Distant Stars Mod Blog


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

 

Entrenchment Logo

1.051 Compatible:

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

SoaSE Logo

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 342)
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on May 15, 2011

In my games, looking at the timeline after - they'll have gotten up to huge fleet sizes quite quickly. Bear in mind, I play on cruel/vicious generally which might have an impact(and I've noticed that they tend to be able to repopulate fleets ridiculously quickly!)

Also, you're right! i5-430

 

Thanks a lot for the info, I'll give it a go.

 

Also, anyone able to explain if the more difficult AI is 'smarter' in any way, or just get bonuses to ship/resource production?

Really enjoying the mod regardless  

Stant123
I've never had an AI max out a fleet and I've played dozens upon dozens of several hour games.  If you're playing hours long games like that you will have a slow down regardless of anything you have for hardware.  That's just the way it is and will be until some kind soul out there rewrites the engine for multicore and multi threading (which we all know the devs won't do because of the time and resources needed to do such a thing).

 

BTW, you don't have an i5 530, Intel doesn't make those.  You've either got an i3-530 or an i5 something else.  Either way, it's not the processor since they all meet the recommended specs for the game.

The HD5650 may be a little suspect because this game traditionally has had issues with ATI cards.

More importantly, as Harpo would tell you, the better the type of RAM you have, the better your game will play.

 

 

The easiest and more fun thing to do would be to start taking the fight to the AI's and remove their fleet. 

 

But back to your original question, yes there is a way to edit the fleet size down further.  In the mod's GameInfo folder, seek out the file Gameplay.constants

Open that file with wordpad or something and look for the grouping of text that looks like this: (It'll be about 3/4ths the way down the file)

    fleetSupplyData-Small
        fleetSupplyScalar 0.75
    fleetSupplyData-Normal
        fleetSupplyScalar 1.0
    fleetSupplyData-Large
        fleetSupplyScalar 1.25

Change the small fleet supply to something like 0.6 or 0.5 and save.

Run your game and use the small fleet setting in the game.  You should notice that there is much less fleet supply available.  Gonna have some wicked fun this weekend since I upped my large fleet supply value to 2.0 

on May 15, 2011

mini-dumped*groans* own fault, nothin mod related(I clicked an icon too much too fast, windows 7 took it as"oh it broke DESTROY!!" -.-;;   ) i was enjoying black-5 too ;O just finished "starbaseing" all the suns for a 67.5 trade from each , completely ignored by AI =3  

anywho........huh......didn't really have any comments to make besides that............eh *shrugs and shuffles to the kitchen for coffee*

 

EDIT: *sipping coffee* I FOUND something to post, did some irrelevant roaming, don't worry I didn't necro anything, dead threads should stay that way ;O. Anyhow there was an idea kind of "produced" in conversation in a thread of "ancient phase gates" and I thought of that"ancient hung of log thing" planet you guys have...but don't put to much use and thought, what if you replaced that, or used a mesh similar to it's style and made a phase gate all could use. Wormholes are great and all but, they aren't too sexy anymore(plus by a scientific point of view, they look like black holes) anyhow it was mentioned setting it's target to all types neutral,enemy,ally but I was thinking, what if you could colonize it as well? or in another approach, just have them appear randomly like asteroids in random gravity wells, give them a "condition" for activation and you have to build an extractor on it/near it/have it attached TO an asteroid even like the Cowboy Bebop/Outlaw Star animes(ahh sweet childhood).

again, just ideas for stuff to make the game a little more interesting.

on May 15, 2011

With regards to the AI: I've noticed that they are a bit better about grouping fleets and that at higher difficulties they tend more toward useful spams (SC and Hoshiko), but they follow the same attack design overall. They do get exponentially growing boosts as you up the AI. Carbon made a thread on it here.

As for the phase gate, memory is still a bit of an issue, so we try to add things that add value to the game. Generally, I would say that wormholes suffice for the job, but if it were possible to make the gates capturable, that might add a new element, especially if the gates required two (much like a wormhole) to work. Then gates could be strategically positioned in games to add a valuable location that would be hard to get to, but generally easier than getting to whatever is striking distance beyond that.

Other thoughts?

on May 15, 2011

would be nice if you could select the destination in -game but I know that's kind of an impossibility, unless you make it a super weapon with instant effect, specific targets(same type other than self) and give it a realistic cool-down maybe a planetary ability. dunno, I just spitball ideas around and they land here lol but it doesn't have to be something super-massive or over complicated, you could just replace one of the planet types you already added, throw in an ability, 0 upgrades unless you want tactical,which would make sense, you would wanna keep your shiny artifact of instant travel safe, but all other values at 0 with no chance of change short of throwing a starbase in there to supplement population/trade depending on the race. With 0 population there shouldn't be any funky elevators making strange appearances(though on the "unity starbase" they look neat with the traffic and all).

