This is the place to ask and recieve specific modding (mod making) questions and answers. If you have a mod making question, post it here.
If your question involves long snippets of entity files and the like, please don't paste the entire file contents here but put them at the incredibly easy to use http://pastebin.com and then provide the link to your paste in your question posted here.
Please do limit "just comments" here to brief posts please. If you don't know the answer or can't point to help--don't post. Please note that a random, uninformed guess isn't an actual answer.
You can refer people to another source--IF it actually helps answer their question. This could be in the form of links, outside sites, specific modding-useful programs, direction towards another post or poster, etc., etc.
Remember--specific questions, specific answers. Only respond to the ones you can help solve. Also, feel free to amplify, clarify, suggest alternatives to or correct answers seen here if such actions are merited and help provide a real solution. No flaming, insults or put downs here in the answers or other posts please.
Thanks in advance for your help and cooperation. The reason for the rigid rules here is those this thread becomes a usable resource in the future to new people looking for answers.
NOTE: If an answer resolves your issue, please share it here. These answers will help others coming along later too. Karma is a great way to respond to people providing help without clogging the thread or bombing their forum mailbox here. Thanks!
OTHER SINS HELPFUL MODDING LINKS*
*Links are updated when requested.
The Soase Idiot's Guide
Confused? No idea where to even start?
Determined to work at it?
This is the place!
Sins Modding Wiki
ZombieRus's Eclipse Wizardry
Tutorials
MyFist0's full modding site.
Emphasis on modeling and
texturing.
REBELLION MODDING TOPICS
Rebellion Modding Q & A
Mesh Editing
Changing Diplomacy Files to Rebellion
IT REALLY HURTS MY BRAIN--HOW TO START
An Idiot's Guide To Getting Started
MyFist0's Modding Megasite!
MOD DOWNLOADS
ZombieRus5's Mod Yard
Directory of Planet Mods
STEAM
STEAM Sins Forums
DEVELOPERS
Sins Developer Journals Forum 2007 to Present
REFERENCE FILES
Research Modifier List
MyFist0's Exported Models & Files
Modifier List
Harpo's Converted Sins Reference Files 2011
THIRD PARTY TOOLS
3dS Texturing Toool & Tips
Ship Fleet Calculator
SoaSE Eclipse Plugin Project
Mesh Resizing Tool--courtesy of the Reqiuem team.
Harpo's Sins Utility Package -- Dropbox
The Sins Optimization Project (TSOP)
Artificial Unintelligence (Mod and AI info)
Sins Data Converter by BCXtreme
EXPLANATIONS & DISCUSSIONS
Rebellion Updates by Blair Frazier
How to Add a Fourth Race
User-updatable Ship Reference Chart
Sins Modding Dictionary
Adding phase Effects to other weapon types
Culture, Explanation/Discussion
Weapons, Explanation/Discusion
Shield Mitigation & Armor, Explanation/Discussion-1
Shield Mitigation & Armor, Explanation/Discussion -2
Graphic Chart of Sin's Counters
Annotated Guide to the Developer.exe
In-Game Map Creator
Weapons Banks & DPS
Combat Mechanics
Rebellion Shield Mitigation & Focus Fire testing
PARTICLE FORGE
Particle Forge Help Thread
GALAXY FORGE
Adding Artifacts
Working Template Examples
SemazRalan's Template Guide
Pirates Base Start Template
SOUND RESOURCES
[SFX] Black Sun SFX/Music Resource for Modders
MODELING & TEXTURING--SOFTIMAGE XSI, 3DS MAX
XSI Texturing, Tutorial
3dS Model Exporter
3DS Max Rigging, Texturing & Exporting, Guide
Modding/Modelling/Texturing/Converting, Tutorials
WIKI'S
Sins of a Solar Empire Official Wiki
An attempt to answer your question Sinperium.
For all of the "caster" abilities attempt to change:
numOwnerships 0
To:
numOwnerships 1ownership "Enemy"
This should make the ability/black hole target all the enemies of the owner, while not harming the owner. If my understanding is correct, setting numOwnerships to 0 effectively makes the ability target everything that is in range. Hope this helps.
I'm answering my own question here in case it's a benefit to someone. The mod files were apparently corrupted during one of my installs/uninstalls. That's the first time it's happened to me. My solution was to get a clean copy of the Diplomacy (my mod is for this) entity files (which is all I edited) and compare them. Some lines were completely missing from some of the files and others had additional lines.
I overwrote the corrupted mod files with the original game ones and just re-edited them. Problem solved--the culture centers now require only one logistic slot and work as intended.
