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1936

Modding / Re: Variant editing with dev mode [current workaround issue]

« on: April 26, 2016, 10:51:56 PM »

It saves the .variant files in:

../../starfarer.res/res/data/variants/

Relative to the saves directory. Which happens to be where they're at in the dev environment, but doesn't match an actual install. You may need to create those folders manually, and would need to copy the .variant files over to wherever you need them. Perhaps this is the missing piece?

So to clarify, the path would be in this case: downloads/starsector/starfarer.res/res/data/variants/     or:     downloads/starsector/saves/starsector.res/res/data/variants/ ?

Also I have copied the variant files, but should i leave the original variant files in data as well? The dev mode editor seems to want to read the variant files from that location only. It still will not save any changes to the variant files. 

1937

Modding / Re: Variant editing with dev mode [current workaround issue]

« on: April 26, 2016, 09:31:13 PM »

Well... clean installed outside of programs and tried to edit the variants after changing security under the entire starsector directory to admin and still cannot seem to make that setting or any variant changes in dev mode stick.

What am I doing wrong here? Am I not changing the security settings correctly? I am going to the folder properties, clicking the security tab, selecting admin under permissions, unclicking the "read only" checkbox, applying the changes, then hitting ok.

It seems to apply the changes (takes a couple seconds and displays a progress bar) and yet if i reclick properties under the folder everything is not saved.

I have windows 7 64 bit.

Any clues for me here?

1938

Modding / Re: Variant editing with dev mode [current workaround issue]

« on: April 17, 2016, 12:56:27 PM »

Well if it won't break anything then I guess that is too obvious a solution not to use it lol. Thanks for the info Alex.

1939

Mods / Re: (0.7.2a) StarSector AI Overhaul, Alpha 1

« on: April 16, 2016, 11:58:54 PM »

  Pretty excited to break into this at a later date to see if I can write a few AIs for a couple things I want to bring to my mod! At the very least I want to test the difference that this AI has over vanilla! Cool stuff Xenoargh!

1940

Modding / Variant editing with dev mode [current workaround issue] **solved**

« on: April 16, 2016, 11:46:36 PM »

Hey was wondering if anyone could help me with this or has run into this before me.

I'm trying to edit variants using dev mode since the new weapon types broke Trylobot's editor and I am running into the permissions issue with Windows 7. I have tried changing the permissions of the variants folder and it always autodefaults back to read only. I don't seem to have a way to get it to "stick" so to speak when I change it even when trying to add special permissions   and that was the workaround discussed here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8600.0

Its driving me crazy its like windows has absolutely determined that if I am allowed to change program file permissions I will break the whole computer.
I could use the second solution and reinstall the game outside of programs(x64) but I would rather not unless that is the only option because that would probably break many more things...    

1941

Bug Reports & Support / Re: v7.2a Consistent Crash while in Marketplace

« on: March 03, 2016, 05:40:05 PM »

Sure! I'll send the save now and try and keep an eye on it so if it happens again I can give you some more specifics. The instance of the error message I originally sent you occurred in the Asharu market I know that for certain. The save is a couple saves after that point though I had already overwritten the original one.

1942

Bug Reports & Support / Re: v7.2a Consistent Crash while in Marketplace

« on: March 03, 2016, 04:33:39 PM »

Hm, this is strange. I'd left it idling with the Jangala market open for 15ish minutes or so, with no crash.

Do you have a tooltip open the entire time, by chance? If so, any idea which one? The stack trace indicates a tooltip *may* be involved.

What screen do you have open when this happens?


Might be worth to do a clean install, too, just in case.

Ok will do. As far as your question I am honestly not sure sorry! I never expected it and don't remember the finer details of what I was doing at the time. I am fairly confident I was either buying a ship or a good (I was switching between those screens often to see what weapons were available and of course from what markets I would need to purchase them) at the exact time of the crash and was deciding which one to go with but I could have been moving the mouse around and a tooltip tried to pop up from a mouseover and caused the exception to occur.

