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.
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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
So, does commenting out things using ; work in SOSE's ENTITY files?
Umm i want to create an ability that increases targets per weapon bank for the duration of the ability, i tried using researchFloatModifiers and failed miserably, can anyone tell me how can i include researchFloatModifiers in abilities ? it crashes as soon as i try to add them.
That is sadly not possible currently. You cannot add new values for researchFloatModifiers or much of anything else, you can only use the existing ones that are in use already.
Is it possible to make a home planet in GalaxyForge other than DesertHome and TerranHome? Will it work victory condition "HomeworldVictory"?
Yes, you can make any colonizeable planet a home world. TerranHome and DesertHome are just the ones the standard game uses, have set resource amounts and no planet bonuses.
I made a new ability by copy-pasting an existing ability, making some changes, and adding a _2 to the end of the filename.entity. Added said new ability to a ship, updated the entity manifest to include my ability file, and started a new game, built the ship I gave the ability to.... but no ability was available for my ship. I'm confused! What did I miss? I can provide files for the asking. I've done this before and it's worked...
Apologies for asking something obvious here, but I assume you mean adding _2 to the basename of the filename, eg xxxx_2.entity and not xxxx.entity_2
I usually forget to update the count at the top of the manifest, which means any entities after that count will not get included.
Also, does the new version of the ability have any prerequisites such as research?
You assume correctly on both counts. filename_2.entity and updated the file count in the manifest file.
What I'm trying to do is build a cut-down, combat-oriented "starbase lite" for the TEC, much like there's an outpost and starbase for each faction in Armada 3. I took the stock ability and buff files that seem to pertain to deploying starbases, but also I couldn't see any references in them to actually build the TEC starbase in particular, in that it specifies the StarBaseTech.mesh file. But taking my renamed ability and adding it to the module construction cruiser doesn't do much of anything, so I'm confused as heck as to what I'm missing.
Ai stops doing research. The mod has a lot of new research abilities, weapons, etc and research in the branch "Fleet" to improve artifacts found on planets. Each race has about 220 + studies. At some point in the AI just ceases to study new research, although it has enough money and resources. This happens on any game difficulty and I don't even understand how to fix it. Changes in the string UpgradeResearch in file Gameplay.constant do not give any results
From what I can see:-
FrigateTechStarBaseConstructor.entity -> ability:0 "AbilityDeployStarBaseTech"
AbilityDeployStarBaseTech.entity -> starBaseType "StarBaseTech" -> StarBaseTech.entity
Both FrigateTechStarBaseConstructor.entity and AbilityDeployStarBaseTech.entity have a prerequisite on the same tech, so your copies may need to change to reflect any new research you've added for your "starbase lite". Eg imagine the player researching your new starbase tech, but not the old one. Your constructor could be unlocked but the ability could still be disabled if that depended on the old tech. IIRC you also have to add new research to the faction's PlayerTech*.entity too.
I'm guessing your copy of AbilityDeployStarBaseTech.entity is using something like ...
starBaseType "OutpostTech" -> OutpostTech.entity
...to build your outpost
Hmm. Strange... when I searched the Ability file for the word "starbase" it came up blank. Like I said, I literally copy-pasted the files and added the _2 to the end. Still, that gives me a direction to run with this, thank you! Will advise when I get back and tinker with it.
I've heard other modders report something like this. I'm not sue if it is just possible to mod the game in such a way it creates this AI bug, or the AI is just programmed not to research forever, but the cause is not really well understood.
Maybe SINS 2 will fix this
While i was changing some values on the star trek armada 3 mod i've encountered something weird. The AI stopped doing anything after building its first for free capital ship. Wondering why it would do that but nothing else i started to observe the AI via dev mode. Thats when i noticed that every few seconds the AI players get stripped of all resources. They all jump to 0 without anything getting built/researched like every 10 seconds. When i give the AI player 1.000.000 of every resource it starts to research and build but loses about 30.000 to 100.000 every few seconds until its at 0 at which point it stops working again.
Any ideas on whats going wrong here?
Has anyone else had a problem with Galaxy Forge?
Mine will now randomly destroy maps by adding random number strings into them and the pane in the GUI that lets you select what planet and star will spawn when you add click on the map is now gone.
Was working fine a couple of weeks back and then it just went POOF!
Quoting Sinperium, reply 2715Has anyone else had a problem with Galaxy Forge?Mine will now randomly destroy maps by adding random number strings into them and the pane in the GUI that lets you select what planet and star will spawn when you add click on the map is now gone.Was working fine a couple of weeks back and then it just went POOF!
