Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

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Osito
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Osito »

@Icemania: glad to see it works with your mod. I still don't know why it works with some mods and not others. I'm a bit burnt out with DW after completing this map, so I've turned to other things for a while.

@Tnarg: thanks for the positive feedback. As for how to make your own scenarios, I will try to outline the procedure. If anyone sees any glaring errors in what I've written below, or thinks any part of it should be clarified, please feel free to step in.

At the outset, I can't release a map “that others could set up with the races they choose.” Having said that, any of my maps can, in principle be used to set up your own scenario. But with the tools presently available, it is a pain to set up scenarios, and there are no shortcuts. However, you can certainly use my maps to set up your own scenarios - within certain limitations.

(1) Before anything else, you have to decide what theme you want to use with your scenario. They’re not interchangeable. If you create a scenario in one theme, it will not work in any other theme.

(2) If you're using the default theme, then it's relatively simple: you can just start my map 1 as a scenario. Just make sure you're in the default theme, then load map 1 as a scenario, and go into the game editor and delete all the events. You then have an almost blank canvas to start on your own scenario. It's not completely blank, because you still have a human empire on Earth. Although it's possible to remove the human empire from Earth, remember that you must have at least one empire in the game at all times and that empire must control at least one colony (at least for non-pirates). Also, even while in the game editor you can’t change the player empire. This is a flaw in the editor, in my opinion.

(3) If you're using the DW Extended universe theme, it's also simple. Just load map 3 as a scenario while in the 'extended' theme, and follow the same procedure as mentioned in point (2).

(4) If you're using a different theme it gets more complicated. First off, you have to load the theme you selected. Next you need to try to load one of my maps (doesn't matter which map you use, as far as I know). To do this, you have to create a custom game and try to load my map into your selected theme. It's important to do it this way, rather than to try to load my map as a scenario in your selected theme. In effect, you'll be following the instructions set out in my first post under the section, '1.1 Playing the map in your own customised game'. However, as noted in subsequent posts, it is possible that the game will crash when you try to load my map in your selected theme. If that happens, then you can't use my map in the theme. I don't know why the crash sometimes occurs with certain themes, and there's nothing I can do about it. As far as I can tell, this is working as designed, and I don't know whether Matrix will ever change things so that my map can be loaded in any theme. If you do manage to load the map into your selected theme, then you can now go to the game editor and set up your scenario. When the scenario is complete you just need to place the file in the '\maps' folder associated with your selected theme (create the '\maps' folder if it doesn't already exist), and you can then load the scenario from the game's main screen.

Here are a few additional tips on creating new scenarios:

(i) If you're creating your starting file by setting up a customised game, it's best to check no pirates and no alien empires and minimum independent races, during game set up. Otherwise, you'll have to delete them all when you're setting up the scenario the way you want it. By starting with no pirates or other races, you get nearer to starting with that all-important blank canvas. Also set 'space monsters' to zero, if you want to add all your own space monsters.

(ii) Your initial game file will most likely have your empire placed at a star system different from the one you want it at. This is because when starting a new customised game, there is no way to specify your initial system. So how the hell to you get your empire to the right place? Here is one way to do this:
- create a new empire of the race you want, and set them as 'playable'.
- add a colony for that empire at the planet(s)/moon(s) you want.
- save the game.
- place the save file in the '\maps' folder of the theme you're playing in (if it's not already there).
- load the save file as a scenario, selecting your newly created empire as the player empire.
- go into the planet editor and delete the initial empire (i.e., the one that you didn't want).
- you now have the map set up with one empire in the right place. You now have to create all the other empires you want and give them colonies where you want them. Unfortunately, there's no way to randomise what the empires are, or where they start. Actually, there is a way (which I'll explain), but it's a bit fiddly and not fully random.

(iii) Note that if you add a new empire to a map, and then give them a colony, that colony’s starting resources will be far worse than the starting resources the empire would normally get in a new game. Specifically, the starting resources are so bloody restricted that it's hard to get out of the first star system in a pre-warp start. If you've played my map 1 or 3 as a scenario, you should know exactly what I mean. The AI cannot cope with this. What this means is that if you create all the AI empires by adding empires in the editor, then giving them each a planet or moon, the AI will not be able to get those empires out of their starting systems. Ok, that's not quite correct: eventually many of them can, but it will take them 20-30 years of game time to do it, by which time your own empire will possess all the best planets in the galaxy. In other words it's easy mode. There is a fix for this, but - sigh! - it's yet another pain to implement. I'll discuss this in point (iv).

