New Planets!

[NovaCameron]

Low Clean Industrial (Foundry 400pop)

Clean Industrial (Trellen renamed High Industrial 500pop)

High Clean Industrial (Byblos 3000pop)

 

Industrial will be renamed Dirty Industrial (may add another there, we'll see)

 

Low Shipyard (unknown)

Shipyard (Kuat, Coreillia Same as Clean Industrial)

High Shipyard (Rendili 3000pop)

Shipyards and Industrials will have different characteristics: ship bonus for one, higher trade bonus for the other, both will have building bonuses still.

Strip ship bonus from urban.

 

Volcanic Industrial (Sarapin 2500pop)

Volcanic Shipyard (Sullust renamed current VolInd)

 

Ocean Industrial (unknown)

Ocean Shipyard (Mon Calamari current AquaInd)

 

Yup so I'm changing it up abit. And noone can complain about there being too few planets. I may add in a low set for ocean and volcanic but I'll have to set up the mid and outer rims to see what pops up.

Also will add in a Carbon Planet (yay! another (mediocre) resource planet!)

 

All of this will come out when the Base Map is done. Once the Base Map is done then setting it up for the Clone Wars and Civil War along with the vong invasion will be easy.

 

I also think we may need to up the cost of the lvl 4 colonization maybe by 25-50%. But maybe not... Most of these planets have huge pops and thus have huge costs for upgrading them.

[Lavo]

Oooo, I do like the sound of these new planets. I'm also going to get around to slapping in a "ship graveyard" (think the Katana fleet, or a "lost" fleet that went missing along those lines), as I got an interesting map idea that uses one (already started making it :v).

[NovaCameron]

eh, be careful with that. Though it maybe cannon, they are nearly unheard of. I suggest not putting it in with any of the randoms or even in a random map. but leave it out to let people decide to put it in. As a plot device or fun.

[Lavo]

eh, be careful with that. Though it maybe cannon, they are nearly unheard of. I suggest not putting it in with any of the randoms or even in a random map. but leave it out to let people decide to put it in. As a plot device or fun.

I'm only planning to put it in custom maps, they won't be put into any sort of random, that would be silly, fairly uncanon, and extremely unbalanced. Basically I agree with you and that's exactly what I plan to do with them.

[NovaCameron]

Cools. I'll finish placing all the planets then work on making them all the right type. GalaxyForge is starting to slow down... and I only got the Core and Western Reaches done! Just working on the Trailing Sectors, not to mention the planet heavy Slice, Trans-Hydian, and New Territories... ugh... Impossible to make large maps in this... lol

 

Edit: Umm... I may have underestimated the planets on the map... looks like I'll breach 400 by the time I'm done. And that will be the main map! lol

 

Edit 2: err... 500 O.O I think, if it keeps adding up like this....

[Lavo]

...Jeez that's massive.

[NovaCameron]

I crashed GalaxyForge! Too many planets... I'll complete it in a text editor.

 

I think my Mega SW Galaxy is just wishful thinking at this point.

 

I got everything in so far up to the Trans-Hydian so it's just that and the New Territories. So about 500... maybe a bit less. Maybe I'll go and figure out what planets to cut so we get a 240 map also... The SW Galaxy is too big.....

 

Success! It's plotted! 530 planets total. lol Now to spend fun times searching up all the names and fitting a planet type to it.

[Snowba11]

Played with the new planets last nite on the star wars lite map played very nice and your planets do look good hats of for them. Personally I wont go over about 300 otherwise it gets way too laggy just as thing s are getting interesting. The map played well until towards the very end it started getting a little laggy (still playable) but that was with massive fleets and all planets controlled, I did have skyboxes and trade ships turned off I also turn off the planet info bar at the side makes things easier (except for fleets). Very good though looking forward to seeing a slightly bigger map also will you put more player starting locations on it and let us know where they are so we know who/which factions satrt where or are they all random?