Can you tell me how to change the player type?
In case you didn't manage to change player type, do this:1. Open your map with notepad;2. Press Ctrl+H;3. at "Find what" put "NPCOccupationVictory"4. at "Replace with" put "Normal"5. then press "Replace all";6. save.
Haven't seen it anywhere but is there a way to increase the number of ships available to build? Meaning, there are 9 slots open for capital ships, frigates and cruisers respectively. If I wanted to have ten or more, is that possible?
It is not possible via the build menus. You can have many more than nine but they would need to be created via abilities.
That figures wit what I have seen, thanks. Hopefully maybe the devs can might just fix that limitation one day?
it would be cool if we could have a button to say, swap pages in the build menu.That way we could have more ships in the build menus.But alas, that would probably take a lot of reworking the game.Hopefully in Sins 2 this limitation will be removed.
Small question, has anyone ever put together a "symmetrical" Dunov BCR? I found a symmetrical Kol BB in the Sins of the Fallen mod, was curious if anyone'd ever modeled a Dunov like that.
I have 2 questions, and I’ve done a bit of troubleshooting on them and not made much progress.
Firstly, I’m trying to make a Scout frigate be able to have a bomber squadron. I’ve implemented everything so that it can build a squadron, but when the squadron spawns, it is consistently spawning off of the map. It’s listed as being present in the gravity well, but it is an unknown distance away and off the screen. However, once the scout goes into phase space and back, the bomber “undocks” from the frigate and all is well. I’ve tried changing it’s stat and frigate type to no avail, as well as trying different kinds of squadrons. Does anyone know how to fix the problem? I can post the statblock if you think it would be helpful, but it’s a pretty standard block.
Secondly, I was wondering how to add an ability to a trade ship. I know that they can have passive abilities because the Tech have one, but every time I try to add an ability it doesn’t even show up. For bug-testing purposes I have tried adding various abilities to a scout frigate, such as a modified missile swarm and scramble bombers (I eliminated the prereqs) and they work fine on the scout but don’t even appear on the abilities bar for the trade ship. Does anyone know why?
Thank you
The problem is that the scout frigates do not have any hangar points set on the mesh. The 3D Models for all carrier units have points for their hangars labeled, and this is the location where newly built fighters spawn. Without this point, the game does not know where to place the new strikecraft.
If you don't want to get into 3D modeling very much, the easiest thing to do is to open the scout mesh in a text editor of your choice. If you've converted the data to text, one of the first sections is for mesh points like "Center", "Exhaust" (AKA Engines), and "Weapon-#". Copy the Center point (every mesh will have one), rename the copy to "Hangar", and increase the count. Now fighters will spawn in the middle of the ship, which doesn't quite look as nice but 99% of the time no one will notice and it fixes the issue.
Stuff like fighters, trade ships and other sub-frigate entities do not have the full capabilities of a normal ship. This is because there tends to be a lot of them spawned in the game, and the game optimizes them as much as possible to only include the bare minimum functionality required for their purpose.
Trade ships would never attempt to auto cast an ability, all they do is automatically move to the next trade destination. You cannot even manually give them orders IIRC. Which means the AI will never use them. So the game goes one step farther and disallows them entirely to make them a bit more efficient.
That said, you can do a fair amount of stuff with passives if you are clever and get some practice with the Sins ability system.
Wow thanks for the answers! That makes sense, and I’ll dig deeper into passives. Thanks so much!
So I'm trying to merge the ships from SOTP into Star Wars Interregnum and my big hangup right now is sound. I moved all relevant sound files and added them into SoundEffects.sounddata and SoundDialogue.sounddata and this is the error message I get....
Text FileArchive missing Label.File: C:\Users\PC\Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion\Mods-Rebellion v1.85 Dev\Star Wars Interregnum unsc beta\GameInfo\SoundEffects.sounddataLabel: effectLine Number:6842 //This is at the bottom of the TXT FileLine Contents: alternateGroup ""
Once I spawn the Infinity.....
Failed to find data file 'Titan_UNSCInfinity_OnCreation_2'. (SubPath = Sound)
Assert @ d:\perforceworkspaces\bfraser_babygoat_7628\codesource\engine\sound\sounddata.cpp(217)m_pSample != NULL || !g_AudioSystem.IsStarted()
The last one I don't even understand as I don't have a D drive. Any insight would be appreciated
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