Feedback of any kind is always welcome. Ideas, balance changes, and bug reporting of any kind is always useful!
Version 1.00 Released!
Make sure to ask for permission before republishing any part of this mod to the public!
Downloads
1.05 + DLC Compatible:
0.12 ALPHA Release:Full Download:http://distantstars.mmobase.com/rebellion/Distant_Stars_(R)_ALPHA_0.13_[45189661].7z
Full Download MIRROR:http://www.moddb.com/downloads/distant-stars-rebellion-alpha-013
MD5: 69486D2FCD3F35E46E6F5EF8C9F1634A
1.34 Compatible:
1.01 Release:Full Download:http://distantstars.mmobase.com/diplomacy/Distant_Stars_(D)_1.01_[45685832].7z
1.051 Compatible:
Beta 0.9951 Release:Full Download:http://distantstars.mmobase.com/entrenchment/DS_Entrenchment_Beta_0.9951_[36672852].7z
1.14 - 1.181 Compatible:
Version 1.01:Full Download:http://distantstars.mmobase.com/soase/Distant_Stars_v1.01_[453701567].7z
Multiplayer Games:We've setup a thread for everyone to organise their multiplayer games in and also setup example times and dates for most people to meet up and start games. These are what we hope to be the main times for people to be around and want to play games together.
The times are:4pm EST (9pm GMT) Saturdays & Sundays9pm EST (2am GMT) Saturdays & SundaysIf you want to organise other games please go ahead using the same topic to consolidate all the information in one place and hopefully get more games together within our community. These games are for PvP, PvAI & PvPvAIso come along and we'll get some games going!
Screenshots:We've setup a thread so you can all post your screenshots to share with us the Distant Stars team and its players. Im sure we're all intrigued to see what kinds of battles and events you've all been having on the mod aswell.
Lore:We know some of you guys love to role play whilst using Distant Stars, and here's a topic for you guys to post all of your role playing stories, character profiles and anything else you can imagine.
Maps:Some of you avid map makers out there have produced some great maps but never really had them recognised because they've got lost. Well here's a topic for you to post a link to the download (we can even provide mirrors if necessary) a screenshot or two of the map for us all the preview and if enough people like it we'll even include the map in with the actual mod!
Please visit our website and for more information, change logs, downloads, and to report bugs. Our website can be found here: http://distantstars.mmobase.com
Bug Reporting
If you want to report a bug please use the Bug Report feature on our website:http://distantstars.mmobase.com/?m=reportabug
Please include as much information as possible, if you have an error log feel free to post it on these forums and we'll take it from there. If you can reproduce the error please include the error log (read below to find out how to enable error logs) and include as much detail on how to reproduce the problem.
To enable logging:Windows Vista/Windows 7:C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\SettingorWindows XP:C:\Documents and settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting
Open the user.setting file (using Notepad, Wordpad or any text editor) and scroll down to the bottom 7 lines from the bottom is the line:LogOutput FALSEChange FALSE to TRUELogOutput TRUE
and from then on any Log files will be saved to the debug folder:Windows Vista/Windows 7: C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Debug or Windows XP: C:\Documents and settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Debug
If you get these log files to us (you can just paste them in to a forum post) we can hopefully get your issues sorted.
Frequently Asked Questions
All files are compressed using 7Zip to shrink the download filesize. To extract these files you must use WinRAR or 7Zip.Any Patches should overwrite the original install directory, either by extracting over the original folder, or cut/copy & pasting over the existing file/folder structure.
1) My game keeps crashing, is there anything I can do to stop it?i) Are you running the game on maximum (highest) settings? if so, lower them to High or Medium, there is a known issue with the game using up too much memory, there is nothing we can do about this, also no matter how powerful your pc is, it is affected by this issue no matter the pc it is not above this crashing issue, it is a game problem not a hardware one, so quite simply lower your settings. If you still have an issue with crashing see point two.ii) Give us as detailed information as possible about the crash, what was happening at the time of the crash, what races, ships, abilities were involved. If you can supply a Debug Log (see above for more information about logging) and post a bug report on our website.
