ManSh00ter

Reply to AudioSINS in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Confused by this: "I'm not sure I understand the second question. It wouldn't matter if you had a lot of entries in the sounddata files - although it might cause problems loading.." So which one is it? I'd hate to go spend hours and days doing the sound effects only to hit a brick wall at the end of it. Personally, I kind of doubt there is a limit of normal sound entries... because if there is, any serious modding effort which aims to do more than just tweak is going

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

So... thus far, the Xin have been accused of shamelessly stealing their design ideas from: -Vong -Protoss -Space Whales -Advent -Apple (the company) :p Their response: [i]SO WHAT? WE STILL LOOK COOL. AND UR GONNA GET PWND ANYWAY.[/i] Jokes aside, for the curious, the Tyrant is armed with: -4 capital-grade plasma launchers -4 high-yield particle beam emitters (electron variant) -1 main gun The main gun fires th

Reply to AudioSINS in Sins Modding Sins Forums

[quote]Lying to the game about how many tracks are included will also mean that the game will ignore all the files you lied about The limit is hard at the moment unfortunately, but it's also shared with all the other sounds in the game, ie, if you removed one of the lines from the TEC light frigate, you could add in another music track.[/quote] Woah, wait a minute... does this mean there is a hard limit on the total sound entries in the game? I hope not, because that would drop a big br

Reply to faction specific ui? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

That's in the player .entity file, in the "hudSkinData" section.

Reply to Star Wars Mod in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Exactly. Using original soundtrack in a mod would be like bootlegging the said soundtrack on a torrent or somesuch. I'm sure someone would object. ;) It is possible to make your own "Star Wars" music though - look at First Strike mod. Their composer did an ok job. And if you happen to have Star Wars soundtracks, it is easy enough to mod them into the game yourself. A matter of converting some files (I recommend a program called "Audacity" for converting into .ogg format, it's free a

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

The concept of the Titan itself I haven't finalized yet, but broadly speaking, its outer shell will be an ovoid or an oblate spheroid, with many holes in its surface and a wide open central core. The spheroid will have several gigantic "spires" extending and curving above and below the central space. The superweapon itself will be represented (at least I hope I will manage to pull it off) with several "stages": -initially a small central swirl with particles dropping from vario

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

The way this superweapon will work is going to ensure that it is not easily abused. First, you have to actually fly the ship to the sector you want to "zap". Unlike with vanilla superweapons, this automatically creates a risk factor for your shiny toy. Second, the weapon will have a relatively long charge-up time before it detonates. In this time window, the defending forces can attempt to knock out the Titan - not an easy task, but possible with a massive focus of fire. I

Reply to Dawn of Victory - Total Conversion: Use the newer thread idiots. in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Hehe, nice one. And, wow, The Last Stand did get mentioned! :D Though, it's [i]Xin[/i] not "Xani"! Ah well. They can still pwn yon space narrrzis with their extra large hot balls of magma. :p Seriously though, this is definitely one of the mods I am looking forward to. I like quality stuff (call me spoiled) and I think this team will deliver on that and then some.

Reply to Engine Exhuast colour control? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Bugger. I was afraid of that. Ah well, that's what testing is for. ;) I played with the shaders today some more, but to no effect. If its possible to make the shader pick up the color of the particle texture, I don't know how to do it.

Reply to Engine Exhuast colour control? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Yeah, I fixed it (hopefully). :p You have to disable the first render pass in the GS_Exhaust.fx file: shared float4x4 g_ViewProjection : ViewProjection; texture g_TextureDiffuse0 : Diffuse; texture g_TextureDiffuse1 : Diffuse; float colorMultiplier = 1.f; [color="#FF0000"]void RenderSceneFirstPassVS( float3 iPosition : POSITION, float4 iColor0 : COLOR0, float2 iTexCoord0 : TEXCOORD0, out float4 oPosition : POSITION, out flo

Reply to Engine Exhuast colour control? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

The thing is, I don't believe you can change the exhaust shader to remove the team coloring, since changing the shader itself in the Particle Forge yields no effect. That means the coloring is done outside of the shader system (as far as I understand how the engine works).

