Peculiar Planets Version 0.5. - Finally Here!

[Lord_Vader]

I present...

PECULIAR PLANETS VERSION 0.5. :D

Finally, it's here. The beta... or rather alpha... of Peculiar Planets, adding in tons of content, including 10 new alien races, some friendly, some not so friendly, new spaceships, weapons, events, etc. etc. This is just the beginning. Within a week or two, Version 0.6. - which will add much more content and fix or try and fix any bugs that crop up - will be released.

Just download the attachment. It's a .zip file, so extract it into your Weird Worlds folder and you're off! I'm sure anyone still on these forums knows how to install a mod by now. :p

All comments are more than welcome. A modmaker loves lots of feedback and discussion; tactical advice for combating the new alien races, questions, constructive criticism, suggestions for new content for Version 0.6., ego boosts and praise.. Anything you can think of. :D

Enjoy the mod, and may your adventures by particularly peculiar!

[clomaka]

and the villiagers rejoice!

[Lord_Vader]

and the villiagers rejoice!

I'm going to wait 30 minutes before pestering you over what you think... :p

For all your patience regarding this mod, I myself am quite the opposite. I will be expecting a rundown of your very first playthrough. :D

About the wait: I should have known better than to plan the mod's release so close to my brother's birthday. :doh:

[clomaka]

i'm actually at work, so i can't play much but here's some quick feedback:

cool races:) i like the new muktian and trans'luvian ships. there's also some pretty funny names.

I know this is still in progress, so i won't bother w. things like ships w. no outlines in the targeting display, but i noticed two things: i can't see the nebulas on the map:( and the comet hose seems overpowered (and it causes slowdowns sometimes. maybe reduce the range and/or number of shots?

awesome job, though; you put in tons of work.

[Lord_Vader]

Thanks for the feedback. :D

The nebulae actually are visible, I was just trying to make them a little harder to navigate; they're a faint blue.

And yeah, the silo's are coming in later.

As for the comet hose, well only one race (the Aspians) have them, and the Aspians are THE most powerful race in the game (the Aspian Devastator beats the Kawangi)... and rare. The comet hose is just a mass driver with different coloring and point-defense capability, so I don't think that's the cause of any slow frame rate.

[Lord_Vader]

Oops, looks like an experimental unfinished weapon slipped through... :doh:

The nogen Comet Hose used by the Aspians - much deadlier - doesn't cause any jamming, but this other one does.

I've updated the attachment, so that's fixed now.

[meKanicalj3sus]

So far so great!! ..love the new look! i'm finding it super hard on 'medium enemy stength' awesome. Even the Garthans r kickin' my butt, only 30min in tho.. :cheers:

more feedbck l8r :rock:

[Lord_Vader]

So far so great!! ..love the new look! i'm finding it super hard on 'medium enemy stength' awesome. Even the Garthans r kickin' my butt, only 30min in tho.. :cheers:

more feedbck l8r :rock:

Thanks! :D I personally thought Weird Worlds' background didn't quite give that sense of lonely, strange adventures in the depths of space that SAIS did, so I made the dominating colors black and blue.

Yeah, the enemies are pumped up a bit, mostly thanks to their new vessels. The Garthan Destroyers are blitzkrieg rammers, and Heavy Carriers are just plain mean.

[The Box]

Okay, some quick thoughts:

I'm liking the new colour palette - it does make the game a lot creepier/lonelier. The new races are all quite interesting and powerful. Some good new items too. However, it took me a while to figure out what represented nebulas on the starmap, and even now I'm still a bit unsure. It does make it harder to navigate as you mentioned, which is both good and bad. I suppose I'll have to get used to it (and hey, it means the nebular extent calculator is useful now).

Also, I experienced a crash to desktop when I arrived at a star, just after hearing the 'star is occupied' sound. Might be a problem with one of the new races?

Anyway, I'm enjoying it so far...

