Lavo

A little over two years ago, on New Year's day, SoGE 2.0E was released. This was a monumental event in and of itself, being the first update for the mod in a long time. The mod has changed greatly since then, in the form of new content, the move to the Rebellion expansion, redefining what capital ships are, building the NR and Vong into their own real factions, amongst many other changes and additions. This year has also been memorable as SoGE made into the ModDB top 100! I thank all who have voted for us this year, and I hope that next year we can push ourselves even further. That being said, let us move on to what you all want to know about, the state of the mod, and what is upcoming in the next version! Ludo Kreesh, the man behind our music selection, has been working on making on a new UI for SoGE, to finally shift away from the vanilla Sins UI. While this is still a work in progress, it is fairly far along and thus we are confident to reveal it to the public. http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/149/148486/auto/tjb4.png http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/149/148486/auto/loj5.png While this looks extremely nice, I'm sure some people are wondering if the Vong will be getting their own unique HUD. The answer to this is a resounding yes; you can expect to see a preview posted of it when it gets to a state of near completion. Speaking of the Vong, their faction will once again be getting a health rebalancing. The current model of ships not truly having any hull, and having shields representing the full health of a ship, will be discarded. Instead, the Vong ships will have an all hull setup instead. Their health regen will be persistent and given to them though a passive ability. Each ship class (frigate, cruiser, etc) will have the same hull and regen values, however, they will have different armor values. Additionally, the Vong's units' health, and health regen, will improve through research which increases their armor value. For those wondering how armor increases both hull strength and hull regen, the answer is that armor increases the effective hull of a ship, or in plain English, an armor value greater than 0 lets a ship take more damage than it otherwise would. This also will eliminate the inconsistencies between some planet modules (research stations, resource mines, etc) and other units. For those who play as the Vong, the Ro'ik Va'lh will also be getting a slight tweak, to make it into a true ship of the line. http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/149/148486/auto/jwbg.png While it was recently displayed that I had been dabbling with particles, I hadn't revealed everything that I had on the books. Something that I wanted to do with supercaps, when the current spawning system was implemented, was having these ships appear as a particle effect in the factory while they are being "built", so that people know when a ship is under construction and so that people will know, for example, when an Executor is being built when they are attacking or scouting an enemy homeworld, to allow them to take action accordingly. While we are on the subject of supercaps, I'll note that the next version will have flagship mode properly supported, and that each faction's flagship will be a supercap, one that does not count against your supercap limit. The reason behind putting in a supercap as the flagship is that in vanilla Sins, more often than not, flagship mode becomes little more than a game of hide and seek. In SoGE, where capital ships are even more vulernable than in vanilla, this flaw might be even worse, and is something that should be avoided. It also can work well with turning supercaps off, as in that case the strongest units on the field would be each person's flagship. Specifically, the Imperials gets the Allegiance, the Alliance, and New Republic, get the MC80B, the CIS gets the Geo. SDN, the Republic gets the Praetor, and the Vong gets the Ro'ik Va'lh. The reason the NR gets the MC80B as their flagship is primarily for balance, as a Mediator would be absolutely broken, and as the NR did have a few of these ships in active service. In addition, Maxloef of Star Trek: Armada III has graciously helped us out in a few ways, namely in making a new particle trail for capital grade proton torpedoes, which was also reworked into a starfighter grade proton torpedo. Pictured below is the former. http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/149/148486/auto/awho.png http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/149/148486/auto/yew7.jpg However I didn't mention the other area that Maxloef has greatly aided us in, that being optimizing models. As you can see here, the VSD-II has gotten a much tangent fix, and as a result looks extremely nice ingame. On the subject of fixes, I'd like to address a concern that many people have, that being mid to late game CTDs without warning. It's known that these crashes are due to Sins hitting the Windows imposed 2 GB RAM limit. Before the release of the Stellar Phenomena DLC, aka. version 1.80, SoGE was tethering on the border of stability. It had virtually no leeway in terms of RAM usage, and a small engine change would tip the balance. The DLC patch unfortunately has done exactly that; SoGE crashes very often, too often for the team's liking at any rate. To that end, the next version of SoGE will include Large Address Aware, and instructions on how to use it, as STA3 currently does. That being said, if you are able, I'd suggest doing it yourselves if you are able to, as this will have a positive impact on game stability. Another fix that's planned, though might not make it into the next version, is unit strings. Simply put, unless you're familiar with Star Wars and/or SoGE, many of the units' description strings tell you jack all about what the unit actually does. This is quite problematic and something I intend to fix. http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/149/148486/auto/tavj.png A little while ago I started working with, and became part of, the Sins of the Prophets team, and in the various discussions and brainstorming sessions the team has had, a number of interesting and fun ideas have come up for abilities. This particular image does not appear to be anything special at first glance, but in truth it is the proof of concept for a new, nasty, upcoming ability that will be used by Vong. You see, the turret pictured here was spawned by the nearby ship, even though the two are clearly not owned by the same player... To conclude this article, I'll take this opportunity to thank Goafan of Enhanced 4X and the upcoming Star Wars: Interregnum for his assistance and insight over the years. He has done a number of things for, or indirectly benefiting, SoGE, such creating the supercap spawn system, and more recently improving the textures of the Sentinel and Gladiator.

