a bit more during Rebellion's development. If it's still a major issue, I'll discuss it with Ironclad as I have some ideas that may help further. In Entrenchment/Diplomacy/Trinity, space mines were also a factor, but those have been optimized substantially in Rebellion as well.

+1 Loading…
Reply #916 Top

Quoting Yarlen, reply 916
Ben asked me to pop-in and comment on this. Here's my 2 cents from my understanding:

Debris does vanish after a while and doesn't really hurt performance much (because you can't really interact with it, etc). Trade ships don't really have much impact at all. What tends to bog things down late game are strike craft (fighters/bombers). Each individual ship is its own entity that the game must track. When you start having hundreds/thousands of them going throughout a game, it can create issues. 

We've optimized these a bit more during Rebellion's development. If it's still a major issue, I'll discuss it with Ironclad as I have some ideas that may help further. In Entrenchment/Diplomacy/Trinity, space mines were also a factor, but those have been optimized substantially in Rebellion as well.
End of Yarlen's quote

So basically bomber spam really is the root of all evil in Sins lol.

Gives me some ideas..  "Signal Interference" each LC in a gravity well debuffs all SC in the gravity well slightly (I'm thinking .2% damage reduction per LC or some other incredibly small number).  Anyways, thanks for the response!  :thumbsup:

Reply #917 Top

Basically what my tests concluded a while ago. Nice to have official confirmation on it regardless.

Reply #918 Top

Quoting loki771, reply 876
Questions about Ship Explosion sound files :    so the ( capital ship, cannon shell, and support ship explosion sounds) are used for the appropriate ship destruction. 

{1} what about the (explosion SUB and SUB ALTs)? do those assign to ships or are they randomly assigned to each explosion event?

{2} are they assigned to you AND the other races in a single game? Or, some go to you and some go to the other players/races?

{3} the (Frigate death explosion and ALT 1 ) are those for all of "your" frigates? or are they used for just one or two ships? Are Frigate explosion sound shared with you and other players or you get one and they get the other?
 
End of loki771's quote

  I answered my own question with looking at the GameInfo / SoundEffects.sounddata , Explosions.explosiondata, and the appropriate ship gameinfo file. 

    This post helped alot! thanks for the post, Harpo99999.   https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/378266

                                             *note : im using rebellion .96  gameinfo files---

     in the "Explosions.explosiondata" file it looks like they already wrote in 7 different frigate death explosions, but they all source the "FrigateshipDeath.OGG and FrigateshipDeath_Alt1.OGG. so ya! :-) im going to add voice overs to individual ships and planet modules. start with one race and work from there.

i messed around adding voices to some of the explosion sounds. sounds really cool and dramatic. but as i just moded the root sound it did nothing but play the samples repetitively. since there was no separation from faction ships and modules it sounded like a mess. yet a good place to start. 

im at a loss, at the moment with the Critical hit explosions.  i thought they triggered when "shields down" or "server hull damage" but they seem to be going off all the time. adding voices to the Critical hits OGG and the Support ship Death explosions OGG made just a big looping mess.

Reply #919 Top

loki I have just posted a link to the 1.01 refs for rebellion, so get them to start modding.

harpo

 

Reply #920 Top

Quoting Yarlen, reply 916
Ben asked me to pop-in and comment on this. Here's my 2 cents from my understanding:

Debris does vanish after a while and doesn't really hurt performance much (because you can't really interact with it, etc). Trade ships don't really have much impact at all. What tends to bog things down late game are strike craft (fighters/bombers). Each individual ship is its own entity that the game must track. When you start having hundreds/thousands of them going throughout a game, it can create issues. 

We've optimized these a bit more during Rebellion's development. If it's still a major issue, I'll discuss it with Ironclad as I have some ideas that may help further. In Entrenchment/Diplomacy/Trinity, space mines were also a factor, but those have been optimized substantially in Rebellion as well.
End of Yarlen's quote

That's why during the whole duration of my mod I've cut down on fleet supply and strikecraft count to buff up individuals ships.  I'll still get hit with large fleets, just not (potentially) thousands at a time.  You have to also take into account all the particle effects going off on those extra ships, too.

Reply #921 Top

So I'm porting stuff over to Rebellion, and now I'm getting an error on the dev exe I can't figure out. The strange part was, it only started poping up after I moved over planet entity files (haven't brought over any other entity files yet) and properly inserted them into entity.manifest (the GSD isn't grabbing them, save for the few that overwrite base planet files). It seems to be a string error, maybe I'm missing string entries for some of these?

Assert @ C:\Projects\P4\SinsRebellion\Release\CodeSource\Engine/String/StringLibrary.h(83)

result == 1
End of quote

Reply #922 Top

I noticed that extra values were added on the ship and research files when I tried moving over some into Rebellion.  I imagine the same thing applies for planet files, too.

Reply #923 Top

Quoting XATHOS, reply 923
I noticed that extra values were added on the ship and research files when I tried moving over some into Rebellion.  I imagine the same thing applies for planet files, too.
End of XATHOS's quote

yes, quite a few files have new lines, though a lot are inconsequential.

 

Reply #924 Top

Quoting XATHOS, reply 923
I noticed that extra values were added on the ship and research files when I tried moving over some into Rebellion.  I imagine the same thing applies for planet files, too.
End of XATHOS's quote

I got a friend to write me a small program to help me convert stuff over... Let me get all the planet, star, research, capital ship, fighter, squad, and star base files in the new format. He's still working on it, putting in some stuff to handle wildcards, which will make it useful for abilities and buffs... For now it's just a glorified replace all in folders with limited wildcard support. Will post it up once he's done with it anyways.

Reply #925 Top

Quoting ZombiesRus5, reply 924

Quoting XATHOS, reply 923I noticed that extra values were added on the ship and research files when I tried moving over some into Rebellion.  I imagine the same thing applies for planet files, too.

yes, quite a few files have new lines, though a lot are inconsequential.

 
End of ZombiesRus5's quote

Enough to fuck up any hope of direct porting. :annoyed: