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!
I don't suppose this could be an 'extra' thrown in? I see the logic behind what you are discussing ... just something I think would be nice to have in the game I suppose.
I can always make it an extra. No problem there. Maybe even con Ryat into including it with the powerful pirates mod, which shouldn't be all that hard anyway.
Actually we tried this once (a while back) and it didn't work. Will reattempt and see if it works now.
Well, if it exists elsewhere, you ask politely and give credit. Meanwhile, I'm up late writing lore. God, writing can be a pain in the ass sometimes.
Well, like I said, I've been doing it since before DS Diplo 0.7
With the improvements to the pirates this last round, they should be better equipped to make it work.
Lore. Amusingly enough, Bison can't get to it until this weekend and Oreo checked earlier today... Kind of opposite of what I was expecting to happen.
ta da?
Whatever, I'm going to bed. Will post tomorrow.
LMAO, when I was sitting on my bus in Springfield,Ma. People were walking by and they were like, "what's up wit him?"
Well lucky you my innards decided to stage a rebellion of an mass exodus in nature and keep me home. Can't drive a fight a rebellion at the same time. Example, was going down 5th Ave just before the 97th transverse through Central Park when the rebellion struck, stopped the bus and made it to the bathroom, passengers thought it was funny as hell. I rather them laugh at the situation then at me if I'd continue on and soiled myself, New Yorkers, gotta love them....Anyway, will get to your lore today and add something, and I want to create this visual of Finley so give me some input on what is in orbit. Take care guys....Fight the Rebellion....
What? No turd smiley? I'm disappointed.
so were the New Yorkers
Aplos had stated he simply gave them the interstellar research and it worked ... Makes me think about a 'pirate' star system in a multiple star map.
The devs did change the way the pirates handle research so it might be working now. Like I said, I will get around to it when I can.
Ahhhh that sounds to nice, I'll be able to implement a few old ideas into some maps I had to give up on as a result, any way you could give a file name to where we can add a specific research to the pirate's list? say wormholes, Synergy, phase interference immunity?(setting choke-points outside the pirate bases is handy, but not if you're actually trying to use them...)
Well, you have to give them the research in their tier list, then you have to list the research in their player file. You do both of those and you should be set. I'll look it up more specifically tomorrow morning while my niece is over watching cartoons.
Hey Ryat, I changed the role type of the admiral's shuttle for all three races to Cargo and the results are pleasing.
They hang out in their own gravity wells, I didn't see any run off to ally gravity wells, they flee from the gravity well when you jump your ships in, and they don't go out scouting or raiding or even bothering trying to attack. Probably the best you're going to get with that.
Now about that armor and shield mitigation... Those can be dropped down to more reasonable levels to allow you to actually be able to kill them. I seriously have a full on 6000 supply fleet and 33 cap ships (since I held off on making the Flagship until after I had 32 other cap ships) shooting at it, and that little bad ass is taking everything like a champ and not dying.
I can see having tough armor (not as tough as it is), I can see having great regeneration rates to shields and hull, but the mitigation should be dropped down. Right now, it might as well just have the invincible tag thrown on it. The threat of it being killed off will also make it so that players don't use them as scouts since with the Cargo role type AI's won't use them as scouts either.
Edit: Also if the weapons are going to be 0 damage, why bother including them?
Very nice find, Stant.
Anyone know which entity files to edit in the flagship mod to get the correct weapons fireing for the Vas Flagship?
Or do I need to change the nulls in the model file itself?
Thanks.
When using Distant Stars version of Galaxy Forge, when I select 'Non-Green Random Star' does that simply pick from the vanilla non-green stars or does it include things such as white stars etc? Also, if it does include the other DS stars, does it include the Sol star? It would be awesome if it did not include the Sol star but included everything else when selecting the non-green star.
Thoughts?
CAPITALSHIP_PHASEBATTLESHIP2.entity
If you don't want to do it, just let me know which weapons should be on there and I'll fix it up and hand it off to Ryat for the next release.
