A lurker delurks... with a mod?

[MShadowy]

Or something of the sort... though I'll admit I'm not to sure how to get this atteched to here, I've... oh wait, there we go. This is something of a beta, and incomplete to boot, but it still contains two pretty much completed custom races and a smattering of items.

Hope you enjoy it. Let me know of anything wrong and/or feel free to offer suggestions.

[sgqwonkian]

The G'Fsk are intriguing... I keep hoping some random event will trigger that somehow explains the genetic link between them and humans despite their being arachnoids. If you don't have such a thing, it'd be a good idea for a future update. If you do, well I'm looking forward to playing it enough that I stumble on to it.


Really like your ships - the ship graphics are clean and sweet, and the battles have been fun.

It's so easy to accidentally make something BAH-roken when modding, yet you've got a good balance to the mod. Good job all around.

Never had any crash-bugs in your mod either, which is high praise, believe me.

But now, here's my complaint. When you encounter the Dominion and you show a picture of Major Brass... that confused the heck out of me. I was trying to figure out if the Dominion were a terran offshoot, if there was some weird treachery scenario going on, etc. Basically, I overthought it, and as a result couldn't figure it out.

Like the third game I'd played of your mod I suddenly realized that it was Major Brass, attempting to hail the Dominion ships you're about to encounter. The enemy never responds so you fight them. Wow. That had gone right over my spinning head the first couple times.

I'd recommend either making that a lot clearer in your text, or biting the bullet and draw an alien-head. My wife keeps telling me to just open your files and put a face of my own design in there so it'll stopping making my brain hurt.

That's it, my only complaint. Otherwise I like the mod a lot.

[MShadowy]

Aheh. Thanks for the comments on balance; I've tried very hard not to overpower anything. And yes, I should probably have noted that the Dominion are not entirely complete. They need another ship and their comms graphic is temporary - also, I'm kinda lazyish and didn't bother grabbing something else to act as a placeholder. It'll be rectified next version.

The G'Fsk are more complete, but I do have a couple things that need doing... your concerns being among them.

Additionally I've got to work on some other quests, items, and equipment, etc.

[MShadowy]

Alright... having some problems here, and I could use some help; the problem seems to be related to destroying a couple items and replacing them with another in one of the quests I've made; not really sure how to handle it either. Edit: I've tried isolating each function; at first I thought it might relate to creating an item, but it seems that any inventory alteration crashes the program.

I've made several changes to the Dominion; they have an icon now, I changed their graphics a bit, and made some balance changes. I've also added another weapon, but I got bogged down in this current problem before I could add much more.

[sgqwonkian]

Which commands are giving you trouble? REMV? ITEM? ITMS?

Are you in PAGE or STAR blocks? Myself, I kept having headaches because I was using ITMS in STAR instead of PAGE. It wasn't causing crashes, but they weren't making the items either.

(I don't think they were causing crashes, anyway... I was crashing a lot, but it seemed to do with off-map fleets)

Maybe you could post a sample of your code here, and some of us other modders could help you try to debug it.

[MShadowy]

The code that seems to be causing problems is:

STAR 0
ITEM it_decoder
END STAR

STAR 1
ITEM it_encbank
END STAR

CONDITION 0
TYPE haveitem
STR0 it_decoder
END CONDITION

CONDITION 1
TYPE haveitem
STR0 it_encbank
END CONDITION

PAGE 1
REQ0 0
REQ1 1
DISP 1
ACTN popup endquest
TITL Databank Decryption
GFXP items/bank.png
TEXT [Blah blah blah. Spoilers not listed.]
REMV it_encbank
REMV it_decoder
TIME 2
ITEM it_membank
END PAGE

Hmmm... I wonder if the item side of things could have anything to do with this.

[sgqwonkian]

Technically, it should be labeled PAGE 0, not PAGE 1, but according to a post by Fingers some time ago that shouldn't cause a crash.

I'd say double-check that your picture is actually called bank.png (not bank.jpg or databank.png, etc) and that it's in the items folder. I had a quest that was crashing at one point because of a typo in the name of the picture reference.

Then make sure the names of the items are correct, and that they are all listed in your game.ini file. I'm pretty sure I've seen that crash a mod.

If that doesn't solve it, I'd check the picture references within the items for spelling - although that usually just results in a invisible/outline/pictureless item.

And if all that doesn't fix the problem, I'd try moving the TIME 2 line. I don't think there's a specific order that code lines need to be in (at least I've never seen that in print) but if you look at existing quests, they tend to follow a certain order generally. Moving the TIME code out of the item-manipulation codes might do it. I've noticed that pop-ups with TIME codes tend to advance the clock after you click "okay", so it could be having trouble figuring out when to generate the new item.

That's everything I can think of.

[Mafaa]

I was player your old version so I'm not sure I you fixed this but the buffomatic 9000 has to big of a picture, the second thing is my game crashed after I died in space engagement and I pressed the ok on the popup thingy. I was the Terran frigate on a large - medium -medium.

[chabex]

Hi,

Is it just me or have someone else experienced the mod crashing back to windOoze when combining the data bank and the encryption module? It has happened everytime when I found both objects...

[sgqwonkian]

I think I figured out why it's crashing when you get the data bank and the encryption module.

The problem is the picture that's supposed to appear. It's listed as items/bank, when it should be misc/bank. It kept trying to call up an image, but was looking in the wrong place.

So if you change this line:

GFXP items/bank.png

to this:

GFXP misc/bank.png

that should stop the crashing.

I haven't tested out the fix yet, but I'll report back when I have.