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Another upload of Drake Technologies to Xelerus.

Drakian Legacy is finally back as promised, although not quite the same. Some items were either replaced or heavily changed. Some items that used to be Drake/Drakian were changed to different tech. One such item was a spore machine gun, which is now a biotech needler (acus celeri), and it uses the bioship's healer stat (normally used for armor repair) as ammo. Also, removed the Fu'ri stations because I do not think anyone wants to see a cheesy recolored station from Elysium (plus, I needed to cut stuff out to keep filesize low enough). Instead, added more Fu'ri artifacts that must be awakened to access their items. I suspect it may be too hard to get them normally.

As for Drake Technologies in part 1, one main new feature is the import of the Barrier Arc Projector, now updated. Instead of a fuzzy green particle shield, it now generates a 40 degrees arc of lightning. May be a bit overpowered. Also some bug fixes, such as clearing zapsats after a ship is suspended. Finally an illegal silly item (similar to Star Wars 3DV) to donate to the Sisters.

Note, while Drake Technologies (part 1) is a tdb file, Drakian Legacy (part 2) is in folder form. The reason is I could not compile Drakian Legacy into a tdb, and rather than wait at least a week trying to figure out how to compile mods that require more than Transcendence.tdb to compile, the mod is released as-is for anyone who wants to play now.

With that done, I will try to update the Star Castle mod next. Parts of it are broken in 1.9a, and I will try to fix.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Just a quick note that I found what is causing the bugs in the Star Castle mod, and I am working on an update to fix that. The Star Castle mod will be updated to 1.9a1, though I cannot say when it will be ready.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Since its last release nearly two-and-a-half years ago, Star Castle Arcade has been finally updated to 1.9 alpha and uploaded to Xelerus. This release fixes the killer bug that totally broke the Star Castle Arcade adventure by making all shots pass through everything harmlessly. But that is not all, the update includes new features too. Ships have been added to ship brokers in Human Space adventures (and Vault of the Galaxy). Also added are extensions for the Star Castle Arcade that act as gameplay additions.

New extensions exclusive to Star Castle Arcade:
* Deadly Rings: Playership normally bounces off the star castle's shield. With this, your ship dies instead!
* Hyperdrive: Adds a launcher-mounted device that teleports your ship to a random location. Works much like in the game Asteroids without the random self-destruct.
* Minefield: Adds stationary hazards that appear throughout the arena. Touching them is deadly, but they can also block your enemies.
* Powerups: The fun one that is self-explanatory - it adds powerups! New weapon, force fields, or destroy the Star Castle. Did I mention new weapons?
* Rebounding Walls: Instead of flying to the other side of the screen, your ship will rebound off the outer walls like in Omega Race. Makes the game hard; do not play without Hyperdrive.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Star Castle Arcade to Xelerus. This fixes some bugs that slipped through yesterday's release. Notably, powerups no longer permanently passthrough your ship after an attempt to visit Ship's Interior. Also removed some junk types, so a restart is necessary for games in Human Space.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies to Xelerus. This is mostly a bunch of minor changes in Drake Technologies in Human Space. A restart is required. Drakian Legacy is now in a .tdb file.

I updated the Zapsat class, and now the beamer satellites behave like Drake's guided beamers in that they do not reach maximum distance instant. Speaking of beamers, the ion beamers were lowered a level.

I removed the damage reduction from the shielded armor. Turns out that the damage reduction made it stronger than Novaya armor plus repairer. Without it, Drake shielded armor should be close to Novaya in effectiveness, instead of being too strong. Also, I added super-heavy versions called "walled" armor for bigger ships that can use heavy armor well. Walled armor has double the hit points normal shielded armor have.

I removed the beam launchers because they caused too much burst damage that can practically instakill the playership with equal level defenses, if used against him. Basically, at least as bad as Molotok with Dragonfly in Rigel in recent releases of Transcendence. Also, the beams looks too wimpy to justify WMD, so rather than trying to make them work, they were simply removed.

