mod project 3

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Since the discovery of the non-reproducing thing, I'm thinking about temporarily halting (planned) work on the wanderer project.

What would I be doing instead? Stellarchaos/mirror universe.

Stellar chaos is similar to FQM in principle, tweak the map generation to make things interesting. Not particularly complex, and small scale.

Mirror universe though... That will be set up to almost completely remove random planet generation, why? Planets won't be the same SHAPES/SIZES. That right there gives us a nice reason to not do it that way. But it'll take a lot of work to make interesting maps that use it. Especially when you want to add variety.

Yes I feel like adding natural sphere/ring worlds. Why? because I think it'd be fun. This is part of where the deterministic stuff comes in. Randomly generated sphereworlds make for very awkward maps. needless to say they'll be special cases that are in special solar systems of their own.

I'm also gonna make it so the game has 6 planet types, and 6 atmosphere types, but they'll be assigned to each other. That is simple and easy. Except for the part where I make models for them, that's gonna get complicated. I still need a program for making.x files. Current list: Crystal, Quantum matter, Hyperspace fold, planetary nebula, Biomechanical, and brown dwarf(not colonizable).

This leads me to a few questions.

1: cloaking, can you make it not affect people whose homeworld type is "crystal"? That or their atmosphere?

2: blackholes, can you make their effect not affect people whose homeworld type is "quantum matter"?

3: random movement/damage, ditto...

4: I wanna make a system and or component type that opens/closes warp points at random. Can I?

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

1-3: Hmm... I guess you can't make a scope setting that checks by homeworld type?

4: I figured as much. But I lack the knowledge to do it myself.

PS anybody know wher I can get a model making utility? I wanna make my own models for some things. Is there a tutorial for this?

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Alright I looked up my notes, and typoe 5 is scheduled as "biomechanical". It got tossed in as a sort of tribute to SE2. In SE2 player homeworlds had a special planet type called "machine planet". Razz

they even looked vaguely similar to Cybertron. And now I'm gonna make n actual planet type to correspond to them.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

alright planets and their atmospheres and abilities:

Quantum Filament
Quantum Haze

mainly occur around black holes

Crystal Planet
Ionized Dust

built in cloaking

Machine Planet
Argon/Oxygen

boost to facility construction

Spacial Rift
N-Space

occur on top of warp points, also spawn in a special system type that acts as an unstable warp point nexus.

Cohesive Nebula
Plasma Haze

Mainly occur in nebula systems, sometimes as a system wide object. Have the properties of natural storms.

Brown Dwarf
Near Corona

Uninhabitable, but can be used for resource extraction nearly indefinately, maybe give them an ability that naturally restores their stats.

So? Any comments?

ForesterSOF · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 23, 2007

On planet types I have two inspired by MODs

1. Water and Volcanic worlds. Water Planets MOD
2. Wanderers make a homeworld in asteroids. Asteroid Habitats MOD

This would require the techs for water and asteroids colonization.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

I'm not planning on changing the types of planets. Razz

Sorry, I guess I was unclear. I'm wanting commentary on my choices of names. Quantum Filament looks weird in the tiny ingame text box. I already decided on what to have for planet types.

In other news: I made an early prototype last night! And it works! Now to finish work on it. The game follows the Atmosphere settings quite carefully. Smile

I also retested what happens when you try to use "Planet colonize type 6". It gives you an error saying that colonize ability doesn't exist.

My initial testing shops that having "Brown Dwarf" as a planet type isn't going to work as I hoped. I'm gonna have to change it to a type of "asteroid" object to use it the way I wanted to. The game seems to like spawning Neutrals with that planet type.

As another small addendum, I might release a new version of Asteroid Mod. Why? to fix ground combat. It doesn't crash, but you fight in an empty void.

As for "Alternate reality", Next phase is rearranging the solar systems to spawn correctly. Then to change the art used to depict the planets. (need help here)

Questions:
1: do asteroid type objects always have to say "asteroids"? Can you name them anything?

2: do special planet sizes work correctly? My work on asteroids seems to suggest this. In that mod, I never encountered an error related to the lack of "hab1" sized gas giants.

ForesterSOF · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 23, 2007

I would make Quantum Filament to Quantum Nebula so nebula = haze.

On 1 I would think so as long as the tag is correct.

No idea on 2.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Well I'll probably start testing(1/2) later today. Smile

Quantum Nebula? Is that the atmosphere? That could work, for some strange reason the atmosphere text box is way larger than the one for planet type. But my problem is that "Quantum Filament" is very difficult to read in the text box. It's so small it's barely legible.

ForesterSOF · Space Emperor Joined: Jun 23, 2007

For size you could call it the "Q" Effect

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Maybe "Q Filament"?

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! An update has been detected! (yes I HAVE seen the old TV show...)

Yes that's right... I finally got around to working on this some more. The following is copied from the SE5.net post I made.

This one is a bit weird... The premise is that you are in a different universe where the laws of physics don't work exactly the same way. The definition of "planet" is much vaguer than we have come to think of it. Each of the 5 types of planet is so different from the others that it has it's own unique type of atmosphere, and sometimes a unique location. Solar systems, may or may not, contain Black stars.

Oh and starting planet types are now pseudo racial tech, IE insane RP req, not not actually racial. This of course is due to the fringe benefits of understanding how a certain planet type works.

things that I'm still working on:

1: I might tweak the atmospheres to allow more than one per physical type

2: the pseudo racial aspect is incomplete

2a: does a sector obscuration ability automatically cancel all production/construction?

