Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Thanks, I'll give it a shot. Sorry about the Narn thing, I must've missed it or didn't remember.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Hi!

Awesome Mod so far! Seriously the best in my opinion!

Exept: For the debugging. It keeps crashing all the time (as mentioned above, ally bug or sometimes randomly when visiting a planet.. no clue what event would have come and at some other instances too). Anyway, if you manage to get it stable it would be.. hyperawesome! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Have you downloaded his newest installment 3 posts up, yet?

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Finally crashed when entering a planet again. Also, I've noticed when encountering a planet with mulitple races fighting, none of them ever ask you to ally with them. They'll all just attack you unless they've already sworn allegiance to you previously. Love the nebula masses. It was a good idea. The blackholes name stays white, though. I wonder if it gets counted towards your exploration score?

Attached are two notepad files that may or may not help you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Couldn't put both files there so here's the other.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Dang, that did help. Thanks, ImUrOBGYN. I've never gotten one of those files... where do you find it? It will help me resize the fleets.

It looks like I am exceeding the maximum number of ships in the game variable. It is keeping the Shadow, Drakh and a few other homeworld fleets from loading, and explains why latter fleets do not load such as the Sunhawk quest.

Unfortunately, that means I have to make smaller fleets! Which is too bad, because it's FUN to take on a couple hundred Gaim at once...

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Yea, fighting the huge fleets are fun, especially when you've built a crazy, powerful ship for ripping through the hordes, full power ahead.
The files are found in C:\Program Files\Shrapnel Games\Weird Worlds by default. Figured they might help after glancing through them. Always glad to help as it helps you to create something bigger and better for the rest of us! ( http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif That sounded selfish. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Hmmm... One of those has never showed up there on my mac. I'll have to just experiment at getting the number of ships down. Since there is a bit of randomness, there will be some guesswork involved - unless I reduce the number of ships per fleet to a maximum of 8 (since the large map has 30 fleets - 8x30=240 plus a few allies / quest fleets).

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Maybe it only shows up as a debugger. So basically, you have to have the crash for it to show. If it's not crashing your Mac, then there's no reason for the file to be created. Just a shot in the dark.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Also, I've been meaning to tell you that the beacon for one of the "Firt Ones" never seems to work no matter when I use it. It always tells me I used it but nobody comes. I hit 'Ok', then another window comes up saying I sent the signal and then that's it. I hit 'Ok' and the beacon selection disappears. (If I'm in the battle screen.) It used to work in earlier versions if I remember correctly.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

It's all the same problem. A number of the fleets are not generating. The crash log you sent me showed that I was generating too many ships in the mod, exceeding the engine limitations (256 max ships in the game at any point). The mod would generate all the race fleets until it hit its limit, then just stop. On my Mac, it would play; on the PC, it would sometimes crash (but obviously not always).

Quest-generated fleets / ships would then also not get generated - the Vorlon destroyer (which is what should be summoned), the Drazi sunhawk, and very probably the fighters from the Narn G'Quan cruiser fighter bay.

I have significantly reduced fleet / ship numbers in the mod so that they should be less than 2/3 the maximum limit at most. However, it hasn't seemed to be changing the behavior of the mod, so there might be something else that is causing it to not generate more fleets past a certain point and I don't know what. I can post my latest version, and if you could share any crash logs (if any appear), that might give a clue... but I wouldn't make any bets!

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Yea, put it up or send it to my email address. I replied to yours a couple days ago.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

OK, here you go. Send me a few crash logs if you get them. Crossing fingers...

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Cool, I'll give it a shot here in a few minutes. If I don't post later tonight, I should be able to by Sunday.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Hey, in 2.1 I always also crash when a Minbari Ship joins me.

The ship is red and blinking as if damaged and I can't access it to check its equiptement.
If I get into any fight later, it crashes as soon as the battle screen is loaded. Couldn't check it in 2.2 jet.

Cheers

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Ok, so far...

No crashes so far! Haven't played the large map yet.

Vorlon Beacon is working.

Narn fighter bay still does not work. They're not very powerful already and without that, they're really weak. Which is sad because I really liked the Narn on the show. Especially the delegate. (Can't remember name offhand but you use his avatar.)

Will it ever be possible to make allies/enemies when entering a multiple race planet/battle screen? Generally, even if I kill every race in the battle, it still doesn't have any bearing on my future relations nor am I ever able to make allies.

BTW, I noticed the little stars move on the map. Took me awhile, lol. I had to go back and check the original version. Didn't think they had 'em. Nice touch. Going back to the original.. hardly remembered what it looked like. Though the nebulas look pretty cool.