It's the standard without the green. I meant to add in the others a long time ago. The sol stuff (star and planets) are not included in any of the random options in DS and won't be to my knowledge. They're included in the first place because of Celestial Bodies.
What would have to be done to include those other stars in the 'non-green' random setting?
galaxyscenariodef file in the gameinfo folder. Right at the top you will see this:
starType designName "RandomNonGreenStar" designStringId "IDSGalaxyScenarioTypeStarRandomNonGreen" orbitBodyTypeCount 3 orbitBodyType "BlueStar" orbitBodyType "RedStar" orbitBodyType "YellowStar"
Change it to say this:
starType designName "RandomNonGreenStar" designStringId "IDSGalaxyScenarioTypeStarRandomNonGreen" orbitBodyTypeCount 5 orbitBodyType "BlueStar" orbitBodyType "MagnetarStar" orbitBodyType "RedStar" orbitBodyType "WhiteStar" orbitBodyType "YellowStar"
Of course, you could always change the count to 6 and add in the line orbitBodyType "BlackStar" to make black holes randomly appear too, but the AI's have difficulties in dealing with them to the point where that just slam their fleet into it and die.
Might try that thanks.
Something to think about true. I made it like that as it will appear amongst a battle and I didn't want it dying too quickly. The pirate battleship can take it out but no other now that I think about it.
Last time I tried that the game yelled at me. So I put it back. Maybe it won't if I set it to Cargo.
Thanks Stant 123 I'll be using this in the map I'm working on! Could you and the team include this in the Forge extras for the next release of Distant Stars?
If i have my own custom galaxyscenariodef file, I'm asuming there will be problems if someone else tries to edit it? I'm looking through it and I'm curious if I could put together some new planet groupings tomorrow and get those to you to include in your next version as well? What is the difference between a Planet Type and and Orbital Body? I understand the templates so that shouldn't be a problem.
Shouldn't be an issue, it's just a couple of lines.
Tries to edit the map? In this specific case, no. There won't be any problems as you're adding options to a selection already available. Someone else playing just won't ever see Magnetar or Pulsar stars if they use your map with the random no green star setting. Their's will still see the red, yellow, or blue only. The only time there is even an issue is when someone uses a map made from a galaxyscenariodef file that has options no one else has. For example, Space telescopes is not a selectable option currently as an individual gravity well item I believe, so if a map maker uses a custom file that has space telescope as an item to force it to show up and passes it around to the rest of us... We don't have that option so the map will crash on load.
Sure, why not, I did for 0.7 Haven't ever bothered to look to see if my newer one ever got included...
Uh... Planet type is the header the game uses to identify pieces of the galaxyscenariodef file. OrbitBodyType is the option used in game.
planetType <------- So the game knows here is the next selection option designName "RandomAsteroidSize" designStringId "IDSGalaxyScenarioTypePlanetRandomAsteroidSize" orbitBodyTypeCount 4 <------- So the game knows how many 'planet' types to pick from when this is used. orbitBodyType "ProtoAsteroidHuge" orbitBodyType "ProtoAsteroidDwarf" orbitBodyType "ProtoAsteroidMoon" <------ The 'planet' that can appear in the gravity well orbitBodyType "ProtoAsteroid"
If you add another selection option, you must adjust the planetType count at the start of the section just as when you add more options to the orbital body types, you must adjust the count there too.
Update 1.21 is now out. Any compatibility problems?
Wow, I actually logged into the wrong account before. Amazed that I remembered the password!
Changelog https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/408939 for version 1.21
Aside from reverting all of your setting back to default and forcing you to move all of your mods over to a new folder, no, the update does not create any compatibility issues that I know of.
The ICO, interface, and AI changes are not something that would affect us.