Similarly, the Brik ammoless launchers like the spike launcher have their bursts cut short. Now they fire a short burst once every four seconds to limit the burst damage. However, since the old spike launcher is fun to use, it stays... as a higher level weapon locked behind Tinkers.

With all of that said, I will probably change more soon once George releases the next update to Transcendence. For now, I uploaded what I did so far.

One more note: I am not entirely happy with the beamers. Their damage per hit seems low, or rather, it can become too low if I need to halve the damage per hit for a possible conversion to 60 fps Transcendence. One thing I noticed while playing with the beamers is low tier damage can be very strong at high levels. For example, a "balanced" level 7 laser that has very high DPS can tear through enemies about as well as balanced higher-tiered damage weapon (with lower DPS) of the same level. Armor may resist laser more, but hull does not, and low-tier like lasers with very high damage can rip through hull despite low or no WMD. I am considering raising beamer level to a level similar to Flensers or maybe higher.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies and Star Castle Arcade to Xelerus.

Drake Technologies has few minor tweaks, namely making the Parr beamer a military item and disabled some of the more advanced beamers (by setting frequency to notRandom).

Star Castle Arcade gets two more extensions for arcade mode, Shield and Zapper. Both are launcher-mounted devices like Hyperdrive, and they are mutually exclusive with each other. They are probably more appropriate as different ship classes, but that detail will be deferred for later. As for the new toys, Shield raises a barrier and makes the ship invulnerable for a second, once every four to five seconds. Zapper destroys mines and damages castle walls, and it can be used up to three times plus one per new life.

Zapper is probably the most powerful of the launcher-mounted devices, stronger than Shield or Hyperdrive. Shield is probably on par with Hyperdrive.

Also, some of the Star Castle Arcade files are in tdb format.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Reuploaded Drake Technologies again to fix a bug that made leveling up items at Dock Services free.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Drake Technologies and Drakian Legacy together have exceeded the 5 MB limit at Xelerus. Thus they were split into separate mods. For their next release, I have reuploaded Drake Technologies by itself then uploaded Drakian Legacy as a new mod to Xelerus.

Drakian Legacy has been unchanged since the last few releases. It is merely separated from Drake Technologies.

As for Drake Technologies, the drone bays have been expanded into a more important feature. The two that were in had their maximum levels capped lower, and four more bays were added. Two of the new bays are simply higher level upgrades with military attribute. The remaining two bays are a third style of drones that emphasize quantity over quality. In addition to drones, there is a new device that takes the shield slot, the drone command device. What this does is 1) add fleet commands to drones so they can be commanded like a fleet, and 2) launch more drones if the device level equals or exceeds bay level. Yes, the bays and the command device can level up at Dock Services. The idea is to enable a carrier playstyle, sort of like the Constellation in Corporate Command. Unfortunately, I did not add a carrier playership with all of these new toys, even though it really deserves one. You will need to cheat to get the items or find them the hard way.

Also a few other minor balance or culling changes.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Just a quick note that I am working on updates to the Drake Technologies and Star Castle Arcade mods to fix bugs that appeared in 1.9 beta 1, namely that the consumables (such as level up ROM) do not work in Drake Technologies, and the Shield extension in Star Castle Arcade is busted.

I will also experiment with more balance changes for Drake Technologies, and maybe add, remove, or change some items too.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Some possible bad news for Drake Technologies - the ZapSats may be on the chopping block and removed (or disabled) in the next update, due to performance reasons.

In my latest test game, I entered a system (in the Ungoverned Territories) that had many objects with many asteroid belts and many enemy stations, some of which are Zoanthrope raider hordes, which is a good stress test. Unfortunately, zapsats did not hold up very well. The beamer sats were terrible at slowing down my computer when they fired. The classic energy bolt ones were fine... if my playership was the only one using them. After spawning about eight autons with zapsats each, the slowdown returned.

