12/12/2009
Sins of a Galactic Empire (SOGE) 1.0e release for Sins of a Solar Empire EntrenchmentA Star Wars total conversion mod for Sins of a Solar Empire12-12-2009TEAM=============================================Models, textures, ship stats: EvillejediAbilities and tons of debugging: Psychoak (It would have taken another year without this help)Swrebellion.com Web support and general debugging: Evaders Interface icons: OzwolfSW Music: PedroMany many beta testers, many who didn't do a damn thing thanks to those that gave us valuable feedback!Probably some other people I am missing, thanksCONTACT=============================================Development website http://warlords.swrebellion.comDevelopment forum http://warlords.swrebellion.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=593&sid=d9baa3b5114c49929088ca5b1506e866bug tracker http://warlords.swrebellion.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.phpsins forum https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/331584INSTALLATION=============================================The zip file should be around 225mbExtract the contents of the zip file to your sins mod directory Example for windows XP C:\Documents\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment v1.041\Example for Vista/win 7 C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment v1.041\open the game and go into options and select the mod from the list of available mods and then activate it.THIS MOD HAS NOT BEEN TESTED WITH ANY OTHER MOD AND PROBABLY WILL NOT WORK WITH ANY OTHER MOD BECAUSE OF THE NUMBER OF FILES IT ELIMINATED TO BE STABLE.The mod should be working fine if the only races you can select are the star wars races. If this is not the case you have not properly installed the mod in your mods folder.NOTES=============================================This release is a compiled version of 1.0e, there are newer builds on the SVN, however these may be unstable or perform poorly, so download at your own riskIf you are in the beta test you will not need to download this file, simply update your SVN repository to get the latest versionThis release contains fully playable factions for the Rebel Alliance, Imperial Navy, Confederacy of Independent systems and Galactic RepublicThere are currently no star bases in the mod and the Civilian research has not been modified, it will be modified in the futureSince it is a total conversion this mod does not contain the stock races (advent, vasari, tech), this decision is driven by the hardcode limits imposed by ironclad and by eliminating them makes the mod much more stable. If you want the star wars races with the standard sins races check out Star Wars Requiem at http://sins.imperial.cc/If you would like to participate in the development of the mod we can definitely use your help! However we are looking for skilled individuals to do development of many detailed aspects of research/ability coding and 2d artwork and do not need general help. Please post on the development forum if you feel that you can help us.Please check the development website for updates on news, new content or official patchesIf you would like to participate in beta testing the mod you can post in the beta testing forum to get access, we are looking for testers that will provide detailed feedback of items they find in the game into our bug tracker.SOME STRATAGIES=============================================Planetary defenses are great starting elements to protect your planets, especially when upgraded, build lots of turrets!There are a few planet hardening upgrades in the defense research, these are crucial if you want your colonies to survive.Capital ships need to be protected before they gain a few levels, once they have a few levels they will become very potent.The ranges for weapons have been greatly extended. If you want more epic battles move your ships into closer range and many abilities and other weapons will be used by the vessels.Remember even Admiral Ackbar thought that it was suicide to move so close to the imperial star fleet!The Imperials focus on Heavy firepower, Ion weaponry and command and control. It is best to lead groups of star destroyers with a flag ship. The Empire does not have a low cost colonizer, but the gladiator and ISDs are very capable. The Executor really has no equal.The Alliance is focused on survivability, the mon calimari vessels may not have a lot of firepower, but they will be able to last the engagement. Mix the mon cal vessels with their other vessels for a mixed fleet and protect the Diplomatic vessels, they have excellent high level abilitiesThe CIS starts off weak, but has some extremely powerful abilities after a bit of research, build lots of trafed II's at the beginning and then progress to Lucrehulks with buzz droids.The republic is based off of mass production of its vessels, use support vessels to supplement homogenous fleets and Lead the fleets with a Jedi cruiser.KNOWN BUGS=============================================Some abilities may not work exactly as