Star Trek Armada II - Requesting Modding Help & Crashing Err

posted on August 29th, 2010, 5:37 am

Star Trek Armada II - Requesting Modding Help & Crashing Errors Help – Thread 4

In this thread, I will be describing two different crashing errors. Each of the following threads in this part will continue with the other crashing errors in my Star Trek Armada II Mod. Each one will only list two crashing errors. The more important errors will appear in the first threads and then work their way up to the errors that I don’t think are as important but still are important in their own ways.

**********THE CRASHING ERRORS**********

1. There has been something aching me for a long time when it comes to making a race in Star Trek Armada II Playable or Non-Playable, namely the Non-Playable races. I have made Species 8472 Non-Playable but whenever I select their race to add units to a map, the game then crashes. Species 8472 isn’t modded because there aren’t many good mods for them (there just aren’t many people creating mods for them) and this means they are still as weak as they were in the Stock version of the game. I have a few mods for them that will add some ships and also changes their textures but compared to the other races, their additions is about 2-3 total, its just not enough to stand up to the other races already in the game and that I’ve added. Now that Species 8472 is set to Non-Playable, the game crashes as I stated when selecting their units for the maps in the Map Editor and I fear that they also might be causing some of the Campaign Missions to crash when they are part of the map. I guess what my question is: “Is how do I make a race Non-Playable by the human player and remove them from being in the selection menu for Instant Action but still make it possible for their units to be added to the map and to also not crash any of the campaign missions?” What I did to make them Non-Playable now was to make them set to -1 in their Race File and totally removed them from their Races.odf file. Could I by any chance give them a higher number that 13 (what I know is the total number of playable races you can have in the game), will they work then? Or does an ODF file like the one used for the Ferengi needed to be created?
The other races that I want to make non-playable are:
1) The Suliban
2) The Xindi
53) A few Races from the Delta Quadrant (not the Borg) combined into one race (Alliance) – “Delta.odf”

2. In my attempts to make many of the races in Star Trek Armada II act more like their counterparts in the TV series that many of us have watched, I have Increased Shield/HitPoint Values for the Borg, the Breen, and the Dominion, I increased their shield/hit point values and then all of a sudden the game has always crashed whenever these “stronger” ships are attacked or about to be destroyed.  How can I change this so that this is not the case? Does anyone also have any suggestions on what to increase these values to that will make all the ships of the mentioned races stronger (no matter what their class or function)? I was thinking about using the Shield/HitPoint Values for the Borg Tactical Fusion Cube for ever ship, but then that would still make the Tactical Fusion Cube (thus all other ships and stations) still weaker than the onscreen counterparts.

posted on August 29th, 2010, 6:24 am

All i can say on this one is I have never run into any problems increasing shield values or HP values on ships.  When messing around I have put some quite large numbers in just for laughs and things have worked fine.

posted on August 30th, 2010, 2:49 am

All i can say on this one is I have never run into any problems increasing shield values or HP values on ships.  When messing around I have put some quite large numbers in just for laughs and things have worked fine.

Where you by any chance messing around with Fleet Ops or regular Armada II? Also besides having Vanilla Ultimate installed, I do have the official patch installed too (the Patch Project hasn't been installed yet but is about to since its seems to perform alright on the backup file that I installed it into). The version of my game says 1.1 though. Is there any issues with that? Also maybe Vanilla Ultimate may have put a limit on the shield and HitPoint Values.

Is anyone here using Vanilla Ultimate or was part of the people (group) that created it?

posted on August 30th, 2010, 4:10 am

I've done some serious modding of A2 including both adding downloaded content and creation of my own content.  As I said, never had problems like you have had.

