Featured (by a small mention) in the October edition of PC Gamer magazine
Candidate for Mod Database's 2008 Mod of the Year
This is the OLD "Work in Progress" thread for the Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 mod.
The new WIP topic is here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342747
The "Release" topic can be found here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473
The mod is intended to be a hommage, and tribute to the original Sacrifice of Angels mod for Homeworld. It will use many of the same models, and effects created for that mod by the Trekmods team. Like the original SoA mod SoA2 is set during the Dominion War era of Star Trek. Using both canon, and non-canon units to recreate those battles with Sins "empire building" mechanic added. Like in SoA you can fight battles in SoA2 using hundreds of starships. Sometimes thousands if your computer can handle it While the mod was not intended as a "Total Conversion". That is exactly what it is winding up being. There is much about the Sins engine, and mechanics that we still need to learn. There are some hard coded stumbling blocks we have to overcome.The factions will be the Federation, Klingons, Romulan, and the Dominion (with Breen, and Cardassian ally units). The main factions seen in the Dominion War. With a "Surprise" as the Pirate faction.
Factions like the Borg "may" be added in the future. LokiGodofMischief is working on a very good 3rd party Borg add on for SoA 2. It is very possible his add on may be merged with SoA 2 at a much later time.
The current version of SoA 2 is 0.03b "The Second Dominion War". Look for it here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473
0.03b only works with Sins versions 1.1, 1.11, and 1.12.
All previous versions of SoA 2 are obsolete, and will not be supported, or hosted anymore. All older version downloads will be removed.
We will NOT port SoA 2 over to Entrenchment until after Entrenchment is out of beta, and released. Along with proper forge tool updates.
I am working on the models mostly ALONE so it may take a while for any new ship model updates.
Darkshimmer is the Balancing guru, Code monkey, and Master at arms. We do have other contributers, and the best 3rd party work from the finest artists in the trek mod community to help make SoA 2 the best it can be.
Status of Demo 0.04 "The actors are in place"
Will update when i have news.
General Changes:
Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod will be included as of 0.03a
May include Sins Plus (planets), but ill need to see how much that mod needs changing to incorporate into SoA 2.
SoA 2 0.03 and above is now patch 1.1, and better compatable. Sins patches 1.11, and 1.12 only address balancing, and online exploits, and have no effect on the mod.
Ships will have some anti stike craft weaponry.
Ships are still being added and balanced accordingly.
More re-balancing so that one faction is not overpowered over the other.
The Federation:
Faction is complete. Only structures left
The Klingon Empire
Faction is complete. Only structures left.
The Romulan Star Empire:
The Dominion:
Faction is complete. Still needs balancing work.
Pirates:
They were going to be the Borg, but that idea failed. So we are looking into Random multirace ship spawns.
Planetary Defenders
Basically "Ships of the week" like the Maquis, Sona, Ferrengi, Tammarian battle cruisers and the like.
Balancing: Darkshimmer has the Federation, Romulan, and Klingon Empire, and Unified Dominion balanced.
Gameplay: We now have a working Cloaking Device! Check the ModDB page for the WIP video. Cloaking will not be fully implemented in the mod until version 0.04
Art: We are working on an LCARS style UI, adding proper icons, and pictures for all of the new units. The UI is going to take a while to do, because of all of the redundancy of the Sins UI. SoA 2 uses 2 sets of UI textures. Instead of the standard 4 textures for buttons, and 2 textures for icons. SoA 2 uses 8 textures for buttons, and 4 textures for icons which IMO is a major waste of resources, because sins loads all these textures at startup. Unfortunetly i dont see any other way to do it. What is kind of cool is that we dont have to use the same HUD for each faction. It is possible to have unique HUDs, but again the perfomance hit, because of the extra drain on resources could be big, and not worth it.
In Planning: (No promises, or guarentees, but we will try to add these if possible.)
Troop Transport effects.
Planetary invasion animations
Tractor beams. (need a code monkey for this)
Whatever else we can think of and are capable of doing.