(iv) To create a new empire with a colony having enough resources for the AI to handle it, you need to use events to create your empires. So what you do is to set up ruins and an associated event at a planet. You have to use a sequence of events to create all the new empires you want: you have to specify the empire (race) to be created, and the planet/moon it's created at. You then create an explorer belonging to the player's (i.e. 'your') empire near to this planet. You then explore the planet and investigate the ruins, triggering the event. This will create all the empires you wanted. You can then save the game, place the save file in the '\maps' folder of the theme you're playing, and load the map as a scenario. Pick one of the races created by the event (NB in the editor, you must have set at least one of them as playable) as your own empire, start the game and go into the editor. At this time, you can now delete the original empire that was created when you first began the customised game - assuming you want to. Unfortunately, you're still not finished. See point (v).

(v) Ok, so point (iv) told you how to create empires with enough starting resources that the AI can be more effective than a puppy with an iPad, but you're still not done. Each of your empire’s colonies will probably have planetary populations of 10 billion, or more, and they'll have techs going into rank 3 or 4. They'll all have the Gerax hyperdrive, which isn't exactly pre-warp is it? And they'll probably have no leader. So you now have to go through every single empire and edit the planet population to the level you want, and edit the techs back to the level you want, and add any leaders you want. While doing all this you have to be careful not to unpause the game for more than a few moments, or the new empires will start building stuff!

(vi) Oh, I nearly forgot. You're still not done. Each of your empires will have 'explored' at least two of the nearby star systems. In order to set them as 'unexplored' you have to load the scenario and set the explored systems as 'unexplored'; you have to do this for every empire. Of course your home system is still fully explored (i.e. the resources are known). That's not quite a pre-warp start is it? Did you want the home system to be unexplored, i.e., not know where the resources are? To do that, you have to: create a new colony for the player empire, in a different system; remove the original colony; 'unexplore' the home system; add back the original colony; reset its population and any characters wanted; remove the colony you created in the other system; 'unexplore' the other system; rinse and repeat for every other empire, remembering that you need to start the scenario for each empire one after the other. Phew, if you're prepared to do all that, you must be dedicated.

(vii) I mentioned earlier that you could have random empires. This is possible by using events that randomly select an event. However, it's not terribly practical, as you can only have one random event happening, so to add, say, 15 empires, you'd have to have events at 15 separate planets or moons. And each of the created empires would start with a big tech advantage. So it's doable, but not very practical.

That's about all I can think of right now. If you've read this far, it's probably enough to put you off bothering with your own scenarios. You know, my overall feeling is that it's nice that DW is moddable, but it seems to me that the way it's been implemented is far more complicated than it needs to be - though, to be fair, there may be no simple way of doing it, given the path along which DW has evolved. It does now make me think that at this stage perhaps the best route is to start again on a DW2 rather than persevere with DW1. My other gripe is that the editor features are extremely poorly documented, in particular with respect to what is possible; at present, you find out what can and can't be done by trial and error.

Osito
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Icemania
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Icemania »

Are you getting any support from Erik and Elliot? It seems every mod needs their support due to the modding limitations. I hope you get the support you need.
ParagonExile
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by ParagonExile »

Yeah, it's killing me not being able to use this without really butchering my game
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Icemania
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Icemania »

Since this seemed to work with the AI Improvement Mod, I thought I'd use to create an Extreme Game of the Month "Rise of the Iceturi". I managed to edit the game and run for it a while. But when I saved and reloaded the game, it instantly crashed. A real pity as this map is awesome Osito.
Emp_Palpatine
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Emp_Palpatine »

So, now way to start in Sol in a custom game? I like to have longer research time, for instance...
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Osito
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Osito »

ORIGINAL: Emp_Palpatine
So, now way to start in Sol in a custom game? I like to have longer research time, for instance...

Unfortunately, you are correct. You can start the map in a custom game (at least in the default theme or the DW Extended Universe theme, and some others), but you will be highly unlikely to get a Sol start. You can't start the scenarios in a custom game. The only way, at present, to do what you want is to use the map to create your own scenario.

Osito
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Emp_Palpatine
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Emp_Palpatine »

So let's hope for some new modding features in a upcoming patch.

Fantastic work, by the way!
If I am courageous enough to do so, I'll try a sol start using a custom-made scenario (I play on moderate difficulty and very low tech speed).
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Tnarg
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Tnarg »

Osito, I have playing around with your extended version of your map trying to create a couple different kinds of scenarios. I spent the better part of my day trying to figure out how to do this via your instructions. I think I have it figured out...to a point, still a lot to learn and more trial and error. Mostly exploring all of the events and how to weave them together into an interesting story now.

One thing that I wanted to try and something you mentioned in your second post was to reduce hyperspace speed and range. So I'm trying Lurchi's Lower Speed and Range mod v2. The only thing that mod modifies is the research .txt and components .txt. So with these two files in the Extended theme, I go to launch a custom game, load your map(extended version) and check all of the regenerate boxes. Launch the game and I get the same error as reported in post 8. Any idea how components and research .txt files would effect your map?

