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[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

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[MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09)

from Sins Forums

Featured (by a small mention) in the October edition of PC Gamer magazine

Candidate for Mod Database's 2008 Mod of the Year

This is the OLD "Work in Progress" thread for the Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 mod.

The new WIP topic is here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342747

The "Release" topic can be found here https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473


The mod is intended to be a hommage, and tribute to the original Sacrifice of Angels mod for Homeworld. It will use many of the same models, and effects created for that mod by the Trekmods team. Like the original SoA mod SoA2 is set during the Dominion War era of Star Trek. Using both canon, and non-canon units to recreate those battles with Sins "empire building" mechanic added. Like in SoA you can fight battles in SoA2 using hundreds of starships. Sometimes thousands if your computer can handle it ;)

While the mod was not intended as a "Total Conversion". That is exactly what it is winding up being. There is much about the Sins engine, and mechanics that we still need to learn. There are some hard coded stumbling blocks we have to overcome.

The factions will be the Federation, Klingons, Romulan, and the Dominion (with Breen, and Cardassian ally units). The main factions seen in the Dominion War. With a "Surprise" as the Pirate faction.

Factions like the Borg "may" be added in the future. LokiGodofMischief is working on a very good 3rd party Borg add on for SoA 2. It is very possible his add on may be merged with SoA 2 at a much later time.

The current version of SoA 2 is  0.03b   "The Second Dominion War". Look for it here  https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/322473

0.03b only works with Sins versions 1.1, 1.11, and 1.12.

All previous versions of SoA 2 are obsolete, and will not be supported, or hosted anymore. All older version downloads will be removed.

We will NOT port SoA 2 over to Entrenchment until after Entrenchment is out of beta, and released. Along with proper forge tool updates.

I am working on the models mostly ALONE so it may take a while for any new ship model updates.

Darkshimmer is the Balancing guru, Code monkey, and Master at arms. We do have other contributers, and the best 3rd party work from the finest artists in the trek mod community to help make SoA 2 the best it can be.

Status of Demo 0.04  "The actors are in place" 

Will update when i have news.

General Changes:

Manshooters Volumetric Explosions mod will be included as of 0.03a

May include Sins Plus (planets), but ill need to see how much that mod needs changing to incorporate into SoA 2.

SoA 2 0.03 and above is now patch 1.1, and better compatable. Sins patches 1.11, and 1.12 only address balancing, and online exploits, and have no effect on the mod.

Ships will have some anti stike craft weaponry.

Ships are still being added and balanced accordingly.

More re-balancing so that one faction is not overpowered over the other.

The Federation:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Klingon Empire

Faction is complete. Only structures left.

The Romulan Star Empire:

Faction is complete. Only structures left

The Dominion:

Faction is complete. Still needs balancing work.

Pirates:

They were going to be the Borg, but that idea failed. So we are looking into Random multirace ship spawns.

Planetary Defenders

Basically "Ships of the week" like the Maquis, Sona, Ferrengi, Tammarian battle cruisers and the like.

Balancing:  Darkshimmer has the Federation, Romulan, and Klingon Empire, and Unified Dominion balanced.

Gameplay: We now have a working Cloaking Device! Check the ModDB page for the WIP video. Cloaking will not be fully implemented in the mod until version 0.04

Art: We are working on an LCARS style UI, adding proper icons, and pictures for all of the new units. The UI is going to take a while to do, because of all of the redundancy of the Sins UI. SoA 2 uses 2 sets of UI textures. Instead of the standard 4 textures for buttons, and 2 textures for icons. SoA 2 uses 8 textures for buttons, and 4 textures for icons which IMO is a major waste of resources, because sins loads all these textures at startup. Unfortunetly i dont see any other way to do it. What is kind of cool is that we dont have to use the same HUD for each faction. It is possible to have unique HUDs, but again the perfomance hit, because of the extra drain on resources could be big, and not worth it.

In Planning: (No promises, or guarentees, but we will try to add these if possible.)

Troop Transport effects.

