jedi_consulor

Update log for Please not this is a current status log not complete Alpha 7 log file.

Well the way it's been done is that Golans are built in skirmish mode from a Satellite build pad. You build initially a Golan I - it has an upgrade sequence to level 2 and 3 Currently I restricted the build's of Golans But in thinking this over maybe at least 2 of each could be built. I am not sure about this, but anyway it's currently set like this. I was all for putting Golan Platforms in GC mode to be built the same way instead of building them from the command bar, but it would seem some do not want that. I was going to do similar with the XQ stations as well. However I will now just keep them as they are in GC mode, and keep them out of skirmish too. Adding abilities to a Star base might work although I have heard of this before but it might be possible.

They aren't really upgradable through Galactic map view though, other than having say Golan I at one tech level then removed at tech level what ever to be replaced with a new Golan II structure that can be buildable and so on through the tech levels. This cancels out ever being able to build other golan stations after you pass through the required tech level to get a new one. (I think this is how I originally had it setup) ? anyway might be better to do it like a starbase and upgrade during a battle. (It might not work properly even) but I'd like to test this for a possibility.

What ? are you asking me not to - or are you ordering me not to : OK, here is what I am going to do then. Golan Stations will be built in the same way as before - after you build an Orbital Space Port. You then have the option to build Golan I - when you do, and your in Space Tactical combat mode in GC - when you click on the Golan I you built - you will then see an upgrade option. You can then upgrade to level 2 then 3. This can only be done in Tactical Space combat mode. (Same way as a Starbase upgrades it stuff). I like this way of doing things a bit better. XQ stations are a bit of pain for me - since they are over kill to an already existing Defence Platform solution to the game. Having both Golans and XQ's on one map or any one time could be a bit unbalancing. :-\ I got Golans in skirmish mode working and you can upgrade them, so perhaps XQ platforms will be kept only for GC mode on some planets.

Just a question to people who have been testing this mod.. (Separate from my last replies on the forum) Where the Golan Stations are concerned in this game they are now built from build pads in Skirmish you can go from level one to three by upgrading the structure. Do people want Golan's built this way for GC Space Tactical as well ? - or just skirmish ? - do you want the Golans to be built the way they are in your current Alpha build or as I am suggesting as a tactical build pad structure in GC mode. - or maybe both ??! - let me know asap. Also would people like me to replace the existing laser turret you build on the build pads with the XQ stations models ? - that can be upgraded from level 1 - 2 or do you want the existing laser turrets on the build pads.

I did make an alteration to the Planetary Ion Cannon - but it was months back in the early stages of me putting the mod together. I made it so it can only stun an enemy ship and weaken it's shields. I was looking for an effect that would disable its shields rather than do any other kind of damage. I am not going to make these things any more powerful than they are though. So there won't really be any changes to these cannons. Well as I am not a 'youngling' on here, and have several years ahead of lots of people on here I just want to say I qualified as a PC Engineer. I have built more PC's than I care to count over the years. I just feel Laptops do not make good gaming machines. They don't have proper cooling for the GPU for a start for when the games start using up lots of power from the system. They are low end onbaord graphics solutions designed for Desktop users doing - well basic home things. Yes you can play games on them, but don't expect a lot of out of it. I know, and I agree it's odd the way things are in EAW, but I use what is available in the game. I can get them firing like proton Torpedoes even, I think shak said some thing about them firing like that a while back though. ! My best recommendation, is to play the game with out any Anti Aliasing and reduce the quality settings. This will free up much of the lag.. Alpha 7 is coming next week and I hope it will ease up the lag in parts of the game. I cannot do much about the Galactic map other than remove starting units. This would stop the AI moving as many fleets around, but will also make the game too easy to conqure if the AI is not smart enough to build new fleets.

The Command centre is yet to be tested HK I can't remember what model I used for them. Daft Vader the code you gave me has lots of scripting problems. I added one so for which was the Liberator Class Cruiser I still need to go through the others, and the change log is not the final build log - just what is done so far.