2) The loading screens and portrait pictures dont appear properly, whats wrong?i) This is an issue with ATI based graphics cards (rarely affects Nvidia based cards) we're looking in to the issue.
3) Why dont you support converting Distant Stars in to TXT format?i) Quite simply many things can go wrong with converting your mod to TXT, we cant help you with something you've probably broken yourself.
4) Can I mod Distant Stars for myself?i) Yes you can however please do not distribute our mod or our mod that you have edited to the public. You must ask for permission to do so, we will regrettably stop distributing our mod to all if users abuse our work.
5) Your mod is in BIN format I can't edit the files, what can I do?i) You can convert the mod to TXT format however we wont offer any support to versions of the mod that have been converted to TXT.
6) Why is Distant Stars distributed in BIN format? i) Mods load faster in BIN format and are less likely to have issues in this format.
7) I'm having trouble installing the MOD, do you have any more instructions?i) Carbon was kind enough to do some more advanced instructions out here.
8) Is there any way to make new maps for Distant Stars using GalaxyForge?i) Within the Distant Stars Extras folder there is a folder called Galaxy Forge, Copy and Paste this folder (or its contents) over your original Galaxy Forge folder (or its contents) replacing any files if it asks you to. When you start Galaxy Forge next you'll be able to use all of our planets.
Or, the DIY approach (without custom icons):
ii) The GalaxyForge supplied by the devs will still work with our Mod, however to be able to access all of our planetary bonuses, templates, planet types and stars you will need to take our GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef (found in the GameInfo folder of the mod) and place it in to your GalaxyForge folder, overwriting the original GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef (if you still wish to make maps for the original game keep a backup of the original file). This will allow you to use all of the Galaxy changes included in our mod.
Note: Any maps made for Distant Stars will not work with other Mods. See #8.2 for DIY instructions for map making or take the appropriate files from Entrenchment, they're cross-client compatible.
Some statistics...
Since August 2009 to February 2011 we have had over...
400,000 Unique visits to the website12,000GB (12TB) of data transferred from our website
That equates to over 60,000 Unique downloads of the entire mod, excluding the excess of 20,000 Patches downloaded.
Thanks to everyone that has supported us this far and making our mod as popular as it is!
Well, Got done with Work early, figure I'll go in and play with the planet textures. Random thought, when looking at the messed up textures, it almost looks like the affected sections are actually portions of another planet texture that were thrown in by accident. I'm no texture artist, but does that sound like something you guys have run into before?
Btw, thanks for being helpful. I know that as problems go this one really isn't all that big a deal, but I have difficulty with the minor annoyances, which can be trying for mod teams I'm sure.
EDIT: Cat, I believe those are for your Icon issues.
Nacey something about ATI cards and .dds files don't always cooperate. So using the original .tga files may help there.
Initially try the DirectX one to see if the fixes the issue. Ironically it may be a driver issue and you need the complete Direct9 for it to work. Something Win7 doesn't give you.
I FIXED IT. Turns out, it wasn't a problem with the Textures. It was an issue with the Mesh, of all things. Removing the Planet_Desert Mesh files reverted it to the Stock Desert and every things good now.
Unless I'm terribly mistaken, this means this was not, in fact, a .dds issue, correct?
In any case, Thank your for your help DS team, and I hope this little bughunt has been beneficial to you. Cat, just go into your mesh file and get rid of everything with "Desert" in the name.
Well meshes are more of a structure that textures are pasted on (if I remember my very limited model training) so basically you may have more or less changed what was being called on to display. So instead of ours which called for a .dds texture onto a mesh its now the original .tga texture onto the mesh.