I rewrote some of the code in an attempt to optimize and speed the game up. There were multiple sysFindObject calls and the like. The good news was I managed to remove some excess calls and optimize the code a bit. The bad news is it is probably not enough. While the slowdown was not as bad, it is still noticeable; and this was only one object using zapsats - my ship.

If I end up removing or disabling the zapsats, what I may try to do as a replacement is experiment with more drones, only more defensive ones that patrol or orbit around the mothership instead of seek-and-destroy enemies.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

After more testing, there is no way I can optimize ZapSats fast enough for large systems. They need to make too many sysFindObject... checks to find enemies, aim, and avoid friendly fire. Sad to say that I will remove them from the game on the next update. Rather, I will disable them and put the resources in an outtakes file. Not all satellite items are affected, just the ones that shoot beams and the like.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
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 That’s unfortunate to hear, I always enjoyed using ZapSats whenever I ran across them. Now I’m tempted to see if I can make my own version of them…
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My mods on Xelerus: Click here!

Of all the things I’ve lost in life, I miss my mind the least. (I’m having a lot more fun without it!)
PM
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

AssumedPseudonym wrote:
Mon Apr 27, 2020 2:31 pm
 That’s unfortunate to hear, I always enjoyed using ZapSats whenever I ran across them. Now I’m tempted to see if I can make my own version of them…
If I could have some that did not slowdown the game whenever I jumped to a highly congested system with a bunch of asteroids and enemies, whenever my ship uses them or add several NPCs with them (like Oracle autons), I would. I really like the zapsats, and the main reason I added the shielded/walled armor is to support the zapsat style. At least the armor will still be useful for the drone bay and command combo.

I did not have a problem with them before (but I mostly playtested in Eridani), but now after playing through the game a bit with the mod, it is clear that the zapsats as implemented failed the stress test. Maybe I can keep a few as Tinker recipes, since only the player having some of less trigger-happy ones is fine (no continuous beamers, though), but having them widely available that NPCs can use them too will cause problems.

I am experimenting with a replacement: energy rings. They are simply trails of light or fire that orbit the ship and block beams and damage enemy ships (but not harm friendly NPCs). After some trial-and-error, they are functional, and they look promising. I need to clean them up and balance them. Since they are very flashy, they will probably end up as Imagik items instead of Drake. I could probably make a Thraddash-style afterburner as an engine device if I wanted.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if I can optimize the ZapSats further if I can make them noFriendlyFire, since I managed to do that with my new energy ring shield? If so, I can cut down the checks even more. Not sure yet if it will be enough.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

I managed to get the noFriendlyFire to work on the zapsats, which let me cut out some more find object calls for collision detection. The result... the slowdown is not as bad. Maybe enough to be acceptable. A side-effect of the changes at the moment is sats no longer check if obstacles are in the way and will shoot at planets and dead rocks of a target is hiding behind that. For now, dumber sats are okay if it means the game is not slowed down too much.

I think I will keep some of the zapsat items instead of removing all of them. Type As are fine, as long as there are not too many ships with them. Type Bs are the slowest and will probably be removed. Type Cs are a bit too advanced, and maybe either get tweaked and/or some removed. (Or I may keep one for testing purposes.) Probably will remove the Oracle auton item so player cannot accumulate too many and slow the game down inadvertently.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
Fleet Admiral
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

I examined my zapsat code again and found two more sysFindObject calls, one to prevent planet camping and other to prevent the sats from firing when they are inside an inert object. I removed those and now the game does not slow down in big systems when I spawn several autons with sats.

The good news is I do not need to remove any sats or Oracle autons. The sats will be a bit more trigger-happy, and the player can camp in a planet while sats shoot at stuff, but I am okay with that if it means zapsats are playable in huge systems. (Plus, planet camping is less reliable than it used to be.) Also, all zapsat attacks need noFriendlyFire="true" to passthrough allies, which is necessary to avoid more sysFindObject calls. Again, I am fine with that.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
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