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
One I think is in the planet lists if you were to alter the resource asteroids it throws a dump as the engine is designed to expect in certain files a certain order of things so if that order is altered it thinks the file is corrupted or such.
It was a mod I suggested for the logh guys for a new resourse asteroid, everything was properly named and such but it got to planet entity and got stuck in a loop while trying to load if I remember correctly.
Great Lord D
Well, that's what the modding community is for. Part of the fun is pushing the engine to the edge and perhaps even stretch it a bit as was mentioned earlier. I agree hardcodes are a modders worst enemy, but you can't have an engine without them. Also keep in mind we do not know how IC programmed their memory management routines. Part of the reason why we see so many hardcodes is perhaps because they do not use dynamic lists when it comes to loading data resources. So you get a fixed-limit list which can take x entries and minidumps the game if you exceed it. Well, that comes to my amateur-programmer mind anyway. If so, then they would actually need to do some major rewriting of the engine memory allocation routines and that's not really needed.
Good thing is, they do listen to our comments. I mean, they actually incorporate program changes to accomodate the needs of the modding community, and that's certainly not what I would associate with someone who wants to "keep us down". And while we may not get *all* of our requests granted to the extent that we would wish, we can work with what we have. Use clever design to work within the constrains of the system given. Optimize your mods. And always keep in mind that what we imagine in our minds is *always* better and more fantastic than what we can make with our hands.
Happens when you download perfect ideas into an imperfect world.
And Danman, hat's off for that piece of debugging. I wonder how long it would've taken me to find that shields are the culprit...
I think thier programmers would take that as an insult...
Maybe. If they are the sort of people who get insulted by amateurs wondering about the inner workings of their software. In which case I would not care, for opinions of such people do not interest me.
Still, I can think of no other reason for imposing limitations on the amount of data entries other than memory management. Can you?
No, and it most likely is the reason The game already struggles with the physical memory limit even in its vanilla state. And because it's not made for the highest end PCs where they can assume the majority are running 64 bit OSes with a 4gb limit instead of 2gb, that makes it harder
That would help immensely.
Exactly. So it may turn out that "supermods" like Danman's are simply not doable within the constrains of the game engine. Now, I plan to add three new races to the game, and I will have to be pretty creative with the way I am using available resources (sound recycling, for example), but I can only imagine the trouble Danman is heading to with the idea of having about 30 races in. In the end, having a complete list would be nice, but I also believe we are beginning to reach that limit to which the engine can be stretched. Personally I am more worried about the sort of "hardcode" bugs like the shield thing. Those are difficult to weed out.
ManSh00ter,
I am glad that my little "disconvery" could help you out. Trust me, I am a big fan of your mod, and I would hate to see it delayed for something that is beyond our control. It was very frustrating for me for the past 2 weeks with this limit. And the worst thing is, that no specific error message occurs within the DEV exe, just a good old minidump. It happened at almost the same time when the EMPIRE was part of the mix. I could not figure out what was causing it. Then I remembered that their ship slots were maxed out, and that eac ship had shields. I came across that problem with the Atlantians months ago. So I decided to remove one ship from the Empire's lists. That seemed to fix the problem. So I am glad I came across a solution myself too before I ripped my hair out.
Hopefully, "supermods" like mine won't break the engine, as, like you, I have great inspiring plans. Like I said to you before, hopefully we can merge our great mods together someday.
I hope to see a great battle some day with the Atlantians vs. the XIN. To great technological, and graphical wonders battling it out to the end. Best of luck to you ManSh00ter.
Thanks for the comments and your support.
"We'll cross that bridge when we reach it."
K, what research is needed for bridges?
Add this one to the list of modding pet peeves. The inability to make ships manuever, and fight at the same time like the fighters do. Some have managed to make crude workarounds, but whenever i try the modded ships shutter violently in place, and still come to a screeching halt after a few seconds. I know the dev's said for vanila sins this is a bad thing, but some mods need to have ships that can manever around during combat.
That would be under "AI not hardcoded to entity type". If we could change AI based on entity types, then we could Defiants zooming around like fighters do. And that = win.
It would help the FS2 mod as well, seeing as how "phase-jumping" fighters are integral to the Freespace universe.
Yes, being able to me the AI would be a big plus, as well as getting ships to not drop dead in combat. Movement in combat should be dynamic as ships try to evade fire, not just sit there and pound each other.
Damn edit button isn't working. I meant MOD the AI.
Are you sure? I think you wanted to smother yourself all over the AI because your in love with sins. Your fantasies are strange indeed!
Yeah, you know me and my Sins obsession.
