Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Mods => Modding => Topic started by: etherealblade on September 25, 2013, 04:31:11 AM

Title: Update Pending..
Post by: etherealblade on September 25, 2013, 04:31:11 AM

...

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P]
Post by: Gotcha! on September 25, 2013, 05:12:42 AM

It might be a better idea to not start topics when there's nothing to post. ???

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P]
Post by: Sproginator on September 25, 2013, 05:36:49 AM

Can't wait pal,

If you need help just message me

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P]
Post by: HELMUT on September 26, 2013, 09:16:59 AM

Obviously it will need some shading, but otherwise i like the boxy style and the flashy colors. Here's a complete tutorial about spriting from Ravendarke http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=6423.0 (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=6423.0)

If you still have trouble you can also ask Cycerin some help as the base of his ships are made from the BSF ship editor like you (correct me if i'm wrong).

However about the star system far away... Don't put it too far. In game it can be an absolute pain in the ass to travel there and i think that kind of details is much more important than lore. And we already have a lot of extremely fare modded systems. (in this thread http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=6727.0). I want to blast some ships, not playing a cryogenic sleep simulation!

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P]
Post by: Thule on September 28, 2013, 09:23:21 AM

are those ships resized? there is some pretty unpleaseant AA going on.

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P]
Post by: Thule on September 28, 2013, 11:43:06 PM

muuuuuch better ;)

(i don't know what kind of program you use but there are certain resize methods you can choose from most of the time, sometimes it is hidden in the options.
for small pixel art always use "nearest neighbor" instead of the more default setting "bicubic"

i like the the alternate shading of the dreadnought. gives the ship way more character.

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P]
Post by: HELMUT on September 30, 2013, 05:42:18 AM

Quote from: Thule on September 28, 2013, 11:43:06 PM

(i don't know what kind of program you use but there are certain resize methods you can choose from most of the time, sometimes it is hidden in the options.
for small pixel art always use "nearest neighbor" instead of the more default setting "bicubic"

Oh, good to know.

And yes, your ships are better. Your previous cruisers were kinda blurry and it stringed my eyes. Will your new faction come with custom weapons as well?

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P]
Post by: mendonca on October 01, 2013, 03:35:34 AM

I think a step that would be relatively easy, and could improve your sprites markedly, would be trying to pull out some depth in the ships by lightening various sections, simple multiply layers of varying opacity white, covering just a few blocks of the ship, could work I think.

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P]
Post by: mendonca on October 02, 2013, 04:41:48 AM

Looking great :)

Look forward to seeing them in game ...

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P]
Post by: HELMUT on October 04, 2013, 12:34:58 PM

I like the "blackhole generator gun" thing. With proper animation it can be very cool.

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P] HALP!
Post by: etherealblade on October 15, 2013, 01:44:12 AM

I plan to place my system somewhere between cygnus and the Biso Telegate.

Spoiler

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66536185/modiverse.png)

[close]

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P] Help Needed! Getting close!
Post by: Trylobot on October 15, 2013, 01:39:26 PM

I'd rather give you the tools to help you help yourself, etherealblade. Here's my first suggestion.

Since you're feeling overwhelmed, you need to scale it back. Make a copy of the current, broken version of your mod. Move the original one to another location, out of the Starsector folder.

In this new copy, You need to remove everything except one, single feature. Choose something really, really easy. For instance, adding one single weapon to the game, and a variant for a vanilla ship that uses your weapon.

Get that to work? Good. Now you have a baseline. Your debugging task is now merely a matter of adding pieces of content from your original mod folder to this new copy, one by one. You have to do this slowly. It's important, or you'll have wasted all the time to do this. Eventually you will encounter something that doesn't make sense to the game, and it will give you an error. It doesn't terribly matter what the actual error says; because you've been piecemealing the content in, you know where the error has to be.

This is the divide-and-conquer method, and it is literally the first technique taught to all would-be programmers at the school where I received my degree. Didn't know you were a programmer? You are. You are crafting data structures and writing script files, including actual Java code, so welcome to the world of programming. Debugging a mod error is literally no different than debugging any piece of logic. Chop it up into bits until you understand one of the bits. Then just hop to another bit that you don't understand, and chop it up too.

Let me know how far this gets you. My guess? Much further than the "do stuff, post entire mod, beg for help, repeat" method I see all too often.

Title: Re: The Ethereal Descendants [W.I.P] Divide and Conquer! ;D
Post by: FasterThanSleepyfish on October 21, 2013, 09:03:42 AM

It's really hard, so don't worry if you have troubles! I had the same problems for the longest time.

TBH, for me it was mostly lots of copy/paste actions to replace certain words within the code. If you need a good starting point, my mod isn't very special, 3 planets and 2 stations with very little else.

