Beginner in need of a professional opinion

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/376221

No, the game is moddable at various levels of complexity from simple stat changes to making almost entirely new game. Start small have goal oriented tasks that you are working towards and can be completed. It's easy to get frustrated if there aren't any successes to go with the failures.

Hmm... It's not so much that I'm pumping out stuff. I just don't mind sharing what I've done as it may spark an idea with someone else. Most of the mini-mods or other ponderings I've done are to serve my fallen mod and usually get incorporated in some way or another.

I'm not the only experienced person in these forums too. There are actually quite a few experienced developers with ranging experiences from software development to graphics or 3d design, etc. Also quite a few inspiring young people with various backgrounds.

Also, it's important to note I spent six months researching and playing with the 3d modeling side of Sins before I decided to make a mod.

Reverse engineering some of the mods is the approach I took to start breaking this down. A good text compare utility is a must for this. I of course recommend Eclipse, but there are plenty of others.

Ya, took six months for me. I had never modeled or modded a game before deciding to jump in here after seeing what other people had done.

Read the weebly link Ryat provided, then read it again. Then try it and read it again to see what you did wrong.

I like tools. Look up Harpo's tools like the manifest maker. The less you hand edit the less headache's you'll have.

Hmm, troubleshooting and debugging are acquired skills. Sounds like you may have some experience in that regard. I've had to rebuild parts of my mod from scratch re-adding in things until the problem was found.

Possibly. If your not really interested in creating whatever it is, the amount of work may not match up to the payoff.

Only you can decide this one...

Yup. I've been working on my planets for about 9 months and they aren't done yet. Heck they only exist on a semi-finished form in the SOGE (Star Wars mod) beta. They are awesome but they are a pain to work with. It will take time, you will loose interest, you will get stuck, but if you keep coming back to it it can get done.

Bug fixing will be something you will likely have some trouble with at first. Though with all the fancy tools out there, and the ability for Sins to display errors (ShowError in user.setting), it won't be too hard to fix 'em. Are you going to get pissed off and quit soon? Sure, if you take it all in at once. Start with small steps before making a big leap.

if you really want to know from someone who has been making a mod for a couple months now........yes it looks daunting but really isn't it is time consuming but worth it........and yes start small edit a couple entity files and get used to the lay out........editing over 140 isn't very fun when don all at once a mistake i made!!!!........making models doesn't take long to learn a while to master but is very fun......if you cpu can use the editor mine cant right now........bug hunting is the fun part as you can see all the work put together in my opinion and you will sometimes see some very funny things while doing so for example a ship that has  -24794834578 for its weapon damage!!!!!!!!(still dont know how i did that) but yes take small steps and learn slowly more enjoyable.......also i would wait for rebellion if you want to as that is a standalone game with alot of new things so it make it more enjoyable when you get good at it!!!!!

Thanks to Ryat for that link.  Cant believe I missed it.

It seems daunting now but I think my first order of business will be to change the TEC light frigate to one of my own design which encompasses a little bit of everything.  I declare the first texture shall be something stupid from 4chan!

Thanks for the opinions and youre all probably right, start off small.  Once I have something that isnt embarrassingly simple I will post again for additional advice.

And seriously, negative damage?  At least I have some fun to look forward to.

yea it is fun but my cpu not being able to use soft-image is really annoying as i cant do anything........ so i am beta testing for the apocalypse mod team right now

ok, I succesfuly imported models into XSI from sketchup and it looks the same.  I created a UV thing and applied a bland gray texture to it somehow, got the basics of null weapon and particle points and stuff, exported to dotXSI format, got the freaking mesh compiler to spit out a file with more than 0 polygons, and started work on entity files.

Id say it was a good days worth of learning when you have to grind it up into little digestable pieces and start from nothing but now Im stuck............................and frustration is setting in.

I basically made my mod folder in the right place for diplomacy, put a slightly modified version of FrigatePsiLight.entity in the GameInfo folder, and then copied the damn manifest file from the main diplomacy folder but every time I try to load it up the game hangs.  All I changed was the shield HP on the frigate which shouldn't have catastrophic effects like this.  Something is wrong with the entity file and I dont know what.