I don't know if I'm missing something because it doesn't work or not. I'm going to go back through your 'readme', etc later and see if there's anything you implemented that I've yet to find or come across. Or you could just send me all the quests, etc and make it easier for me.

Attached is my latest stdout file. No crashes, so the other file was not produced.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

In multi-race battles, I think all diplomacy is suspended. I think the game design documentation mentions somewhere that they had planned on implementing "betrayal" and other features into such events, but never got around to it.

Glad to see everything else is pretty stable right now in v2.2.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

In previous versions and various other mods, there were times when I would meet two races or more without having established a relationship with them and have been asked to join their side. I've even been asked to join the side of both races one after the other! I'll see if I can find the text in the default folder for this.

Okay... I remember this happening with the Zorg before, for example. Here's text from the file zorg.ini located in C:\Program Files\Shrapnel Games\Weird Worlds\default\gamedata\races. I've also attached the zorg.ini file but in notepad. (Forum won't let me attach an .ini file.)

The first one is if you've already established a friendly relationship with the Zorg the second paragraph is if you haven't attacked or established a friendly relationship with them. Two possible requests for each.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TEXT greetallyfriendly
<color=990>Uninvited guests come to pilfer from the table of wisdom, yet they do not express humility nor do they relinquish arms at the door. We ask your aid that we may teach these curs some manners.<color=999>
<color=990>Although our adversaries' negative waves convey ill intentions, our auguries portend victory. Will you join us in celebration as we confront them?<color=999>
END

TEXT greetallyneutral
<color=990>Uninvited guests come to pilfer from the table of wisdom, yet they do not express humility nor do they relinquish arms at the door. We ask your aid that we may teach these curs some manners.<color=999>
<color=990>Although our adversaries' negative waves convey ill intentions, our auguries portend victory. Will you join us in celebration as we confront them?<color=999>
END

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Heh. Love the mod. It's great fun and better than the full game I'd say. But, I'm afraid to add that I've had ally-able aliens for some time (I probably sohuld have mentioned it...).

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Hate to be the harbinger, but here's the files after the crash. The usual, on my way to a planet and just as I arrived, it crashed to desktop.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

...and the second file.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

While digging through your mod, I noticed under the 'gamedata/items' folder, you only have fb_gorith.ini for fighter bays. Would this affect the non-working narn fighter bays?

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

not really. "Gorith" is the name of the narn fighter hull! Thanks for looking though.

On the crashlogs, it shows that the game is still generating too many fleets, even though the fleets-per-race and distribution.ini FLEETS settings should limit it well below the engine limitations. Sigh.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Would it have anything to do with map size? When started playing this game, one of the first things I messed with was the map size. When I increased it too much, the game would crash. I don't know if there are map size limitations or by creating such a large map, I had in turn caused the game to produce too many fleets. Another shot in the dark... I'm going to try that other file you sent in a few mintues.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

There are indeed map size limitations, but this shouldn't be coming close to them. And, if that was the case, the "small" and "medium" maps should behave much differently than the "large" maps, since they are the same as the unmodified "medium" and "large" map settings of the default game.

I've got no more solutions, sorry.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Great mod! Really enjoyed it so far. Had the Vorlon Destroyer once. Won all battles then ;-). The other day, however, the Vorlon did not show up at all even though I had the beacon. Bug?

Please, make all the other ship conversions as well (Gaim and others). I'd also remove all the original WW items as they distract from the B5 mood a bit.

Another thing: sometimes I reach a planet and the music for meeting an ally plays, but no ally at all shows up, neither anything else is found on the planet. Is that intended?

Keep up the excellent work! Waiting for the next updated version. By the way: is 2.2 the most recent one?

Jamiri

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Hi Psientist,
first of all my respect for this fantastic mod, even if it still has some glitches. It was also trying to track the problems with fighterbay and some others you mentioned, but without success so far. But in order to keep this most promising mod alive I will submit my "stderr" and "stdout" from my recent crash to desktop, on the big map with the terran battleship.

Hope someone more into coding can make anything out of this.