@Jay I told you - if you delete the AI files don't cry to me that the AI does not do anything. When I said about the AI - I mean it will affect the game through out not just in skirmish. There are some important files you can't delete, or the AI won't build anything in Skirmish or in GC. The files you would need to delete are the PG Event Lua Files (Easy to locate) there in the scripts folder. Then all of the AI folder in the XML folder itself. The game will be back to the dull normal game that way. Which means a less challenging AI, Another file which is optional is Difficulty Adjustments - which controls the build times and multipliers like that. I DO NOT RECOMMEND Messing with the AI in this game. Jay your testing an Alpha build for me as a favour, I want the AI tested as IS. To change an Alpha build is outside of the agreed beta guidelines and is not helping me test this mod. So anyone leeching my mod and modifying it for their own purposes won't get any more builds from me as they are not genuine Beta testers. Status Update: Golan Defence Station can be built from a build pad in Skirmish mode Shipyard as Starting unit structure in Skirmish. Can be upgraded to Level 5 to unlock all skirmish build space units that are available. Liberty Cruiser Added to game. All Skirmish maps 100% done for Space Skirmish mode - updated for SOTE Shipyards start of as a little Fighter factory structure, and progress and get bigger into large ship yards. - Thanks to Z3r0x for this code and support for SOTE. I will also be updating SOTE with Z3r0x's new AI files once he has released them in his update, so the AI will be much smarter and better to play against. When you play Space Skirmish mode the maps should be accessed by clicking on 'Custom Maps' you will not see any normal maps when you enter the Skirmish mode screen. All the maps are now located in the Custom Maps section, you just need to click the button to access them. JC

Very nice looking Clone Troops 1upD - Any Clone Wars mod will be wanting those I expect ;D

ok fine.. I won't cancel my work. I need a lot more time to get the AI working right though.. recent tweaks I did made it more lame and useless at building or capturing things, where as my earlier AI work was working fine. This stupid debate over crying about the AI is not helping anyway. Z3r0x has just updated his mod with shipyards and I took a peek at what he did - I feel really stupid because I do not know why I didn't think of doing it that way,. So I think Z has the best way of doing ship yards in skimish - clever way of doing things I think. So I will be re doing my skirmish shipyards for a start, plus I will get Golan and XQ Defence Platforms building from build pads. This will take me a few days working through this so bear with me.

ok, ok.. I need to think over night on what to do.. but I can't please everyone and can't make this mod work the way everyone wants. The solution is that if people don't like the AI then remove the AI folder ?! - it returns the game to the default one anyway. But don't cry at me when the AI is not doing anything at all any more. If you have Geforce 6 or 7 or higher you will have no problems running this game if you have a semi decent card. When I stated mine has 512 MB I did not indicate or mention the thought or notion this is best for game play. Like DUH...?! I Fracking know its a matter of how good the clock speeds are on your gfx card is, AND that with your pipeline. Mine is a crappy 4 pixel pipeline but I can balance this in FOC by turning off AA. But then still have high quality. HK brought up a good point in PM and I forgot to say it also, but if people have trouble playing a mod turn down or turn off Anti Aliasing. Simple - less lag.

HK I am fed up of people crying about the AI not working the way they want, and people going on about their GPU being good or bad. I am bored of this argument, and its stopping my enthusiasm for the game. I am not only stopping the mod but I am probably going to leave this community as well because I am tired of debating what's wrong with the mod all the time.

Look I am not going to bother arguing. This project is cancelled. I have had enough.

How do you figure that : I have an nVidia Geforce 7300GS with 512MB ram My GPU is newer and supports new shaders that your card doesn't Also.. I am having problems making the AI work the way other people want, I do not feel happy about making the AI less smart, by doing so sure it causes the AI to be less active and it doesn't do as much, but it's also making the AI behave well, slow at building things as well. To the point that a smart human player can out smart the AI all the time because of unresponsiveness. I think either I look for some one who can do the AI for me in SOTE - or people will just have to accept the way I wanted it to work in the first place. I can't keep up with trying to please everyone and loose interest in what I was working on in the first place.

