Hello All,
It has been made apparent now that there are many hardcoded limits in the game, which cannot be modded around, and are like a brick wall once you hit them. For example, here are some hardcoded limits that I have come across:
Structures and units - These cannot be changed or altered, which means that you cannot mix unit types. You cannot have a orbital defense cannon have fighters and you cannot have a fighter bay have weapons
Captial ship limit. - the limit was 5, but this has been now changed to 9 in the 1.1 BETA, which IS much better
Weapon limit - you cannot have more than 3 different weapons on a ship
Ability limit - You cannot have more than 4 abilities per unit
Star Abilities - you can only have 1 ability on a Star. Planets can have 4
Sounds - there is a max of 1100 sounds, spread across dialog, music, and effects. The cobination of these files cannot reach 1100, or the game will dump
MODELS- the 3D models, or meshes, can only have a maximum of 10 emitters for any particular weapon, engine, etc., or the game will crash.
STRING FILE - EDIT - No limit now, as far as I can tell. I have over 5780 entries so far.
I am writing this for all modders, so that they know that there are hardcoded limits which they cannot be changed or modded around at this time. I am also writing this for the developers, in hopes that they will read this and consider changing these limits so that us modders can do what we do without having to worry about hitting an invisible ceiling.
I would appreciate everyone's support in this, from both modders and gamers alike.
Thankyou.
DANMAN
I think you hit em all:
Strike Craft: Check.
Sounds limits still not coherant with other options: Check.
AI options: Check.
More standard capabilites for low-purpose structure types: Check.
Ok, you got my attention.
SOUND HARDCODES- needs to be more than 2000 guys. That was a good start, but why such a low number? I need at least 3000 just to get what I already have in the hopper done, let alone all the other stuff I have on the backburner. This is REALLY limiting my modding ability here.
This is my biggest gripe. The other is the names for the Capital ships are also hardcoded, and those also cannot be changed. This needs to be corrected, along with only being able to use the stock player images for some of the screens. This also must be fixed. The other stuff if changed will be gravy.
Anyways, I sure hope someone at Ironclad is listening, as my emails seem to be falling on deaf ears. (had to call you out on this one.)
Anyways, you guys are doing a good job, but somethings are still slipping by. Please see what can be done. And yes, I think I will keep this post going until answers are given.
Can you explain these?
Well, the starting names for capital ships, when you build them. As it is, you can't add custom names for capitals without either renaming them in-game or going into the string file and messing it up for the vanilla races as well.
I know DANMAN really wants custom names for his Atlantians, and seeing my Star Destroyers start off as TDN Karamazov and TDN Kolossus pisses me off as well. Other mods might want to look at this too.
Any TC mod will see this as a problem. Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, Stargate.
And there are only 3 screens available for player portraits. Which makes it very hard to find out what your player will look like without playing. So if I'm playing 7DS as the Empire, I won't know if I'm Thrawn, Palpatine, Vader, or Piett when the game starts. And when Halo is in, well you get the idea.
Basically, these are two little annoyances, nowhere near as big as the rest of the problems, but they can really ruin your day when it comes to immersion.
I actually tried to tackle this problem a little while ago. Needless to say, I gave it up and just moved on. I really would like to see some custom names without going over the original.
No need to change ship name hardcoding, just attach a readme of possible ship names, let the player print it out and rename their ship as they come out of production. What's so complicated about that?
Same with sound, true fans should know the ship and weapon sounds by heart and be able to reproduce them with nothing more than their own body. Hint: Klingon ship sounds will sound like a sub-woofer's built into your chair.
Yes, please remove hardcoding limit on race-ship names and increase sound to 36000 just to be safe.
36,000? Are you insane? That's nowhere near big enough for 7 Deadly Sins, especially if DANMAN can strongarm Major Stress, the BSG mod team, and the Stargate mod team into letting us assimilate them. Let's not forget no races from Master of Orion have been added, and a lot of Star Control stuff is missing too. Plus DANMAN needs sounds for the UNSC and Covenant as well when they are finished.
And the Atlantians and Empire need some custom sounds and music as well.
So right now, the absolute biggest thing impeding 7DS is the ridiculous sound hardocde. The limit seems arbitrary and needless. It can't be that hard to increase or even remove completely.
My theory? Star/Clad doesn't want us making them look bad. Even though we already are. You have failed Star/Clad! Your feeble efforts to impede us are only anoying us. We will make un-modded SOASE look like a pile of crap with our modding prowess, and there is nothing you can do about it! MUHUUHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!
No need to let our egos stop us from getting through the door to breakfast in the morning.