Regards from Germany,

Simon

EDIT: I just noticed from the post above me that 2.2 is available, the crashlogs I have submitted were from 2.1. Sorry.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

I think he's left this one 'as-is'. I could be wrong.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Greetings, Is there any trail to follow in order to meet the Shadows? I am playing for a long time but have never met them (only the Drakh)

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

It appears the fighter bay problem is caused by a simple error of not naming the race correctly in the fighter bay file (fb_gorith.ini). It refers to "Narn" rather than "Narn Regime" which is the name of the race. Correcting that should make it work.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Whoa, it finally works!!! Fingers, you are truly the man that makes things work! Huge thanks for your help with that problem.
Only one word missing that made so many people desparate.
I hope Psientist wouldn't mind if I upload the revised file " fb_gorith.ini". Copy it into "\...\Weird Worlds\B5_Shadowfall\gamedata\items" and replace the old file.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Cool, will try that change in ini tonight. Hopefully, now Psientist picks this one up, too, and comes back to finishing this mod!

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Added comment: Looking at the quest.ini file I see lots of events that I have never come across in my many games of Shadowfall. Am I the only one thinking that most of the quests are broken?

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

In the large map setting, the Vorlon, Shadows and the planet killer don't show up, even if the quests come up. I think it's been suggested that it may be a limitation on the number of ships.

Re: Mod Update: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Aha, so if I played the medium or small maps, all the events would work?

The Narn have become much tougher enemies now, at least if fighting a couple of their carrier ships.

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

This is probably one of the best mod for WW or SAIS I've seen, but there were a couple of things that bothered me about it so I went in and started fiddling around some:

* Neroon wasn't showing up as an ally, turns out you need to add a line to the top "FLAG ally", and prolly change the ALLY # in distribution.ini. Also didn't know how else to get friendly with the centauri, so having the Primus now makes them friendly towards you.

* For some reason the drazi merc doesn't work. I even checked that quest file versus the garthan merc in the original and I still don't see why not. I added a pak'ma'ra ranger ally and had no trouble with that one showing up. very strange b/c i remember the drazi working in an older version.

* Didn't like the way mr. morden just drops off a drakh cannon and then everyone else hates you. Instead he now asks the chilling line, "What do you want?" and acts more like a timeless bauble instead, only i upped the penalty. Seems like a better trade off now.

* Brought some unused ships over from the original WW and added ships for drazi and made a new race, the raiders, even included primordius fortress (now a raider mothership) as a mission, but have yet to see it show up so I don't know if it even worked.

* I'm wanting to add in the rivalry between the narn and the centauri by having their ally ships make you enemies of each other race. So if you get the narn ship the centauri will attack and vice versa. Good idea?


Well, I prolly completely overstepped my bounds by making all those changes, please forgive me psientist, if anything, take them as suggestions.

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

I like the changes you made (as from reading), PaddirN. Why don't you make your version available as a download here?

Psientist seems to have abandoned this project (he even does not comment on it in this forum any longer), so why don't we just optimize the mod a little bit for him. I think the mod could be much more complete, if it was an open project to which everyone could contribute.

BTW: do you know how to get friendly with the Brakiri or other neutral races? Because I don't (except the Drazi).

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Aight, I might throw it up on here, but I'll check with Psientist first. I just feel like I'd be stepping on somebody else's toes if I released an updated version of their mod. Also with the release of v1.2 I'll need to update the files in the gamedata folder.

Other changes made and/ or planned:

* Starfuries! Already got it in, just trying to tweak the gameplay. In my first simulator runs they were getting creamed by raiders and something about that just didn't seem right.

* Might take a stab at adding jumpgates in game, although in a rather cheap way. Psientist tried before but I think he abandoned the idea.

* A couple of ideas I've got floating around that will hopefully take advantage of v1.2 features.

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Hopefully, he'll answer at all. Haven't seen him on this forum for a long time.

Cool, Starfuries! I was really missing them. So, will they be a fighter add-on to the player ship (launch bay)?

The jumpgates are already in the game (as an event) although they don't seem to work.

Keep going, PaddirN, so we might see a complete mod eventually! If you need help for playtesting, I'll do it.

Jamiri

N.B.: Just found out about the 1.2 upgrade of WW. Cool thing!

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

yea, the starfuries aren't much to jump and shout about, but they're prolly the most recognizable ship from the series, it seems a crime to not include them. For now it seems the best place to put them is in a fighter bay in an upgraded Omega class ship. I'm toying with the idea of including the EA as an encounterable race and including the Earth conflict in this.

From what I could gather, Psientist was trying to use an aethric mirror effect for the jumpgates. I tried messing around with it myself, but nothing worked and I can see why he dropped it. I've got something a little different planned that might even add a new element to the game. Or it might just be plain stupid.

