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Modder's "Get-an-Answer" Thread

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Modder's "Get-an-Answer" Thread

Answers from Modders, for Modders who "Ask a Question"

from Sins Forums

This is the place to ask and recieve specific modding (mod making) questions and answers. If you have a mod making question, post it here.

If your question involves long snippets of entity files and the like, please don't paste the entire file contents here but put them at the incredibly easy to use http://pastebin.com and then provide the link to your paste in your question posted here.

Please do limit  "just comments" here to brief posts please.  If you don't know the answer or can't point to help--don't post.  Please note that a random, uninformed guess isn't an actual answer.  

You can refer people to another source--IF it actually helps answer their question.  This could be in the form of links, outside sites, specific modding-useful programs, direction towards another post or poster, etc., etc.

Remember--specific questions, specific answers.  Only respond to the ones you can help solve.  Also, feel free to amplify, clarify, suggest alternatives to or correct answers seen here if such actions are merited and help provide a real solution. No flaming, insults or put downs here in the answers or other posts please.

Thanks in advance for your help and cooperation.  The reason for the rigid rules here is those this thread becomes a usable resource in the future to new people looking for answers.

NOTE: If an answer resolves your issue, please share it here.  These answers will help others coming along later too.  Karma is a great way to respond to people providing help without clogging the thread or bombing their forum mailbox here. Thanks!

 

OTHER SINS HELPFUL MODDING LINKS*

*Links are updated when requested.





The Soase Idiot's Guide

Confused?  No idea where to even start?

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This is the place!

 


 

  
   

Sins Modding Wiki

ZombieRus's Eclipse Wizardry

 
     

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REBELLION MODDING TOPICS

Rebellion Modding Q & A

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Changing Diplomacy Files to Rebellion

IT REALLY HURTS MY BRAIN--HOW TO START

An Idiot's Guide To Getting Started

MyFist0's Modding Megasite!

MOD DOWNLOADS

ZombieRus5's Mod Yard

Directory of Planet Mods

STEAM

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MyFist0's Exported Models & Files

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THIRD PARTY TOOLS

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Ship Fleet Calculator

SoaSE Eclipse Plugin Project

Mesh Resizing Tool--courtesy of the Reqiuem team.

Harpo's Sins Utility Package -- Dropbox

The Sins Optimization Project (TSOP)

Artificial Unintelligence (Mod and AI info)

Sins Data Converter by BCXtreme

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Rebellion Updates by Blair Frazier

How to Add a Fourth Race

User-updatable Ship Reference Chart

Sins Modding Dictionary

Adding phase Effects to other weapon types

Culture, Explanation/Discussion

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Shield Mitigation & Armor, Explanation/Discussion-1

Shield Mitigation & Armor, Explanation/Discussion -2

Graphic Chart of Sin's Counters

Annotated Guide to the Developer.exe

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Rebellion Shield Mitigation & Focus Fire testing

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modding
7,612,662 views 2,761 replies
Reply #226 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Volt_Cruelerz, reply 223
And is there really no way to make a squad directly buff a member of that squad?


You can create a passive non-stacking ability that applies to all fighters in the gravity well. That's the only sure way I know of to give an ability from a squad to its fighters (albeit all that race's fighters in the gravity well). However, like GeoFan77 said, there is no good way to make a squad directly buff the members of that squad.

Your flare/phase dodging ability might work well with the "apply buff to all fighters in gravity well radius" method. 

Quoting Volt_Cruelerz, reply 223
@philo: Do you mean the buff only stays active on, say, 6 SC at a time so it would rebuff them if a replacement fighter was built for one of the original six that got blown up? 


The ability I was talking about earlier spawns fighters and then applies an additional buff only to those spawned fighters. So there is no problem when they get destroyed as they all will time out when the original ability times out.

Reply #227 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting philothanic, reply 226


You can create a passive non-stacking ability that applies to all fighters in the gravity well. That's the only sure way I know of to give an ability from a squad to its fighters (albeit all that race's fighters in the gravity well). However, like GeoFan77 said, there is no good way to make a squad directly buff the members of that squad.

Your flare/phase dodging ability might work well with the "apply buff to all fighters in gravity well radius" method. 

The ability I was talking about earlier spawns fighters and then applies an additional buff only to those spawned fighters. So there is no problem when they get destroyed as they all will time out when the original ability times out.