Anyways, I think there is some kind of hardcode on types of DDS texture files too, but I can't seem to lock it down yet. I'll post more as I find out more.
What do you mean? If you mean about usable file formats, that's pretty normal for any program out there which is not an image editing sofware.
Or do you mean your new textures don't show up anymore?
"Defiants zooming around like fighters do." ~SpardaSon21
When I read the part about the this, it made me think of replacing the strikecraft mesh with the defiant mesh, then watching scores of tiny lill' ity-bity defiants flying all over the battle field... lol... That would be funny.
JC
It would be until you realize that SoA 2 is a serious mod. Then all hell would break loose from all the nit picky trek fans bitching about the little micro defiants (with equally micro quantums)
Sins does NOT like dds saved specifically as normal maps. found this out the hard way. Try saving a sins normal map as a dxt5-nm and watch the result. You will see what i mean. It only likes dxt5 argb interpoliated alpha. For effects it likes both TGA and DDS
All models MUST have a Normal, and a DA texture even if it is an all black one. The -da, and normal maps MUST have an alpha channel. Preferably a copy of the RED channel for the normal maps. Otherwise you will run into "black ship syndrome". This is straight from the dev's here. The new patch changes some things but the fact the da's and normals still need alpha channels remain.
See, I didn't know that, and I have a mild case of black ship syndrome on my models. A copy of the red channel... never would've thought of that.
By the way, you can have an invisible ship controlling big ship that are actually fighters, but unfortunately fighters have to be built separately, can't phase on their own, always "dock" before phasing and such. So yeah, that remain the big gripe for any mod which uses ships which are supposed to be moving during battles. It's easy for Star Wars, their ships just sit there and duke it out...
This is exactly what I was talking about. If the DDS is not in a specific format (which we didn't know up front), then you get the Black Ship syndrome, or the glowing ship syndrome too with the blooms are messed up.
The actual thing I am talking about are if you set your graphic settings too high with mods, they seem to cause minidumps with the game. For example right now you can only run 7DS with a planet setting of HIGH. HIGHEST setting causes the game to dump within 3-5 minutes into the game. I believe that planets and ships must be saved at different DDS settings, such as DX3 or DX5, but I am having trouble figuring out which one works with what. I believe DX3 is for planets, and DX5 is for ships, but I still need to test my theory.
ManSh00ter and Major Stress, thanks for posting. Means a lot that we are working together on this.
Figuring out planet texturing is a priority for me. On several occasions when I tried resizing planets I ended up with a glowing, pulsing blue ball instead of a planet, even with original textures. So there may also be a planet-specific problem when they are resized, I just haven't been able to pinpoint them. I am now trying to get my heands on an exported planet mesh so I can analyze how it's built.
Danman, what resolution textures are you using with planets? That problem you have looks to me like some sort of a memory issue... no idea why the game would dump based on graphic quality otherwise. Anyway, have you tried lowering planet texture resolution? Or if you are using "non-standard" planets, such as planets with moons or the derelict shipyard thingy, maybe the problem lies there and not with the actual graphic settings, so you may want to try and disable some of the more extravagant planets. I know I had a few minidumps when I used a custom-builts planet mesh, so the game definitely does not like new stuff in that section...
I will have to check the resolution of the planet textures. I thought that may cause it as well. I am convinced however that the DX3 or DX5 DDS format is behind the error. I hope that is the case, and not a resolution problem, as I think I used the same resolution as vanilla Sins planets use.
Also, with regards to meshes, I have been successful in making different sized planets and stars, so I may be able to help you there. A lot has to do with the glossiness of the model. Try to keep it the same number as vanilla meshes. Any variation will cause weird effects. Also, if you make the planet bigger, then you usually need to make the txture bigger as well.
Also, you must include both the light side and dark side textures as well, or again things will look weird. If you want to work together on this, I'd be happy to help. Send me a PM and I'll give you my email. Then you can send me what you are working on. I know you use XSI for modeling, and I use 3D MAX, so there might be an issue there as well. I think together we can find a solution. I leave it up to you.
Again, thanks for posting. It means a lot to have your support.
Now that is a nice looking planet! Glad to see that you worked it out. Please post if you have any more problems. Also, have you experienced a limit on engine emitters as well as flair points? I noticed in your video you have spotlights coming out of your Battleship, and I was wondering if you used flair points and if they gave you problems. Awesome work Mansh00ter!
DANMAN, you said you can have a max of 3 weapon types in your original post, but is there a limit of how many weapons you can have on a unit (say I wanted 20 beams for example)?
Sorry for not reading whole thread, but only just recently decided to some modding
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