If I can't get it to work, I can still work on my scenarios with out it, it would just be cool for immersion, and make the galaxy seem really large.

Thanks, and I have been playing your human revolution scenario on the side and am loving it. 128 years in and only in 18th place. Some of the Independant races have really pulled themselves together and now have decent 10 to 20 colony empires!
feygan
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by feygan »

ORIGINAL: Tnarg

Osito, I have playing around with your extended version of your map trying to create a couple different kinds of scenarios. I spent the better part of my day trying to figure out how to do this via your instructions. I think I have it figured out...to a point, still a lot to learn and more trial and error. Mostly exploring all of the events and how to weave them together into an interesting story now.

One thing that I wanted to try and something you mentioned in your second post was to reduce hyperspace speed and range. So I'm trying Lurchi's Lower Speed and Range mod v2. The only thing that mod modifies is the research .txt and components .txt. So with these two files in the Extended theme, I go to launch a custom game, load your map(extended version) and check all of the regenerate boxes. Launch the game and I get the same error as reported in post 8. Any idea how components and research .txt files would effect your map?

If I can't get it to work, I can still work on my scenarios with out it, it would just be cool for immersion, and make the galaxy seem really large.

Thanks, and I have been playing your human revolution scenario on the side and am loving it. 128 years in and only in 18th place. Some of the Independant races have really pulled themselves together and now have decent 10 to 20 colony empires!

Without properly checking the other mods files against this mod files (probably with something like winmerge etc), you have no way to tell if they are changing any other factors. Also the new mod files could be adding or calling for things this map does not have.

If you only want to slow down hyperspace drives then I would suggest your safest option be to do the changes yourself. Go into the components.txt and find then alter all hyperdrive speeds to suit your liking. I found for this map a start of 4100 for Gerax and 8300 for Torrent drives works nicely and prevents sudden attacks from halfway across the galaxy, you get a much more slow rolling war happen this way. Just be sure to also change the amounts in the researchs.txt for the amount they increase.

My personal opinion at this time is the state of DW modding is not very user friendly at all. I have got this map running with a combination of mods along with making my own changes to those to suit my game. However to start with I did try to just follow basic mod installation instructions and found every time there were errors. It would appear the only practical way to actually use mods at this time is to begin to understand what they are doing and how they work so you can spot differences and prevent errors. As it stands I think DW just is not feasable to really use mods from a player only standpoint unless you have lots of different mod folders and almost never use any combinations (other than the few modpacks that have been created).
Tnarg
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Tnarg »

Thank you feygan for your advice on making the changes in the components .txt and research .txt myself. Looking at these files it's pretty obvious in the components .txt; however, I can't make light of day on what needs to be changed in the research .txt. Would you be willing to provide an example. Thank you again.
Tnarg
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Tnarg »

Osito, where in the editor can I change the amount of starting resources for a created empire? When you say that when you create an empire in the editor and the races start with horrible beginning resources, are you talking about the 3 to 5 planetary resources that that particular planet starts with or the stockpiles of the many various resources necessary to start building your initial few ships and bases? Thanks.
feygan
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by feygan »

It is a matter of looking for the techs that relate to whatever component you are changing. In this case the hyperdrives and so in game you have techs that give you a new type of hyperdrive, and techs that offer an increase to that hyperdrive type. So taking the top end as an example you have I believe three tech stages as follows.

1.The tech that unlocks the Torrent drive (the name escapes me)
2.Hyperspace path slicing, this offers an increase to the Torrent drive stats
3.Unified hyperspace theory, this offer an additional increase in stats.

Now the Torrent drive itself has it's base stats determined in the components.txt, however if you look at the two tech listed above in research.txt you will see something like this.
PROJECT ;171, Unified HyperDrive Theory, 7, 16, 1, 10, 0, 0.0,
COMPONENT IMPROVEMENTS ;51, 7, XXXXXXXX, 105, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0,
PARENTS ;170, N

This shows how the tech will effect a given component in this case a hyperdrive, each number corresponds to various things such as the component type etc etc, all these numbers are explained at the top of the research.txt. In this case though XXXXXX represents what the new hyperspace speed will be after this tech. So if say change the torrent drive to move at 500 but forgot about this tech then you would suddenly find your torrent drive ships moving at 32000 upon research of this tech (I believe this is the default value).

This applies to each and every tech that has an effect on a hyperdrive and also includes changes to things like jump delay/energy use etc. So if you make a change to any component types you need to remember to make changes to the techs that will effect them later also. It is a bit of a headache due to the way the modding is laid out, you are basically defining 3 versions of the same component for each and every hyperdrive. Space empires 4 was like this and it's data files were a nightmare and tedious at best to edit, Space empires 5 went the route of having a single component entry and then having a line that told the game how each tech advance increased the component in percentage increments etc, it was a much better method and far quicker to edit without going into triplicate and more each time. Really do not understand why DW has used this method.