 

Well, I was thinking of having the fighters themselves deploy the flares, not the carrier...  I guess if I hadn't already loaded up a fifth ability on the carrier I could do that...

 

Also, wouldn't your method also apply the buff apply that to any SC squad made by the carrier, not just a particular type?

Star Control: Origins
Reply #228 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Volt_Cruelerz, reply 225
So, if I were to give the something like incendiary shells I wouldn't have to give it to the carrier? I could just give it straight to the squad and all the fighters would be capable of it?

Well you still can't use applybufftoself, but once you get the buff on the strikecraft you can essentially use the strikecraft's weapons as the travel effect to get around the fact that squad's cannot use them. Using this method though its hard to ensure just one particular strikecraft has the buff. In my mod I was able to give such a buff to just fighters in the gravity well using the must have energy weapons constraint (the bombers had missiles), but that doesn't really work for Sins factions.

Quoting Volt_Cruelerz, reply 225
And I know its possible... DS has its fighters with active abilities...

Now that is interesting. What exactly does it do?

Quoting Volt_Cruelerz, reply 227
1. Well, I was thinking of having the fighters themselves deploy the flares, not the carrier... I guess if I hadn't already loaded up a fifth ability on the carrier I could do that...

2. Also, wouldn't your method also apply the buff apply that to any SC squad made by the carrier, not just a particular type?

1. If its a passive ability you can give it to the squads quite easily, provided you want all strikecraft to have that ability. The problem with active becomes that the squad will need to get the buff via an AoE ability that will probably effect more than just the one squad. Of course with flares that might actually make sense, but it makes it difficult to balance.

2. He's talking about fighters spawned by an ability, not by the carriers natural strikecraft. If a regular strikecraft happened to be near the carrier when it used the ability it would probably get the buff as well, but in general it should work as intended.

Reply #229 from Sins Forums Top

Does anyone know where I can find a program that allows me to create and modify mesh files?

Reply #230 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting ImperatorPavel, reply 229
Does anyone know where I can find a program that allows me to create and modify mesh files?

Unless you just want to resize something, it doesn't exist. :P You have to convert it to something else first if you want to edit them (which is not easy). Creating them is easier, you can make a model in any program so long as you can convert it to .xsi somehow. I recommend you read up on myfist's modeling info here.

Reply #231 from Sins Forums Top

 How do you modify an artifact?  Nevermind, I already found it.

Reply #232 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting ImperatorPavel, reply 231
Also, is there any way to create new artifacts?

I know you can make them but I'm unsure if you need to do anything else to get them to appear in game.

Reply #233 from Sins Forums Top

I tried giving a variant of Incendiary shells to the squad, but it didn't work...

Reply #234 from Sins Forums Top

The artifact "Data Archive" is a research subject, so I would think that you would be able to modify an artifact and have it appear in-game.

So say you wanted to (I'm using the Empire's Super Star Destroyer from the 7 Deadly Sins Mod) create a super titan that could only be built if you had a few artifacts, let's say two, it woul look like this:

Prerequisite,
 NumResearchPrerequisites 2
 ResearchPrerequisite
  Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_ARTIFACT_SUPERTITAN1"
  Level 1
 ResearchPrerequisite
  Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_ARTIFACT_SUPERTITAN2"
  Level 1

And work.  I think.

Reply #235 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting ImperatorPavel, reply 234
The artifact "Data Archive" is a research subject, so I would think that you would be able to modify an artifact and have it appear in-game.

So say you wanted to (I'm using the Empire's Super Star Destroyer from the 7 Deadly Sins Mod) create a super titan that could only be built if you had a few artifacts, let's say two, it woul look like this:

Prerequisite,
NumResearchPrerequisites 2
ResearchPrerequisite
Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_ARTIFACT_SUPERTITAN1"
Level 1
ResearchPrerequisite
Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_ARTIFACT_SUPERTITAN2"
Level 1

And work. I think.

Yes that would work. What I'm unsure of is how the game determines what artifacts get randomly distributed. If you wanted to make those custom artifacts then use the galaxy forge to force them to spawn at a specific planet it should work, but I'm unsure how to get them to spawn at random like most artifacts, if that's even possible.

Quoting Volt_Cruelerz, reply 233
I tried giving a variant of Incendiary shells to the squad, but it didn't work...

That's because it uses apply buff to self. You have to change it so it gets the buff some other way.

Reply #236 from Sins Forums Top

Just converted the DS bins to txts.  The "AbilityTargetingScrambler" is an ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadiusWithTravel and obviously doesn't MD on its users.  In fact, both of the DS SC abilities are ABTTIRWT's.

