[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 349)

5221

jozmar

on May 29, 2011

@Stant123: The oil slick didn't show up before I enabled the mini-mod.

5222

Ryat

on May 29, 2011

Like the new Avatar Pic Stant.

5223

G_Bison

on May 30, 2011

Ryat

reply 5222

Like the new Avatar Pic Stant.

Agreed, noticed it before I fell asleep this afternoon, Draak did a good job , may have to inquire a new one for myself.....

5224

Stant123

on May 30, 2011

blobness

reply 5217

I only stated it as an option because it fixed this exact issue for me and a few others, and the mesh was confirmed by one of the team members as the source if the issue after we had found the solution. You also linked me those same files back when I was having this problem, and as I stated before they did not fix it, so in the event the same was true for Oatesy I gave him the other solution.

For the record, since you have been fairly active recently and posting useful stuff and commenting on the flagship mod, I'm going to be nice about this, otherwise I'd tear you a new one because that's just what I do when people try to correct me when I know damn well I'm right.

In all honesty, as I stated, your fix may work, and it may not. I reviewed this thread all the way back to page 165 and as far as I've been able to discern, my texture fix helped 5 people who reported back, yours only helped you. Again, in all fairness to my fix, when you were having the issue, I did not include the meshes as part of the fix, so you did not get those same files. That came nearly three weeks AFTER your issue had been resolved, so simply writing it off as not going to work thus requiring you to post an alternate method when you haven't even tried it is not good for your reputation if you're trying to build one here. Yes, you did try the textures, no you didn't try the meshes.

For the sake of not wasting time, using my fix WILL fix the issue, unlike yours which might not. How do I know this? Simple. I include textures and meshes that I know work because I know they match up, rather then relying on guesses and hoping it all works out. Obviously, the better choice here is to go with the option that will work, instead of the one that might work and leaves other potential issues unresolved. While we were trouble shooting your problem, we were just learning the solutions, however, since we're far past that point, and have resolved it multiple times over, I'm going to continue recommending the fix that I have until the next full release is made public. I'm fairly certain if Oatesy looks at his other original planets he could very well likely be experiencing a polar shift on those planets as well... They just don't have the large dark spots, and therefor are less noticeable. Again, should this be the case, your fix will not fix those, forcing him to come back here and ask for more help. Mine will fix it even if he was unaware of the problem existing. That's the beauty of doing things the way I do them. I can fix issues that people are unaware that they even have. Learn from me young one and you too can be this good.

Okay? Okay.

jozmar

reply 5221

@Stant123: The oil slick didn't show up before I enabled the mini-mod.

So my question still stands, when you're NOT running MSGM do the dark spots go away leaving you with pretty planets again? It's important for us to know this so we know if it's the MSGM causing the issue or if it's DS and you just didn't see it before. If they still exist when running just DS, PM me and we'll go through it step by step until we get it fixed... That is unless blobness wants to take over mod trouble shooting and file fixing for me.

Ryat

reply 5222

Like the new Avatar Pic Stant.

Thanks.

G_Bison

reply 5223

Agreed, noticed it before I fell asleep this afternoon, Draak did a good job , may have to inquire a new one for myself.....

Draak does do good work, but he didn't do anything for this. It's of my own creation. Even the in game icon is of my creation, I was just unhappy with the look and gave it to Draak to clean up so that it would look better in the game, and even with what he gave back to me, I did some modifications to before sending it back to him to include with his other icon work.

5225

blobness

on May 30, 2011

Sorry, my bad for not examining the files you posted. I assumed they were the same ones you had linked me earlier. The only reason I took offence was that I felt you were being dismissive of a tested method in a situation where it may have been useful, but now that I know it would be redundant its a non issue, and I could've worded that post better anyway.

Either way, I'm just here for the mod and the discussion, and if I feel I can contribute in any way I will do so, but any advice/feedback I give shouldn't be considered anything more than that of a recreational player, so if I step on anyones toes, I apologize as I don't intend to.

5226

Ryat

on May 30, 2011

@Stant123 and blobness - Thanks for keeping it civil guys.

5227

LimeyMan

on May 30, 2011

So...

How're the other icons coming along Draak?

I can just imagine it... My new avatar saying "Oatesy03, DS... Wait, he doesn't actually contribute anything. Hmm..."

5228

Stant123

on May 30, 2011

Eh, it's a holiday and I'm in a good mood. Plus I know he just wanted to help, and has contributed better then most that come here, so I'm willing to extend a courtesy of explaining without the insults.

Oatesy03

reply 5227

I can just imagine it... My new avatar saying "Oatesy03, DS... Wait, he doesn't actually contribute anything. Hmm..."

I can see it having the 'DS Lore' tag at least. You've earned that much.

5229

LimeyMan

on May 30, 2011

Hey, just going to make it known that I should be able to go on TS pretty much whenever for the next week, seeing as I am on my half term holiday. Sometimes I'll be out of course, but anyway.

And as you correctly surmised Stant, my Lore progress is indeed impeded by gladiators. Details not to be released in public.

5230

blobness

on May 30, 2011

Stant123

reply 5228

Yay, people think I contributed. And now for a completely OT question! It's rather simple, so I don't feel its deserving of its own thread.

I know Sins AI is hardcoded and a little wonky, but not much beyond that. So if I were to take the Long-Range Jumps Research entity out of the stock Game Info folder and put it into the folder of an unfinished mod that lacked said research, would the AI in that mod make use of it? I'm sure theres a few parts of the file I would have to change to make it available to the races of said mod and ensure it fit in with gameplay, I'm just trying to figure out whether or not this is even viable.

5231

Ryat

on May 30, 2011

Basic techs are easily useable by the AI. Its the extras that can cause issues sometimes.

5232

blobness

on May 30, 2011

Sweet, thanks Ryat. I'll screw around with it later. Maybe I can whip that old LoGH mod into something resembling finished yet.

Now back to DS discussion.

5233

Stant123

on May 30, 2011

To get it to work though, you'll have to give it a grid position that it doesn't overlap something else, you have to add it to the entity.manifest so the game engine knows it's there, and you have to add it to the Player(Faction).entity file so the game allows it to appear in their in game research window.

Tip: 0 counts as the first spot, 1 is the second spot, 2 is the third, etc.

5234

blobness

on May 30, 2011

Figured I would have to do all that at some point, but thanks for the walkthrough, Stant. Once it's actually in the tree for both factions, the AI will make use of it though, and thats all I needed to know to make the attempt. I suppose there are some benefits to AI being hardcoded and unchangeable, at least for an incredibly amateurish Sins modder like myself.

5235

LimeyMan

on May 30, 2011

Blobness! You have two karmaz!!! Now I can't recognise your posts at a glance! Get an avatar.

Concept: "Blobness: Didn't get into a Flamewar with the Mod Support."

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!