This is the "Release" topic for the SoA 2 mod. Candidate for Mod Database's 2008 Mod of the Year.
SoA 2 0.03b adds the unified Dominion (with Cardassian, and Breen units) as a playable faction. It is the second part of the 0.03 series. You do not need 0.03a3 to play it. The 0.03b is complete. Delete any previous version of the mod and replace with the new version. This is still a "Ships Only" Release. Structures, Defenses, Research, and Ability's are schedualed for the 0.04 update.
The SoA 2 "Work in progress" topic is here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/173883 All News, and updates will be posted there. Any non known issue bugs post over there.
Here is the Mod Database page. You can download the mod from here. http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2 If the download is not there yet. It is still processing. Keep checking. It takes a while for ModDB to process new files
Here is an alternate download link for 0.03b. The link will be removed when ModDB has the file up. http://files.filefront.com/SoA+2+003bzip/;12933985;/fileinfo.html
SoA 2 0.03b "The Second Dominion War" is the second of a two part release of 0.03. All four main factions are playable. We merged Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod into SoA 2. While still a demo we are no longer going to use the term, because SoA 2 is starting to shape up into a full blown total conversion.
You MUST be running Sins version 1.1, 1.11, or 1.12 to play the mod. It will NOT WORK ON ENTRENCHMENT! or any other Sins beta. It also will not work on any versions of Sins before version 1.1
Read the Readme file for important installation instructions.
If you have an older version of SoA 2 just delete it from your mods folder, and replace it with the new version.
For best results install the SoA 2 mod on a clean install of latest update of Sins of a Solar Empire (version 1.12 as of this release).
Before you run the game for the first time after a clean install of Sins. Delete the "Ironclad Games" folder in c:\documents and settings\"your user name"\local settings\application data\. For Vista users its C:\Users\"your user name"\AppData\Local\. BACK UP any other mods, and screenshots BEFORE you do this. This will ensure there are no stray older version, and/or beta files are in your sins installation.
Disable "Ship Mesh Highlight Filter" in your options\effects Otherwise you will see some wierd lighting problems with modded ships. We have not had time to adapt the modded ships to use this feature yet.
Disable any and all Team Color settings. There is a bug in how Sins renders team color in 1.1. It affects both the mod, and the default sins models. The Team Colors bleed through on the entire mesh. Both vanilla game ships, and modded ships are affected by this. Ironclad switched the specular, and team color shaders with the 1.1+ updates, but it seems like they failed to implement the code to render them correctly. Turn team color on and off to see for yourself. The mod doesnt use team colors anyway so you do not need this feature enabled. Ill post a bug report about this later.
The mod has been tested only on the US English version of sins. Other languages may, or may not work. If you are using a language other than English rename the "English.str" file in the mods strings folder to whatever language you are useing. Example: "German.str" if you are using the German language version.
Future planned updates:
SoA 2 0.04 will concentraite on adding all of the factions proper Research trees, Ability's, Structures, Defenses, and balance tweaks if needed.
SoA 2 0.05 will be the final spit, and polish of the mod before going into the final version. Anything that we couldnt get to do in the previous versions will be done here. Model, and texture tweaks, effects, sounds, more balancing, etc. will be all be refined if needed.
Enjoy the latest release of SoA 2
Major Stress,
Darkshimmer,
Trekmods,
Digital Underground.
Ah, punctuation, how I miss thee.
yes i did like 16 times as i said it shows it on the games mod list i go to enable the mod then log out of the game to see the cinimatics first it does not show up just the sins's one i go to a map see what happends i wait for like 2 to 3 minutes and nothing no factions and no ship for those factions so i dont know anymore i pretty much give up on it its not worht the trouble anymore
Think what you want about the mod. If it doesnt work for you then it is something wrong on YOUR end that is the problem. Not the mod.
Did you make sure you are running sins 1.05? NOT the 1.1 beta.
Did you make sure you didnt have an SoA 2 folder inside of an SoA 2 folder in your mods directory?
Did you make sure your version of Sins is in ENGLISH? If not rename the English.STR file to whatever language you are using.
Did you delete the "Irongclad Games" folder to make sure you dont have any stray beta files that can crash the mod?
The directions are in plain black, and white. If you dont understand them that is not my problem. I wrote them clearly enough, because MANY people have installed this mod correctly, and it works just fine for them. Just because ONE PERSON obviously CAN'T READ, or REFUSES TO READ the damn directions. This is a waste of MY time, and everyone else's time who has to respond just to repeat themselves to every uneducated, incompitent, trained monkey that shouldnt even be operating a computer, because they CANT READ! When the problem is more than likely an easy fix the user could have easily done if only he/she would have READ THE DAMN README!
I am not getting paid to do any of this so i really dont give a damn what you think of my mod, or my response.
Major Stress I took your advice and edited the ship stats to me and my friends satisfication. I also (as did many) added in the sins plus planets and edited the string file to make the planet designations trek ones ( M class, D-class etc..) We're having a great time with it Major Stress dont let the few destractors get you down this is a great mod My friends and I are all loving it and I cant wait to see the next version! I havent been on these forums lately because we've been too busy playing the mod!