This was a helpful answer as I did not know this but I am still testing. Thanks.
1. The Ability, "AbilityTechOrbitalCannon" can target planets anywhere in the galaxy. It's limited to planets, but that could be changed by changing the number of objects to two, and including "PlanetModule" as one of the objects. That should allow your ability and buff to target both planets and structures.
2. I don't have an answer for this one, so I won't even speculate.
1. You can most certainly make an ability target a planet then effect all structures owned by you (very similar to the Kostura). Targeting individual structures on different planets probably not.
2. I really don't know, couldn't you just switch the child and parent around and get the same effect? Need more specifics on this one.
Sorry, I was willing to try this disjointed thread... But I don't think it will work. You'd have to go back to the ask a question thread. This one pertains to Ryat wanting a way to limit a race to one and only one flagship but allowing a new one to be built should the original die.
Edit- I finally had a chance to look at the buff possibilities and I don't see a way to target the right planet or structure so this most likely wouldn't work anyway.
Ok, I have an ability on my Nephilim Battleship called Immortality, basically the idea is once researched it will raise from the dead if killed. Well long story short I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted back then and never really came back to it until today (plus someone complained on moddb ) . It turns out the trick was to use the requiredShip versus the randomShip setting. Huzzah!
You could use this approach as the passive fifth ability on your flagships such that when a flagship is killed you automatically get a new one. This would of course ensure you only have one, but it does also mean you will always have one.
Either way I'm happy to have this working right for me.
I have 2 small questions:
1) I know how to make grav wells take more than one starbase, but is it possible to have it set so they have to be different ones? i.e. I provide 2 different starbases in my mod, I don't want to have 2 of the same built in a grav well.
2) Where is the tech tree/ diplomacy background located (folder/name)? I've accidentally incorporated the Star Wars Requiem background and now I cannot find it to get rid of it.
thanks!
ZombieRus makes a Zombie capitalship. Hmm...
1. Impossible I'm afraid.
2. BackdropInGame and BackdropFrontEnd in the textures folder.
From IskatuMesk
Question 1
I want to remove Influence entirely. I guess the easiest way to do this would be to remove the distance-based influence loss on planets and then all related modifiers. I'm not sure where the best place to start this would be.
Answer: Not able to remove entirely. It is hardcoded. Can reduce to minimal influence by use of Gameplay.constants file.
Question 2
I think part of this is contained in researches but I'm not sure. I want to entirely remove fleet upkeep and change the supply caps to something like 200+20 per research or somesuch.
Answer: You actually control fleet upkeep per individual ship. Capital ships will always cost one Capital ship point though. basePrice credits 550.000000 metal 70.000000 crystal 10.000000 slotCount 12.000000 <---- upkeep control for each ship at their respective entity file.
The files you are looking for for the supply caps is found under these file headings. RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXCAPITALSHIPS RESEARCHSUBJECT_MAXSHIPSLOTS Look for these headings and I am sure you can handle the rest.
Question 3
Having zero experience in ability editing, is it possible to create a channeled beam ability that steals life from a target enemy ship?
Answer: Yes, see Vulkoras' Ultimate Ability Disintegration for an example.
To add on to Ryat's response to IskatuMesk:
Question 1:
While influence is hardcoded, it can be made pointless. As Ryat noted, via changes in Gameplay.constants. Here's what I believe would do the trick:
allegiancePassiveGainRate 0.000 allegiancePassiveLossRate 0.000 allegianceFriendlyMaxGainRate 0.000 allegianceEnemyMaxLossRate 0.000 allegianceGainFromCultureMax 0.0
This in essence makes culture spread not hurt planets at all, while ensuring that culture can still be used, albeit for other uses (such as additional antimatter regen).
planetBaseAllegianceAtDistanceCount 1 allegiance 1.00
This forces all planets to have 100% allegiance.
Question 2:
To remove fleet upkeep costs entirely requires editing the supply count/slot research files, as Ryat mentioned, like so:
researchModifier modifierType "IncomePercLost" baseValue 0.000000 perLevelValue 0.000000
Actually that's the supply/cap cost (right?), the Upkeep I was referring to was the income reduction from increasing the cap, but Lavo caught that one it seems. Thanks to you both!
You are correct Lavo, by editing the Distant Stars entity "caster" files the black hole does not affect the planet owner's forces and then you just change (in Distant Stars) the black hole's entity file value under "is colonizable" to "TRUE".
I set up a test map and watched my little constructor float happily by the singularity. it's beautiful man...sniff..beautiful.