36000 sounds? Whoa. By that point, we could reuse some of the sounds, by then some voices will seem to overlap because many will sound similar. Each ship needs about 10 sounds for voices, and I'm not making every ship have 10. Some can overlap, as long as they sound decent. On top of that, about 60 are needed for the race itself. Then 10 things of music or so for the new races with lots of background (Star Trek/Wars), and just a couple for music for the lesser used stuff (Star Control, MOO). In the end, I think about 100-150 new sound sets per new race for voices and music. More for SFX, which mostly applies to the Star Wars/Trek and other races with lots of premade stuff, and many SFX can be reused in other races.
Only stock images for some screens? How do you mean, Dan? Which ones?
I completely agree. Lets not let our ego get the best of us. I think 200 sounds per race is fair, but even then at the current rate I will need 2200 sounds, and that is just for what I currently have in the game with my 11 races. This gives no room for further expansion, so the limit needs to be at least 10,000 or more, if not just made to be unlimited like the String file is.
And the capital ship names needs a way to be edited and added too without replacing the originals. Remember, 7DS is not a conversion, but a mod that adds to the original game.
As far as making a mod that is better than the original game, well, that is still up for speculation. While I would love to believe that hype, remember that Sins would not be with us if it was not for Ironclad/Stardock. So, we need to give them credit there. However, we do need to call them out a bit to get things fixed, and to respond to us when we come calling.
Gihren, the race pics when you are doing the player setup, still only show the original races, even with all out custom race pic files. Also, I still cannot get the UI in the game to show the custom pics, right now it will only show a blank box, not matter how many things I try. I believe this may hardcoded as well.
Also, I way to change weapon names or add weapon types would be great as well. Right now they can only be WAVE, BEAM, MISSLE, etc. It would be nice to be able to change this or add to them.
Anyways....our voice is getting bigger.
Yeah. Having new weapon classes wpuld be cool. It should be easy too. After all, that doesn't really do anything as of now. It is just designations for weapons and for research.
I have a question?... If you create your own custom race, then, say you create custom ships for your race (by custom, I mean "from scratch", without simply copying, and modifing a stock vanilla ship), then how does the game name the ship?....
JC
If it's a capital ship, it gets its name from the string file capital ship list specific to that race, but you have to do some tricky stuff to get the "Capital Names", otherwise, just put in an extra string file entry to handle it (the easy part)
Sorry, I should have specified,... I was specificly refering to Capital ships,... I was wondering, if you create your own race, and your own capital ships for that race, then when they are created at the capital ship factory, how does the computer name the capital ship (if it is a custom ship?) Does it just pick a random name from all 3 of the vanilla races in the string file?
Does it simply not give a name to the ship?,.. I'm just wondering what logic the game uses behind naming the ships...
Does it name them based off of the player.ENTITY file, if that's the case, then how does it name ships, if you create a custom race?... Does it name them based off of the Capital Ship Factory that they are built at?...
Maby I'm just thinking too much.. JC
Ships are named from a list in the .str file. Each race only uses their own set. You know which is used by the new races by the voices, as well as the new ship names.
Dan, I've gotten ALL the pics to work for me. Let me try sendthing them again, check your mail soon.
You have all my support for anything!
The player .entity file defines the capital ship name list (CapitalShipNameType I think the string is called), and is set to TECH, PSI, or PHASE. The English.str file then contains the name list for the 3 races.
The problem is that the link between the .entity and the string file is "hardcoded" as it were. You can change the CapitalShipNameType in the entity file and add a bunch of your stuff in the string file, but the game won't recognize it and spit out blank names (which may actually be preferrable to Klingon ships being named the Illustria, or something ).
But they're also pretty much all covered, what other kind of weapon would you add that isn't a solid beam, pulse, autocannon, missile? Not to mention that these aren't directly tied to their particle effects, so you can make autocannons that have a bunch of unique looks.
Yeah. But there's energy, phasers (for Star Trek), acid, and good ol' fire that can't be done. I know ManSh00ter wouldn't mind Acid-shooting weird alien spit pods on his Xin.
Besides, it doesn't matter if pretty much everything is there. The simple fact we can't make our our classes in just annoying. I mean even EaW and FoC allow custom weapon names on ships.
Why not? The weapon type does not matter for practical purposes. It's only used internally. "Acid spit" thing can just as easily be classed as a missile, an autocannon, pulse beam, or wave and it won't matter because you can create the particle effect you want for it. Sure, the info card won't show it and it's a problem for a mod that's a collection of lots of stuff, but for something like the Star Trek TC, or Star Wars, it's pretty easy to change the strings to have decently descripting names on the info card.