described, may have conditional issues or may be over/underpowered. This is being worked on and some of it requires Ironclad to release a new patchResearch costs have not been finalized, they will change in the futureSome ships may be unbalanced this will be addressed as we get specific bug reports some descriptions are too long and cause the text to spill out of the description box, this is especially true on lower resolution screens like laptop screens. We are working to fix thisOn some ships it may be possible to zoom in to the point that the models mesh disappears slightly this is being addressed.some vessels such as the subjugator and some fighters may have no texture or may have incomplete textures, this is being addressed in future versionsYwings are currently being displayed as bwings, this will be fixed soonSome abilities or effects may require work, this is especially true of abilities like SprintSome icons are being reworked and will require some adjustmentsFighters fly through ships and bounce around, this is something that needs to be fixed by ironclad, it is an engine issue.The AI likes to spam some ships, right now there is no fix for this.Compatibility =============================================Entrenchment 1.041+ (until ironclad breaks it again)model files and textures are compatible with older versions of Sins, however Ironclad made many changes to the SINS code that require 1.041, if you want to backport the mod to a previous version feel free, but it is a tremendous amount of workDownload Links=============================================
http://www.filefront.com/15122655/SOGE1.0e.zip
This mod is AWESOME! I played several games and got a mini-dump only once, playing the Empire. The origional factions are real easy to beat though, a couple hits and their ships go down but its still fun. The only real complaint I have is that the ships are way too dark and the Capital Ships are small compared to the rest.
well here are the steps I have taken
1) started from 1.16 base binary data in the particle, window and gameinfo folder. Added mod files. All of the mod files do not overwrite existing files except for explosions.explosiondata, soundeffects.sounddata, soundmusic.sounddata, HudIcon-ship.brushes, loadscreen.brushes and the planet files (the planets only increased the size of the gravity wells.
2) removed all abilities from ships and removed the modded abilities.
3) checked the overwritten files line by line for missing references or invalid values.
I still get minidumps occasionally
so it looks like going through the new mod files for missing entries after that I really can't say I have any idea why the game would mini dump (it really should only minidump when something isn't referenced properly and doesn't exist or when a value would create a value that a function cannot handle, though all the minidumps that do occur seem to be bad pointer references)
if that does fix the majority of the issues adding back abilities one by one will be the next step.
Having burned the midnight oil with a friend trying to find the issues in this simply put awesome mod over the last 2 days all our waking hours this is what ive found so far (apologies if it has been mentioned before or is allready known)
Research:
-Cannot research "Wormhole Navigation" and "Long Distance Jumps" as Empire (the icons are there bud overlapped by existing other research. They can be clicked but no research comes of them thus making multiple star games impossible as youre land locked.
- The research of "phase jump disruption" and "Interstellar networks" seems redundant since you can build those structures off the bat?
Structures:
- Repair Platforms dont seem to actually repair. Theyre also missing the auto-cast icon for repair ie you cant use them manually neither.
- Novalith can be built but not fired.
Ships:
- Antimatter Regen. Edit nm I found out how this works its fine
- Abilities/Autocast we agree seems to be some but not exclusive to the minidump issues. There is also a lot of ships which becomes bugged/or is bugged for ship abilities and purchases when levelling. Where points cant be spent ect. Especially with Alliance Capitals.
Bugs/Minidump maybes:
- Pirates set as inactive greatly reduces minidumps.
- Minidumps is near impossible to pin-point for us non-programmers as we had a million of them last night and they were utterly random. We even saved the game every 3 mins manually to try and get "as close to a minidump" as we could get but each and every time it would let us game a little longer without exception. We had easily over 100 minidumps during testing over last few days and not once could we replicate it to a fact.
We are confident to say that we agree with you EvilleJedi that it seems to often be involved with abilities and may very well have links to the debris. But we simply dont know. We do not have programming aptitude so its difficult for us to link the events with the "aha!" moment.
So far all testing has been with Alliance and Empire in various forms.
One last wish.
