[MOD] Distant Stars - Rebellion Alpha 0.13 Released! [17/06/13]

Published on January 5, 2009 By Nacey In Sins Modding

Article Link

Feedback of any kind is always welcome. Ideas, balance changes, and bug reporting of any kind is always useful!

Version 1.00 Released!

Make sure to ask for permission before republishing any part of this mod to the public!

Downloads

Rebellion Logo

1.05 + DLC Compatible:

0.12 ALPHA Release:
Full Download:
http://distantstars.mmobase.com/rebellion/Distant_Stars_(R)_ALPHA_0.13_[45189661].7z

Full Download MIRROR:
http://www.moddb.com/downloads/distant-stars-rebellion-alpha-013

MD5: 69486D2FCD3F35E46E6F5EF8C9F1634A

Diplomacy Logo

1.34 Compatible:

1.01 Release:
Full Download:
http://distantstars.mmobase.com/diplomacy/Distant_Stars_(D)_1.01_[45685832].7z

1.051 Compatible:

Beta 0.9951 Release:
Full Download:
http://distantstars.mmobase.com/entrenchment/DS_Entrenchment_Beta_0.9951_[36672852].7z

1.14 - 1.181 Compatible:

Version 1.01:
Full Download:
http://distantstars.mmobase.com/soase/Distant_Stars_v1.01_[453701567].7z

Make sure to ask for permission before republishing any part of this mod to the public!

Multiplayer Games:
We've setup a thread for everyone to organise their multiplayer games in and also setup example times and dates for most people to meet up and start games. These are what we hope to be the main times for people to be around and want to play games together.

The times are:
4pm EST (9pm GMT) Saturdays & Sundays
9pm EST (2am GMT) Saturdays & Sundays

If you want to organise other games please go ahead using the same topic to consolidate all the information in one place and hopefully get more games together within our community. These games are for PvP, PvAI & PvPvAIso come along and we'll get some games going!

Screenshots:
We've setup a thread so you can all post your screenshots to share with us the Distant Stars team and its players. Im sure we're all intrigued to see what kinds of battles and events you've all been having on the mod aswell.

Lore:
We know some of you guys love to role play whilst using Distant Stars, and here's a topic for you guys to post all of your role playing stories, character profiles and anything else you can imagine.

Maps:
Some of you avid map makers out there have produced some great maps but never really had them recognised because they've got lost. Well here's a topic for you to post a link to the download (we can even provide mirrors if necessary) a screenshot or two of the map for us all the preview and if enough people like it we'll even include the map in with the actual mod!

Please visit our website and for more information, change logs, downloads, and to report bugs. Our website can be found here: http://distantstars.mmobase.com

Bug Reporting

If you want to report a bug please use the Bug Report feature on our website:
http://distantstars.mmobase.com/?m=reportabug

Please include as much information as possible, if you have an error log feel free to post it on these forums and we'll take it from there. If you can reproduce the error please include the error log (read below to find out how to enable error logs) and include as much detail on how to reproduce the problem.

To enable logging:
Windows Vista/Windows 7:
C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting
or
Windows XP:
C:\Documents and settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting

Open the user.setting file (using Notepad, Wordpad or any text editor) and scroll down to the bottom 7 lines from the bottom is the line:
LogOutput FALSE
Change FALSE to TRUE
LogOutput TRUE

and from then on any Log files will be saved to the debug folder:
Windows Vista/Windows 7:
C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Debug
or
Windows XP:
C:\Documents and settings\<Your Windows Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Debug

If you get these log files to us (you can just paste them in to a forum post) we can hopefully get your issues sorted.

Frequently Asked Questions

All files are compressed using 7Zip to shrink the download filesize. To extract these files you must use WinRAR or 7Zip.
Any Patches should overwrite the original install directory, either by extracting over the original folder, or cut/copy & pasting over the existing file/folder structure.