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

I assume you are thinking of a "heatwave" sort of effect? If so, then no. Such effects require specialized shaders which displace pixels in a pattern which then creates the shimmer or ripple effect (for example with water and liquids). As far as I know, Sins do not have such a shader, though personally I think it would be perfect for shields (with a bit of colorization thrown in) and such. I am not a programmer, but from what I've seen of the existing shader architecture, it could be po

Reply to Engine Exhuast colour control? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

I believe the exhaust coloring is currently hardcoded, since the engine does not respond to the change of pipeline effects. This also voids any need to try and modify the GS_Exhaust.fx file itself. And yes, I do not think you can write your own custom shaders and pipeline effects. That would be seriously cool to be able to do, since I know other games which allow modders to do this kind of work (often with very interesting results), but alas here this isn't the case it seems.

Reply to Engine Exhuast colour control? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Not sure that works, Danman. I could be wrong since it was a while since I messed with exhaust, but I am pretty sure I tried changing the pipeline effect from GS_Exhaust to Particle_Additive and it did not work.

Reply to [MOD] 7 DEADLY SINS : by DANMAN GAMES (DANMAN3712) ver 2.5 FINAL AVAILABLE to the PUBLIC! in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Sluuuurp. :p Maybe useful in a custom made map where every sector is either a violently damaging asteroid field or a nebula or somesuch...

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

How does a huge ship, dwarfing even the largest of capitals, bundled together with an artificial singularity generator capable of wiping out entire fleets in one shot sound? Cool enough? :p

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

CrazyJoe, yes I've seen the mods you mention and the idea seems interesting. Right now I envision the research as close to the original, but if it turns out feasible would not mind mixing in several research options which can be repeatedly researched to place an emphasis on continuous technological development. So most likely the end result will be a mix of both, where "bonus" research topics, those which provide a boost to certain abilities and stats, will be "repeatable" to a certain extent.

Reply to 1.1, how far back is it going to push mods? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

From what I've seen, it shouldn't cause too much issue. I am mostly concerned with this: "-As mentionned in graphics: New ship shader with colorsample.a swapped with datasample.r (Team and spec have reversed position)." Not exactly sure what this means. I hope I won't have to rearrange all of my textures... :p When it comes to the Last Stand mod specifically, since I am purposefully delaying string and "text" editing in favour of graphical assets, as with previous patc

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Not... exactly. :p Ships are 75% done. Stations still have a while to go until they are finished, but the good thing is, that's pretty much the last major hurdle to overcome. Sound design, based on my initial trials, will go along smooth and quick. Scripting is not so time consuming either. Minor graphical art will be also done, but very likely the mod will be released with only the basics (ship icons, portraits, etc.), with other fluff being added with the inevitable updates.

Reply to [MOD WIP] Star Trek: Sacrifice of Angels 2 (updated 01/10/09) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Just add a "Phaser Subspace Resonance Shift Coil" as a tier 1 tech which: "Allows phasers to ignore the firing ship's hull by shifting their subspace signature to a different resonance profile than that of the ship, thus allowing for enhanced weapons coverage. Side effects may include fried crew." :p Nice work on the ships though. Well done! :CONGRAT:

Reply to XSI-modeling questions in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Capital ships: anything up to 4000 polys Cruisers: around 2000 polys Frigates: The Lower The Better As a general guide, use this: how often do you think the ship is going to appear in the game? Thus the poly count is highest for capitals and stations since you only get a handful of them on screen at any time, and lowest for frigates and strike craft since they appear in huge quantities.

Reply to Firing arcs in Sins Modding Sins Forums

That would be great. Along with actually being able to have proper turrets. :)

Reply to What tools/programs used for unit/building/effects do you use? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

XSI mod tool is free. XSI definitely isn't. ;) I myself use XSI and Photoshop for textures. Notepad for editing of various files, except particles for which we have the official tool.

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Glad you guys like the work so far! :) Also, I like the ideas being thrown about for Titan works. The customization approach sounds nice, I'll definitely have a look if it can be done once I get around to scripting the research tree. Homeworld-only production also sounds interesting, though I have to actually bury my nose in the game .entity files a bit deeper to see if it can be done (most of the work so far has been spent on graphical assets since making the scripts is much easier and

Reply to Trek Mod's Accomplis in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Also, try scaling down your model (that looks like the 3D view, use the other viewports which don't get distorted). Or adjust your camera so you don't get the "fish-eye" distortion which happens when your model is too big for the camera setup you have. Assuming that's your problem (looks to me like it is) and not a formatting issue.