[Lord_Vader]

Okay, some quick thoughts:

I'm liking the new colour palette - it does make the game a lot creepier/lonelier. The new races are all quite interesting and powerful. Some good new items too. However, it took me a while to figure out what represented nebulas on the starmap, and even now I'm still a bit unsure. It does make it harder to navigate as you mentioned, which is both good and bad. I suppose I'll have to get used to it (and hey, it means the nebular extent calculator is useful now).

Also, I experienced a crash to desktop when I arrived at a star, just after hearing the 'star is occupied' sound. Might be a problem with one of the new races?

Anyway, I'm enjoying it so far...

Thanks. :D

Yeah, making the Nebula Extent Calculator have some use was one of the reasons I made the nebulae harder to see. Also, in space travel, without sensors, things like nebula extent calculators, navigating nebulae would be difficult.

As for the crash, it sometimes happens when you arrive at a star, occupied or not occupied. I'm tracking it down. ;)

[meKanicalj3sus]

Wow just discovered that ‘fighter bay’ drones are controllable!! By far the best implemented use of that system I’ve seen.. Excellent Garthan & Mutikan ‘heavy carriers’. New race models look great especially the ‘Trans’luvians’ & the ‘Redation’ heavy weapon rocks!

Getting that crash now & then.. I think the only races I haven’t come across are the ‘Tchorak & ‘Musthar’ after bout’ 10 large map games ;) (only got back to Hope twice with a measly 18-19000 score lol) no slowdown here also.. ‘Super impressive overall!!

[sgqwonkian]

Sounds good! I hope to fit in a few games today, and add to your feedback soon.

I can easily imagine how something based on the mass driver can slow the game down. My "microparticulate duster" in Drives'R'Us sometimes has that problem.

As for the crashes, this link might be helpful for figuring out what's causing them:
http://weirdworldsmods.wikidot.com/symptom-crashes-during-game
That covers most of the things I know can cause a crash, along with symptoms and solutions. If it turns out it's not one of the causes listed (or linked to from) there, please feel welcome to add your eventual solution to the wiki. (Password is "shrapnel and eel")

[Black_Bear]

Great!!!

[sgqwonkian]

Just a heads up -

There may be a problem with the Zorg Fighter Bay. I got it, and it failed to launch any fighters at all when I was fighting the Tchorak. Then I died, so I couldn't really test it again.

I had the Aspian Fighter Bay in the very next game, though, and it worked fine, so I don't think the problem was user error on my end.

I glanced at your code, and didn't see anything immediately wrong with it. As near as I can tell, it should be working. Don't know if it's worth extensive debugging that this time, but we might want to keep an eye open to see if it happens again.

[Alphasite]

Just a heads up -

There may be a problem with the Zorg Fighter Bay. I got it, and it failed to launch any fighters at all when I was fighting the Tchorak. Then I died, so I couldn't really test it again.


I had the Zorg fighter bay and had the same problem. I was running from the CLI and had hundreds of these lines:

ERROR: launchfighter: unknown race Zorg

That might help track down the problem.

[Lord_Vader]

Wow just discovered that ‘fighter bay’ drones are controllable!! By far the best implemented use of that system I’ve seen.. Excellent Garthan & Mutikan ‘heavy carriers’. New race models look great especially the ‘Trans’luvians’ & the ‘Redation’ heavy weapon rocks!

Getting that crash now & then.. I think the only races I haven’t come across are the ‘Tchorak & ‘Musthar’ after bout’ 10 large map games ;) (only got back to Hope twice with a measly 18-19000 score lol) no slowdown here also.. ‘Super impressive overall!!

Thanks! :D The Heavy Carriers definitely give the Garthans some more punch, but then again, if you have the Military Battleship then those fighters can come in real handy.

The Redation weapon packs a punch but is very easy to dodge, even for a slow frigate.

Watch out for the Tchorak Volcano Home. ;)

Sounds good! I hope to fit in a few games today, and add to your feedback soon.