1) My game keeps crashing, is there anything I can do to stop it?
i) Are you running the game on maximum (highest) settings? if so, lower them to High or Medium, there is a known issue with the game using up too much memory, there is nothing we can do about this, also no matter how powerful your pc is, it is affected by this issue no matter the pc it is not above this crashing issue, it is a game problem not a hardware one, so quite simply lower your settings. If you still have an issue with crashing see point two.
ii) Give us as detailed information as possible about the crash, what was happening at the time of the crash, what races, ships, abilities were involved. If you can supply a Debug Log (see above for more information about logging) and post a bug report on our website.

2) The loading screens and portrait pictures dont appear properly, whats wrong?
i) This is an issue with ATI based graphics cards (rarely affects Nvidia based cards) we're looking in to the issue.

3) Why dont you support converting Distant Stars in to TXT format?
i) Quite simply many things can go wrong with converting your mod to TXT, we cant help you with something you've probably broken yourself.

4) Can I mod Distant Stars for myself?
i) Yes you can however please do not distribute our mod or our mod that you have edited to the public. You must ask for permission to do so, we will regrettably stop distributing our mod to all if users abuse our work.

5) Your mod is in BIN format I can't edit the files, what can I do?
i) You can convert the mod to TXT format however we wont offer any support to versions of the mod that have been converted to TXT.

6) Why is Distant Stars distributed in BIN format?
i) Mods load faster in BIN format and are less likely to have issues in this format.

7) I'm having trouble installing the MOD, do you have any more instructions?
i) Carbon was kind enough to do some more advanced instructions out here.

8) Is there any way to make new maps for Distant Stars using GalaxyForge?
i) Within the Distant Stars Extras folder there is a folder called Galaxy Forge, Copy and Paste this folder (or its contents) over your original Galaxy Forge folder (or its contents) replacing any files if it asks you to. When you start Galaxy Forge next you'll be able to use all of our planets.

Or, the DIY approach (without custom icons):

ii) The GalaxyForge supplied by the devs will still work with our Mod, however to be able to access all of our planetary bonuses, templates, planet types and stars you will need to take our GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef (found in the GameInfo folder of the mod) and place it in to your GalaxyForge folder, overwriting the original GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef (if you still wish to make maps for the original game keep a backup of the original file). This will allow you to use all of the Galaxy changes included in our mod.

Note: Any maps made for Distant Stars will not work with other Mods. See #8.2 for DIY instructions for map making or take the appropriate files from Entrenchment, they're cross-client compatible.

Some statistics...

Since August 2009 to February 2011 we have had over...

400,000 Unique visits to the website
12,000GB (12TB) of data transferred from our website

That equates to over 60,000 Unique downloads of the entire mod, excluding the excess of 20,000 Patches downloaded.

Thanks to everyone that has supported us this far and making our mod as popular as it is!

dyMRNwSFh9gw

Comments (Page 251)

3751

Jihad110

on Oct 16, 2010

OK thanks Its just that the DS mod is exactly what i want, i mean i was using the TSOP mod and yes the game ran better than before but it made sins shit, research takes LONG and income is slow as hell. So yeah, its either boring sins or screenshot speed sins

3752

Ryat

on Oct 16, 2010

I will see what I can do about poking our lead coder. But no guarantees.

3753

Jihad110

on Oct 16, 2010

Yeah fair enough, i just tried to play a 4v4 on 'into the breach' and i started to get properly unplayable fps about an hour and a half in. I tried all the usual suggestions like not building mines and un pinning planets from the empire tree but could you guys give me any suggestions? How do you play sins with DS mod and still get a decent gaming experience, i.e what maps, how many players e.t.c. Its just that i find that the DS mod for whatever reason creates more fps drop than normal.