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Sounds good to me having the Starfuries as a fighter bay add-on. However, don't you think it would make the Omega a little bit too powerful right from the start? Maybe you could make the fighter bay only available from Babylon 5 (i.e. the Glory system) or any other race (maybe from EA Earth??) once you fulfill a mission or two. That would be really cool!

Looking forward to the jumpgates!

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Aight, well tried contacting Psientist and haven't recieved a response yet and it looks as though he hasn't even posted on this forum in about 4 months the last time I checked. I'm gonna go ahead and start up a new thread and try and post a newer updated version of the B5 mod.

As for the starfuries in fighter bays, I'm not planning on making them available to players, but you should be able to see them in game >hint hint nudge nudge<

Also, I'm planning a name change in this newer version (for a number of reasons I'll get into when I post), credit still goes out to Psientist, wherever he is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

I think Psientist wouldn't mind to meddle with his (abandoned) mod, as long as you give him the credits he merits!

And while you are at it "modding the mod": can you change the Minbari ally into a Tinashi Light Frigate? I always found the Nial Fighter such a poor addition to my fleet. Well, actually any lone fighter ally is useless, imo.

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

I haven't heard from Psientist myself nor have I been on in a long time, either. I see PaddirN has created an update to the Babylon mod that I've yet to check out but will in a moment.
For this mod, one of the problems was the Narn ship being unable to launch fighters. In your b5shadowfall_v22 mod folder, open fb_gorith.ini and replace line "STR0 Narn" with "STR0 Narn Regime" without the quotes, of course. This will allow the fighter bays to work. I have not tested any other fighter bays, yet. Thanks to Fingers for pointing out the simple name error that we missed before. I find it's usually something silly like that people miss.

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Hey everybody.

My apologies for my absenteeism. I have been *very* busy with work, and the forum activity really dropped off for a while, and after investing so much time in the B5 mod I just got burned out for a while.

I'm overjoyed you guys got the Narn fighter bay to work! I haven't played it in the working mod version yet, I was concerned about it making narns too strong. They are supposed to be, militarily, probably the weakest of the major babylon races.

As to stepping on my toes... Let me be official. I am releasing my work on the babylon 5 project to the gaming community under the GNU license where appropriate ... basically, everybody can do what they want with it so long as it's not for commercial profit, they give acknowledgement where credit is due (not just to me), and they make clear indication about changes from the original (starting a new Mod title/thread, or collectively managing a common updated mod).

I really don't have the time to continue development on this mod, so everybody else's efforts are welcome.

I did try to maintain a very high level of quality in this mod, so I would request that either a few of you work together to maintain standards, and that the moderators keep a copy available of the original b5 shadowfall mod v2.2 I designed out there.

As to the other questions - I'll try to rummage through my memory to respond -

I wanted starfuries too! never got around to them...

I did not include special diplomatic conditions for all the races (e.g., brakiri, gaim, etc.). You might not be able to "get friendly" with all races.

Map size shouldn't affect this. Those are set as random quests, and I think I flagged them so only one of the major quests would show in any given game (like the planetkiller).

The vorlon ship will not show if it has been destroyed, or cannot reach you for some reason.

I agree... but it's so time consuming to make proper, high-quality custom fleets and fleet graphics ...

ah, thanks, glad to know it's appreciated.

Well, in 2.2 you should have the option of turning down help from Morden. but if you accept, then you unfortunately have signed on with the Drakh, and they make you behave hostile to other races... that was my "deal with the devil" idea. Don't change it too much, because there are about 3 other quests that check on how you responded to Morden.

I tried to leave as few original WW ships in the game as possible, using babylon-universe ships only. Time limited creation of all new fleet graphics.

good idea, there are a few events in there to make that happen. Defeat Centauri Prime, and then go exploring, for example.

well, I reused music files alot. I never made any original music for the mod, which was needed, and maybe I made some wrong music choices for events/planets... sorry?

Apologize for the late and long reply, and good luck to any future work you folks undertake on it!

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

Thanks for dropping in. It's too bad you don't have enough time for this any longer. I stopped checking in and playing for awhile, too. You did such an awesome job and the quality is great. Maybe one day you'll get a chance and an urge to start up again.
Any other games you've got into the mod community with?

Re: New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall
 

I'm starting on Dominions 3 (also by IllWinter / Shrapnel). Much of the modding is similar, some differences. I may find more motivation for modding Doms3 because of the ability to have play-by-email games with friends, and it seems to support "small" mods much more easily (you can play multiple mods at once).

However, there appears to be a lot of undocumented limitations / parameters for modding Doms3 too, so we'll see!