 

Also personally I like Lavo's idea for a graveyard type planet, just for one or two possibly in the galaxy but thats me.

 

And if there is anything I can help with just ask.

[Lavo]

Did some browsing, got and looked at the Sins Optimization Mod. Now I've figure out how to use dds files instead of tga files in the Texture folder. I'll be playing around with that sometime, should help with lag. Edit: BLUE_BLAST has been successfully converted to dds. Doing the conversion myself, I've gotten it to 42.8 KB versus the normal 192 KB. Also I will slap in the TSOM's trade ships and other fixes when/if possible. Snowba11, check your PMs. :v Edit 2: I was able to save it as a more compressed tga with no loss of quality (unlike the DDS) to 48.2 KB. It seems not all of the tga files are 32 bits/pixel, which means I can easily save them as 16 or 24 bit/pixel without quality loss, and 16 bit + RLE offers better compression than DDS. Edit 3: Seems that some files, not all, work better with the 24 bit compression. I'll keep on this though. Edit 4: It appears that 16 and 24 bit tgas don't save all of a dds' alpha channels, which explains why they're so small. Aka. 16 and 24 bit compressions won't work for all texture files, even if the quality is fine. Edit 5: Compressions complete. All that's left to do is to edit some the Mesh/Particle files and upload.

[NovaCameron]

Yup Yup. I'll put out the 530 planet map and see if I can ax some planets... I doubt it though. I'll try for a 250 map. See how that works. Might need to make it from scratch.

 

It's hard to make a galaxy map... it's so huge and it's hard to get a proper sense of it. Look at the SW atlas and then deciding what to cut. Since cutting a planet can make the map sector look somewhat empty...

[Lavo]

Making a new map is prolly the best option, seeing all the stars you likely have. Also I got the graveyard to work.

[NovaCameron]

Stars? No... there is no information about stars really. just a ton of planets...

[NovaCameron]

Eh, due to the amount of changes needed to match planets up to the SW galaxy. I'm reconfiguring the resource structure of the planets. Also adding in planet types as necessary. So stay tuned for a massive reworking.

 

(Also: new textures! maybe. depends what the planets need. I'm also thinking that i can cut out the mipmaps from the dds files since sins is a ram hog and keeps it all in memory anyway. I'll do some tests as i rework the planets.)

[Lavo]

Eh, due to the amount of changes needed to match planets up to the SW galaxy. I'm reconfiguring the resource structure of the planets. Also adding in planet types as necessary. So stay tuned for a massive reworking.

This isn't a good idea imho, the planets are very well done and balanced atm. Might I suggest adding objects via the Galaxy Forge/manual editing, or putting in new planet files?

 

(Also: new textures! maybe. depends what the planets need. I'm also thinking that i can cut out the mipmaps from the dds files since sins is a ram hog and keeps it all in memory anyway. I'll do some tests as i rework the planets.)

Less RAM usage is almost always good.

[NovaCameron]

Well most, if not all, of the 'new' planets I'm putting in are just the current ones with different population, resources, bonuses, and (ship)abilities. And I'm just tweaking the resource balance. It should be more accurate. The resource reworking I've planned for a while for the different planet sizes. I'm just extending it to rework around a new resource list, (read: bigger) so i need to rework the planets a little. Most shouldn't see much of a change, but a few might move up or down in number/quality ranking.

 

Basically I'm adding more variety, not a reworking of everything the planets have, just the resources.

[Lavo]

Ah, I understand now. Yeah, that sounds good then.

[NovaCameron]

Wahoo! the (massive) map is done! Now I have to put in the planets and edit all the existing ones... 524 planets.... ugh.... lol but it looks sooo good on paper. http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/c/cd/GalacticPolulation.jpg - It may not look like it, but there are 520 dots on this map. and all have been put in.

 

The extra ones are planets to make the hyperlanes look right and link properly.