Future Updates:
SoA 2 0.04 is now in planning, and will be focused primarily on Proper research trees, Ability's, and adding proper Structures. More than likely demo 0.04 will be the last demo. After that then the full mod should be ready.
SoA 2 0.05 will be the final spit, and polish of the mod. It will focus mainly on re-balancing if needed. Also final artwork changes will be made here. Which will include some ship model re-builds, and re-texturing.
The Full SoA 2 1.0 mod will be released "When it is Finished". We are doing this on our own free time. We aren't getting paid to do this. We have no set schedule. We have no time limit. I want this one to be good. So it wont go online until we feel it is ready.
*NOTE: Much about Sins as we are all now realizing is hardcoded. SoA 2 is going to be far from a perfect "trek" mod due to these hardcoded issues. However we will try to do the best we can with workarounds, and compromises to get it as close as possible. Like i said some things wont be perfect. Some things cannot be done at all. Enjoy the mod for what it is, and try not to be too "nit picky".SoA2 will be hosted on Mod Database once it is ready http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2This main header will be updated when i have news to post.
GREAT NEWS!
Oh crap... I need to figure out how to uninstall entrechment bete!
Uninstall, install Sins w/out entrenchment, copy the sins directory elsewhere, install entrenchment, use both!
Entrenchment is still in beta. Why would we release a mod for a game that is not released yet? That does not make any sense. Besides none of the SoA 2 crew has Entrenchment yet. I have no plans on getting Entrenchment. I just cant afford it right now. So the mod will remain for standard sins unless we have good reason to switch it over to Entrenchment. A starbase slot is not good enough reason. We can make our own starbase slot in standard sins.
Right now it is just myself and shimmer working on the mod. Having a mod for standard Sins, and one for the Expansion is out of the question right now.
We need to focus on only one mod for only one game. This is the reason we didnt upgrade 0.02 to the 1.1 patch. The same will happen when 0.03 is released. All support will stop when the next major sins patch breaks, and obsoletes the mod. We can only focus on one thing only, and thats the next soa2 release. Some will whine about it, but they arent the ones making the mod. I dont want this to be like what i seen happen in Dawn of War. Where relic released a patch damn near every other day, and each succesive patch, and expansion broke the mods. The mod teams mistake was they tried to adapt their mods to each new patch instead of focusing on finishing their mod. We are focusing on finishing the mod.
Ok : ) I was just wondering what the future plans for entrenchment where, I by no means expected a working mod for a beta : P
actually there is. i dont remember who, but i remember eading about a few days ago
New cinematic test video up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8wMT2yKVL8
Really looking awesome guys. Can't wait to try this one out.
Lookin' good! What's that star-shaped Romulan ship?
ok we've run into a snag here, half our beta testers are getting an error when enabling the mod.
does anyone know what 3D3X error reading PipelineEffect\SetupDefaultStates.fx is? or what its refering to?
they have already reinstalled the game and given fresh copies of the mod. Some get this error, some play just fine, need to track this down, any help would be appreciated or we can't release!
Try this: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/317487
Otherwise what is the system configurations of the testers that are failing?
Sins itself has a very bad habit of minidumping if you are close to maxing your ram out.
I dont get the error shimmer is reffering to ether on my laptop nor my desktop.
Since you created a map folder for SoA2 ive been getting dev exe errors. Do we really need the map folder?
Not star shaped it is shaped literally like a bird, and is one of Atolms designs. The Black Wind. One of the very few fan designs i do like.
Ah, cool - I looked up a closeup (YouTube doesn't do it justice) and yeah, that's an awesome design - not a Warbird ripoff, yet very distinctly Romulan. I also really liked the Ael'hlaiim class Warbird - is that one in there too?
will planet health be componsated for the stronger weapons so there not so easy to take and orbital defences increased in health and power of phasers, quantum torpedoes and disrupters etc
We pretty much left the planetary siege mechanics default sins. Except we changed the effect of the bombs to torpedoes. We will do new siege mechanics in a later update.
yes stress i need that map, but only for testing not for release
I'm playing with the 0.2 demo at the moment, enjoying it quite a bit. I had a quick question for the more experienced modders here.
