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!
Okay guys, cool it.
This won't solve the issue. Let's move on.
Sigh, if you are going to mock them at least go back further to Ishtar the goddess of fertility. It was her day originally. So its happy sex goddess day.
Lore is back!
Stant, I downloaded your file but it had an error and closed the little window showing it when I opene it with winrar, all I got was a folder with gas giant and normal efficiency, is that supposed to happen? Because I was searching all the folders and there were no icons.
Im not sure if Stants file is compressed in a new format that we also used for our downloads. If thats the case downloaded the latest .7zip should fix that issue.
It sounds though you also might of gotten a bad download. Might wanna try again. And let us know the results.
Speaking on that, I acutally wrote some this weekend. Expect it soon. Carbon will make an appearance, heck it could be the road back to bringing into him back to main conflict.
For anybody on the DS team, or anybody else who could know, It appears multiple Icon's in the DS mod are packed into 1 file. Is it possible to unpack these files so the icons are more easily editable? I'm using Gimp for simple re-texturing (as I do not have money for the more advanced programs)
They should be unpacked after you use an unzip file. I do know you need the .dds extension for Gimp to make them work.
Do you mean they are all on 1 texture file? Which is how it suppose to be for the game to do its thing.
If your looking to pull some specific icons out of that you have to do it the hard way and cut and paste.
Hmm okay fair enough. Is there any specific way of figuring out the file name for these icons. Like in the entity files.
iconTextureName "starcore-white"
hudIcon "HUDICON_STAR_WHITE"
infoCardIcon "INFOCARDICON_STAR_WHITE"
ect..
I have wondered about the insane population caps of savannah planets
We do need to balance them a bit better.
Well not a balance, more of a more realistic population, the city planets should be bigger.
Take a look in the Texture folder in your mod folder. Look for the following:
Icons_planets.dds
Icons_planetsMainView.dds
Icon_planetsPictures.dds
Icon_planetsSmall.dds
Im gonna go out on a limb as guess what your looking for is in there, texture wise.
Also might wanna look at:
HUDIcon-Planet.brushes
InfoCardIcon-Planet.brushes
MainViewIcon-Planet.brushes
These files are found in your Window folder inside the mod folder.
These files go hand and hand. The ".dds" is the actual textures and the ".brushes" tell the game where to find the correct texture for each item on the ".dds" file.
If you not done so, make sure you have converted the files from BIN to txt, otherwise the .brushes files will be in a format you cant use.
In theory each planets has stats based on what type of planet it is.
Savannah is large due the fact its 90% land, unlike a normal Terran.
Is this realistic? *shrugs* Realistic isnt our main priority. Expanding on the core gameplay found in SINS is.
We tried to make each planet type unique as possible. There are good planets, like City. Also there are horrible ones, like Toxic.
And don't forget Deadly Secret.
Love Deadly Secret.
Oh, and all icons of a type are together in an image. All planet icons are together. All faction icons are together. That's all she wrote. For the .dds, you want to convert them to .tga or something readable by most programs. Save in a format that gives you layers while you work and then you can just save as a .tga and use that rather than convert into .dds.
.brushes, like mentioned, have to be converted to .txt and the pattern is a little hard to follow for a bit. If you can wait until tomorrow when I get off work, I can look over my .txt files and explain how it's laid out, as Sins tends to program things backwards.
If you want to tell me which icons you're looking to do, I can probably give you specific instructions.
Oh, and the .dds/.tga file name will not match with the .brushes name. Another wonderful trend in Sins programming I might have to help you with.
People you got to remember that Sins basically 1/10 to 1/15 the population/cost of everything just to make it faster. I mean do you really think a standard terran plant can only support 100 people, come on, it should support at the very least 1 million if not 10 million at the very least.
I like to view the populations as each 1 as how many millions of people there are. It's a lot more realistic that way, otherwise as slow as the populations rise, there's no way you would have enough people to crew all those frigates and stations.
-Twi
Everything's representative. Sizes are off. Spacial regions are mish mashed. Numbers don't make a lick of sense.
Just enjoy the fact that it works without going to blue screen.
Is it normal, that the pirates get riduculously high damage in a long game?
Something like 1400+ damage with the starbases missiles, 130+ from the Corsairs autocannons, or 70+ from the rogues lasers?
And all that without the powerfull pirates!
about savannah planets, I think they should be slightly smaller in populations. As for city planets, its all fully blasted city, no surface water, just a huge planetopolis. So I expected about 1,500 to 2,500 pop. Though it might generate an unfair amount of credits, but eh, if the enemy wants it they have it.
I posted in a dead threa that 1 unit of population is equal to 25 million people. And the reason asteroids have 500 million people is because most live inside the asteroid as I believe. City planets have 25 billion which would be moderate for a planet completely covered in a shanghai/new york enviornment. I used 25 million as a reference off of the normal unresearched terran pop of 280/7,000,000,000 and I get 25,000,000. Which pretty much settles it. figure out the rest with the equasion to find out planet populations.
wot?
don't try to apply logic to SOASE, it just blows up things.
Eye spy with my little eye....
DS Lore posts!!!
I should get back to that.... Kinda left it hanging....
Applying logic doesnt blow things up if you connect the entire game.
The distance between a planet and the closest ships can get is a way of changing scales. That is about all the planet logic I got.
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