It's already been considered; in the beta the DA texture of planets has been reduced. We aren't going any further than that; as any more optimization will hurt the visual quality of planets, in part as our planets are often larger than SOA2's, and as I personally don't have anywhere near the knowledge to pull off what Stress did. The poles are unrelated to textures. Also, get LAA (link here), as this will solve memory issues.

I suggest to increase the size of the portion of the UI that contains a player's name and icon such that it would fit over the empire tree button. The reason being that if you decrease the resolution of Sins enough, it will move the faction name/icon underneath the empire tree button.

You gotta take into account when work on the game started. Back when they started dual cores were just on their way to becoming widespread, and I don't recall if quad cores were even around yet, or just getting onto the market. It would be, but that has to take a backseat to gameplay. Otherwise you'd see people building absurd amounts of frigate shipyards and getting high repair rates in the hundreds of hull restore per second. I'd also like to request that you put regular sized loading screen art back in. So much detail's lost in these small shots and some of them are really pretty.

The reason his mod isn't shut down is he doesn't post a full version on Moddb. If he posted a full version, the one he hosts on his site, you bet it would go down quick. Do remember the Iron Engine is at least 7 years old; CPUs have changed drastically in this time. Multi-core processing was not a standard at the time, even dual core CPUs weren't standard at the time. Actually, I plan to nix the repair station that's currently ingame. Basically I'd be moving the model, antimatter, and ability, of the current repair station to the frigate factory. That wouldn't work as the repair buff does not stack. I like the renaming idea though.

There's one single capital ship explosion that is bugged and causing those boxes, not all of them. That said, yes the explosions that are currently in are far from canon, but we have nothing to swap them with, and nobody to make them. As it is, the current swap was done purely as to avoid using vanilla explosions, which frankly are boring and worse than what we have right now. If we had a particle artist, or someone to do particles for us, I'd be more than happy to swap out the current set of explosions for something better. Nomada's stuff, outside of Warb's models, is absolutely unsuitable for Sins, RAM wise. Plus outside of what he has from Warb/EJ, much of that is used without permission. That being said, I had an idea recently that I plan to implement; put in our current repair station as the frigate factory and leave it with the repair ability. As lets be frank, in canon frigate yards were used for ship maintenance and the repair station is not that useful as it is. Goa has also done an amazing job rigging that model for ship construction. This method would also mean less stuff the game has to load up, and there already is UI art done for this model. I'm wondering the same to be honest. Going to see if I can get in touch with him elsewhere.

Haven't heard from you in a little while CaptainBenz. How's everything going? I can get the Broadside ingame fairly quickly; just need the main/color and (if you have one) illumination textures.

Off hand I know IS' planets are used in E4X and SotP, might be used in parts of SotF but I do not know that for certain. It might not make a huge difference sure, but I want SoGE to be different in this regard, as planets are a really big thing in our mod and something that makes SoGE stand out. The biggest thing I need more than anything is someone to simply look through Burnstrobe's, and possibly other peoples', models and pick out ones that would be good for SoGE and get permission for their usage. If someone can get the models themselves (preferably in .obj, but .alo .3ds and .max all work fine) and send them to me I can take it from there, as rigging models is not difficult. The one concern I have, in particular with Burntstrobe's planets, is that they might not have a proper light texture which is key for Sins. However this will be dealt with when the issue arises. No, this would result in an unacceptable increase in RAM usage. Do recall that we have more variety in actual planet types than any other mod by a longshot. It's possible sure, but as it is planets are already the biggest offender in texture usage, and SoGE is hurting extremely hard RAM wise thanks to Stellar Phenomena. We should be good in terms of events; they aren't particle heavy. And yes, I should mention that events don't bring about new graphics, but particles, which is an entirely different beast. Even then, it's only in certain cases; one does not need particles to make a cool event. Much thanks!

Depends on the mod. Infinite Space is a very nice looking mod, but it's everywhere now; putting it in would make SoGE be less unique and break immersion a bit. Would like to know what you have in mind. That said, I would recommend looking at Burntstrobe's planets, around a year or two ago I helped him out with models and according to him and/or Warb, Burnstrobe was cool with giving us his custom planets.