I know I am missing something REALLY stupid in the setup of my manifest file but I cant figure out what.  Hell, I cant find any damn place on the internet that tells me what I should be doing in this regard and I have spent the past hour looking at tutorials

so im going to sleep on it and maybe it will look different tomorrow

Its probably a wrong Capitalization or slight misspell.

Those issues are soooooooo

annoying.

Post up your entity file and let us look.

I originally changed the FrigatePsiLight.entity file, put it in the GameInfo folder under my mod directory, and loaded my mod with no changes.  Then I realized I probably missed the manifest file.

At first I had a manifest file for my mod that contained only the file I changed listed in the manifest(result == minidump;) but upon closer inspection of other mods like distant stars I realized they contained both new mod files and original game files in the manifest.  Also, if the game did just look for the one file I changed and load that up instead then how would all these total conversions Ive seen even work in the first place?

Correct me if Im wrong but you need a copy of the normal manifest file for whatever version of sins you are running and you add onto that the extra files you create for ships, structures, and whatever encompasses your mod.  I currently have the manifest file from the diplomacy folder under Program Files and my install directory copied into my mod directory and only one the file I changed in the GameInfo subfolder since I am not adding anything to the game, just adding a few thousand HP to the advent light frigate; this causes the game to hang and go hide in the (NOT RESPONDING) closet.

After reviewing the tutorials a little better I believe I must copy the entirety of game assets into my mod folder in order to make it work; Ive read this was the case with the original game.  This also seems stupid because Ive seen much smaller mods that just change a few things which arent hundreds of megabytes in size.  Distant Stars was a huge mod that changed quite a few things and maybe the original files they changed are what I was seeing in their manifest.

I have read that entrenchment and diplomacy only look for what has changed in your mod compared to the main game and go looking for files in your mod directory first which seems smarter than the old method but that just makes me really confused as to what I need to do in order to make the damn thing work in the first place.

My two courses of action are to:

1) Go review my original method of only having the things I changed in the manifest file and check for the misspellings you suggested

2) Copy EVERYTHING from the normal game into my mod directory which is probably not the way it works at all anymore.

Im tired and feel like Im chasing my tail here so I will wait till the morning to sort it out.

1 yes

2 no

Don't worry, have had similar issues myself. The manifest file hates "entiy" folders I have found.

You need to understand how the expansions load mods and game files. It starts at the highest stacked mod loading all the files in there. If this contains an entity.manifest this is the one used by the game and must contain all the entities that will be used.

The game then checks any lower mods for files not loaded from the first mod. If there is an entity.manifest in this mod it will not be used. Its already loaded.

Then if the mod is for diplomacy it checks the programfiles\stardock\Sins\Diplomacy directory for any files not loaded. Then checks programfiles\stardock\Sins\Entrenchment for any files not loaded by the mods or diplomacy expansion. Finally checking the original sins files for any files that the game needs but were not loaded yet.

The Entrenchment and Diplomacy expansions are basically mods placed in the root directory. Hope this helps a bit.

Edit: After reading your last post again I should state that modding an existing file does not require changing the manifest and the entity.manifest will not be needed in the mod. 

If you added another ship entity then you would need to copy the entity manifest from the reference files to the mods root directory and add your new entity to the list and update the count.

Edit 2: Sketchup to XSI and Is your mod directory correct?

never type in String Ib either i sat there for hours trying to figure out what i did wrong now i see why people who sit and look through lines of files for errors are a good thing

Weird, I'm informed immediately if something is spelled wrong or has the wrong case

Having showerrors TRUE is nice to have on.

It's actually my editor which only a precious few seemed to have figured out

I may have to look at that if I ever get time.

Thanks for the insight on how things work.  That helps me a ton

I used the same tutorial you linked for sketchup to XSI.  The main reason is that I could immediately figure out everything on sketchup and xsi was like rubbing a cheese grater over my face with about a billion options that seem to do nothing.  I want to get a simple mod working so I can actually see if this method works though and I can see my models in the game. 

Tried just modifying a core game file like a frigate and changing the HP and the reference to a new mesh file I made with no effect in the game after loading my mod.  Today it just hangs up on me when I try to enable that mod folder with the one stupid file changed and no manifest file in the mod.  Even an unmodified file copied from the forge tools reference data section put in my mod/GameInfo directory makes it hang.  My guess is that the forge tools are not up to date because they dont seem to have been updated in a long time so Im going to convertdata from my install directory and try that.  I used reference data because Im lazy.

