I finally have it!

I finally have direction.

from Sins Forums

So.  I was chilling in the strategy room this morning, just to check it out, when I stumbled upon a terrifying and reoccuring opinion. "Capitals suck," they told me. Pound for pound, they aren't worth it. WHAT?! My flagship, my ultimate ship, it isn't really ultimate? Well, it is. Eventually.  But it's not worth the name of Capital ship that they gave it, which lit a fire inside me, and I had direction. I'm making super Caps. I hear your groans, but Im talking three gamebreaking last ditch effort to win super ships. SuperNova Battle Carrier, designed to build frigates on the fly. Victria War Ship, putting the latest in weapons technology at your disposal, and the to-be-named-later Command Ship providing mobile support for your frontlines. That's for the TEC. There will be more for the other races. However. I have QUESTIONS.

1: Why can't I make a new Research Field? Research fields they have are cluttered, leaving no room for more research! How am I supposed to make my ultimate fighting machine worthwhile if I can't make them research it?! I realize I probably can't get a new research field, so my real question is what are the steps I need to go through to make my Fleet Research Field pretty enough to hold another research block?

2: I need ships for this, but I have a McGyver solution. I'm gonna have to model myself. What program do I use? How do I get the meshes converted so that I can edit them? I don't know what I'm doing here...

3: And finally, a few things running through my head. Is there a Maximum entity.manifest amount? How much stuff can I add? Is there a maximum String count? What are my limitations here? Answer me, Sins Developers!

modding
4,663 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Modding Home Modeling Home
Placing Mods Modeling Tools
Placing Maps Texturing
Modding Tools Getting Rid of Non-Tris and Non Quads
Modding Basics Creating the UV Map
Developer EXEs Hooking-up Textures to the Model
Hard Code Limits Creating the Tangent Map
Sound Setting-up Meshpoints
Spiral Galaxy Fix Cleaning-up Your Model
Add Planets Exporting your Finalized Model
Add Race Creating a Second Set of Materials
Research Button Import Models
Particle Forge 3 Shared Models
Convert Data Convert XSI

 

1. Yes it sucks you can't add a new field. What I did for diplomacy is take a bunch of the stuff that sort of could go under Defense making a larger block in that field opening space up in the combat area for new stuff. There is a little room to make the blocks bigger on almost all the fields.

2. Start with Softimage|XSI free. You need that anyway for getting the model in-game. Get the artist guide as well, great to get started.Modeling Home

3. No limit to the string or entities as far as I know. The models and there textures will use up your ram. Hard Code Limits

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Wow. You've been super helpful. All I need to do is adjust the playertech files to expand the research blocks, right? Nothing else?

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Yep, thats correct. There is a limit to how many rows a research block can have, but I don't remember what it is off the top of my head. I ran into that making my mini pact mod.

As a side note look here and here for some more modding tools I created. If you can't figure out Eclipse then the syntax wiki is still useful.

[Mod Utility] Entity Editor and Validation Tool (Updated 10/12)

http://code.google.com/p/soaseplugin/ (where to download the tool)

Additional syntax and enumerated value reference:

http://code.google.com/p/soaseplugin/wiki/Syntax

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

myfist0 there ARE four hardcode limits in strings, ALL to do with names, and  confirmed by blair fraser, the hardcodes ARE

max number of planet names =512

max number of star names = 512

max number of starbase names =512

max number of capitalship names =512

the confirmation was by email back in july/august 2009, when I was creating the sins stringer (string file editor that burnt out my programming)

harpo