I can easily imagine how something based on the mass driver can slow the game down. My "microparticulate duster" in Drives'R'Us sometimes has that problem.

As for the crashes, this link might be helpful for figuring out what's causing them:
http://weirdworldsmods.wikidot.com/symptom-crashes-during-game
That covers most of the things I know can cause a crash, along with symptoms and solutions. If it turns out it's not one of the causes listed (or linked to from) there, please feel welcome to add your eventual solution to the wiki. (Password is "shrapnel and eel")

The comet hose works fine, it was a modified experimental weapon (using many more mass driver particles and adding in missile characteristics), now removed, which was causing the problems.

As for the crash, I've been looking for the reason for a few months now. It seems to be quest-related.

Great!!!

:D

Just a heads up -

There may be a problem with the Zorg Fighter Bay. I got it, and it failed to launch any fighters at all when I was fighting the Tchorak. Then I died, so I couldn't really test it again.

I had the Aspian Fighter Bay in the very next game, though, and it worked fine, so I don't think the problem was user error on my end.

I glanced at your code, and didn't see anything immediately wrong with it. As near as I can tell, it should be working. Don't know if it's worth extensive debugging that this time, but we might want to keep an eye open to see if it happens again.

Just a heads up -

There may be a problem with the Zorg Fighter Bay. I got it, and it failed to launch any fighters at all when I was fighting the Tchorak. Then I died, so I couldn't really test it again.


I had the Zorg fighter bay and had the same problem. I was running from the CLI and had hundreds of these lines:

ERROR: launchfighter: unknown race Zorg

That might help track down the problem.

Hmmm, I'll look into it. There may be some small unnoticeable error somewhere, like a typo or something.

The Aspian fighters are really good for draining your enemies' HP. They die easily but their comet hoses are positively lethal.

Thanks for all your feedback, guys! :D

[sgqwonkian]

As for the crash, I've been looking for the reason for a few months now. It seems to be quest-related.

Sounds like a GFXP problem. Double-check the GFXP line of every page of all your quests. Did you make any custom planets or stars? They can also have problems with GFXP. Or, if the quest generates a specific item, it could be the GFXP line of that item. I swear that line is the cause of 90% of all crashes.


P.S.: My earlier post's link to the wiki may have been to a too-specific page now that I think about it. Might be better to start at http://weirdworldsmods.wikidot.com/bugs instead, and just follow links as you manage to rule things out.

[sgqwonkian]

I had the Zorg fighter bay and had the same problem. I was running from the CLI and had hundreds of these lines:

ERROR: launchfighter: unknown race Zorg

That might help track down the problem.

Hmmm, I'll look into it. There may be some small unnoticeable error somewhere, like a typo or something.


I wonder if it's case sensitive. Perhaps just changing "Zorg" to "zorg" inside the fb_ file will fix it.

[Alphasite]

Just a heads up -

There may be a problem with the Zorg Fighter Bay. I got it, and it failed to launch any fighters at all when I was fighting the Tchorak. Then I died, so I couldn't really test it again.


I had the Zorg fighter bay and had the same problem. I was running from the CLI and had hundreds of these lines:

ERROR: launchfighter: unknown race Zorg

That might help track down the problem.

Hmmm, I'll look into it. There may be some small unnoticeable error somewhere, like a typo or something.

The Aspian fighters are really good for draining your enemies' HP. They die easily but their comet hoses are positively lethal.

Thanks for all your feedback, guys! :D

I found the problem. In the file fb_fighterbayzorg.ini there's an extra space after "Zorg" in the STR0 line. I took it out and now I get Zorg fighters.

[The Box]

The fickle formatting of Weird Worlds...

Well, I've played a few more games with the mod, and some of those enemies are armed to the teeth. Still enjoying it, but: should I be able to use the heat bubble shield and another shield at the same time? And there was something else minor, but I've forgotten it now.

Anyway, I'm off to kill some Aspians...

(almost left out the "p" there, which would have looked awfully racist)

[Lord_Vader]

Thanks Alphasite! I've fixed it for the next version.