Planetary invasion animations

Tractor beams. (need a code monkey for this)

Whatever else we can think of and are capable of doing.

Future Updates:

SoA 2 0.04 is now in planning, and will be focused primarily on Proper research trees, Ability's, and adding proper Structures. More than likely demo 0.04 will be the last demo. After that then the full mod should be ready.

SoA 2 0.05 will be the final spit, and polish of the mod. It will focus mainly on re-balancing if needed. Also final artwork changes will be made here. Which will include some ship model re-builds, and re-texturing.

The Full SoA 2 1.0 mod will be released "When it is Finished". We are doing this on our own free time. We aren't getting paid to do this. We have no set schedule. We have no time limit. I want this one to be good. So it wont go online until we feel it is ready.

*NOTE: Much about Sins as we are all now realizing is hardcoded. SoA 2 is going to be far from a perfect "trek" mod due to these hardcoded issues. However we will try to do the best we can with workarounds, and compromises to get it as close as possible. Like i said some things wont be perfect. Some things cannot be done at all. Enjoy the mod for what it is, and try not to be too "nit picky".

SoA2 will be hosted on Mod Database once it is ready http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-sacrifice-of-angels-2

This main header will be updated when i have news to post.





modding
4,105,457 views 1,754 replies
Reply #1701 from Sins Forums Top

I was wondering, why isn't the cap ships listed first if you build a cruiser or some frigate, for example say I have a fleet of ships and I create a group say 1, the lead ship isn't the cap ship but rather a random class ship, in vanilla sins even when select a random fleet with a capital ship the cap ship is the lead ship

Reply #1702 from Sins Forums Top

why does posting take so long

Please ignore

Star Control: Origins
Reply #1703 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting garster1, reply 25
it works in sins 1.15

Really ? Please do tell how you got it to work. I had to roll back to an imaged 1.12 to get this mod to work. I had no maps running 1.15. If there is a fix, or a patch, please tell me where to go !

Quoting Mooster,
I went on to having more than 150,000 supply points after what I have here. I'll post my newest fleet pictures, after I can make sure that it would run if I launched. Just got to find ways to squzze more ram.

As of now I have the following:

200+ of each frigate and cruisers

10+ of each capital ships

Sweet.. How did you get so many points to build all those ships ? Max research of both cap and regular ships doesn't allow anywhere near that many builds.

Reply #1704 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Janetsy, reply 3
Really ? Please do tell how you got it to work. I had to roll back to an imaged 1.12 to get this mod to work. I had no maps running 1.15. If there is a fix, or a patch, please tell me where to go !

You deleted the galaxy folder in the SoA 2 folder, right? And that allowed you to run it in 1.15 but you had no maps?

Reply #1705 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Dragoon4ever, reply 4
You deleted the galaxy folder in the SoA 2 folder, right? And that allowed you to run it in 1.15 but you had no maps?

No. Actually I didn't delete anything. I found this mod, which made me want to installed the game again, then used the new updater which automatically brought it to 1.15. Loaded up the game, and no maps were showing. I went to the forums to look for a solution, and found that the mod only works with 1.11 or 1.12. (this was like 10 days ago) So I rolled back to 1.12 from an image I made, and the mod worked. (just lots of runtime crashes)

Just today, I came back to see if there was any new news, or updates, and I see Mr. Garster stating that it works in 1.15.

At this point, I do not know of any of the past history with this mod. I only found it 2 weeks ago. Made me want to play again. :) So, consider a brand new install of the game, with an update to 1.15, will this mod work ? If so, please advise as to the steps to take.

Thank you for replying. I am absolutley dying to play this mod, but the runtime crashes of 1.12 happen to often to get a good game going.

I am on Vista 32bit with 2GB ram and dual Nvidia GTX 8800's if that matters.

