Re: B5 MOD General
 

Yep, welcome back.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Did anyone ever download the latest complete pack? Did it work? Did it explode?

Re: B5 MOD General
 

I did and ran into problems with the Vorlon designcreation.txt file.It has number of techs that apparently have been deleted (general medium weapons, general tiny weapons, matter weapons, electromagnetic weapons, vorlon tiny weapons, vorlon light weapons, vorlon medium weapons, antimatter utilization to name a few). RCE after trying to load those 2-3 times in-game (in other words I kept on playing but after 2-3 turns with that error message repeating I got an RCE).

Re: B5 MOD General
 

The Centauri have some formatting problems with the Colony Gas and Ice designs. The N in Num of Abilities is missing.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Now that I think about it... I recall something about Vorlons and Shadows not being ready yet. Just delete their shipset folders.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Or COMPLETE them and use them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Or beg Fyron to complete his team's creation and enjoy it in all its glory! =) hehehe

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Yeah, leftovers from the MOD I worked on is what the Vorlon file looked like.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Has the work on this projected halted?

Re: B5 MOD General
 

To the developers, do you recall what tool you used to create your components file?

I'm using your mod to test my data checker app. I've found that you often have 0 abilities for a component but there will be a set of Abilities listed with zero values. I'm also seeing that you have Weapon Speed data listed for weapons that don't use seekers.

I'd like to know so I can decide on what to do for my Data Checker.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

The original data files were generated from an excel spreadsheet by Val oh so many years ago. Not sure what Pathfinder, Grumbler and Timstone do though.

The seeker speed thing isn't an error to SE4, so much as redundant. Perhaps report it as a warning?

The ability 0s and tech req area 0s are apparently safely ignored by SE4. Perhaps report them as warnings as well?

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Oh wow... trimming off those pointless ability and tech req lines reduced the file size by 0.9 MB!

Re: B5 MOD General
 

.9 MB is right =)

It's about 40,000 lines removed from the file. That's just to many "warnings". I'd rather just promote the removal of such data to speed up downloads and faster SE4 load times.

Since the file was essentially created from hand, then I won't worry about it.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Just keep in mind that Num Abilities being less than the number of (valid entries for) abilities present is not always an error (same with tech reqs). That part should be treated as a warning, since it is commonly used by modders to "remove" such entries without actually removing them. Of course, having parameters to treat them as errors to be fixed, as warnings, or to just ignore them would be handy. But this is probably a discussion for another thread.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

The components.txt file was created essentially by hand and then copy/pasted as needed, followed by the search and destroy to make components specialized where needed.

In general, I left in 3 tech and 3 capabilities per component even when one or two were used because it is a lot easier to tajke them out at the end than to add them in when you need them and they are not there. Efficiency was not a high priority for the beta version.

Insofar as I know, no one is developing this mod any more. We are awaiting SE5. The Vorlon problem is solved by deleting their AI_research.txt file in the folder labelled Vorlons. They should not do any research - they are First Ones and no longer bother with such issues. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif By using the default AI_research.txt they will essentially discover nothing. Remember that they are not considered a human-playable race (and would be overwhelmingly powerful if so played).

Re: B5 MOD General
 

The data checker helped me locate more than 46,000 lines of either needless data or improperly formatted data. Removing this data shrunk the file from 10.4 MB to 9.28. =)

In the future I'll likely add the option to ignore those issues, so that the data checker is more useful during a Mod's creation.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Thanks for the fix on the Vorlons.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

That will not really fix the Vorlons though. They will then try to use the Vorlon research file from the stock Vorlons folder if you have the race installed there. You need an empty research file (empty of entries, not so much file headers/footers) in the B5 Mod's Vorlons folder instead.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

I'm not following you Fyron. He said delete the Vorlon Research file. That will make them use the default one, which will apparently give them no new advancements.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Missing AI files will be imported from the SE4\Pictures\Races\Racename folder before the Modname\AI folder will come into consideration. Modname\AI is only used if the stock Racename folder is also missing the AI files (or it doesn't exist in the first place).

If you do not have a Vorlon or Shadows set installed in your stock folder, and never, ever plan to, then deleting their AI Research files from the B5 Mod folders will work. But if you have these shipsets installed, you will create a new set of problems created by stock AI Research files being used in the B5 Mod.

Thus, for a complete solution you want to have a Vorlon_AI_Research.txt file in the B5 Mod folder that has nothing between the BEGIN and END blocks. This is the only surefire way to make sure they won't research anything non-existent.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Cool, I follow you now.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

A bug: The Engine Mount for ships of size 4999-5011 has incorrectly Cost, Tonnage, Tonnage Structure and Supple Percent set to a very low value. Should probably be 44 or 48 or some such. As a consequence, the biggest ships of 5k tonnage can actually move ridiculously fast.

One thing I've observed, though, is that there's really little difference between the respective ship sizes. They're approximately as fast, they can take approx. as much, they take approx. as long to build, etc. This seems to me to make it a little pointless, since there's not much reason not to just build the biggest one, rendering the previous sizes researched useless.

So what if that was changed? Bigger speed/movement gap, bigger tonnage gap, bigger material and maint. cost and *far* bigger building time differences between the different ship sizes. What I hope this would achive is to put some more thought into what sizes to build, make them distinctly different, not just have a ship that is slightly bigger than the previous one I just researched.