Well, I've played a few more games with the mod, and some of those enemies are armed to the teeth. Still enjoying it, but: should I be able to use the heat bubble shield and another shield at the same time? And there was something else minor, but I've forgotten it now.

Anyway, I'm off to kill some Aspians...

(almost left out the "p" there, which would have looked awfully racist)

Thanks. :D No, the heat bubble shield shouldn't work with any other.

Good luck with the Aspians. If you come across an Aspian Devastator, run. :p

[Alphasite]

Are the Pandominii fighters supposed to be indestructible?

[Lord_Vader]

No, they're not... They're not indestructible, are they? :p

Anyway, good news, guys. Got two new races (Rohar and the Kitae)... in-universe, it's actually one race with differing philosophies. The Rohar right now have 4 ship classes, the Kitae 8, but I might be adding more.

I'm also working on implementing a further Aspian theme to the Sector, so as to make them the main threat. (Slave races of the Aspians, main quests, etc.) All for the upcoming Version 0.6! :D

[Alphasite]

Neither my ship nor the Zorg fighters could do any damage to them.

[Lord_Vader]

Neither my ship nor the Zorg fighters could do any damage to them.

Well they're certainly not indestructible on my system. ;)

Try the simulator.

[Alphasite]

Neither my ship nor the Zorg fighters could do any damage to them.

Well they're certainly not indestructible on my system. ;)

Try the simulator.

I'll give it a try there. I've been trying to run into them again and they either weren't around or I'd have run into the crash problem.

[Alphasite]

Neither my ship nor the Zorg fighters could do any damage to them.

Well they're certainly not indestructible on my system. ;)

Try the simulator.

I'll give it a try there. I've been trying to run into them again and they either weren't around or I'd have run into the crash problem.

Okay, they are indestructible in the simulator, too.

[Lord_Vader]

Odd. Well all I can say is they work perfectly normal on my system.

[Alphasite]

I tried all the different races in the simulator.

Can anyone else try the simulator and see?

[Alphasite]

I deleted and reloaded the mod and still have indestructible Pandominii fighters.

I'm running this on a Mac. Maybe there's some kind of bug there.

[sgqwonkian]

I just tested it in the simulator, and I'm also having the problem where the pandomini fighters are unkillable. I put 2 terran battleships and 3 zorg frigates against a single pandomini fighter. After 5 minutes, they'd failed to do any damage to the fighter. I also noticed that the fighter didn't stop shots. Projectiles and beams would pass right through it and continue on their course as if there's no ship there.

So it's not that he's immune to damage, he just can't be hit. Everything goes right through him like he isn't even there.

I glanced at the ship and race files, and found the problem. Inside pan_ftr.ini you have the following line:

MASK ships\pan_ftr.png

That line should read "MASK ships/pan_ftr.png" instead. Looks like you got your slash and backslash confused.

I changed that line of the file to what it should be, relaunched and ran the exact same battle in the simulator again. This time, it took my flotilla about 5 seconds to kill the fighter.

[meKanicalj3sus]

..weird. no probs with the Padominii here. Zorg frigate easily beat 2 of em' :rolleyes:

[Alphasite]

I just tested it in the simulator, and I'm also having the problem where the pandomini fighters are unkillable. I put 2 terran battleships and 3 zorg frigates against a single pandomini fighter. After 5 minutes, they'd failed to do any damage to the fighter. I also noticed that the fighter didn't stop shots. Projectiles and beams would pass right through it and continue on their course as if there's no ship there.

So it's not that he's immune to damage, he just can't be hit. Everything goes right through him like he isn't even there.

I glanced at the ship and race files, and found the problem. Inside pan_ftr.ini you have the following line:

MASK ships\pan_ftr.png

That line should read "MASK ships/pan_ftr.png" instead. Looks like you got your slash and backslash confused.

I changed that line of the file to what it should be, relaunched and ran the exact same battle in the simulator again. This time, it took my flotilla about 5 seconds to kill the fighter.