Reply #1706 from Sins Forums Top

just go where you install the mod and delete the "galaxy" folder from the mods directory and you will get the games default maps back to play the mod on, not having played the mod though, i cannot help with the crashes

Reply #1707 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Janetsy, reply 5
No. Actually I didn't delete anything. I found this mod, which made me want to installed the game again, then used the new updater which automatically brought it to 1.15. Loaded up the game, and no maps were showing. I went to the forums to look for a solution, and found that the mod only works with 1.11 or 1.12. (this was like 10 days ago) So I rolled back to 1.12 from an image I made, and the mod worked. (just lots of runtime crashes)

Just today, I came back to see if there was any new news, or updates, and I see Mr. Garster stating that it works in 1.15.

At this point, I do not know of any of the past history with this mod. I only found it 2 weeks ago. Made me want to play again. So, consider a brand new install of the game, with an update to 1.15, will this mod work ? If so, please advise as to the steps to take.

Thank you for replying. I am absolutley dying to play this mod, but the runtime crashes of 1.12 happen to often to get a good game going.

I am on Vista 32bit with 2GB ram and dual Nvidia GTX 8800's if that matters.

Yes, the mod will work with 1.15. Just do what MT4K said and delete the galaxy folder from the SoA 2 0.03c folder. It should start right up then no problem and have all the maps.

Reply #1708 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Janetsy, reply 3

Quoting garster1, reply 25it works in sins 1.15

Really ? Please do tell how you got it to work. I had to roll back to an imaged 1.12 to get this mod to work. I had no maps running 1.15. If there is a fix, or a patch, please tell me where to go !


Mooster I went on to having more than 150,000 supply points after what I have here. I'll post my newest fleet pictures, after I can make sure that it would run if I launched. Just got to find ways to squzze more ram.
As of now I have the following:

200+ of each frigate and cruisers

10+ of each capital ships

Sweet.. How did you get so many points to build all those ships ? Max research of both cap and regular ships doesn't allow anywhere near that many builds.

edit the entity files :D

Reply #1709 from Sins Forums Top

i got round to testing the mod with 1.15, it's coming along nicely so well done chaps on your work so far :thumbsup:

 

problem was (probably something my end mind) i couldn;t try the mod for more than 10-15 minutes, for some reason all the sound effects are working fine, except the torpedos...., they seem to blast completely out only the left side of my headset and give me a serious headache due to it :annoyed: , it's very strange since all the other sounds are working fine, but oh well it's looking good from what ive seen so far and look forward to future versions

 

keep up the good work lads \o/

Reply #1710 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks guys ! Awesome... It works fine now on 1.15. Also no runtime crashes after an hour, which doesn't really mean anything... but I stuck the Win 7 beta HD back in, and it was insta-crashing with the runtime errors on 1.12 with this OS.

 

Let the addiction begin. I will deprive myself of sleep. I will probably lose a few pounds. There may even be a vacation day involved. Either that, or after an intense 4 hours it will crash, and I'll go to bed.

 

Reply #1711 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Mooster, reply 8
edit the entity files

 

Is it easy enough for a begginer to do ? Or should I not touch it ? lol... I will say that I am pretty adept with simple game modding. I can usually figure out how to do such things, provided it doesn't require any actual programming knowledge. A programmer, I am not.

Reply #1712 from Sins Forums Top

The link in Reply #462 to download version 0.03c doesn't work anymore. It just takes you to the FileFront homepage and the only version of SoA2 that they have is the full 255mb version of 0.03b. Is there any other way to get 0.03c?

Reply #1713 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting davey8413, reply 12
The link in Reply #462 to download version 0.03c doesn't work anymore. It just takes you to the FileFront homepage and the only version of SoA2 that they have is the full 255mb version of 0.03b. Is there any other way to get 0.03c?

I'll get back to you asap on this.

Reply #1714 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Janetsy, reply 11

Quoting Mooster, reply 8edit the entity files
 

Is it easy enough for a begginer to do ? Or should I not touch it ? lol... I will say that I am pretty adept with simple game modding. I can usually figure out how to do such things, provided it doesn't require any actual programming knowledge. A programmer, I am not.

my suggestion is that you play around with the numbers, if you mess up you can always undo.

What I usually do is this, each time I edit the files, I backup the files somewhere else, do my editing, if i don't like it, i would undo in the file, but if it causes a crash, i just reload the files in it isn't that hard to do.