Is there any way the function shield transfer from TEC could be included in some shape or form could be a lot less powerful for all i care or maybe a repair platform that does shields restore or some such? Reason I ask is we found that our flagships massive shields would slowly get eroded by the game by sheer attrition and due to its size would never recharge in any meaningful way even out of combat and as a result we could just watch our ships get eaten down to the bones through the game with no way of doing anything about it
Hope this helps.
Awesome mod, awesome job. Hope we get rid of the worst mini dumping´.
Going to edit this post with anything I find as summary
Well I found rebuilding from vanilla files to be the easiest way to get a mod working, especially across major versions - perfecting a race/abilities/research etc before moving onto the next race. Hence my manifest/string files have all my "customs" at the top so that in the event of major changes I can copy my changes back into vanilla files pretty quickly.
How about releasing a "CIS only" release that people can thrash out for you?
Even a relatively simply mod like Requiem was generating obscure minidumps simply because I typo'ed some rarely used ability (one memorable one used to generate a minidump 15 minutes into the game, because I typo'ed an ability that the AI researched and only used later!).
The error popups don't capture everything... I can imagine getting a total conversion error free would be an absolute nightmare.
I did some testing of SOGE myself as the CIS race against Alliance AI without pirates and I had a pretty stable experience right up to the point where I right-clicked to auto-level capital ship special abilities and mini-dumped there. I wish I could remember the CIS capital exaclty (the second cheapest one with decent DPS I think) so maybe it was activating an ability that caused it.
Jason your mod MiniDumps just as bad so i wouldnt give Eville any advice
Im Curious to think maybe it has to do with the conversion to 1.16 (When i was using the older version of the Mod with 1.16 and it was ment for 1.05 i do believe it worked perfectly only after i updated the maps) just a thought
Well I managed to stabilize the mod by v1.6 by following my advice.
Ryuzaki, what's your advice on the best way to isolate issues and resolve stability issues - do you find cross-referencing between entity files or the validity of their content to be the best thing to focus on?
P.S. What mods have you authored and/or converted?
None but thats irelivent to the discussion all i was saying is last time i played your mod it mini dumped 10 minutes in
anyways Eville whats the statues on the issues
Great mod Eville
The only time I've minidumped so far (playing as Empire with pirates disabled) is when I try to exit the game. Every time I quit, I get a minidump message. This obviously isn't very bad for me, since the only time I'm "forced" out of a game is when I'm already quitting.
One request for the next version is that you increase the antimatter reserves of hangars. While the increased capacity that they have is necessary, that capacity means that even your initial squads are produced at a heartrendingly slow rate as antimatter regenerates.
^I take that minidump statement back.
I just minidumped for no apparent reason, still as Empire with no pirates, when I disabled auto-casting colonize and tried to use the "stop" button for two Gladiators while my camera was out of the system.
I've had some minidumps occur while exiting the game as well.
I dont get it anymore. weve played this mod rather extensively. I play single player games rather ok in fact I played some of them to the end using a huge map single star np whatsoever except the blatantly obvious ones like mandatar dreadnought ect.
But in multiplayer mode with my friend no combination of forces will save us. We mini dump at least once every 15 mins
As I stated earlier I dont know a damned thing about programming but I get the eerie suspicion that because 60%+ of all capital abilities are either broken or cant be bought ect maybe the CPU makes "calls to a code" expecting to do things/upgrade levelled capitals but gets a error return and crashes? Meh I dont know.
How do I put the SOGE icons into the Mod? Do I have to make a folder?
well that's my current goal, test the abilities one by one and try to fix them if they have issues
Dont know if this particular observation helps or not.
But the Alliance seems to be vastly more bugged than any other race. Reason is we can play solo games playing CIS, Empire and Republic with no minidump issues as long as we dont build mandator dread or have pirates active but every single time we play alliance on either machine (one runs xp 32 bit one runs vista 64 bit) we crash all the time.