2b: do you think a planetary bonus to production would be broken?

3: I'm not very good at making pictures and would like help with implementing large scale graphical changes.

4: The names of the planets and atmospheres are open for debate(mostly) If people have better idea I'd love to hear them.

see here for past developments: http://www.spaceempires.net/ftopict-4497-.html (actually that's this thread)

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

questions:
what is there that will cause a solar system to not display any objects other than visual effects? I was working on updating this to 1.77 and tested map generation. It sometimes generates solar systems that have no bidirectional warp points. That is WPs will spawn connecting it to other systems but they only go IN. There are no WP entrances inside and all ships that enter get stuck in a zone outside the hex area. Also, the systems don't contain any planets regardless of what they SHOULD contain. I've tried doing this several times and only 2 system types come up this way. A "nebula" system that I told to generate planets and a similar black hole system. BUT these don't always spawn with no WPs. Sometimes they spawn normally. I have totally failed at finding any other connection between the broken systems.

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Maybe there is a broken stellar object that the randomly tries to place, and chokes on?

SouthernCrosser · Space Emperor Joined: Feb 12, 2008

Hyperspace Folds? Thundering Asteriods!

Looks interesting so far

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

I dunno. I've seen it spawn one of my homeworlds in one of these systems. the system itself seemed to be fine. Albeit without the ringworld that was supposed to be present there. No warp points going out and any ships trying to come in would get stuck outside the map. the only stellar object I can think of that might be the problem is the ringworld itself, but that doesn't always cause problems. I've told two other system types to automatically spawn ringworlds but they do not have this problem.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

I'm gonna change what ringworlds spawn where to see if that might be it. I think I've eliminated every other possibility. But even then... I've checked the models and that part is the same... :/

It's not the warppoint number.

It has nothing to do with system numbers.

It doesn't appear to have anything to do with the system type.

what bugs me most is that it doesn't always happen... somewher between 1/2 and 1/3 ofthe systems of this type do this.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

After hours of testing, it IS the ringworlds. BUT I have no idea how or why. Sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn't. I've combed over everything that was changed between 1.71 and 1.77 and I can't find ANYTHING that might be the cause. (other than the EXE)... Sad

Any ideas?

Oh, yeah, before I forget. there is a second problem that IS even worse. sometimes the game chokes during HW placement and doesn't actually populate any of them, thus you start the game with a totally dead empire. It seems to only happen as certain physical types of planets, why I don't know.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

does anyone have any ideas at all? Sad

Ender · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 18, 2008

I do not think it is just ringworlds. I've already told you that I'd seen such a system starting a DevnullMod game and there are no ringworlds as starting objects in this mod.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

Thank you, that's a start. Any idea as to what it might be though? It's very perplexing the way it fails to spawn all of your homeworlds, then just gives up and doesn't spawn your empire. It does spawn SOME of them, but not all and it doesn't populate any of them with anything.

Oh yeah, as a test I modified the nebula systems. Originally they would spawn 20 storms then a ringworld. that version the storms would actually spawn, then MAYBE it would quit spawning stuff. I changed the first storm entry to be another ringworld. Now it will sometimes crap out when the first ringworld would generate, this of course cause it to spawn no storms. Then there's the times when it doesn't crap out until it gets to the second ringworld. In those it spawns the first one and the storms but craps out when it gets to the second ring. And as before it doesn't always crap out. It does seem more likely with 2 rings though.

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Sounds like you might have some faulty stellar object types. There isn't really any good way to locate a problem, other than systematically removing data to narrow it down.

Are you sure all of your planet types cover all of the atmospheres in StellarObjectTypes.txt? You must have entries matching all combinations of atm and type that are possible in AtmosphereTypes.txt, because the game will try to generate them if it encounters them in SystemTypes.txt, or if it hits "Any" entries. You should have at least all combinations possible in the SystemTypes.txt file present in your list of stellar objects.

Santiago · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 26, 2006

I would definitely agree with Fyron. A long while back I made 5 new atmospheres with all new planets to go along with them. Any small error/mismatch/missing file between the files you are working with did cause the problems you speak of and others depending on what was wrong.

What I ended up doing was getting organized and stop modding tons of stuff and not keeping track of what I was doing. I worked on small things at a time and then checked them and move on to the next. ( ie 1st atmosphere working then on to the 2nd.)

I set up a test game with a test map of one system type (easy enough to change once I was satisfied) with all the objects I wanted. Ignore the system on the map with the homeworld. Once all the objects are correct, then the homeworld will most likely be correct. Or make sure you choose the atmosphere for your homeworld that you are working on. If an object is wrong/missing; track the files for that object and it may be a file that you have not addressed. Or it may be that the file being referenced may be in the wrong location. I did that too many times Embarassed

As for ringworlds and sphereworlds, I don't think I got that far along. I just know I got all the planets and new atmospheres to work correctly.

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Using a program/script to generate boiler plate data like planet objects also helps.

marhawkman · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 24, 2008

that's just it... In this mod physical types and atmosphere types have a 1:1 ratio. thus requiring me to take out all of the "any" entries. Well, except size, I did leave several things with a size of any. There's at least one model for each size/atmosphere/physical combination. Unless the (stock) models are bad, which I doubt, it's either a game bug, or I screwed up something that I haven't Identified yet.

Another thing that makes me think it's a bug is that all of this stuff worked perfectly fine in 1.71. I ported it to 1.77 and checked everything to make sure it fit, but it just doesn't work(right).