I can not get the Developer exe to work

You have to copy/paste it sriaght INTO THE SINS MAIN FOLDER!

I.E. C drive/stardockgames/ Sins of a solar empire! and paste it with all the rest of the core sins files!

Hope it helped!

Justin S.

Thank you, i know it had to be someting like that. but i could not find any info about how to get it to run.

they should put that in the readme (Hint hint, star dock/ironclad)

Stephen

I though exactly the same thing!

Further more, you will have to download manually the D3dx9_.....dll file in order to run it!

Just type it under google and download from main site Happy Sinning!

Justin S.

hopefully when the 1.1 forge tools are released (I don't mean galaxy and particle forge either) the developer exe will be accompanied by the correct dll, or just not require it.  I've been to some dll sites that aren't safe places to download before.

Forge Tools 1.1 is out now, and nope, no dlls, just the bare exe.

Oufff..lucky I kept my downloaded Dll

Thank you for posting about the developer.exe, ive done all my little mods in notepad, and haven't tried the tools yet, but its nice to know now where it goes and that the dll is still needed to get it to run.    THanks!!

Take care,

-Teal

NOOOOO!!!!!!  I download  the d3dx9_32.dll now it telling me that XINPUT1_3.dll was not found why for all thats sinful is this not working!!!!!

edit:  My bad, i thought it was convertdata.exe, sorry.

-Teal

The developer executable needs to be run from the same place as the normal Sins of a Solar Empire.exe. It expects and needs the same resources to be present in the same place

The old Developer.exe for 1.05 doesnt seem to read the new files. Perhaps it is the format. Will there be a new Developer.exe for 1.1 or perhaps i am not doing something the way i am supposed to?

Sorry to bother,

-Teal

Yeah the old one shouldn't work, too much changed. Is the new one not included in the 1.1 mod pack? Will have to wait for it if it isn't.

i feal so stupid i put the Developer.exe and the .dll in the wrong sins folder

any way why do the tools not come with the .dll????

Because the dlls come with the game

It comes with d3dx9_36.dll which does not run the Developer.exe you need the d3dx9_32.dll to run it this may be am over site but the .dll that is need to run it does not come with it.

what exactly does developer.exe do? or what is it used for?

It allows you to change some settings ingame, spawn ships/buildings on the fly, and it picks up changed files without needing to restart the game.

Some people swear by it, but it's a double edged sword - file changes beyond basic values can easily screw it up. It also bugs you with irrelevant code warnings here and there

*BOWS BEFORE DEVELLOPER.EXE!!!!

I LOVE YOU

Thank you for makking the codding of my first abilities a walk through the park!!

Justin S.

Like I said, sometimes you get warnings that have nothing to do with anything of yours. That one comes from the Sins code itself.

Isn't there a skip all button? And that's why I don't use the dev exe much. Other than spawning units and auto-updating files it has no advantages over the regular. And those are pretty minor advantages in most cases

Dev.exe is usually used by modders to find problems.  "Skip" is great, "skip all" doesn't always work, and "Break" seems "Broken" -doesn't seem to do much.  Mostly dev.exe picks up errors in what you edit, which is commonly: GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef, Gameplay.constants, all entity files, new meshes, buffs, abilities, etc...; anything you edit wrong.

Dev.exe won't always tell you what ability generates an error, so introduce new/modded abilities, buffes, etc... in increments so you have the opportunity to go through a smaller number of files than a larger amount.  It throws many strange errors that seem inherently SINS and have nothing to do with what you've done.  Star/Clad has sadly chosen to remain completely silent and given no indepth write-up.  Be sure to check the txt files in the DEBUG folder -near where your mods install; they might help you fix problems.

Pretty sure break breaks any loop that you may be in that caused the error. At least that's what it means in C++ which is what I think the game's coded in (tired and can't be asked to check). So if you keep getting the same error endlessly (and I mean not because an entire set of emitters is bad and it's throwing an error message at each one, but it's really in an infinite loop), that should get you out.

It's really good for tweaking things, but there are a lot of limitations, some of which are because the game needs to be streamlined. I'd love a dev exe option to load the whole damned thing into ram even if a race isn't playing or no entity uses a model at that time, but I understand why it's not there. It makes understanding model errors a bit easier, and that's what I use it for most of the time.

Yup, that's basically what I meant in a less fancy way. Tweaking stuff it's good for because you can spawn whatever you're tweaking on the fly or have it pick up changes instantly. But trying to write something like a new ability on the fly with the dev exe running will probably cause more headaches than it's worth. In that sense, the developer exe has no advantages to the regular executable.