So maybe at least some of the more severe bugs are tied into Alliance somehow? and this is definately not Capital ability oriented. We just played several games where nocaps were build against vanilla races and we just mini dumped all over the place when in combat, zooming in on combat ect.
Again, no other race is even comparable on grief levels. Sure we have the odd mini dump here and there but Alliance is unplayable.
okay at least one of the major alliance issues is due to the player file, I'm still testing this but something is really messed with it.
current status is using a proxy race file adding things back one by one to the alliance to see what breaks it.
ever stop to think that maybe its not just some capital ship abillites that are broken just a guess.
yes maybe I have, but the problem is a lot more complex than that, I already removed all of the abilibties as the first step a few days ago and I still got minidumps
made the bug tracker a little more accesible, see the first post in this thread for the change log and bug tracker (you still need to sign up for an account to report bugs)
oh that comment wasnt towards you eville sorry
First off I'd like to say DAMN, this mod rocks!! I absolutely love the direction I see your are taking with this. It's Mini dumping too much for me to play good games right now but just when I start to get upset I have to remind myself your not even to a 1.0 release yet. So yea, I can't wait till its solid. I was going to write a couple suggestions/questions but then I realized I got no business making suggestions on an unfinished mod nor should I ask questions when I haven't read 26 pages of posts on the subject so well just leave it at, "I can't wait till its done!"
You are officially my favorite new fan krunkert
We do obviously take suggestions, but we appreciate the time it takes to go through these posts so we don't repeat ourselves. I'm sure the minidumps will get resolved, Eville is hard at work on it.
If you feel like something hasn't been addressed before or isn't resolved, just ask.
This pretty much says everything I was going to.
I really cant wait for this one. What I do get to play before the mini dumps is enough to really get me excited. Once this goes to Entrenchment (if it makes it there) I will sure be there with you.
Wish I knew something about coding so i could offer some help Lets just say you have all the positive thoughts I can send your way....hope it helps some
thanks for your work
Alright, after over 2.5 hours of playing a custom map with 189 planets and 4v4 (alliance v. Republic v. Empire v. CIS), I hit two minidumps.
Minidump #1:
situation- beginning of an engagement between Alliance and Republic, zoomed in on a lvl 5 MC80 heavy star
cruiser as the fighter squadrons from both sides converged on eachother.
ships involved-
Alliance: 4 MC80 HSC (3@lvl4, 1@lvl5)x5 x-wing, 4 MC30 missle cruisers, 8 Assault MKII, 10Heavy corellian gunships.
Republic: 3 dreadnaughts, 9 Acc. II, 5 Centax, 3 Victors, 5 Vindicators, 8 CC-2200, 2 Carracks, 3 Bojef, 2 Consular
Minidump #2:
situation- after rebooting, I had zoomed away from the battle. Onceit was eveident the enemy retreated, my MC80s started bombarding the planet while the other ships and fighters busied themselves with the orbiting strucutrs in the area. Then a Consular Cruiser dropped in and I zoomed in on it. As my fighters closed in, BAM minidump.
I hope this helps even a little. I'll keep playing so as to find anymore situations.
Played several hours on Gateway with 5 AI Empire players and me as Alliance. This is the first time I played with any race besides Empire without expiriencing ANY minidumps (well, I had two while exiting the game...but who cares since I was done playing).
The only difference between prior Alliance player games and this one, was that I DIDN'T build any MC80A capital ships.
Oh, the Alliance also kicks the Empire's rear in terms of ship quality and abilities. I tried beating the other 5 AI players on Gateway with everyone as Empire, and got my rear handed to me every time. However, the Alliance sliced their way through Imperial fleets like nothing.
One Independence Star Cruiser, escorted by 1-2 Mon Remonda Cruisers and a few MC30c Cruisers = dead Imperial Fleet (unless it is truely massive or has allied support).
Between battles, having the ability to maximize shield recharge rates also gives the Alliance ships a much longer lifespan. Not having to pump out the replacement ships really goes a long ways economy wise.
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