Don't worry about this; from what I can tell only the empire icon is affected by this, the rest of your HUD is fine on smaller resolutions. Edit: I also adore the research arrows you put in. Making them semi-transparent was an inspired idea; it will also help with the times when arrows go "over" another research icon. Also, I haven't committed it yet, but I've edited the race logos to fit the main HUD, so they are inside the blue box/screen. Edit 2: Fixed the pressed icon issue, found the file and slapped in the buttons.

Looking at the UI, some really nice improvements! I like the SSD/ISD/Neb/Dread icons, though you didn't put in the when pushed icons. Also I really like the no borders for the loading screen, though I still think that loading images should be left to their regular big sizes; if needed the faction characters can be moved over such that they are not blocking the loading screen art. The borders for the empire menu icon (the thing on the left) should be removed; the Sins HUD is inconsistent size wise as it changes when you change the game's resolution and it effects that icon's borders in particular.

I can't say I would mind. Might make everything look better as well, esp. when say, a planet isn't selected and you have all those empty boxes. Also, the button that shows up when an item is researched is still is a complete box, not sure. That makes sense. Don't worry too much over enlarging the borders; if it's unfeasible downscaling the loading screens a bit is hardly an issue.

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/1528/w0ps.png Also, while I like the new loading screens you put in, I can't say I'm a fan of the downscaling them all idea. Would it be possible instead to fix up the borders of the loading screen? If not, let me know, and I'll downscale them to fit. Also, do toss full sized versions of those new screens you found so I can put 'em in in their full glory.

This looks great Ludo! Absolutely top notch work, and something the mod greatly needed. There's a slight visual nitpick I have with the upper left part of the main HUD, and not all the research tree arrows have been made into the excellent black ones you made. I'll post pictures of what I mean a little later. The red HUD I think, with the border swapped out to be an irregular reddish-brown rectangle (like a blood clot) would make a fitting HUD for the organic Vong.

Passive damage reduction. Come to think of it, making the planet invulnerable isn't a bad idea. Thanks for the idea!

Update: December 30, 2013 | Revision: 1118 -Increased range of all defensive structures -Grav Well Generator no longer grav well wide -Decreased light map size for planets for possible RAM savings -Made difference between move area radius and hyperspace exist radius to at most be 20000 for planets

Well, I feel like a fool right now.

That's for a single capital ship explosion, not weapon effects. Weapon effects are pretty much a big red alarm.

The MD5 Hashes can be found on the Moddb download pages for all files. Glad to hear LAA works for you! Surprised that even the particles were blocky because of a lack of RAM, but knowing Sins that doesn't surprise me.

If you're getting blocky particle effects that's a tell tale sign of a corrupted download. That being said, you are correct in guessing that 1.80 has made things far more unstable. Before 1.80, SoGE was on the threshold of taking up too much RAM relative to the 2GB limit. The SF DLC made the engine itself use up more RAM, and as a result has made SoGE push the envelope a bit too much. SoSE also tends to get extremely unstable once you hit the 1.5 GB marker, so it is not surprising if you crash before hitting 2 GB on the nose. Regardless, I'd suggest running Large Address Aware on the SoSE exe, as it will alleviate RAM related crashing issues. This also will not have an effect on your MP compatibility/checksum. Due to the negative RAM changes brought by 1.80, as of the next patch I will be making using LAA a requirement to run SoGE, as SoGE can no longer reliably run without this being done.

Update: December 19, 2013 | Revision: 1117 -Mines now cost less to deploy, and require no research -Removed mine laying from many ships/factions, ships can lay stationary mines, planet builds homing mines -Prowler now can clear mines -Allegiance now decreases by 7.5% per jump from homeworld, rather than 5% -Adjusted check and trigger conditions for Open Rebellion and Partisans -Removed Bulk Cruiser from Alliance -Fixed Antifighter Suite ability for Vong

Update: December 14, 2013 | Revision: 1116 -Fixed loading screen, icon, issues. -Updated SW Galaxy FFA desc -Fixed Venator's missiles issue

Messed up some stuff when I tried to compress things for RAM savings; will fix.

Update: December 10, 2013 | Revision: 1115 -Fixed Coronal Mass Ejection event; now gives an energy weapon penalty rather than buffing them -Reorganized strings; if you see any strange looking or missing ones, let me know -Did some minor texture tweaking for small memory gains -Fixed issue where planets that aren't supposed to give refinery bonuses do give bonuses

This looks interesting. I'll certainly take a look at it!