Oh, Idea you could make something like the wormhole colonize-able and add the ability mentioned, and make whatever form you want the gate to take into a particle instead of throwing in an entire model, though that might be just as difficult >.>

on May 15, 2011

Ryuzaki777
Hey guys how could I disable the music you guys added I love the nilla sins music ALOT an with this mod it be epic.

1. Remove the game.musicdata file from the mod. (GameInfo folder, you'll lose access to 43 sounds as DS uses 77 and vanilla sins uses 34.)
2. In the Sound folder move the following list of files to another location until you've had a chance to run the game without them to make sure it not only works, but that you're happy with the changes:

  1. Advent 1
  2. Advent 2
  3. Advent 3
  4. Advent 4
  5. Advent 5
  6. Advent 6
  7. Advent Announcement
  8. Advent Battle
  9. Advent Battle 2
  10. Advent Quiet
  11. Advent Quiet 2
  12. Advent Sad
  13. Advent Theme
  14. Battle 1
  15. Battle 2
  16. Battle 3
  17. Battle 4
  18. Battle 5
  19. Battle 6
  20. Battle 7
  21. Battle 8
  22. Battle 9
  23. Battle 10
  24. Battle 11
  25. Battle 12
  26. Battle 13
  27. Battle 14
  28. Battle 15
  29. Battle 16
  30. Battle 17
  31. Battle 18
  32. Battle 19
  33. Battle 20
  34. Battle 21
  35. Battle 22
  36. Battle 23
  37. Battle 24
  38. Battle 25
  39. Battle 26
  40. Battle 27
  41. Battle 28
  42. Battle 29
  43. Opening Theme
  44. Quiet 1
  45. Quiet 2
  46. Quiet 3
  47. Quiet 4
  48. Quiet 5
  49. Quiet 6
  50. Quiet 7
  51. Quiet 8
  52. Quiet 9
  53. Quiet 10
  54. Quiet 11
  55. Quiet 12
  56. Quiet 13
  57. Quiet 14
  58. Quiet 15
  59. Quiet 16
  60. Quiet 17
  61. Quiet 18
  62. Quiet 19
  63. Quiet 20
  64. Sad 1
  65. Sad 2
  66. Sad 3
  67. Sad 4
  68. Sad 5
  69. TEC 1
  70. TEC 2
  71. TEC 3
  72. TEC 4
  73. TEC Announcement
  74. TEC Opening
  75. TEC Quiet
  76. TEC Theme
  77. Trouble 1
  78. Trouble 2
  79. Trouble 3
  80. Trouble 4
  81. Trouble 5
  82. Trouble 6
  83. Trouble 7
  84. Trouble 8
  85. Trouble 9
  86. Trouble 10
  87. Trouble 11
  88. Trouble 12
  89. Trouble 13
  90. Trouble 14
  91. Upbeat 1
  92. Upbeat 2
  93. Upbeat 3
  94. Upbeat 4
  95. Upbeat 5
  96. Upbeat 6
  97. Upbeat 7
  98. Upbeat 8
  99. Upbeat 9
  100. Vasari 1
  101. Vasari 2
  102. Vasari 3
  103. Vasari 4
  104. Vasari 5
  105. Vasari 6
  106. Vasari Announcement
  107. Vasari Battle
  108. Vasari Sad
  109. Vasari Theme
  110. Vasari Trouble

That should be everything to make the game revert back to the originals.  If it doesn't crash, just delete all of those files you removed and you're good to go, if it does crash, then put the faction named ones back in and try it again.

As a side note, there's a lot of stuff in there that probably didn't need to be packaged with the mod...

Ryuzaki777
It'd be awesome if the dev team could tell me exactly which files I should delete, move, etc.

Bad boy! *swats on the nose with a newspaper*  Most of us are modders here, some more knowledgeable then others, but still, don't discount someone simply because they are not named by one project or another.  BadTune was actually pretty close to having the correct answer, he just didn't detail it out, so +1 for that.

celticfable
Also, anyone able to explain if the more difficult AI is 'smarter' in any way, or just get bonuses to ship/resource production?

We can and already did: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/378050/page/2/#2861609  Same as the one Draak posted while I was typing this up, but directly to the post of what it is they do and by how much with a longer explanation.

Draakjacht
but if it were possible to make the gates capturable,

That is possible actually.  Not sure if the other races would be able to use them besides the Vasari even after a capture, but I can't think of any reason why they shouldn't be able to.  The only issue I see is in a random game that only has one Ancient planet thing.  Makes it kind of useless.  But to map makers would be another element to add to maps.

BadTune
would be nice if you could select the destination in -game but I know that's kind of an impossibility, unless you make it a super weapon with instant effect, specific targets(same type other than self) and give it a realistic cool-down maybe a planetary ability.

