Help with mod that disbales mines & cannons

from Sins Forums

I'm kind of new to modding but I wanted to make a small mod that just removes mines and super cannons (novalith, deliverance, kostura). I'm playing with Distant Stars b4 and diplomacy 1.31, so I created a new mod, copied the playerxxx.entity from the Distant Stars mod folder into my new mod folder, used the dev tool to turn them into text, then removed the technologies for mines and cannons and adjusted the numbers. Then when I run Sins I load my new mod on the top of the list, followed by Distant Stars.

The game runs and I can play and all the technologies I want gone are gone from the research trees, but almost exactly 30 minutes into any match I play the game crashes and I get a mini-dump popup notice. I have no idea how to parse minidumps or debug anything, so I'm kind of at a loss about what's going on.

Any ideas?

modding
2,915 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

First idea is that the B4 release isn't 100% perfect.

Second, posting in the DS thread would be better since people like me who can really help you out, don't always check the forums for random posts.

Third, minidumps aren't going to help you out at all, you need to turn logging on and look at the log for that game and hope it recorded something worth looking into.

Fourth, pay close attention to the activities you are doing, if you're doing the exact same thing 30 minutes into every game and getting a crash, you may want to change things up a bit...  And of course, report it in the DS thread so that we can confirm the crashing behavior and correct it.

Fifth, simply removing the research from the list may not be good enough.  You should remove the items from the entity manifest as well, and make sure you get all of them.  Remember the Vasari has 2 mines.  One that comes with the mine layer, and a second type that is researched.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

No one but the Devs can read minidumps unfortunately. You can try running them in the developer.exe and see if you get any error messages, but with these kind of errors you usually don't get much.

I don't know why it would be crashing, though now that the AI can use superweapons it may require it to have them. If this is the case you might want to try putting them back in but try some of the following things to ensure no one can build them.

  • Give the mines/cannon research a prerequisite that doesn't exist (I.e. from another faction).
  • Try setting the resource build/research costs to 99999999.
  • Set the tactical slot cost of cannons to 99.
  • In the gameplay.constants file, in the playerAISharedDef section, change each BuildMines line to 0.

Again I'm just putting out a theory, I have no idea if it will work, but they maybe good alternatives to try.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

GoaFan77, I think you're right about the AI requiring super weapons. I got rid of the player entities (so all tech shows up again) and did as you suggested: set tactical req of cannons to 99 and set AI to build 0 mines. It worked! Just played a game with no AI minefields (although they still built mobile mines for advent carriers, just never deployed them) and no cannons.

Thanks for the help :)

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GDSR, reply 3
GoaFan77, I think you're right about the AI requiring super weapons. I got rid of the player entities (so all tech shows up again) and did as you suggested: set tactical req of cannons to 99 and set AI to build 0 mines. It worked! Just played a game with no AI minefields (although they still built mobile mines for advent carriers, just never deployed them) and no cannons.
End of GDSR's quote

For that one you might want to delete the mine layer squad from at least Advent carrier cruiser and perhaps the hangar. The AI has enough trouble as it is without making tons of useless carriers. ;)