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!
Regarding the Shuttle Ability, is it impossible to just name it something descriptive like "Admiral on board" or "Escape Pods" or something stupid like that and then leaving it as is, instead of just having a String Not Found?
Thanks! That's what I did wrong: I had Distant Stars enabled first.
I might seems how I can't get rid of it.
It's still referencing strings and hudicons from my ability.
nameStringID "IDS_ABILITY_NEPHILIM_IMMORTALITY_NAME"descStringID "IDS_ABILITY_NEPHILIM_IMMORTALITY_DESCRIPTION"hudIcon "HUDICON_NEPHILIM_CAPITAL_BATTLESHIP_ABILITY3"smallHudIcon "HUDICON_NEPHILIM_CAPITAL_BATTLESHIP_ABILITY3"
No actually I removed those. As for some of the photos I haven't yet put them in but there is still more to do like with the abilities and such. Unless you did send them over and I didn't see them. Been known to happen.
As for the AI I may attempt that one instead. It would work as well, thx for the tip.
@ZombieRus5- lol I really need to look things over better. You did send them all over.
Okay, ideas for the 6 missing map images. Some are more inspired than others and I have yet to put Carbon's name on his. Feel free to make suggestions or blam any of them.
Working on Stant's and Oranos' icons next. This is a good chance for me to get all that out of the way as no Advent or Vasari player in the lore have made requests. At this point I'm willing to take on a couple extra icons, but I'm reserving it for lore members only. And a sketch would be preferential to a description.
HUD idea might go over the weekend. Was having technical issues with it a while back. Made the game look like grated metal.
Have to poke Rot for models.
edit: Ryat, have you looked at any of the behavior of the starbase constructors to see if they'll help? I know the AI sometimes suicides them, but less often than scouts.
I redownloaded the mods and it now works perfect. I don't know why had this problem. Maybe i didn't correctly installed the patch. Anyway that's history now
Don't sweat it Joebenz. Really need Nacey to make that unified by now.
I'm finding maps with more than 4 AI's unplayable due to slowdown - even with fleet size set to minimum. Is there any way to edit Distant Stars to change the max fleet size?
Are you playing on a speed setting that is faster than Normal? If so you are essentially doubling the amount of calculations your CPU is having to do in the same amount of time ... on Normal and even on Slow speed settings I have not had any problems.
Do also consider graphics. Skyboxes, a large Empire Tree, and anything set to Very High Graphics will slow you down.
Normal speed, all graphics set to medium/low with most options turned off, core i5 530 and HD5650. Only gets slow when AI start maxing out fleets.
I've never had an AI max out a fleet and I've played dozens upon dozens of several hour games. If you're playing hours long games like that you will have a slow down regardless of anything you have for hardware. That's just the way it is and will be until some kind soul out there rewrites the engine for multicore and multi threading (which we all know the devs won't do because of the time and resources needed to do such a thing).
BTW, you don't have an i5 530, Intel doesn't make those. You've either got an i3-530 or an i5 something else. Either way, it's not the processor since they all meet the recommended specs for the game.
The HD5650 may be a little suspect because this game traditionally has had issues with ATI cards.
More importantly, as Harpo would tell you, the better the type of RAM you have, the better your game will play.
The easiest and more fun thing to do would be to start taking the fight to the AI's and remove their fleet.
But back to your original question, yes there is a way to edit the fleet size down further. In the mod's GameInfo folder, seek out the file Gameplay.constants
Open that file with wordpad or something and look for the grouping of text that looks like this: (It'll be about 3/4ths the way down the file)
fleetSupplyData-Small fleetSupplyScalar 0.75 fleetSupplyData-Normal fleetSupplyScalar 1.0 fleetSupplyData-Large fleetSupplyScalar 1.25
Change the small fleet supply to something like 0.6 or 0.5 and save.
Run your game and use the small fleet setting in the game. You should notice that there is much less fleet supply available. Gonna have some wicked fun this weekend since I upped my large fleet supply value to 2.0
Do keep in mind that my game was buggy after I loaded Windows 7 because I needed to get a driver for my Nvidia that worked better with Windows 7. So, it's always a good idea to double check driver updates and what not, as they are the easiest thing to do and it will be better for you across the board.
Before you start a game (in the map selection screen), you can go into the game options window and change "normal fleet size" to "small fleet size".
Stant, some preliminary drafts at the size you would see them in-game. The left (sorry, I put it on a white background) would be your standard gradient image, which would have the same break up as the blue image. I would refine some of those lines, as it is a quick shrink after I segmented the station and cargo ship. The right (I got smart about the background) is a lighter grey scale of the station which would need clean up for final production. I made this as it reflects the detail in your naval icon. I'll keep playing with it, but if you want to see any of these ideas refined, just let me know.
Yeah, no, I don't care for the gradient on the left, but the one on the right looks pretty good if you can keep the exhaust trail a solid line instead of broken up and keep white lines between the levels on the station to kind of keep the look of separate levels, ya know? Super thin though. I played with the gradients and didn't care for any of them which is why I handed it off to you to see if you could do better then me and keep as much detail of the original as possible.
Yeah, I can refine the levels a bit. The exhaust trail is certain, but I figured this is a test run. I'm thinking to go with the light bias and maybe have the level separation only cut about 50-60% over, leaving the left shadowed in grey. Whatcha think?
I think I'd have to see it to be sure.
But skyboxes are beautiful!
Some of them are kind of implausible/completely impossible, but they're so beautiful!
I would say not if you live in a nebulae, but most of those are false colored by Hubble (for good reason though). Inside of a nebulae you would probably get something monochrome at best, dark and smokey on average. Pitch black elsewhere.
Much of what we "see" in sci-fi things are not possible in reality. But then sci-fi movies and video games would not be very fun if it was made real to life.
What scaling is that on the size then? 1 I assume is game default and then 1.25 would be default size plus 1/4? So 2 would be double the default? That being the case, is there a physical limit to how high you can make it? For instance, 5x the size? Practically speaking I know that is probably a bad idea for performance but with the game accept that value?
Yeah, it can go as high as you want more or less, performace will cap at a certaint point though. Ive been able to enjoy 2.0 large fleet settings for years now with little to no studder except when in a large map and over 200+ units fighting in a single grav well. I cant watch those kinda battle very well, but if thats the only time I have issues Im ok with it. And to be honest its the horde of SC that come with a fleet that big that are the biggest slow down.
Im willing to be on a side note that if SC were removed along side Trade/Refinery ships you see the game running with crazy fleet suppy easy.
Also... great looking icons Draak! You should make more
He is
How about increasing the number of capital ships allowed? I thought that would be in the constants file too but I didn't see it anywhere.
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