And whitefire even after all the editing I did to this mod it still runs
ok well i tryed it a few times more and i got what looks like half of it.. i can watch the cinimatics that you had place on it stress and can see what changes it had done to the game but one thing is still missing its the factions and the ships i dont see them
Hi Major Stress,
I am one of those lurkers and just wanted to thank you for this mod. You are one of the few modders to actually have a successful working mod out there that kicks major %^&. Thanks again and look forward to further enhancements as you have time.
i would like to say sorry for what i said .. i feel like a real ass im sorry stress i finaly go it right you see im not much of a computer geek i had just got this game about 6 days ago, and when i saw the startrek mod i start to drool as i said im realy sorry for what i said about the mod ok?
Bet it was an easy fix, wasnt it? Care to share what you did to make it work?
I was very frustraited, and "stressed" out (pun intended, points to avatar) with my reply above, and i apoligise.
I have enough on my plate with RL, and dealing with finding a way around hardcoded stuff, and building new stuff that may or may not work because of the hardcoded brick walls without having to play "Tech Support" on top of it all lol
I get problems like this all the time, and usually the problems have very simple solutions. Like someone not clearing out the 1.1 beta files by deleting the "ironclad games" folder, or extracting the zip first then moving the SoA 2 folder into the sins mods folder. Most importantly 99% of the problems happen because people do not take the time for whatever reason to read the documentation given to them. I know people get excited when they see a trek mod, and immedietly want to play it. You need to have patience and read the instructions just like any other software
The majority of people that get Sins are getting the 1.1 beta, and probably dont even know it, because they have "Show Pre-release Versions" checked in Impulse without realizing it. Then they get frustraited when the mods (not just mine) do not work. I am not sure if Impulse has show pre-release on by default, or not, Trying to run the mod on the 1.1 beta has been the single biggest problem i have seen so far. Second is trying to run it on a non-english version of Sins (which is an easy fix, and one is provided in the readme). 3rd is the folder in a folder problem caused sometimes by extracting the zip directly into your mods folder. Extract it somewhere else then copy/paste, or move the SoA 2 folder into your mods dir. There have been rare instances of bad downloads. So when all else fails try re-downloading the mod.
Glad to see there is still a drool factor. should remember to bring a mop next time
i loved what you have done with the game.. the one down side with playing federation ships... they dont last long in a fight i had a hand full of klingon ships ransack my home planet i sent every ship i had to try and fight them off haa ya had my ass handed to me i had aone where to of my capital ships were taking on 3 ka vorts and still lost.. two galaxy class didnt last very long i know this is just a demo so i under stand. ps i even had all the teck upgrades for all the ships too
Stress has already said its not balanced yet. If you want it balanced now, try and do it yourself.
Feds are actually awesomely overpowered anyway. Just send fleets of 100+ damage miranda's at things. They have the punch of a galaxy class from 4ap.
Yeah there some ships that are overpowerd, Miranda's are one of them.
But they were fun at a lan last night!!
Tried the mod on lan, works great, except we had a lock up on one of the maps.
Think Major Stress needs to work on the balance abit better, e.g. the Warbird for Klingon is a scout ship?
You can do the same for the Feds, 30-40 Miranda's + 1 or 2 cap ships can wipe out an entire fleet.
Hello Major Stress
I would like to ask you what programs do you use to create ships and textures. I am taking a batchelors in Game Design and as a side project I would like to work on modding this or another game. I know 3ds max to a degree and I know of other 3d modeling programs like XSI, milkshape etc. I'm just wondering what everyone uses to create ships that they then put into the game.
Thanks in advance
I'm going to try out your mod tonight!
The B'rel class bird of prey is a scout ship. The K'vort class bird of prey is a battlecruiser
Ah Major Stress,
I checked out your readme file and realize you grabbed a bunch of these models from a bridge commander mod. Perhaps you still have some info though on how these things were modeled. I would love to make a ship in 3ds max with textures and all then figure out how to bring it into Sins
I'm another one too, but I had to post my appreciation. While I've only played once, as the Federation, this thing is great. Looks great, sounds great, and I particularly like the music.
Keep up the good work.
The majority of the models were made in 3dsmax. Some others IIRC were done in lightwave (Moons Ktinga). Some of the models were intended for a failed HW2 project. Those models which were basically higher resolution versions of our original SoA models wound up in the also failed Favor the Bold mod for Bridge Commander. Reasons they were both failures was the difficulty at the time in how to mod those games. So the team lost interest, and moved on.
I make no big secret that i am using 3rd party work. All 3rd party artist are properly credited in the readme.
My method of importing some may consider strange, long, tedious, but it works. I make (or import a 3rd party model) in 3dsmax, Re-UV map the textures to one single sheet. On my own models i build them with a single texture in mind.
I then export from max to .3ds then import the models into Lightwave. There is only one reason i do this, and that is to scale the model properly. I dont like how max scales. Lightwave has a handy feature called "absolute size". Just lock the x, and y axis, type a length in the z axis then blammo. Your model is scaled. Then i export the scaled model from Lightwave to .obj. For no particular reason other than to keep it separete from the master model. Convert it to .x format using deep exploration. I used to export back to 3ds from LW, but my version of XSI 6.0 crashes every time i try to import .3ds.