 

Reply #237 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Volt_Cruelerz, reply 236
Just converted the DS bins to txts. The "AbilityTargetingScrambler" is an ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadiusWithTravel and obviously doesn't MD on its users. In fact, both of the DS SC abilities are ABTTIRWT's.

Hmm, well then I have no idea how they did it then. Seems you should be asking them.

Reply #238 from Sins Forums Top

It doesn't appear to actually do any sort of travel, but rather is just an instant buff to targets.

 

I was eventually able to do something like what I wanted for the TEC.

 

That said, I'm wondering if an ApplyOrRemoveBuffToSelf would work for an ability if that buff had a ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius..  True, the squad has no physical entity, but it is represented by icon when at the macro level, so couldn't it apply the buff to the fighter the SquadPhaseCombat follows?

EDIT: actually, could I just have the thing work backwards from what I just said?  Have it ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius and then have those ApplyOrRemoveBuffToSelf?  That way, it's not applying to an incorporeal instance and I think it would still work.

Reply #239 from Sins Forums Top

is there any way to have ships spread culture?

Reply #240 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Volt_Cruelerz, reply 238
Have it ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius

Apply buff to targets in radius is what we meant by area of effect abilities, though I fail to see what you would want to do with ApplyOrRemoveBuffToSelf. To create a buff just to apply another buff is completely redundant, since you could just gave that buff the first time. 

Quoting chaos_forge, reply 239
I was trying to make a mod, and once I finished I put it in the Diplomacy mod folder and start Sins. The game loads the mod without giving a minidump, but when I try to play, the changes the mod is supposed to make (switching around the abilities for a few capital ships) aren't there. It's like I never activated the mod. Does anyone have any guesses as to what the problem could be?

Do you get a checksum of the mod that is not zero?

Reply #241 from Sins Forums Top

I'm creating an ability called "Load Antimatter" that increases the damage of the missiles fired.  Since the squad isn't the one that actually deals damage, I figured I would apply it to the fighter itself via an ABTTIA.  Since I want the ability to also increase the fragility of the SC (because AM isn't exactly the most inert substance), I was going to have it be a boolean ability like charged missiles.  I did end up coding it and the result was the following error:

C:\Projects\P4\SinsDiplomacy\Release\CodeSource\GS\Entity\Interfaces\IBuff.cpp(5136): assert! [_firstSpawner == NULL || CanEntityBeAttached(_firstSpawner)]

Beyond that, the ability doesn't function and the fighter doesn't end up with the damageasdamagedealer or damageasdamagetarget entity modifiers.

Reply #242 from Sins Forums Top

Fighters can't have buffs that apply only to self or single targets/planets.  The ship to which they are linked can have a buff that applies to them.

Check out the "Heavy Fighters" ability and buff for an example.

Reply #244 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting chaos_forge, reply 243
is there any way for a ship to spread culture?

Yes, look over the BuffCannonShellPsi.entity for the CultureSpread buff. You would set it up on a ship by having it apply directly to the planet the ship is in.

+1 Loading…
Reply #246 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting chaos_forge, reply 245
What about culture repel?

Capitalships do this by default, at a rate which can be changed, but the only way you can influence this is with research. I don't think abilities can repel culture.

Reply #248 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting ZombiesRus5, reply 244

Quoting chaos_forge, reply 243is there any way for a ship to spread culture?

Yes, look over the BuffCannonShellPsi.entity for the CultureSpread buff. You would set it up on a ship by having it apply directly to the planet the ship is in.

I've been trying to get it to work, but I can't seem to get it right. Here's my code: http://pastebin.com/kYFsZUpL

EDIT: nevermind I fixed it :grin:

Reply #249 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Sinperium, reply 242
Fighters can't have buffs that apply only to self or single targets/planets.  The ship to which they are linked can have a buff that applies to them.

Check out the "Heavy Fighters" ability and buff for an example.

 

I'm trying to get this as an ability that can be managed at a squad-by-squad basis.  And did you mean fighters can't buff themselves or squads can't buff themselves?

Reply #250 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting chaos_forge, reply 248
I've been trying to get it to work, but I can't seem to get it right. Here's my code: http://pastebin.com/kYFsZUpL

EDIT: nevermind I fixed it

Cool, I was going to post a version from my mod that does this very same thing.