The files you will need to edit is the following

Since each race is designated into the three races of the base sins,

Fed-psi

Klingons - tec

Dominion - psi? got to check

Romulans - ? got to check

but the most important file is the following. maxshopslots(race) or something like that and maxcapslots(race) or something like that, oh ya, the race is the race that it is used, for example to edit fed maxslots is to go for maxshipslotspsi.

Use a GUI converter, i believe there are some on the forums here, convert the files.

open the file using your txt editor, find the lines

researchModifier
    modifierType "ShipMaxSlots"
    baseValue 0.000000

and edit the perLevelValue to what ever you want, so here we have edited it to 3200

researchModifier
    modifierType "ShipMaxSlots"
    baseValue 0.000000
    perLevelValue 3200.000000

and save, and reload the game ;)

You might also want to change the incomelost so you get back your fleet upkeep

Reply #1715 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Mooster, reply 14
my suggestion is that you play around with the numbers, if you mess up you can always undo.

What I usually do is this, each time I edit the files, I backup the files somewhere else, do my editing, if i don't like it, i would undo in the file, but if it causes a crash, i just reload the files in it isn't that hard to do.
You might also want to change the incomelost so you get back your fleet upkeep

Yeah I actually figured it out last night. (with a little help browsing the mod forums here) Got a program called SinsConverter to edit the entity files, and played a huge game all night. No crashes, no glitches, and now, no limit on ship production ! (within reason of the available memory of course) Although the fleet upkeep is a problem now. lol..

Thanks Mooster. If I hadn't seen your post, I may have never known... The game is much deeper when you can just build enough ships to properly defend your choke points. One thing I hated was not having enough ships on big maps, where it is very easy to over expand. Everytime I would move the fleet, 10 seconds later a horde of enimies would come. Was very frustrating trying to develop strategies around that.

Reply #1716 from Sins Forums Top

I was wondering, why isn't the cap ships listed first if you build a cruiser or some frigate, for example say I have a fleet of ships and I create a group say 1, the lead ship isn't the cap ship but rather a random class ship, in vanilla sins even when select a random fleet with a capital ship the cap ship is the lead ship

I get that problem with entrenchment. I belive its the ship the cursor is closest to that is designated the flag.

Reply #1717 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting FearlessDefiance, reply 16

I was wondering, why isn't the cap ships listed first if you build a cruiser or some frigate, for example say I have a fleet of ships and I create a group say 1, the lead ship isn't the cap ship but rather a random class ship, in vanilla sins even when select a random fleet with a capital ship the cap ship is the lead ship
I get that problem with entrenchment. I belive its the ship the cursor is closest to that is designated the flag.

so what, i have to say the first cap ship is the flag ship instead? I remember seeing that somewhere but which file i don't remember

Reply #1718 from Sins Forums Top

TBH I'm not sure. I would think there should be a easy way to just click on the ship you want to be the leader without having to actually mod it in. All I know is when I create fleets, I put the ship I want to be the flag at the bottom right so its like the last ship to be selected and generally its the one that will end up as the flag.

Reply #1719 from Sins Forums Top

New link up for 0.03c

http://files.filefront.com/13427630

This version of 0.03c works with 1.15

This is a full version of the mod with the 0.03c patch that was released earlier in February, not an update, make sure you do not have any other versions installed.

Reply #1720 from Sins Forums Top

what is in the update?

Reply #1721 from Sins Forums Top

It's not actually an update. Several people have said they didn't have 0.03c, so I'm reposting it since the last one seems to have come down. The only way it could be considered an update is it works with 1.15 without any need to tweak or change it. Also this is a full version, the last 0.03c was only posted as a patch to 0.03b, this is the full mod.

Reply #1722 from Sins Forums Top

okl, i have treid the mod again, i don't see much except for the updates in the research, what else is in it?

Reply #1724 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting spitfire_IX, reply 23
the mod does not appear in the options when i start up sins any help

Did you put it in the 1.15 mods folder? not to be confused with the old mods folder.