Well, whats weird about that Is I went and checked in my Stock Sins Texture folder and all the files there are .dds too. And, upon closer inspection ( I put the mesh files back to check) the texture doesn't change in the slightest when I remove them. It's just that the Big ass spot of darkness on the northern and southern hemispheres is gone. Thats it.
EDIT: All the relevant planet files are .dds, I mean.
Odd. Maybe a defect somewhere else. I am constantly using desert planets (all that space for labs) for my testing purposes.
Yep. I'm confused too. Either way, I made it work, without even a loss of quality. Maybe it was just a faulty download somewhere, I dunno, Just thought you guys might want to know about it.
Again, thanks for the help, and continue your excellent work please.
So, I converted the planet icon images to tga myself and it fixed that issue. I tried it on the player portraits as well, and it only partly worked. Most of the default images are fixed, but many of the custom ones are not even in the rotation, and a few are still off center. Mine was the intelgrated card by the way, but it may work for the ATIs as well.
Any thoughts on placing "Suicide Mission" - Mass Effect 2 (or any Mass Effect music) into the mod?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2z28mutY1E "Suicide Mission" (gets good at around 0:45 in)
There is already a song or 2. You got your request even before you asked it.
The player portraits issue is a long time error with ATI cards.
Most excellent.
What exactly are these issues? I use exclusively ATI cards and the Planet Mesh issue was the first Graphical Glitch I've ever had with Sins since I bought it in 08.
I had the same issue with some of the planets textures looking messed up. I came the the same conclusion, after removing the mesh files "posted below" the planets went back to normal. I suspect it has to do with this batch file you guys gave us to remove the older files. I think that the two are related to the issue happening.
This is the bactch file you guys gave us.
del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetDesert01-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\PlanetDesert01-da.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\PlanetDesert02-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\PlanetDesert02-da.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\Planetgas0-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\Planetgas0-da.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\Planetgas1-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\Planetgas1-da.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\planetglow.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetIce01-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetIce01-da.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetIce02-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetIce02-da.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetTerran01-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetTerran01-da.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetTerran02-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetTerran02-da.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetVolcanic01-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetVolcanic01-da.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetVolcanic02-cl.dds"del "Dip Rebalance v1.2\Textures\PlanetVolcanic02-da.dds"
Will let Nacey know when I contact him again.
The portraits being off centered or otherwise messed up. ATI cards have been doing this for a very long time.
I did know about the mesh files being broken in B2 I sadly missed removing them before releasing B2 to the public and didnt suffer from that issue myself so it didnt get picked up, I only realised afterwards when thinking back "I removed the textures so why bother with the custom meshs?" hence their deletion (its fixed in my local copy which im currently referring to as B3 but it may just turn out to be 1.0 depending on how things go!)
Apologies for not suggesting it sooner I had just seen screenshots of the planet icons and didnt realise it was the look of the planet that was being affected too
But yes ATI cards do often render .dds files (mainly the player portrait files) incorrectly and thats something I have no idea how to really fix see'ing as the Direct X fix didnt work and converting them to .tga files will likely have no effect either.
Thanks for all the testing guys all helps to make it perfect ready for the next release!
Question: Is it possible to have a random event consisting of a ship jumping into a random grav well?
Glad to help out. So far I haven't run into any other problems whatsoever, and I'm glad that I haven't been hit with this mysterious .dds problem.
So, not to sound like an ungrateful kid, but are there any plans for the Vasari Flagship, graphically? The other two flagships, despite being kitbashes, flow together really well and look like logical designs for their races, while still remaining unique. The Vasari one...not so much. Most of the time I'm unable to tell it from a Kortul, then I get a smack in the face when I flip to a different view and theres that seemingly random protrusion, and it really breaks up the model.
Obviously this should be taken as the observation of a random bystander, and not as a serious criticism, considering that I don't know the first thing about Sins Modding. (though, if you can use it, I might be able to whip something up in blender later this week.)
Yeah I might have to change that up a bit. Have a similar issue as well with it.
What about SivCorp's Hellion mashup?
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