3754

Jihad110

on Oct 16, 2010

Didn't see your latest post, much appreciated

3755

Stant123

on Oct 16, 2010

According to Harpo's research the speed of your RAM plays a big factor in performance. Personally, I drop in frame rates 4 or 5 hours into a game but never to the point where it's unplayable, and I have no issues running any map with the maximum amount of players on my desktop, my laptop however is a different story but it's a few years older and a much less capable system, so it really is a system specific issue. Outside of the reduced graphics options and not building things, you're not going to find any more suggestions that lead to a quick fix. It's a limitation of the way the game was designed. Until the next version is released, you're unfortunately stuck with trial and error finding out what works best...

3756

KrdaxDrkrun

on Oct 16, 2010

Turn down the settings and turn off things like colored skyboxes and dust clouds.

That seriously speeds things up.

3757

SivCorp

on Oct 17, 2010

Jihad110

reply 3751

And I think that sums up why I think the two should be melded together. At least the model reductions...

Too bad RL keeps us all from getting it done (cause I still haven't finished the starbases yet for TSOP, Grrr)

I love the mod, I just hate that it limits the game to 2v2 and below.

3758

Ryat

on Oct 17, 2010

SivCorp

reply 3757

And I think that sums up why I think the two should be melded together. At least the model reductions...

Too bad RL keeps us all from getting it done (cause I still haven't finished the starbases yet for TSOP, Grrr)

I love the mod, I just hate that it limits the game to 2v2 and below.

We agree and we are working on it. But as you pointed out. RL rules all.

3759

Jihad110

on Oct 17, 2010

Well i have 4GB of DDR3 RAM at 1300MHz, now as far as i'm aware this is good enough to play more or less any PC game, i've never had issues. However with sins especially with DS mod i get FPS drop about 1.5 hours into a 4v4 67 planet game and its PISSING ME OFF!! What kind of jesus RAM do you have to play well for like 4-5 hours on much larger maps?

3760

Jihad110

on Oct 17, 2010

Stant123

reply 3755

Sorry double post, web page froze.

3761

EternalRequiem

on Oct 17, 2010

that 2 extra gigs of ram won't matter, what are the effect settings at in your game? what have you turned off and have kept on. At most I never usually play with more then 3 AI cause I know it will tax the game and cause more memory usage. 4vs4 is a lot of memory usage... that's 8 factions which causes a huge usage of memory.

3762

Jihad110

on Oct 17, 2010

Errm well bloom is disabled all qualities are set to very high, no AA. But i have tried turning details down and it doen't make any differnece. So all these big maps that you guys play, do you play them with few AI? I switched to the Star trek mod today and even though its soooooo obvious i finally realised that the game runs so smoothly because all the effects consist of lines and little red torpedoes, all explosion effects are kept relatively normal and there are FAR less strike craft as there are few ships that can build them.

Anyway i just feel eternally frustrated because i'm gettign the impression that everyone can play sins better, i tent to play 4v4 on roughly 67 - 82 planet maps at which point i get fps drop about 1.5 hours in, what have you guys found to be the upper limit of players and plantets with DS mod?

3763

EternalRequiem

on Oct 17, 2010

all qualities are set to very high

that is your main problem right there, you have the quality set too high especially with 8 players you should have set the quality level down to at least medium if your running that kind of game with 7 opponents. No wonder your game has low FPS only an hour and a half in.

3764

Ryat

on Oct 17, 2010

Well I rarely play past 4 players, but yeah detail dropping before you start the game is what is needed. For some reason if you start a game at high/very high the game keeps them in memory for that entire game. Its a bit lame, but when you consider this game is a first for Ironclad we have to leave it as something they hopefully will learn from in later games.

3765

Jihad110

on Oct 17, 2010

Ryat

reply 3764

For some reason if you start a game at high/very high the game keeps them in memory for that entire game.

Which is why i dondn't notice a differnece when i lowered the graphics mid whay through. I thought that graphic qualities are dependant on GPU, mine is more than capable of dealing with these sort of graphics. I wouldn't really want to compromise on graphics so 3v3 on about 40 planet map is about the maximum then?

Stant said he dosent have any problem running any map mith max players, does that mean he has the quality set to low?

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