@Jay like I said, I wasn't knocking your GPU, but it has a very big factor in why you get lag the way you do. I have already said my experience of playing SOTE is nothing like your's. The lag is not caused because the Consortium is missing from the SOTE campaign. The SOTE campaign does not call on Expansion files because it is not looking for a consortium based player in the game. (It read's from the ORIGINAL campaign scripts) not FOC's It's hard to explain But it's in he sandbox files and shows it does not even require or read from the Expansion script so it does not look for a consortium either. The Single Player GC file's for the SOTE campaign and Revenge of the Empire do not look for the Consortium at all - because how can a script look for some thing that is not listed as being a legitimate player faction ? - Simply this has nothing to do with the lag you have in your game. I am answering this partly from the PM you sent because this should be explained publically. The fleet movment's you mentioned are quite normal in EAW and FOC it's enhanced even more I would guess because of the AI aggressiveness. But it does not mean the AI is doing nothing - it means it is doing some thing. The more active the AI becomes, the busy the game will become and the more busy your PC will be playing the game. I told you the other day, every one is having different levels of experience with the game. Some people will have more lag than others, I do not have much at all. While you choose to ignore my advice about what would be the real cause of the lag on your game, I have to reiterate that a 6150 GPU really is not a gamers processor. 2 people on here have told you such. Yes I am working on reducing lag in the game, but I said before I cannot wave a wand and make it go away for you completely. If you had a better graphics card it would help a lot because it would off load all that stress your putting on your System Memory - because if you don't realise Intigrated graphics used shared memory. So if you have 1 GIG system memory - your GPU uses 128MB - 256MB of the memory available, leaving around 750MB (or so) That's very little for the System to use for available free resources. You will have EAW running, plus lots of system background applications running all taking a chunk of the available memory. Don't think I do not know what I am on about.. I have been building PC's for years mate. I appologise for the lag your having in the game and I am re writing the AI aggressiveness - however, the AI needs to be active, creative, and it needs to be doing things, otherwise if the AI is dumb it won't even bother to challenge you and would make the game boring.

I hate to burst your bubble Lord of the Sith, but I actually don't like the skin that much on Avengers ISD. After looking at it in the ALO Viewer the main hull looks fine, but turn the ship around and look at it from the back and it's not skinned properly. (Back of the bridge area and engines area) It lack a skin and is using a generic skin that is wrapped around this area. This is not the reason I don't want to use the ISD Avenger did, - but you must appreciate the work that has already been done, and I have done the ISD's several times to make them cannon the way shak suggested making them. I am really not prepared to do all this work over again to suit the minority of people who like that ISD. Frankies ISD is good enough for the mod, and the skin is equally as good, in fact in my quality settings the skin looks great - especially the ship lights on the thing. So I am saying no to re doing an ISD just to make it so it has moving turrets, I added the Venator with moving turrets as a unique ship that can be un locked at special locations and ship yards. It is supposed to be just a bonus unit from the clone wars and is a rare ship to find.

I have already stated this before. 3 Flight Groups 12 fighters per Squadron - this is how it is in this mod. So that 4 fighters per flight group. This is how it should be. shak and I wanted to make this cannon so it reflects the true flight group numbers they would have, 36 fighters = 1 Wing 76 fighter's per star destroyer is 1 Wing. 36 fighters per Mon Calamari Cruiser. This is how we wanted to do the squadrons in this mod. People say the AI is spamming fighters - it's probably not, read the change log and you will see the number per squadron reflects real squad sizes of the ships they are carried on, not sizes the developers used in the original game.

I just tested the campaign Revenge of the Empire, and yes there are several tweaks needed to make that campaign work. I will increase the fleet movement distance so fleets can travel further, also I landed my forces on Ord Mantell and found one of my units got stuck and would not move. This was an AT-ST. StormTroopers work fine for me they land properly in formation and I didn't have problems selecting any of the squads I brought down to land on the planet. I think it's probably the passibility on some maps that is causing the problem - its not the units. For example I noticed where my AT-ST's had landed - it had landed right near an area of map that was not playable. I think tweaking the maps and making sure they have a good clear landing passibility area near the landing zones will maybe fix this problem. JC