One final point is that even though these are all .txt files use something like notepad++ to do your working as it clears up any mess and makes the entire thing almost tolerable to look at for more than five minutes.
Tnarg
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Tnarg »

Feygan, thanks and bummer, you are right...headache! I'm going to stick with working on my scenarios for now. I'll delve into that torrent once I get a couple scenarios built.
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Osito
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Osito »

ORIGINAL: Tnarg

Osito, where in the editor can I change the amount of starting resources for a created empire? When you say that when you create an empire in the editor and the races start with horrible beginning resources, are you talking about the 3 to 5 planetary resources that that particular planet starts with or the stockpiles of the many various resources necessary to start building your initial few ships and bases? Thanks.

Simple answer: you can't. This is a major headache when trying to create scenarios.

There are essentially two options:

Option 1

1. Create a new empire in the game editor.
2. Give the new empire one or more colonies in the game editor.

This method will give each colony of the empire a small number of resources. The amount of resources is sufficient to do a pre-warp start from a single colony, if you are careful. However, the AI is not careful, and will gimp itself by using up all its resources.

Option 2

1. Create an event which spawns a new empire at a specific planet.
2. Trigger the event.

This method will create an empire with a colony which has (I believe) the same resources as an empire would get at the game start. However, the empire will also have explored at least two nearby star systems and will have a number of techs, probably including the Gerax. So you have to go to the editor and 'unexplore' the other systems, and take out the techs to put the empire back to pre-warp.

Neither of these options is ideal, but it's the best I can do.

**********************

Regarding slowing the warp speed, there is a relatively simple method, which is simply to amend the hyperdrive speeds of the various drives. For example, you might put the warp bubble generator speed down to 1000, the Gerax down to 2000, and so on. This would also affect range of course, but that would be a good thing. I haven't tested this to see how well it would work.

I believe that if you just amended the speed of the drives and their improvements in, for example, the 'Extended' theme, my scenarios should still work. However, I haven't tested it, and I can't guarantee it. I don't know what it is that prevents my map working with certain scenarios, and no one from Matrix seems to be ready to step in and provide an explanation.

Anyway, good luck!

Osito
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feygan
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by feygan »

Editing hyper speeds works really well with your map (though I am sure it will have the same effect on others too). I find you end up with far more coherent empire boarders. One of my problems with vanilla was how many empires would look like a dropped plate of spaghetti encompassing vast distances but never actually covering any area fully. This led to lots of pockets of empires that constantly infringed on each other and in turn allowed for sudden deep strikes with no warning.

In my last game using your map at the end of the tech tree my empire had covered some 50+ colonies, but this was all contained within a 3 sector range of Sol, almost all AI races were of a similar structure to this and it made wars so much more interesting. I simply could not just drop a fleet on a homeworld as it would of meant I would then have a world surrounded by both hostile culture and forces. This forces a much more natural warfare feel and also allows you to structure your defences with varying perimiter levels. My personal choice on speeds starts at 4100 for the Gerax and builds up to 8300 for the Torrent drives, I found this way you had speeds that don't force you to get bored watching a fleet crawl along, but also allow you time to react when you see a fleet approaching. Much more though it forces you to actually think how your defences are planned as you can no longer just leave an uber fleet to cover an entire sector as it simply cannot get everywhere fast enough.
Tnarg
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Tnarg »

Hello feygan would you be wiling to copy and paste your component and research modifications here so I could take a look at them, just the parts that you modified would be great! Thanks.
feygan
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by feygan »

ORIGINAL: Tnarg

Hello feygan would you be wiling to copy and paste your component and research modifications here so I could take a look at them, just the parts that you modified would be great! Thanks.

Rather than fill up this thread with things off topic here is a zip of the component and research techs I am using in my current game. Simply copy and pasting I feel would do an diservice to anyone using mods at this time as I said before the way DW modding works means you really need to learn some of how it works otherwise you will no doubt run into errors and crashes. It simply is not a user friendly modding game at this time.
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Tnarg
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Tnarg »

Feygan, much appreciated! I am a visual learner and this helped me understand all of those intricate weavings much more.

Osito, your map and help in trying to understand the galaxy editor is also greatly appreciated. I am working on a scenario based off your map and am discovering a ton of very cool tools in the form of events that can create a very immersive story driven scenario. When I finish this one, I plan on making more!

Thanks again!
ParagonExile
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by ParagonExile »

Osito, I finally figured out what ruined the mod on my game, just so you know; I was using the GEM planets and stars, and when they were removed the game worked as it should. I must say, your map is incredible!
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RE: Galactic Star Map (Version 1.0)

Post by Premislaus »

Great map! I’m very grateful to you .
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