[Snowba11]

cool nice work that map will be great cannot wait to give it a try. one thing i would add and hope is don't add too many hyperlanes I found the version i did had way too many lanes whereas the small galaxy(95) you did played nicely with the hyperlanes you added in. It had a nice steady tactical feel to it.

 

as Lavo says I wouldnt totally re do everything as it is looking good however evrything done from now on in the mod really needs to have the memory issues addressed. Fingers crossed the new add-on might help somehow with this matter.

 

did anyone try the fix a while ago (large address aware if memory serves me right?) I tried it but it didnt dseem to do much for mine once i was playing larger maps ?

[NovaCameron]

It's just the resources! lol Which I haven't touched from the first release. Sins has a processor issue as well. The exe wasn't designed for large maps in mind. This is what causes the lag in long/big games. Rebellion might fix this I hope. Getting rid of the mipmaps well cut the texture size in half (Ok not half, like 24%). I might mess with the ship textures but I'm not sure what removing the mipmaps will do in game.

 

Ya it was mostly the lanes and planets that I didn't like about your map. The major hyperspace routes didn't exist or were routed through planets which didn't make too much sense. There were way too many lanes to too many planets. And you had a huge amount of planets clumped in the Core/Slice area. Some of which I had no clue what planet it was. The map felt off balanced and didn't really look/feel right.

 

Once I kick this out you'll see why I'm going to have trouble cutting planets. It looks so, balanced. All the major hyperspace routes are in. There are dead ends in the lesser routes, linked planets to the main routes, bypasses, clusters, ect. The map is HUGE, 10kx10k. Most maps are 100x100 and the current galaxy map in 1000x1000. This will make it seem not rushed. It may even seem slow and tedious sometimes. Even with the massive amount of planets. You will have to set up centers of power in certain areas. Because it will be impossible to move one fleet to the other side of the galaxy quickly. War will drag out for hours.

 

Edit: WOAH. I can get rid of 176.4MB from the mod just by getting rid of the mipmaps... O.O

[Lavo]

Edit: WOAH. I can get rid of 176.4MB from the mod just by getting rid of the mipmaps... O.O

The question is, will this just improve the size of the mod, or will it also improve RAM usage. If the latter, you sir are great.

 

Also Rebellion will not fix the processor issue, this is due to how the engine was made, and that it is a 32-bit exe. The RAM issue however, might be partially mitigated or fixed, which is something the devs have mentioned.

[NovaCameron]

No, I didn't change the compression. Mipmaps are smaller copies of the base image and thus don't add anything to the game since sins doesn't use them. Thus it keeps the image in memory and doesn't use 24% of it. Getting rid of them makes the image smaller thus smaller when it's in RAM. And Sins I think loads ALL of the textures this should help a lot.

 

Also I'll bin everything and keep a copy in a txt folder so you can work on them still.

 

(edit: Or I could be completely wrong and removing mipmaps will cause sins to keep a larger texture in memory, but I don't think I am...)

[wbino]

Why do all my planets lose money? Even after upgrades,is there something new I'm not getting?

Also to explore a planet at first cost 3000, but next upgrade to explore is 450? And forget the cost to try to move a home planet.....

[NovaCameron]

Are you colonizing the 'greener' planets and urbanized ones? You probably aren't if you are loosing money. Tack a few 'high' planets or centalized planets and I gaurentee that you will be swimming in money.

 

And which planet has the odd upgrades? I'm reworking the 'exploration' upgrade as well as it doesn't perform anything right now.

[wbino]

I'll look when I get home at work now.

Two new planet ideas though:

Prison planet( would see huge prisons from space) and

Post apocalyptic world. ( off shoot of barren)

[Snowba11]

Prison planet would be like kessel which would be ok maybe have a couple of mines etc too, and there are a couple of post apoc planets in the sw universe there names evade me for now one of them i think is the home of the miraluka species. Will check later on.