Also possible, however it's starting to give me the feel of StarGate rather then just  dealing with an old gate system in place.

on May 15, 2011

True, i suppose it would make more sense to have set exits to gate like that, easier to implement that way too. But hey, there's an idea for the stargate guys and their mod lol. Think changing the wormhole mesh into a gate of some kind would work then? Wormholes do have a rotation though you can't really see it*wonders if removing that rotation could save a slight bit of memory in-case there's "faces" to a wormhole* Though you may have to throw the particle on it's side and have it rotate like that, maybe sink it under the center line a bit so ships won't pass through "solid" pieces of gate. maybe you could use the atmosphere layer to place the particle mesh while leaving the wormhole-whatzits in tact and get rid if it's un-sexy sparkles and gas, or just the gas(purple-ish blue crap floating into the center). aaaand I have been awake almost 28 hours now.....I'm worried i may only be creative when I'm exhausted seeing as all my posts that have some relative sense and or ideas to them only happen around this time >.>     should probably get coffee..need to stay awake till 7 at least.........darn bookstore and college.....break took too long, my sleep schedule got all wonky -.-;;

 

Edit: I went and had a good idea for a cap or flagship but i think it would be kind of tedious to implement. Any race would fit it since they all use beams but fine tuning it is coming up kinda muddy in my head. the idea is based off a merge between missile barrage and cleansing brilliance, but no 360 range, only one direction, randomly selected multiple targets, those between the targets and the craft(in the path of the beam) will suffer equal damage as the target so it's more of a level six skill than a 1-3. Anyway, if it's too powerful you could cause the ship to suffer something as a cost of usage, maybe 10% hull lost(intense head from the weapon's discharge deforming the barrels[yay homeworld comic posted above]). I could see this happening for a TEC vessel since, historically humans have erred more towards"Take you with me" but Advent are kind of like that too in an, extremist revenge sort of way. Basically it's a skill for an act of desperation, you could make it's damage high and take more hull or all anti-matter, something like this needs a very long cool-down so it can't be abused, and if possible a usage condition for the hull to already be at about 50% as to make it useful in desperate situations. Sorry if all this is impossible but I got to thinking about it when I was reading a bit of the lore again and looking over a few more forums. You could give each race it's own version of this for balance sake. The Flagships are high-power to begin with so a normal level 6 would seem like a mundane upgrade on a capital ship. Was thinking this might make things a little interesting with "lose your ship and take theirs with you and keep the planet, or run to fight again later." Besides, you think any human's gonna run seein that Vasari monster floating around their home, ready to practice their drawing abilities on the face of their planet with a high powered bombardment lazer? pssh They'd smack a starbase into it if they could but this seems more within the realm of possibilities, for any of the races

 

THIS HAS BEEN ANOTHER WALL OF TEXT BROUGHT TO YOU BY ME!!!! THANK YOU!!*falls off stage into the band*

on May 15, 2011

I didn't discount, I'd already had that idea in my head, but didn't want to just go rummaging through the files without a sure idea of what I was doing, now I have that. Karma will be givin. Thank you BadTune, Thank you Stant123.

on May 15, 2011

even in stargate you need 2. And having one that could exit anywhere would make the Vasari super weapon less super. I would say just rehash the wormhole coding with a capture function, like a derelict mine. Poof, done.

on May 16, 2011

Btw, if you liked the above tribute, you might recognize this battle. Seriously, I should have just RPed a pilot.

on May 16, 2011

OMG please tell me where you are getting those comic strips!

 

Also, and I am sorry if this was already asked, but will this mod be further developed for the Rebellion expansion?

 

Your devoted fan, Aliksander

on May 16, 2011

Ugh, forum errors, sorry if this double posts.

Aliksander
will this mod be further developed for the Rebellion expansion?

Yes, it will be.

on May 16, 2011

GODDAMN KADESHI

 

I know it's OT for DS, but I love seeing those old comics again. Homeworld has always been my favorite RTS, and it pisses me off that it hasn't gotten the love it deserves.

on May 16, 2011

Indeed, blobness, Homeworld is also my most favorite RTS. It has never really been matched in the twelve years since it first came out.

on May 16, 2011

Nevre really matched ? Was there ever any other 3D-RTS ?

on May 16, 2011

The two images are the only of their kind and made by a contributor to the Relic site. They are now on Deviant art under the titles of Homeworld Tribute. As for truly 3-D games, I was really hoping Sins of a Solar Empire or Genesis Rising would be such, but it turns out not. One was a great game in spite of it and the other blew chunks. I'll let you guess which is which.

Okay, sorry for going OT. I have some images I hope to show tonight, maybe getting approval on a couple of them.

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