Are you running on Windows or OS X?

[sgqwonkian]

Mac OS X

[Alphasite]

Mac OS X

I am as well.

[Lord_Vader]

Alright, so it seems the problem is that Windows works fine with the slash/backslash mix-up, but Mac doesn't...

Well, another thing to fix in Version 0.6. ;)

Anyone have any specific ideas for new races or ships? I'll happily add them to 0.6.

[sgqwonkian]

I'm curious if other the issues I'm having with ship masks and alpha channels are showing up on your computer. Many of the vessels in your mod appear on my computer as big black boxes, and the pictures of the ships just fade in and out in those boxes. Off the top of my head, I'd say at least half of the new ships in your mod don't display correctly.


I didn't previously report it because it's version 0.5 of a work in progress. I'd assumed you were aware of the problems with their graphics, and only released it with the flaws because we were all so darned impatient. :) I didn't want to complain, because I didn't want to discourage or annoy you.

But now that I know one of the problems isn't showing up on your system, it makes me wonder about the others. Are people running this on PC seeing the same graphics problems I am?

[Lord_Vader]

Nope, all the ships display perfectly correctly over here at least. ;)

I wouldn't have released a mod that incomplete. :p

[ExplorerBob]

I, as a Mac user, have the same problems as described by sqqwonkian.

Aside from that, the mod seems to be pretty much alright. I am concerned with the focus on the Aspians, but that's just my personal preference in mod development.

[Alphasite]

I'm curious if other the issues I'm having with ship masks and alpha channels are showing up on your computer. Many of the vessels in your mod appear on my computer as big black boxes, and the pictures of the ships just fade in and out in those boxes. Off the top of my head, I'd say at least half of the new ships in your mod don't display correctly.


I didn't previously report it because it's version 0.5 of a work in progress. I'd assumed you were aware of the problems with their graphics, and only released it with the flaws because we were all so darned impatient. :) I didn't want to complain, because I didn't want to discourage or annoy you.

But now that I know one of the problems isn't showing up on your system, it makes me wonder about the others. Are people running this on PC seeing the same graphics problems I am?

I'm seeing the same thing.

[Lorewin]

Thanks for the mod - enjoying it a lot :D Couple of minor changes I've made - the Garthan Derelict didn't seem to to give me the ally (the popup came up, but it didn't give me a ship).

Fixed by adding after:

SCOR 200 exploring

These lines:

ALLY garthan 7
UNPR 0

Also, I removed the line:

FLAG damocles

from gar_old.ini (not certain if this was required, but I was seeing some strange behaviour in combat after retreating everything but the Antique - it would lose all onboard systems and appear as "No data", meaning I had to quit the game).

Also experiment.ini has a minor typo - has msc/experiment.jpg in it (instead of misc/experiment.jpg).

I've had a couple of the crashes on reaching a planet, but can't see a pattern. I will say that of the shipsale quests I've only ever seen the Garthan variant come up - not sure if that's expected?

Thanks again, I'm looking forward to seeing 0.6 and beyond :)

[meKanicalj3sus]

@ Lorewin i so agree..

Can't wait for 0.6 Vader.. more weapons please :D can i have my 'Nova Cannon back & maybe a player usable 'Redation heay weapon :fight: :fire: :rock:

[chabex]

Is it a game or mod limitation if I launch fighters and I destroy all visible enemies the figters stop- but when a cloaked ship appears my fighters would not move and attack?

[Khuratokh]

This is one of the many "features" of WW. Enemy fighters will automatically lock on to a new enemy. Your own must be ordered seperately, very annoying if you've got 6-8 fighters onscreen. This is something inherent to the game mechanics and will happen in every mod, not just this one.

[Zythee]

This is a great mod Vader, thanks! I have to say, those new destroyers look awfully familier... :)

It does crash occasionally - Have you had a chance to update with the fixes that were mentioned a few years ago in this thread?