I import the direct x model to XSI 6.0 then follow the modding documentation to the letter. One thing i do that i have seen others not do is i delete all the imported scene materials. Then i create a single new scene material, and apply my textures to that new material. I dont trust the imported materials, because i have seen wierd results in game from it. You only need one material.
I use Photoshop 7 to make the textures.
There are tons of tutorials on the web. Google is your friend if you dont mind doing some reading.
I never went to school for any of this. My school was the school of hard knocks
Thats awesome that you answered so throroughly!
Thanks for that. I really wish I had better modeling skills. I can really appreaciate all the creases and bumbs on the Galaxy class I was playing last night. Too bad though for some reason I coudlnt use the tech to get more fleet and crew. I dunno the bar wouldnt fill but the research was going on. I wanted to make a bunch more Miranda classes.
I too love the music in the mod and the models are top notch. I don't really notice anything low res about any of em! I will have to do some reading but it looks like you also get some use out of Lightwave (never used that one) and XSI (never used either) Lightwave just to resize and scale but unsure why XSI is used.
The funny thing about getting an education and batchelors in this stuff I read on Epicgames forum that basically they will hire someone who has done a mod and shown some work in preference to someone with just a degree. A degree isn't even needed but I would like to get the batchelors. 3d Max can be crazy because you have to know how to light, model and texture. Photoshop skills are great to have too. I'm not so strong when it comes to texturing yet.
Kudos for the mod man it's great. I really love the phaser arcs and photons you nailed the sound great. I guess somewhere in the modeling you can tell the game engine where you want the lasers to come from? They look just like they are coming off the phaser banks I love it!
You need XSI to do any kind of serious modding in sins. Unfortunetly.
The Hardpoints need to be done in XSI. The texture application, and tangents also need to be done in XSI. The model converter only reads dotxsi.
If there was a way to "truescale" my models in 3dsmax i wouldnt have to use lightwave at all. I have found max's scaling tools to be vague at best. I hate eyeballing, and guesswork when it comes to that.
The music is straight from the motion picture soundtrack
The weapons are far from perfect thanks to the hardcoded firing arcs.
The Galaxy/Venture was not meant to be built in the hundreds which is why it has such a high fleet cap. There were never more than three seen in any battle.
Hmm so my tech research should have been working? I couldnt get beyond fleet and crew level 1 though I queued both to be researched and had nothing else going at the time. Maybe it was that particular game and I'll have to try another one / see if I can make some more capitals.
I played another game last night using Federation and then Klingon. Can you mod the mining structures, ship building structures, planet strutures? What about changing the voiceovers can you substitute new sounds like Make It So or something?
I downloaded the Forgetools XSI Modtools and looked at the scant documentation. I also found the tutorial on this forum having to do with using Modtools. Lots of documentation with this and SoftImage provides it for free!
I've never done an unwrap UVW but I think I can get a start by creating a basic object like a Federation shuttle and try to get it into the game. Maybe a runabout or something. It's a boxy shape that I think I would be okay at modeling LOL. It only gets hairy when I have to extrude, push, pull and round out shapes. I tried to make a spider for an animation project for school and keep it all as one shape and it didnt turn out so well Anyways though are the Hardpoints the places where you specify beams to come from or something? How do you specify the lighting? Like on the Akira class you have a red and green light coming of the front near the forward saucer section.
I know, which makes pure galaxy/venture 2k-fleets quite amusing
I found something interesting
If you start out on a small map you have to designate your capital planet when you first start. Medium map doesn't have this problem. Seems to have a better starting economy too. Who would have known the map size effects your starting economy.....
Hmm. I never had to designate a capital world in any of my games. What map was this? Was it random gen, or one of the prefab maps? Not that it matters, I never touched any of the map files. Which is why the mod factions start out with nothing. IMO it is better that way.
You have to start modding somewhere Even if it is just a little box. Welcome to the school of hard knocks, and trust me you will experience some hard knocks. Dont give up on it if modeling is what you really want to do. It takes a lot of patience, and multiple attempts to get it right.
UV mapping is easy once you understand how it works.
On another note: the next update wont be for a while. I may be starting a new job soon (hopefully it wont require much travel time as my old job did). My time however will be very limited when it comes to the mod. RL has to come first, and i need to pay my bills. So vacation time is over for me. I will update when i do get some free time though.
Hi everyone.
First Stress the demo's great, you take as long as you need to get the full mod done perfect, and if the demo's as good as this then i cant imagine how good the mod will be. Now this might sound like a stupid question is there a complete shiplist for the mod, ive seen a few times that Stress has a shiplist set in stone but i cant find it anywhere. I'm not here to nitpick just let the guy do the job, i'm just curious. Thanks
Hey the demo looks awesome the ships r really detailed.. im really amazed at the research done on each race's ships
but i havin a bit of a prob with the credits.. As soon as i start playin the credits keep reducing by itself.. no matter wat i do.. so i cant play further when i quit the game i see thru the stats tht the AI had the same prob.. any1 else had the same prob
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