Edit: If it is a tooltip linked to a ship or weapon I can go find what is available at that market currently if you need me to.

1943

Bug Reports & Support / Re: v7.2a Consistent Crash while in Marketplace

« on: March 03, 2016, 02:53:30 PM »

Hi - is this modded or vanilla? Roughly how long does it take? What version of 0.7.2a is it? (-RC1, -RC2, or -RC3?)

Edit: does this happen with every market, or only specific ones?

Unmodded, I believe -RC3, the newest one.

I am not sure at this point it has happened to me three times. It takes a fairly long time (in the minutes but not hours) and seems just to happen its not linked to an action like clicking a box or anything that I can tell. It happens when I become distracted with other things or when I am taking a fairly long time in deciding what ship to buy and how to outfit it. Not for basic resupply runs or the like.

I am at the beginning of the game so I believe the first two times were at Jangala station itself but could one could possibly have been at the pirate station. The 3rd time was at that Independent planet right below it where the abandoned station is located. That one was frustrating... lost 28 stacks of drugs I had just pillaged from a pirate cargo fleet and managed to unload with my transponder off 

1944

Bug Reports & Support / v7.2a Consistent Crash while in Marketplace

« on: March 03, 2016, 01:09:02 PM »

I keep getting game crashes if I linger on the market U.I of any station or planet for too long.

It was a null exception, last lines of code in the starsector log were:

Spoiler

1558360 [Thread-4] INFO  com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.events.TradeInfoUpdateEvent  - Adding Food(Asharu)
1559726 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.oo0O  - Creating streaming player for music with id [faction_generic_market_01_neutral_var01.ogg]
1559726 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.H  - Playing music with id [faction_generic_market_01_neutral_var01.ogg]
1933548 [Thread-4] INFO  sound.oo0O  - Cleaning up music with id [miscallenous_corvus_campaign_music.ogg]
1933556 [Thread-8] INFO  sound.oo0O  - Cleaning up music with id [faction_generic_market_01_neutral_var01.ogg]
1933747 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.oo0O  - Creating streaming player for music with id [faction_generic_market_01_neutral_var01.ogg]
1933747 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.H  - Playing music with id [faction_generic_market_01_neutral_var01.ogg]
1933831 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.s.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.P.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.s.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.impl.StandardTooltipV2.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.P.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.s.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.P.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignState.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

[close]

1945

General Discussion / Re: I really want to ***** the AI

« on: November 02, 2015, 09:31:58 AM »

What I mean by that is that not every ship has its own AI, for example, an Onslaught and a lasher have the same AI. This results in things like the Onslaught not taking hits on it's nearly impervious armor and instead using its highly vulnerable shield.

Yeah that is one thing on my "wishlist" of future polish after the game is closer to being finished. It is probably the only thing left thats truly limiting the combat AI in a big way. There should be different defense tactics between low, mid and high tech ships that treat flux and shield usage differently. I think this is one reason why I have always felt that low tech ships suffer in the hands of the AI. They almost never utilize their strength as an armor tank and lower their damage potential raising up flux by using their terrible shields.
 
One way to kind of solve this is to give the low tech ships a system like the ammo feeder that also prevents shield usage. It essentially forces the AI to armor tank while dealing additional damage anyway. Of course you are limiting shield tanking to long range missile strikes or when the system is on cooldown but I find that you notice that downside less than when your Onslaught armored with Mjolnirs decides to shield tank and suddenly has so high of flux that it can't even fire its weapons anymore 5 seconds into the fight  .

1946

Modding / Re: Misc modding questions that are too minor to warrant their own thread

« on: June 06, 2015, 11:20:42 PM »

Thought I saw this a while back but is it possible to mod the amount of dissipation each vent gives when equipped?

1947

Blog Posts / Re: Terrain

« on: June 01, 2015, 01:25:57 PM »

Wow that looks awesome!