Title: Re: The Altari (Still W.I.P)
Post by: HELMUT on October 28, 2013, 09:49:58 AM

I really like this idea of space monsters. I tried to emulate this a bit with my Crystal ships on the Spriters judgement thread on a lesser level. Space Eldritch abominations roaming the void to prey on unsuspecting fleets? I'll totally buy that.

However, it will be pretty much needed to get some proper animations for theses. Statics sprites won't look goof and you'll need quite a handful of scripts and effects for them to really look "alive".

Title: Re: The Altari (Still W.I.P)
Post by: Thaago on October 28, 2013, 12:29:28 PM

Hey, attached is that sample for adding systems and planets to the game. Brief explanation:
mod_info.json needs the line: "modPlugin":"scripts.SSGModPlugin"
to point the game towards what to call.

SSGModPlugin contains functions relating to what to do when the game starts/loads. In this case the only function that does anything is onEnabled, which is called every time the mod is turned on and the game started. Its currently setup to run just once and call the activate() function. The activate makes an instance of and calls a class that actually makes the systems.

SystemMaker contains a couple of arrays with data (names and locations) of star systems to make and the function generateSystems. The function loops through the arrays and (in order) makes the system, makes the star, makes the planet, and makes the jump points.

I hope this helps you break through that wall! :)

[attachment deleted by admin]

Title: Re: The Altari (Still W.I.P)
Post by: mendonca on October 31, 2013, 12:44:56 AM

The file that spawns the planets typically also sets up the SHIP SPAWN POINTS.

The behaviour of these spawn points is held separately in a file describing each of the spawn points.

Looking at the files in front of me:

PackSectorGen.java

Contains a few lines in here which spawn points are initialised, and also typically will send out a few starting fleets based on that spawn point.

PackSpawnPoint.java
PackConvoySpawnPoint.java
CanisHegemonyPatrolSpawnPoint.java
CanisTTPatrolSpawnPoint.java

Each of these spawn points then is set up differently, and that determines what type of fleet spawns (a set chance for each fleet) when the spawn point 'activates'. Activation frequency, and maximum number of fleets at one time, is set up in the initialisation process for each spawn point.

The types of fleets that can be called are determined within the particular faction file.

Title: Re: The Altari (Still W.I.P)
Post by: Zaphide on November 05, 2013, 12:32:11 PM

I think you posted the same file twice?

Regardless, your spawnpoint looks OK :)

To get <stuff> into the campaign you will need:
 - A mod_info.json file that references your ModPlugin
 - A ModPlugin that calls any of your generators (e.g. SyndicateAspModPlugin.java)
 - A generator file to add anything (systems, spawnpoints etc) to the campaign (e.g. ASPSectorGen.java)
 - Any object files you are wishing to add to the campaign (e.g. ASPSpawnPoint.java or your AltariSpawnPoint.java)

If you can re-post your SystemMaker.java file (which I assume is your generator file) that would be helpful :)

Title: Re: The Altari (Still W.I.P)
Post by: Zaphide on November 07, 2013, 01:28:03 AM

Okay well this line won't work (SystemMaker.java):

Code

AltariSpawnPoint AltariSpawn = new AltariSpawnPoint(sector, system, 5, 5, Ascension);

The last parameter is the 'anchor' (usually the place things spawn from) and seeing as you are not declaring an object Ascension anywhere (at least that I could see) it will not work. I suspect it should be 'planet'?

You will also need a mod_info.json file in the root directory of your mod, and it will need a line like:

Code

"modPlugin":"data.scripts.SSGModPlugin",

This will call your modPlugin.onNewGame() method (I think it also incorrectly triggers onEnabled too which can result in double everything).

Hopefully that helps somewhat :)

Title: Re: The Altari (Still W.I.P)
Post by: Thaago on November 07, 2013, 05:42:26 AM

Quote from: Zaphide on November 07, 2013, 01:28:03 AM

...

This will call your modPlugin.onNewGame() method (I think it also incorrectly triggers onEnabled too which can result in double everything).

Hopefully that helps somewhat :)

As set up it will call onEnabled only once - that was a bug that got fixed for this version. I like onEnabled better than onNewGame so that mods can be added later :).

Title: Re: The Altari (Still W.I.P)
Post by: Zaphide on November 07, 2013, 11:55:38 PM

Quote from: etherealblade on November 07, 2013, 11:25:48 PM

ok I replaced that bit to
AltariSpawnPoint AltariSpawn = new AltariSpawnPoint(sector, system, 5, 5, Planet);
Because I want the fleets to spawn at "Altari Prime".

keep in mind my faction file is labled and assigned altari.faction with "altari" being lower cased....while AltariSpawnPoint.java is capitalized. not sure if this has anything to do with the errors.