I would like to make a slight change to my copy of the mod so that the Federation uses the TEC race instead of the Advent. I know the player entity files must be changed to list the correct ships, but I'm fairly sure that's not all that has to be changed.
Can someone give me an idea as to what files I would need to change to make the Federation use TEC? Or if it's even possible? I would be greatly appreciative of any help you guys could give.
I'm very much looking forward to 0.3a and I'm watching closely for it's release
everything in the player entity file is going to change, and every time we update it your going to have to remod it. Advent was only selected as a starting point
this issue is still not resolved. When he removes the pipelineeffect folder the game is playable, i think we might have to update the textures to reflect the new changes made in 1.1, what he see's in the color overlay for the team colors!
Ok i am aware of this problem.. It is a problem with sins itself, and how the 1.1 update renders the team colors. Originally i made the textures in accordance with the 1.1 updat (Alpha on cl texture team color. Red on da texture specular). The problem was the entire model would be the team color. or have a team color hue. I noticed Vanilla sins has the very same problem. Turn team colors on and off while checking the vanilla games ships. I have had Team Colors disabled while running the mod. The mod doesnt use team color nor does it need it. The team color and specular maps were switched in 1.1, but the engine still renders them like in 1.05. So i left the mod textures alone. I didnt have any issues and they looked just as they did in 1.05. Which is the way they are supposed to look.
The Federation entity, and other mod entitys are just a foundations. They will eventually have all original sounds, icons, etc. There is much more to do with the mod, and it will take much time to do it.
About getting voiceovers, I have been unable to find a suitable microphone, and as such will be unable to provide those. Its a pity since I have a really good voice (and my klingon is impecable).
I believe the D3DX error has to due with a localisation issue. By default, I run the swedish version of Windows XP SP2. At current, I have reinstalled to an english version. I have not gotten around to reinstalling Sins and the mod yet, however another tester was running the mod just fine, and he has an english version of Windows.
Quoting darkshimmer, reply 17everything in the player entity file is going to change, and every time we update it your going to have to remod it. Advent was only selected as a starting point I figured that would be the case due to the large amount of changes the patches introduced. However, I would like to customize the mod now so that way I can play with the Star Trek races until you guys release 0.3a. I remember reading in a few spots that there was still lots of work to be done, and as they say, you can't rush art But I haven't updated my game to 1.1 or purchased Entrenchment specifically for the reason of being ablt to play with this mod. I just like the TEC race better because it's structures look closer to the Federation and that woman's voice for the Advent drives me nuts. If anyone can just give me an idea of what would need to be changed to make the Feds use TEC, I would appreciate it. Thanks!
I figured that would be the case due to the large amount of changes the patches introduced. However, I would like to customize the mod now so that way I can play with the Star Trek races until you guys release 0.3a. I remember reading in a few spots that there was still lots of work to be done, and as they say, you can't rush art
But I haven't updated my game to 1.1 or purchased Entrenchment specifically for the reason of being ablt to play with this mod. I just like the TEC race better because it's structures look closer to the Federation and that woman's voice for the Advent drives me nuts.
If anyone can just give me an idea of what would need to be changed to make the Feds use TEC, I would appreciate it.
Thanks!
I dont mean to sound rude, but this is the wrong place to ask. Especially when your questions have already been answered on the main modding forums. You just have to search for it.
In any case it is so simple to do it is silly. Just compare a mod player entity with the a vanilla tech player entity make your changes, and save it. If you plan on doing this for 0.02 keep it to yourself for your own personal use. 0.02 is obsolete, and we dont support it anymore.
Sorry if this sounds mean, it is not intended to be. im just tired is all.
Tim,
What my counterpart here is trying to say in so many words....
you might as well wait, 0.3a is right around the corner as soon as we get the testing finished, we're just trying to resolve this issue we have with the team colors, please just wait alittle longer.
It's ok, I know what it's like to be tired and not want to go into details on... well, really anything LOL
Ohhh ok, I was thinking you guys were still a couple months away from release of 0.3a, I just wanted something to do until then LOL. I can wait until the release of 0.3a if it's coming up pretty soon.
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