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 42)
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on Jun 30, 2009

Good news! I had my crash fail a start up again. How is this good news you ask? I have not played SINS in two days. So it's just my machine giving me hell for the fun of it. The game is going well last I played. Framerate is slowing down now that I'm on the interstellar scene and getting info from all corners of the sector. But one expects that. So, the mod is doing swimmingly.

on Jun 30, 2009

Same here lol

on Jun 30, 2009

Hello Nacey, just started to mess with Vasari and noticed that they start with 3 capital crews instead of 1

on Jun 30, 2009

Ryat you are right, it does open with 2 but upgrades to 1, so it kinda makes 3...

and btw Nacey, when you release another version do you mind making the entity files all in the text format, make it faster for those of us who want to mod it back right away without having to use a converter all over again

on Jul 01, 2009

Had a serious mini-dump. Blew up a ship, while the pirates sent out a fleet, was also playing the game with several applications going. Error statement from windows saying not enough virtual memory.

on Jul 01, 2009

GeneralJohnny
It's possible that the crashing is being caused by the Volumetric Explosions & Damage Effects mod.

In the mods thread, there's talk of random crashing with the latest version, deleting the "pipelines" folder fixes the problem for some apparantly.


Also I just noticed how the game doesn't seem to randomly crash if I run it through the dev exe, luck? I intended to let the game crash so I could see the error in the the text log generated by the dev exe.

 

I am having so many crashes that Sins is now unplayable with the Distant Stars mod.  I tried deleting pipelines, I tried replacing pipelines with unmodded Sins files and I also tried using the Entrenchment dev exe.  None of this made any difference what so ever.  I crash all the time if I play with unmodded Distant Stars files or modded Distant Stars .entity files. 

I'm not quite sure of the cause of the crashes.  Sometimes it could be in battle, sometimes it can be when I just start a game and try to start doing things.  Some maps seem to work better than others but they all crash.  Sometimes it even crashes on a map load (not as often but still a pain). 

I have tried reinstalling Sins + entrenchment 2 times.  That did not make anything better.  I have tried reinstalling the Distant Stars mod 0.82 and that also has had no luck.  I even tried .81 for the heck of it and again no luck. 

With the Dev exe I did get some errors that actually made me have to close Sins via the Windows Task Manager.  These errors are:

"Slot ActionPlanetOpenUpgradeManagement can't be setup over ACTION_CAPITALSHIP_ABILITY_0."

&

"Slot ACTION_PLANET_OPENPLANETMODULEMANAGEMENT_ORBIT0 can't be setup over ACTION_CAPITALSHIP_ABILITY_1."

The planet in question was a "Dwarf Swamp Planet" and before it was colonized it had the effect of "Radiation Bombardment" which had a timer of something like 460 seconds. This ability would toggle on and off allowing colinization when it was off.

I hope these crashes can be fixed asap.  I loved Distant Stars with the old Sins (without Entrenchment) and due to how awesome Distant Stars was I can no longer play Entrenchment without it!

on Jul 01, 2009

Here's a new problem... has anyone seen this?

When I make a map in forge 3, my phase lanes do not show up in game.

They are in forge OK, but when the game starts, they are missing. Tried it many times with different maps.

WTF?

 

on Jul 01, 2009

Had a serious mini-dump. Blew up a ship, while the pirates sent out a fleet, was also playing the game with several applications going. Error statement from windows saying not enough virtual memory.

Yeah, the memory useage for DS is skyhigh. With all the new planets, and mass of new graphics. You can very very easily push your memory usage to max.

Nothing we can really do about that, other than suggest if you dont have alot of RAM best beware of DS.

 

And to the rest of you who are experencing the Random-Mini Dump, please know that it being addressed as best we can. Due to Real Life, progress is slow, like 56K slow.

on Jul 01, 2009

steveinstructor, there is an option in sins /entrenchment "show phase lanes" is it ticked?????

harpo

on Jul 01, 2009

yes.

it's not that i can't see them... they are really not there. ships can not travel and no auto-search ship will move.

the phase lanes have really disappeared. It happens on any map i make in forge. It even happened to a map that worked OK that i brought in and saved again without making changes.

so forge is killing me. I am using the newest Forge 3 tool, with the DS .81 forge tool extra add-ons.This sucks.

 

 

on Jul 01, 2009

steveinstructor could you disable the ds.81 forgetool extras and test again?

I ask as I use galaxy forge 3 and have had NO problems with phase lanes, but I do not use any of the individual mod addons to allow different planets as I use mostly random colonizable, so my maps work with ALL mods

harpo

 

on Jul 01, 2009

I GOT IT....

It seems my mod path was too long. Windows XP can not see filenames beyond a certain size.

My path used to be:

D:\Documents and Settings\Steve\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment v1.03\DS Entrench 0.82\DS Entrenchment Beta 0.82

So I removed one of the folders and remade it so the path is now:

D:\Documents and Settings\Steve\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Entrenchment v1.03\DS Entrenchment Beta 0.82

That little bit was enough. All may maps now work and the phase lanes are back.

So watch your path size, people.

 

on Jul 01, 2009

actually you had also nested the mod inside another folder the \DS Entrench 0.82\ which also would have caused the mod to not activate the changes

also windows xp,v*********ta & windows 7 have a maximum path length of 260 characters INCLUDING the file name

 

harpo

 

on Jul 02, 2009

-Ue_Carbon



Quoting Ryat,
reply 20
Had a serious mini-dump. Blew up a ship, while the pirates sent out a fleet, was also playing the game with several applications going. Error statement from windows saying not enough virtual memory.



Yeah, the memory useage for DS is skyhigh. With all the new planets, and mass of new graphics. You can very very easily push your memory usage to max.

Nothing we can really do about that, other than suggest if you dont have alot of RAM best beware of DS.

 

And to the rest of you who are experencing the Random-Mini Dump, please know that it being addressed as best we can. Due to Real Life, progress is slow, like 56K slow.

Or better yet just run the game without any other apps going.

on Jul 02, 2009

ROFL, yeah that would work too.

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