Just as an example, a Scout currently has 100 tonnage, an Escort 150, a Corvette 200, a Frigate 300, Destroyer 400 and a H.Destroyer 450. On a homeworld planet they all take about 1 or 2 turns to build. This largly render just about all of those sizes except the last, and perhaps the first, redundant.

I'm not proposing any immediate changes, I'm just looking to see if others have an opinion about it. It's just that I find myself always building the biggest ships, unless I'm making a pure scout ship, and it sort of feels like the rest are going to waste.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

The ships all move at about the same speeds because this is frictionless space, and speed is limited only by the relationship between mass anbd power (yeah, that _should_ be acceleration, not speed, but we have the model that we have).

Smaller ships are harder to hit, so building smaller ships makes some sense. Larger ships get mounts that disproportionately increase the power of their weapons, so bulding them makes sense as well. Intermediate-sized ships get a balance of the two approaches, so building them can ALSO make sense.

Large ships have much more total armor, but it is leaky armor and thus you could find yourself losing your reactor and going dead in space - large ships are a gamble.

I always build a mix, as playing game with all big ships and all small ships taught me that those approaches had definite limits. Try it yourself.

It is true that many hull types become redundant (why build a destroyer when a heavy destroyer has the same total weight in required components and therefor a smaller percentage taken by required components?) but that is true of the original design as well, and I think it works out well.

If we were to do this from scratch I think I would allow small, medium and large ships from the start and just make them better as technology improved, rather than just larger. Maybe with SE5 that's what we will do.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Hey Grumbler,

Everything alright?
Just for the record, I'm still busy building a new version of the weapons creation sheet I've posted in my sig. This one should be waaaaay easier to use. Fortunately I have colleagues who can help me with it. It's going slow (my colleague doesn´t have that much time), but we´ll get there. I hope it can be used for SE V too. Would make the production of a SE V version of The Mod a lot easier and faster. I hope we can keep in touch with eachother. Maybe even Val will honour us with a visit. Would be nice if he helped again (and everybody else from the "old" core of course).
This of course doesn't automatically mean there will come a SE V version of The Mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

SEV version will potentially be a lot easier to make and maintain, due to having a single entry per component family. No more 10 MB component files!

Re: B5 MOD General
 

I'd really love a quick release of a B5 mod for SEV when it's released. Any idea how much work a port would take? Or will it all have to be rebuild from scratch?

What you mentioned, grumbler, is something along the lines I was thinking. Have like 5-6 different ship-size research areas available from the start, which when researched gives ships with widely different abilities, combat speed, price, maintenance and such, then let the next research levels improve those ships in all sorts of ways, while also maintaining the differences.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

/me plugs the Templatizer http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.php/Templatizer

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Too bad SE:V will make your templatizer program obsolete. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Hi, Tim, everything is fine (just finishing all the exam grading today, final grades go in next week and the school year is done).

Just waiting for SEV so's we can get this underway again. Dunno where we are gonna get the 3D artwork, though.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Fyron:
Wow, now that's im provement. Cool feature. Thumbs up for Malfador!

Grumbler:
3D art? Well, I'm proficient with both LightWave, 3D Max and Solidworks. I think that part won't be the biggest problem. All the 3D art sure as hell can't be completed with the first release, but a gradually release is certainly possible. Ah, we'll cross that bridge when we get that.
I'm glad you feel like making a SE V port for The Mod. You made me a happy camper. Two thumbs up for you again friend.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

I'm curious about something here - It sounds as if the B5 mod is NOT going to be for SE-IV, but for SE-V. Is this right, or am I misunderstanding something somewhere???

Re: B5 MOD General
 

The B5 Mod for SE4 already exists, and the authors are done working on it.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Where is it to be found???

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Fantastic Fyron, thanks for the help. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Black Knight, we would be interested in your thoughts on this, when you have had a chance to play with it. It is a beta, and says someting about what we hope to do in the next version (SE5).

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Hi everyone, this looks like a really fun mod. Where can I get some screenshots of this and where can I download it? The link at spaceempires.net seems to be broken. Also is there a discription about gameplay?

I haven't played this great game for about 2 years now. Can't wait to start again

cheers

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Grumbler: No problem. I'm starting a new game with it this weekend, and I'll keep you up to date on any thoughts I might have about it.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

AugustusSE, try the link again. I just tested it, and it works.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Any plans on making a B5 mod for SE V? If So will it take years or decades?

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Be a great mod if it gets done.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Yes, we plan to make this mod for SE V. It should not take more than decades.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

That would be great, this is one of the few I played.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

I've downloaded the final version, but I can't seem to do anything. I can't see jump gates (p0581.bmp not found) and the only engine has a size of 500 while my largest ship is 300. Should the download be ~30mb?

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

The Image Mod may be required.

Engines probably require mounts to fit on each hull.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Ah, it was both of those. Thank you!

I've been away for too long.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Is anyone interested in making a B5 mod for SEV, only datafiles, no models (since i dont know a clue about them for SEV) ?

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

If you're making a mod you shouldn't worry about shipsets. People are gonna use what they like.

But I've seen people making some EA models, for SE5, so you're already set anyways. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

There are several SE5 B5 shipsets out there, and some more in the works:

http://home.spaceempires.net/shipyards-a-BlackSwan.html

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Yes, right after i posted i decided to check and yards and noticed a bunch of sets already out there.

So, i wont start on it all by myself, if anyone is interested, give me a shot via PM or post.