1948

Blog Posts / Re: Terrain

« on: May 27, 2015, 03:20:26 PM »

]Hah, that reminds me of one thing that really wowed me about a particular old CRPG - if you were fighting in a forest, and you used a big enough fire spell, the entire background shifted to forest-on-fire.  It had no game mechanical effects, but... seriously, wow.  (Breath of Fire II, if you were curious what game I was talking about.)

Yeah I love that sort of thing! The details that really make a good game stand out to you and become great. I kind of feel like many modern developers lost a bit of touch with that kind of thing. There is actually a really interesting article about JRPGs like Final Fantasy potentially becoming mobile platform only because console games are down pretty severely. To summarize it he says that Japan is making this sort of societal shift away from anything that involves them too deeply (like storytelling) because people often spend several hours commuting alongside work so everything must be immediate gratification, convenient and have some repetitive and addicting quality to it.

I feel that many game developers all over the world are also feeling a similar pressure and so there has been a trend emerging where story elements and immersion are second to gimmicks that are meant to either "innovate" or streamline an existing playerbase into dlc consumption.

Take a look at the Resident Evil shift after 4 for example. Its such a shame because if you look at games that become defining in a genre it is usually the ones that are thorough and immersive alongside their good mechanics and graphics.

... sorry that got way off topic 


Needless to say these new features are exciting for me!

1949

Blog Posts / Re: Terrain

« on: May 26, 2015, 10:38:05 PM »

Also, even if a change of the battlefield doesn't favor one side or another, it could still favor different tactics, so it could have "fun value" there without being a strategic consideration.

Finally, I think there's value in *even purely visually* tying the battlefield to the place in the campaign you're fighting.

I do get what you're saying, though. We'll see exactly where on this spectrum things will end up.

I think this is a good thing to point out.

If it ends up that it is really hard to implement combat effecting terrain, one of the main complaints about variety is largely satisfied simply by having visual tie-ins to areas that you are traveling through. Stations, ship graveyards, wrecks, planets and all kinds of things are made immersive just by having battles by them include them visually even if it doesn't effect anything below the campaign level. The hard part is balancing making the differentiation stand out and be noticeable enough to be immersive and cool without being a distraction.


Still, being able to effectively implement gameplay enriching terrain in combat along with those visuals would just be fantastic for storytelling and making some memorable set piece missions.

1950

Suggestions / Re: Planetside Battles

« on: May 18, 2015, 09:31:21 PM »

The big issue with this is that there isn't any parallax of the background implemented, so motion of the ships against it feels very awkward, when the objects aren't supposed to be incredibly distant. 

That's a major part of why the visibility issues crop up, too; because we're not seeing the background move relative to our current ship's motion or the ship we're camera-following, it simply doesn't feel right.  Of course, there's a bit more to this, to get a good feel; a washed-out set of hues with noise won't be as effective in that context and a better approach to the treatment of the art would be required, but the lack of parallax is a prime issue.

We can't really fix that with mods, because we don't have access to the rendering process there and can't implement a new system to handle that. 

I've wanted to do a land-based TC based on this engine for quite some time now, but it's just not practical until that portion of the engine is accessible and we can rewrite the core method there.

Yeah I kind of figured that would be an issue. I have theorized using the "nebula" effect to kind of custom build an immersive "environment" that can affect movement and make a sort of terrain like feel. It would take a huge amount of work and finesse to pull it off though and I am not sure it wouldn't cause all sorts of performance issues. Honestly I have pushed off attempting some sort of ground based combat until I can actually implement it in the campaign anyway.

For that to happen I need to be able to designate different battle types and also flag ships as only deploy-able in specific ones (to separate ground forces from space forces).

(Backgrounds are not all loaded at once. There's one current combat and campaign background, new backgrounds get loaded into the same memory as needed. This is why there's a slight loading time when jumping into a new star system, for example.)

Ah crap, my bad for spreading misinformation unintentionally.

No worries I probably misunderstood what you meant and ah makes much more sense