My mod directory is correct.  Ive been installing them for a long time and have a decent feel for where stuff should go.  I can get all the mods Ive downloaded to load up correctly.

Clearly I have no idea what Im doing.

Forge tools should remove the reference files. Even though it clearly states they are for an older version of Sins a lot of people have had this issue.

Download the reference files from Harpo's thread or the weebly site.

The Link Ryat first gave you would have worked too!

I actually did just that to the same effect.  It hangs even with the original sins 1.191 reference file from the weebly site.  They were the same size files btw.  Im going to download the diplomacy ones and trying again.

You guys respond really fast!

Still hangs!

Screw this

Sorry I keep bumping this stupid thread.  Ill be a quiet noob from now on.  Probably going to reinstall since no other mod seems to work anymore either.

no worries about bumping, we will help you sort it out. If you have the patience we will stick with you.

Do not modify the base game in program files. If you did you could reinstall or verify install with impulse.

What version of what expansion are you trying to mod? Forge tools reference files are out of date but also you can't use Diplomacy entities for vanilla or vice versa, they are slightly different.

Get Notepad++ or ZombiesRus van help you with Eclipse. Get used to comparing files.

Can you upload your files so we can look at them? Zip up the whole mod. PM me if you want to email.

On my latest attempt I was using Diplomacy entities for version 1.011 which Impulse says isthe latest version obtained here.  The game runs fine normally on diplomacy, entrenchment, and vanilla.

Eclipse is a bit daunting for me at the moment because my java skills are high school leftovers.  We didnt get much farther than for loops and system.Println("you are an idiot");  I am using Notepad++ at the moment

Im fairly convinced it just hates me at this point since everything I try causes a damn hangup on the game.

Here is the ONLY file inside my my mod directory/GameInfo  All I changed was shield HP from 450 to 900.  No manifest, nothing else at all.