The others, here are the differences between DS and the official stuff with changes made in 1.21:
In the soundeffects.sounddata file, they added the following:
effect name "WEAPON_PHASECAPITALWAVEHEAVY_MUZZLE" fileName "Weapon_PhaseCapitalWaveHeavy_Muzzle.ogg" type "Effect" is3D TRUE priority 5 threshold 30000.000000 minAttenuationDist 1200.000000 maxNumPlayingSimultaneously 5 isLooping FALSE isResident TRUE minRespawnTime 0.1 fadeInTime 0.0 fadeOutTime 0.0 alternateGroup ""
Gameplay.constants: (there's actually a few differences here)
jumpAngle 45 (DS is 15)
DefaultSalvageRefundPercent 0.30 (DS is 0.40)
planetBaseAllegianceAtDistanceCount 11 allegiance 1.00 allegiance 0.90 allegiance 0.80 allegiance 0.70 DS is: allegiance 0.55 60 allegiance 0.40 50 allegiance 0.25 40 allegiance 0.25 30 allegiance 0.25 20 allegiance 0.25 10 allegiance 0.25 05
DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYHEAVY:CapitalShip 0.6 (DS is 0.75)
Pirate Raid stuff is all changed in DS so I'm not going to bother listing it.
buildSpeedData-Faster shipBuildRateGameSpeedScalar 0.40 (DS is 1.875) moduleBuildRateGameSpeedScalar 0.40 (DS is 1.875)
cultureSpeedData-Faster cultureConnectionReferenceLength 850000 (DS is 2125000) allegianceShiftRateScalar 1.45 (DS is 3.125)
researchSpeedData-Faster researchRateGameSpeedScalar -0.05 (DS is 7.5) Not sure if that's actually an error.
incomeSpeedData-Faster incomeRateGameSpeedScalar 0.75 (DS is 1.25)
shipPhysicsSpeedData-Faster shipLinearMaxSpeedGameSpeedScalar 0.6 (DS is 1.5) shipLinearAccelerationGameSpeedScalar 0.6 (DS is 1.5) shipLinearDecelerationGameSpeedScalar 0.6 (DS is 1.5)
diplomaticPointsSpeedData-Faster diplomaticPointsRateSpeedScalar 2.0 (DS is 6.65)
playerTradeNetworkDef incomeRateBonusPerLongestNodeDistanceNode .075 (DS is 0.15) targetTypeCounterData aiData aiRetreatThreshold 0.25 (Ds is 0.13)
Tech and Psi module constructors had their abilities moved to the 4th slot rather then the third. (Not an issue)
Deconstruction abilities and buffs added. (Not in DS currently)
Detect mines range 6000 (DS is 7625 if you downloaded my scout fix, variable and not working in DS without my fix.)
BuffGaussBlast had "OwnerChanged" finish condition added.
The other gameplay issue about the capital ships is not something we had access to before, so it doesn't affect anything DS does.
English.str the following was added:StringInfo ID "IDSOptionsScreenVideoOptionsUseSystemCursor" Value " Use System Cursor"StringInfo ID "IDS_ABILITY_TECHMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_NAME" Value "Deconstruction"StringInfo ID "IDS_ABILITY_TECHMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_DESC" Value "Tear down enemy structures."StringInfo ID "IDS_ABILITY_PSIMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_NAME" Value "Deconstruction"StringInfo ID "IDS_ABILITY_PSIMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_DESC" Value "Tear down enemy structures."StringInfo ID "IDS_ABILITY_PHASEMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_NAME" Value "Deconstruction"StringInfo ID "IDS_ABILITY_PHASEODULEDECONSTRUCTION_DESC" Value "Tear down enemy structures."
VideoOptionsTabContent.window file had the following added:useSystemCursorCheckBox area [249, 568, 220, 30] text "IDSOptionsScreenVideoOptionsUseSystemCursor"
Entity.manifest had the following added:
entityName "AbilityPhaseModuleDeconstruction.entity"entityName "AbilityPsiModuleDeconstruction.entity"entityName "AbilityTechModuleDeconstruction.entity"entityName "BuffPhaseModuleDeconstruction.entity"entityName "BuffPhaseModuleDeconstructionTarget.entity"entityName "BuffPsiModuleDeconstruction.entity"entityName "BuffPsiModuleDeconstructionTarget.entity"entityName "BuffTechModuleDeconstruction.entity"entityName "BuffTechModuleDeconstructionTarget.entity"I think that's it.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
