New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall

Psientist · #1 July 22nd, 2006, 11:31 PM

Some great feedback! Thanks. Some responses:

1. I can't track the black hole thing down. I assumed it was a quest STAR definition somewhere, but I paid double attention to them this time through with no luck.

2. I tried to make the nebula masses look more like the wispy nebula gases you see in Hubble telescope images, and yes, give some actual value to the nebular extent calculator item. As long as you pay attention to the projected travel times between stars, however, it won't be a problem- but if you jump before you look, it might. That was on purpose... whether it was a good call or not remains to be seen.

3. The White Star is only supposed to have 6 cargo slots. It's not a full size frigate, so I comprimised - the game needed more than four slots but 8 seemed over-generous. It's easy to fix if everyone thinks it is too restrictive.

4. I agree about the black hole item dropping thing. It snagged me in playtesting, that's why I put the warning on the Gravitic Field Inverter and changed the icon so everyone would give it a close look. I tried to add a custom planet to black holes to give you a place to dump items, but black holes are hardcoded it seems to not allow planets! And, if I move the First Ones quests out of black holes, it kind of ruins the whole point. I wanted to give a reason to check out black holes at all, and make it a little hard to find First Ones and the goodies they can give out.

5. Babylon 4 is designed purely as a derelict. It doesn't have maneuvering thrusters or a drive, and isn't intended for play ... so no, I wouldn't imagine it would be much fun in the simulator. I could remove it from the simulator selections I guess.

6. I "upsized" all the maps. The small map is the normal game's "medium"; the "medium" map is the normal game's "large", and the "large" is an "extra large" one for extended play. It shouldn't affect stability... you can always try deleting the "distribution.ini" file in the mod if you want to go back to the default map sizes, but I haven't tested stability on that.

7. It seems that the map sizes, and the mod itself, is not uniformly stable across both the PC and Mac platform. Unfortunately, this doesn't help me debug any.

8. To be honest, I wasn't aware of the Infinite Space Federation site. Thanks for the link!

ImUrOBGYN · #2 July 23rd, 2006, 03:35 AM

1. black hole thing isn't that big o deal
2. I like the idea of the nebula masses the way you have them. Frustrating at times, but forces me to pay more attention now
3. Figured that was the reason, but wanted to be sure
4. can be dealt with, it's worth the trouble.
5. I've met up with Babylon 4 before in one of the betas and could not board it without attacking it before which is one of the reasons why I tried using it in simulation. Just to see how it'd hold up against other ships. Also, I could've sworn I saw it using weapons in the title screen auto melee.
6. as big as the med map is, I don't guess I need the large map that badly, but it still crashes it. Any ideas on why?
Again, great work. Looking forward to any future iterations.

Psientist · #3 July 23rd, 2006, 11:17 AM

#6 - I have "ideas", but only ideas. The large map does increase the map size and number of stars and quests. However, those never seem to cause problems in my experiments. There is an EVENTs flag in the distribution.ini file which seems more sensitive, and could be the problem.

It could also be the mission.ini file, which seems really sensitive to IPAY settings (the negative starting bonus each mission type is set with).

Experiment: Since I can't recreate any problems on my end, if anybody wants to try a few things might help track down the problem.

1. Delete the distribution.ini file in the mod and see if it works on all map sizes. This would revert to the default. Play game to see if that helps or hurts.

2. Edit the mission.ini file in your mod copy, and set the IPAY numbers to 0 for all three missions. Again, separately, play game to see if that helps or hurts.

And let me know if that makes a difference...

blargue · #4 July 23rd, 2006, 02:09 PM

Okay Psi, I think I've solved your large map quandry. The problem, so far as I can tell, is that you have the DIF set to 3 for that map size. When you create a game with 'large' map size and 'more' for enemy strength it generates fleets for which there aren't any discriptions (I'm guessing the DIF modifier for 'more' is +2, therefore creating DIF 5 fleets). So when the game tries to populate the map there aren't any fleets to do it with, hence the crash. If you just adjust the DIF setting for the large maps to 2 instead of 3 it works fine.

The only thing I can't figure out is how it still works on a mac.

Psientist · #5 July 24th, 2006, 10:25 AM

I'd presumed that the DIF setting was for scoring purposes -- since there's no documentation of the distribution.ini file setup -- but it would be great if that was the problem! Does that fix it for anyone else with crashing problems, before I go posting an updated version?

Black_Bear · #6 July 24th, 2006, 11:39 PM

FANTASTIC JOB!

Psientist · #7 July 25th, 2006, 03:20 PM

black bear, thanks, it makes me glad I took the time to make it!

ImUrOBGYN · #8 July 26th, 2006, 04:00 AM

Ran into the "full cargo and full ship so I gotta quit problem" again when finding the technomage and receiving their gift. Technically, no planet so I couldn't dump something off. Guess I'll have to watch going into double binary systems w/full cargo, too. I never really paid attention to not being able to dump in one.
Still loving it and still getting my arse handed to me by Shadows!

Psientist · #9 July 26th, 2006, 12:16 PM

Hmm, I guess I didn't check to see if binaries can't have planets! I thought it might be handy to have the technomages always in binaries.

I've adjusted the technomage quest to generate a planet, so in the next version that won't happen again.

ImUrOBGYN · #10 July 27th, 2006, 04:51 PM

Had another cargo problem. Had 4 'guests' on board and acquired a fifth. Since you can't leave guests on planets, I was forced to restart. Sad thing is, it was the last planet I had to explore. Doh. I think I'll dig into the game and see how easy it'll be to increase cargo loads.
Ok, I've increased the cargo hold of the Whitestar (fav ship) for items, but it doesn't seem to include the cargo hold for dignitaries(guests). Where would I find that?