FrigatePsiLight.entity

TXT
entityType "Frigate"
defaultAutoAttackRange "GravityWell"
defaultAutoAttackOn TRUE
prefersToFocusFire TRUE
autoJoinFleetDefault TRUE
canBomb FALSE
frigateRoleType "Light"
statCountType "FrigateLight"
mainViewIcon "MAINVIEWICON_FRIGATE_PSILIGHT"
picture "PICTURE_FRIGATE_PSILIGHT"
NameStringID "IDS_FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_NAME"
DescriptionStringID "IDS_FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_DESCRIPTION"
counterDescriptionStringID "IDS_COUNTERDESC_FRIGATE_LIGHT"
basePrice
    credits 250.000000
    metal 40.000000
    crystal 0.000000
slotCount 4.000000
BuildTime 22.000000
hasLevels FALSE
ExperiencePointsForDestroying 30.000000
MaxHullPoints 425.000000
MaxShieldPoints 900.000000
HullPointRestoreRate 1.000000
ShieldPointRestoreRate 1.000000
BaseArmorPoints 2.000000
maxMitigation 0.600000
Prerequisites
    NumResearchPrerequisites 0
numRandomDebrisLarge 0
numRandomDebrisSmall 5
numSpecificDebris 0
armorType "Medium"
hudIcon "HUDICON_FRIGATE_PSILIGHT"
smallHudIcon "HUDICONSMALL_FRIGATE_PSILIGHT"
infoCardIcon "INFOCARDICON_FRIGATE_PSILIGHT"
minZoomDistanceMult 2.000000
NumWeapons 1
Weapon
    WeaponType "Projectile"
    damageEnums
        AttackType "ANTIHEAVY"
        DamageAffectType "AFFECTS_SHIELDS_AND_HULL"
        DamageApplyType "BACKLOADED"
        DamageType "ENERGY"
        WeaponClassType "LASERPSI"
    DamagePerBank:FRONT 46.750000
    DamagePerBank:BACK 0.000000
    DamagePerBank:LEFT 0.000000
    DamagePerBank:RIGHT 0.000000
    Range 3500.000000
    PreBuffCooldownTime 5.500000
    CanFireAtFighter FALSE
    SynchronizedTargeting FALSE
    PointStaggerDelay 0.300000
    TravelSpeed 4000.000000
    Duration 0.000000
    WeaponEffects
        weaponType "Projectile"
        burstCount 6
        burstDelay 0.200000
        muzzleEffectName "Weapon_PsiCapitalLaserMedium_Muzzle"
        muzzleSoundMinRespawnTime 0.210000
        muzzleSounds
            soundCount 3
            sound "WEAPON_PSICAPITALPLASMAMEDIUM_MUZZLE"
            sound "WEAPON_PSICAPITALPLASMAMEDIUM_MUZZLE_ALT1"
            sound "WEAPON_PSICAPITALPLASMAMEDIUM_MUZZLE_ALT2"
        hitEffectName "Weapon_PsiCapitalLaserMedium_Hit"
        hitHullEffectSounds
            soundCount 1
            sound "WEAPONIMPACT_ENERGYMEDIUM_HITHULL"
        hitShieldsEffectSounds
            soundCount 1
            sound "WEAPONIMPACT_GENERICMEDIUM_HITSHIELDS"
        projectileTravelEffectName "Weapon_PsiCapitalLaserMedium_Travel"
m_weaponIndexForRange 0
hasWeaponLevels FALSE
mass 2000.000000
ShieldMeshName "Shield_FrigatePsiLight"
maxAccelerationLinear 200.000000
maxAccelerationStrafe 10.000000
maxDecelerationLinear 500.000000
maxAccelerationAngular 3.700000
maxDecelerationAngular 9.999996
maxSpeedLinear 825.000000
squadTypeEntityDef:0 ""
squadAntiMatterCost:0 0.000000
squadTypeEntityDef:1 ""
squadAntiMatterCost:1 0.000000
maxNumCommandPoints 0
NumSoundsFor:ONATTACKORDERISSUED 3
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONATTACKORDERISSUED_0"
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONATTACKORDERISSUED_1"
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONATTACKORDERISSUED_2"
NumSoundsFor:ONCREATION 1
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONCREATION"
NumSoundsFor:ONGENERALORDERISSUED 3
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONGENERALORDERISSUED_0"
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONGENERALORDERISSUED_1"
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONGENERALORDERISSUED_2"
NumSoundsFor:ONSELECTED 3
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONSELECTED_0"
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONSELECTED_1"
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONSELECTED_2"
NumSoundsFor:ONSTARTPHASEJUMP 1
SoundID "FRIGATE_PSILIGHT_ONSTARTPHASEJUMP_0"
MeshName "Frigate_PsiLight"
ExhaustParticleSystemName "Exhaust_FrigatePsiLight"
ExplosionName "Frigate1"
HyperspaceChargingSoundID "HYPERSPACE_CHARGEUP"
HyperspaceTravelSoundID "HYPERSPACE_TRAVEL"
EngineSoundID "ENGINE_PSICAPITALSHIP"
ability:0 "AbilityStealAntiMatter"
ability:1 "AbilityTransferAntiMatter"
ability:2 ""
ability:3 ""
MaxAntiMatter 200.000000
AntiMatterRestoreRate 0.000000
cargoType "Invalid"
maxCargoCapacity 0.000000
formationRank 1
minShadow 0.200000
maxShadow 1.400000

I think, if youre interested in modding, the best thing to do is choose your "specialisation"... i mean, you can build new models, create textures, play around with entities and create new abilities, weapons, effects and other stuff.... there is lot of different work to do, so i would choose what fits my bill the best  and either join some other modders or if you are adamant about creating your own mod, just convince some other people to help you... either way and that is basically whole point of what i am trying to say, you cannot create a mod alone (i am ofc talking about big total conversion mods with completely new models and entities, not some number changes in the existing entities), as it is helluva lot of work for one person, herculean task really. There may be people who did it around by themselves, but they are either exceptionally strongwilled or have too much of a spare time on their hands...

Eclipse does not require Java knowledge.

This is not a Diplomacy file, but is instead a Vanilla reference file. I can tell because the field typeCount is missing as can be seen in the Entity Definition tree.