Thanks for telling me about the Rendilli problem Mate, I will see what can be done to fix it asap. Rather odd it doesn't connect, does connect with our other two campaigns ? Maybe it could be fixed by adding a main trade route connecting to another planet. @Jay, I don't want to sound like I am knocking your processor but shak is right Integrated graphics are the worst kind of GPU's out there, and are really only designed for less demanding games. These type of GPU's are designed for Desktop Business users, or home basic applications for general use. I have an Integrated processor as well and Intel one which I don't use. I went out and bought an nVidia 7300GS. Also Dual Core processors do not have any affect on game's - many games do not make use of Dual Core Technology EAW is one of them. The Galactic Map problems are down to rendering of the planets - the amount of them in the game, and how many of them the AI controls. Sorry I forgot what you said - what installed RAM do you have ? My PC uses like 2GIG and I have a 3GIG processor too, but these things are only part of the performance you will get in a game the GFX card is designed to take the work load of the system and run the game at the best it can. Which is why you have High end GFX cards designed for gaming, - mid range - for the consumer Desktop market - for Desktop Video conferencing applications, and budget low end cards. You could consider them as entry level and have all the guts taken out of a GFX card and makes it much slower and perform's poorly compared to other cards on the market. I am just explaining this so you understand that the way you describe the game - is not as bad or like it on my PC which has a much higher GFX card and memory installed than yours. I think the test's show people have varied experiences in playing this mod. I have noticed lag, and I working on fixing the issues. However I can't wave a magic wand and remove it completely for people - people with old GPU's and a system with little System memory available will always get a different experience to playing a mod than me. My GPU is not perfect, it's grippled with a 4 pixel pipe line. For adequate game frame rate you need good clock speeds and at least I would say a 12 pixel pipe on your gfx card. This is geek talk I know, but people should actually try and research what they are buying and not get sucked into the retail blurb they give you in the shop. They are there to sell you some thing - and even lie about it if they have to ! LOL The card most people should be able to buy is a mid range card at least like a 6600GT << pretty good card for EAW and other SW games. I had one never had any frames drop in games or much at all lag even playing a game with 4x Anti aliasing. OR get a Geforce 7600GT - newer card supports more and improved shaders. JC

Your correct - it is too much trouble than it would be worth. Plus would delay me even further from getting this done !

I don't really want to bother Avenger with any requests like that, it suits his mini mod the way he did it, plus he's busy doing other things.

Mate its your Graphics card that causes the lag, not your processor, which is quite respectable. AMD always make the best processors for game playing. a 6150 Nvidia is a cut down budget card for the Desktop market, - not a proper gamers card. Heck it probably has a 2 pixel pipeline which is very poor for gaming. Mine has a 4 - but it's this that caches the frames from the game. The clock speed of the gfx card is probably basic and probably affects the over all performance. As I SAID we use Frankies models which use Direct X Shader's we discussed this before how it could affect the performance in games and cause lag. Which is why people like Avenger prefer to use bump maps instead. Your talking about Rogue Squadron lead by Wedge Antilles - I will say no more. They are an elite Fighter group they do auto heal because I designed them to. This is cannon in the fact they have an Artoo unit to carry out repairs to the ship. I already answered this one earlier. He does because I haven't set him to not to re spawn. I am still debating the whole thing on what heroes should be rebuildable. Plus the once's who should not be re used. We need to have a chat about this Team members and beta testers alike. I have plans to add another buildable SSD, but I haven't had the time to code this in yet. hmm yes The Eclipse is the stock in game one, but is quite powerful as it is. By the way please no more bug reports or complaints about skirmish mode, even in PM's - I got the message ALREADY. I don't want to keep repeating myself - but I have said I am working on this at the moment. Also about Starbases spawning lots of squadrons ? - yes this is being sorted out as well. I have reduced the amount of garrisoned units they can have.

Basically we have to use Frankies ISD's - because otherwise tactically the ISD's would be out gunned by other Frankie Models used in the game if Avengers ISD was used. Hmm about Max ? - I do have a copy of Version 8 I don't use it however because I just found I haven't the time or interest in model making It takes time to learn how to use Max and make quality models from it - thats not even taking into account learning how to convert a model to ALO format. If he can at least direct you on how to convert to ALO we can do our own conversion for a Tector Class SD We could use the existing skin Frankie made may be for the skin as well. All That needs doing is the Hangar removing - or covering up on the model. Its a matter of doing the hardpoints then. I just don't have the time to do this but if you wanted to try shak - its up to you. I mentioned yesterday that I now have buildable Golan Stations from the skirmish build pad - without much feedback about this. I have currently the following structures buildable: Golan 1,2,3 and XQ defence platforms. I will add Xizors Skyhook for the Empire as well. I am still thinking about whether to actually do the large ship yard from here, and move all the large ships to this buildable structure. All the maps need re doing anyway to make the maps better suited for this kind of skirmish buildings.

@Shak - Thank YOU. At least some one cares. Well yes we need a new model for a Tector.. Maybe YOU could ask Avenger to do one : Although I doubt he will. Would be good to have a proper model for this class of ship though with moving turrets to boot.