I get this:

Spoiler

15189 [Thread-6] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.D  - java.lang.RuntimeException: Error compiling [data.scripts.SSGModPlugin]
java.lang.RuntimeException: Error compiling [data.scripts.SSGModPlugin]
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.scripts.ScriptStore$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Parsing compilation unit "com.fs.starfarer.loading.A$1@523df"
   at org.codehaus.janino.JavaSourceIClassLoader.findIClass(JavaSourceIClassLoader.java:180)
   at org.codehaus.janino.IClassLoader.loadIClass(IClassLoader.java:158)
   at org.codehaus.janino.JavaSourceClassLoader.generateBytecodes(JavaSourceClassLoader.java:199)
   at org.codehaus.janino.JavaSourceClassLoader.findClass(JavaSourceClassLoader.java:164)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
   at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)
   ... 2 more
Caused by: org.codehaus.commons.compiler.CompileException: Source file "data/scripts/SSGModPlugin.java" does not declare class "data.scripts.SSGModPlugin"
   at org.codehaus.janino.JavaSourceIClassLoader.findIClass(JavaSourceIClassLoader.java:165)
   ... 7 more

[close]

To fix that error you will need to change the first line in SSGModPlugin.java:

Code

package data.scripts.world;

to

Code

package data.scripts;

as it seems like your SSGModPlugin.java is in data/scripts rather than in data/scripts/world.

Note your 'Planet' (line you changed in SystemMaker.java) should be 'planet' as that is your variable name as defined above that.

altari.faction and AltariSpawnPoint.java is fine for those files :)

Title: Re: The Altari (Still W.I.P)
Post by: Zaphide on November 12, 2013, 01:43:34 AM

Hi etherealblade,

Well I think that would be a shame if you didn't continue with the mod :( Really liking the sprites and you've put a lot of work into it so far.

Regardless, here is a version I have slightly modified to get it working:
https://bitbucket.org/Zaphide/exerelin/downloads/Altari.zip (https://bitbucket.org/Zaphide/exerelin/downloads/Altari.zip)

You had a few compile errors in your scripts. I also renamed them and moved one so they are more like the approach taken by most other modders (should make comparing to other mods a little easier if you want to copy things).

Title: Re: The Altari (Still W.I.P)
Post by: Zaphide on November 13, 2013, 02:00:52 AM

That's OK :)

I work as a software developer (although not with Java and less as an actual coder more recently) so I probably have a slight head start on you there :P and believe me, the frustration of taking the first few steps is by far the worst. Once you get up and going you'll start to get more of a feel of how things hang together, which makes it easier for the next thing etc etc etc.

Anyway, happy to help!

Title: Re: The Altari (.50 version release)
Post by: dmaiski on November 20, 2013, 04:26:17 AM

umm i thinky you fubbed the ship_stats.csv file...
explorer has 250 OP
scout has 150 OP
battle rig has 550 OP
defiant has 350 op

and all their relative stats are way too high for vanilla other then that its actualy quite alot of fun to play around with them

Title: Re: The Altari (.50 version release)
Post by: ValkyriaL on November 20, 2013, 05:08:39 AM

what are these names? class? 550 OP is a super capital number, 250 is about the same as big cruisers/BCs and 350 are battleships/BCs

Title: Re: The Altari (.50 version release)
Post by: dmaiski on November 20, 2013, 09:05:20 AM

explorer frigate has 250 OP
scout has frigate 150 OP
battle rig capital has 550 OP
defiant destroyer has 350 op

Title: Re: The Altari (.50 version release)
Post by: ValkyriaL on November 20, 2013, 09:46:18 AM

a frigate?...with 250 OP? I think you have a 0 to much there, there ain't no vanilla tag being applied to this anytime soon if the stats are along those lines. :-\

then again, he might not be going for vanilla balance, since there is no tag, so i guess its good in that respect. ::)

Title: Re: The Altari (.50 version release)
Post by: HELMUT on November 20, 2013, 05:27:01 PM

Definitly not balanced right now. Altari is massively overpowered for the moment. Also no stations available in their star system.

I was still able to toy around with them using dev-mode. I tried the anomaly ship, broken as hell, but fun. The animation for the main beam of the monster may need some work (the big red glowy thing around it looks weird).

Still, the weapons sound pretty fun to use and i hope they'll be balanced as well. Also, to those who read this, at least try this mod just for the black hole gun, it's hilarious.

Title: Re: Update Pending..
Post by: haloguy1 on November 30, 2013, 05:41:06 PM

When will the next update me i must have an easy'er way to obtain these ships of power.

Got one it is sooo OVER POWERED and soo i did some tweeking and now the missiles only have 10 in them not 30 now that is alot for a missile launcher.