I believe that the problem is that when you upgrade missiles, any new weapon under the missile category is upgraded. For, say, the Kohr-Ah, the blades would be upgraded with that (I think). And it looks better to have the proper names
English.string file. 46 total TEC CapitalShip names, 40 total PSI names, 31 for Vasari. It's an automatic thing, all new races must take their capitalship names from the 3 Vanilla races. We seek change.==========================......StringInfo ID "IDS_CAPITALSHIPNAME_TECH45" Value "TDN Mercano"......StringInfo ID "IDS_CAPITALSHIPNAME_PSI39" Value "Josonea"......StringInfo ID "IDS_CAPITALSHIPNAME_PHASE30" Value "Jrakis"==========================***engage RP Rant!!***
I cri foWl, I cri SPE'C'IhZM! The DEH'VZ r klErli T'RROSIntRk and r duhskRmEhnaTng aGNst the AhdvInt and Va'sah'Ri. Ahz thu unoFisul spOkz-krEtshur for the AhdvInt and Va'sah'Ri (Aktuhlly Ovrlord Samaz Ralan ahz I kahnkrd theR homewerldz yestrda eevening), I dEmahnd that thuh AhdvInt and Va'sah'Ri hav thuh saym numbr uv KapEtulshiP naymz ahz thuh PahTHeyTIK M'MMahLE'NZ that kall thimsLvz "Hoo'Mahnz". I aLso spEk oHn Bhaf uv ahL rassez, that I wehL soon nslayv wEth mI flEt of R'OG vehSulsz that thA tOO haV at thA'RR dEspozul KapEtulshiP naymz uv ahn amownt Ekwul tOO thOz uv thuh Hoo'Mahnz.Ef wE kanOt haV Waht thuh Hoo'Mahn'Zeez pOzEhS, EKwaLehTE, thehN GiV ooS ahL 30 KapEtulshiP nAymz puR RayS, wIch bI mI ehstYmItz rSTz ahT 50 n'ON-reHp'REzIntid (nOT Yet kahnkrd Ray'SIZ) that wehL nO dowt naym MEE, Samaz Ralan, ahZ thA'RR mUCH StEmD mAsTur ahNd EturNul spOkz-krEtshur.
I thu uhNdRsInD ahnD mI mInYunz DsI'UR EKwaLehTE!
LohnG LehV HowZ Ralan
***RP RANT OFF***30 names per race for at least 50 races please. Or do you have no love for anything but Humans?
They could easily come up with a system to take the prefix string from the (racename) file and a unique ID after it (usualy a number) from the string table and get the names. I was really supprised when I learned the names were hardcoded. Thats one of the simiplest systems you can create.
Yeah. Seems really stupid to hardcode something this simple.
Guys it annoying, I understand but seriously it is IC first game, as they stated they were wanting to make sure the game is playable on a wider range of systems spec. Sure by hardcoding certain parts it's makes modding hard but if that means I can play sins on my laptop then I won't complain.
The reason why, is that I have seen the jump for system specs when you have very powerful mods. Best example is Bridge Commander Supermod, Bridge commander requires very few system requirements that a ten year old computer will run it nicely, but the mod pushes it to the point that I would need to borrow my mates gaming rig.
You ask yourself why don't I get one, cause I have the money but am a third year uni student, I can't afford to be playing games so much, which would happen if I had a gaming rig. That's why it going to be built after university so it won't detract me from my studies. Yes I love games, hell I was playing since I was four on my brother sega game gear, my mate mega drive and then my own playstation.
What I'm getting at is I rather have a game that works on my computer in the first place rather than some super mod which has some ridiculous system specs that would easily play crisis.
Also to the guys that say IC abd Stardock must be doing this to make sure mods don't become better than their game, don't be ridiculous, why have a modding forums on their website? Why give us the the tools they used? Why am I suspecting a reply like to keep an eye on us.
Also the mods that quickly die out are the ones where the changes made are to the point anyone could do it, the best mods are the ones that totally redefine the game and what could be done on it, to the point you get messages saying I didn't think that was possible.
Sorry if I rambled on a bit.
Great Lord D
I agree. I can't tell you how frustrated I am trying to change simple things like this. I guess they figured that modders wouldn't actually ADD to their game, just modify it. They perhaps only envisioned 3 races. Well, I am at 11 races now, with only more to come. So this would be a nice change. It would help with the immersion of the game.
Also, I seem to have found yet another hardcode. If you try to fill up all the frigate build slots in the player files, for both regular and crusier class, the game will dump if every ship has shields. If you leave one off, the game works. But if the all have shields, no dice.
This has happened with the Atlantians, and the EMPIRE too. Both filled up all the slots, and both have ships for every ship. I had to purposely either give one ship no shields (the Atlantian drone) or leave off ships that were intended to be in.
Very annoying.
I think my biggest overall gripe is not knowing what the hardcodes are before I hit them. As I figure it was something that I did wrong, when in fact it is the stupid hardcodes.
It would be nice to get a list from Ironclad of what all the hardcodes actually are.
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