New Mod: Babylon 5 Shadowfall

[ImUrOBGYN]

I'm still playing beta 3 and occasinally get the strange black hole quirk. Your nebula masses anger me to no extent as I often find myself trying to cross them without realizing it until it's too late. But, it does finally make one of the items quite a bit more useful (can't remember the name offhand, it's used to outline the edges of the nebulas or whatever), so I say it's a go. :-) Whether on purpose or not. Can't wait to try your 1.0 so I'm off to do so!

[ImUrOBGYN]

Ok, simulator seemed to work, though selecting Babylon 4 is pointless as it seems to be derelict. It does not attack, defend, and you cannot board and take control. Tried the full game (only starting it) and I am able to begin a small and medium map game, but the large map crashes to desktop everytime. This was tested with each ship with low nebula mass and max enemy every time.

[ImUrOBGYN]

After playing the 'medium' map, it seems it's 'large' map size. I haven't tried the 'small' map, dunno if it's the correct size or not.
I did run into a couple other small problem. When entering a black hole and meeting some ancient ones, I received my 'gift'. I had a full cargo hold at the time and had to quit the game due to the fact I could not move anywhere. There was nowhere to put an extra item like you would on a planet and the item I received could not be equipped without displacing another item into cargo. I know your anti gravity item for entering black holes has a warning about using it w/full cargo, but this is more of a needed fix and not a 'game/role playing' type of error. I assumed that having a full cargo and entering a black hole would kill me or something, not do that. (yes, i entered it anyway, lol).
The second problem, unless this was done intentionally, is that I cannot fill the cargo bay on the whitestar. There's two rows for cargo, but you cannot fill the last two spaces.
All in all, a very enjoyable mod and one of the best I've played so far!!!

[Psientist]

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]

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]

#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]

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]

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]

The first time I ran Babylon 5 Shadowfall v1 it crashed, after that I have NOT had a single problem at all. I probably had a memory dump. The playing is fantastic, love the ships, weapons, and the GAL.... enough said!

At my age I almost had a heart attack! Thanks for keeping this 66 year old gamer going!!

A job well done!!

[Black_Bear]

FANTASTIC JOB!