That was ridiculously easy.
Lavo and his family will be spared in the great galactic purge.
I've updated the "TOS" for this thread and questions and answers can be posted here now. Please follow the spirit of the guidelines so we have a usable forum resource for modders here.
This has already been a success in my own mind as I have received an answer to which no one had answered in months and several others have gotten advanced help.
Your modding questions can be complex ones--modder to modder--this is a resource for all levels of modding. It also isn't "my thread". I fully hope it will be developed and carried by the quality of the people who participate in providing resources in it.
Along that line I will be placing links to modding sites/utilities and the like (such as those provided by Harpo, ZombieRus, MyFist0, etc.) in the opening post. Stay tuned as I go through them.
I am pondering a creative reward for those contributing and I have one in mind but it will require some organizing and development before I can announce it. For now, karma is the quickest reward and please give karma to those providing you help. My prize I'm working on won't be karma...it's more tangible.
Thanks for those who have already helped. Totally awesome.
There is any way to make some update like PSIDAR updates, but that work limited by range, instead of working being limited by number phase jumps?
I do not think so... even if there was, I don't think you would want to do that, as the range between planets can vary quite a bit depending on the map.
Does "range" (outside of number of jumps) exist beyond a star's gravity well?
I got the Forge Tools 3 pack earlier today, and set about changing the capital ship stats and some of the abilities. All I did was change a few numbers, saved it into a GameInfo folder, and placed it in the proper Mod directory. I ran the game, found it right where i put it, and enabled the mod. entered the game, and nothing changed. i thought that maybe i could force the game to use the mod, and after backing up the main GameInfo folder, i pasted my mod .entity files into it and overwrote the original ones. that got me a mini-dump as soon as I opened the game. Can anyone help me get the mod working on the game?
Forge Tools reference files are badly outdated. The top of http://soase.weebly.com/modding-tools.html explains what is still good and what is crap.
Well it physically exists (its how the game renders several planets on screen at once, and how frigates can attempt to go to different planets without engaging phase drives), though you can't use it to apply buffs on other gravity wells for example. PSIDAR seems to operate beyond gravity wells though, and as I haven't messed with those techs/abilities all I can say is that its probably not possible and it won't be practical even if you get it to work.
Yeah--an interesting concept using actual range outside a gravity well but I suspect it doesn't apply to everything.
i've got a little problem. i'm trying to mod diplomacy v1.2, and i have good reference files. here's the debug.txt:
Text FileArchive missing Label.
...\CAPITALSHIP_TECHSIEGE.entityLabel: m_weaponIndexForRangeLine Number:212Line Contents:
and here's the actual file, the problem being in red:
muzzleSounds soundCount 3 sound "WEAPON_TECHCAPITALAUTOCANNONHeavy_MUZZLE" sound "WEAPON_TECHCAPITALAUTOCANNONHeavy_MUZZLE_ALT1" sound "WEAPON_TECHCAPITALAUTOCANNONHeavy_MUZZLE_ALT2" hitEffectName "Weapon_TechCapitalAutoCannonHeavy_Hit" hitHullEffectSounds soundCount 1 sound "WEAPONIMPACT_PHYSICALHeavy_HITHULL" hitShieldsEffectSounds soundCount 1 sound "WEAPONIMPACT_GENERICHeavy_HITSHIELDS" projectileTravelEffectName "Weapon_TechCapitalAutoCannonHeavy_Travel"m_weaponIndexForRange 0firingAlignmentType "Default"TargetCountPerBank:FRONT 1TargetCountPerBank:BACK 0TargetCountPerBank:LEFT 1TargetCountPerBank:RIGHT 1canOnlyTargetStructures FALSE
what exactly is the problem with this? can anyone help me?
For future reference, this is where you ask questions. Now to answer your question, that sort of error usually indicates that there's a line of code missing. In order to properly analyze this thing, go to line 212 and see if m_weaponIndexForRange is actually there. If not, it means you likely deleted a line or something, if yes, then I have absolutely no idea what's wrong with it, as iirc 0 is the standard value for ships.
Nah, the dual thread thing was a bit much. Just keep the questions and answers concise. If you want a conversation ask a question link to the thread for a conversation please.
hard to see just with this snippet. Can you give the whole file. Use http://pastebin.com/ please and it will keep the post small. Or like above start a thread so we can ask questions and make sure to edit the answer back in if it's not provided here.
@Sinperium can you add a link about using pastebin or dropbox to share full files without littering the post. It's very hard to troubleshoot issues with vague descriptions or code snippets.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