Usually its just been game failing to start because of typing errors in my ODFs or stupidly choosing hardpoints that don't exist for weapons.

posted on August 31st, 2010, 8:54 pm

I know that you have said that you have fooled around with the HitPoints/Shield Values of the ships and stations in your game and that you haven’t had any problems with them. What then could be the difference with your edits not causing a crash but mine do. I say this because these crashing errors weren’t happening until I edited the HitPoint/Shield Values for the Borg, Dominion and Breen ships and logically that seems it would have to be the case because nothing else has been changed with these ships because their weapons are all the same other than the fact all Borg, Dominion and Breen non-combat ships have been armed, this to shouldn’t cause a crash because many Klingon ships that aren’t for combat are armed, and some mods have even armed these type of ships.

posted on September 4th, 2010, 5:23 am

Can anyone please give me the highest Shield/Health HitPoint Values for the Borg, Dominion and Breen Ships if possible? I don't mean the stock game values for the Tactical Fusion Cube, what I mean is the highest possible values that can be used that shouldn't cause a crash so I can run a test on those ships and stations to see if its really the HP Values causing the crash or something else so that we can all narrow down the possible problem?

Attached are my edited Borg ODF Files with the Higher Shield/Health HitPoint Values ans also the weapons that they have and all my other edits to them. All Special Weapons and Weapons on these ships were only added to the ships after they were put into my game (mod) and were tested, they do work.

Attachments

Borg ODF Files Edited.zip

(53.63 KiB) Downloaded 261 times

posted on September 5th, 2010, 2:28 am

I don't know what any one really wants me to do. I know I have some circumstances that interfere with this mod project, namely the timeline, the submitted proposoal and how its all for my college class. If that wasn't the case, I'd be happy to start over. Alot of times I've been feeling like starting a modding team to help work on this mod and to test everything and workout the bugs together. I hope that could be possible.

posted on September 5th, 2010, 4:17 am

Well, I hate to say it, but I really think that Blade and Loki's advice will probably have to be heeded at some point. It may even save you trouble, even though it sounds horrible: starting over, putting one thing in at a time and then coming here or elsewhere with bug reports as they happen. As it is, you've got crashes occurring from many possible sources and you don't know how they are happening and sadly you aren't yet experienced enough to find them yourself. That is quite a recipe for at least a long postponement. It seems that it would be far easier for you just to start from the beginning and sludge your way through it 

posted on September 5th, 2010, 4:58 am

Well, I hate to say it, but I really think that Blade and Loki's advice will probably have to be heeded at some point. It may even save you trouble, even though it sounds horrible: starting over, putting one thing in at a time and then coming here or elsewhere with bug reports as they happen. As it is, you've got crashes occurring from many possible sources and you don't know how they are happening and sadly you aren't yet experienced enough to find them yourself. That is quite a recipe for at least a long postponement. It seems that it would be far easier for you just to start from the beginning and sludge your way through it 

First off, I do have exsperience in finding problems in my mod and actually solving them and fixing them perfectly. I can't take Blade and Loki's advice when it comes to starting over because what no one seems to get, there are stages to this class, and as the class progresses, those stages are meet. I can't go back because then I'm behind the whole class for the 2.5 years. I have to fix everything that is going on now or not do the project at all and take an "F" for the class and that is unexceptable exspecially when I'm paying money to take this class. That is a waste of money and I won't be doing it.  That is why I'm against starting over and I will not do it, its just impossible to do. I have invested to much to dorestart the mod and then the same problems happen at different points, the exact same problems,  Ican tell you from exsperience that it isn't my mod causing it or my computer because I've done the work on more than one computer, all have the same crashing errors.  Furthermore, if another modder named Toto can tell me that all the problems that my game is having is and are easy to fix and that he can easily fix them after the mod is complete means that anyone here should know how to help, but all I see is everyone telling me to start over when I Don't Have The Time To Do That anymore and to be honest the firt day of classes for the Fall Semester has begun and and there is no way that I'm starting over now because I've just found out that will all these crashing errors, I'm 3 - 3.5 months behind everyone, that is almost actually an entire semester in itself. There is no more time for the game of having to START OVER, this is a time for ACTION and it has to be completed. That may upset some people, but it is the God's Honest Truth.

This isn't the first game I've ever modded and I've done so for other games like Battlstations Midway, (I found ways to edit that but I reverted back to the original because it is far better than any modded version.). LEts jsut put it this way, I'm not new to modding but only Star Trek Armada II has had crashing errors that I can't solve.

posted on September 5th, 2010, 5:16 am

One other thing I like to add, I can tell that not many people to none at all have downloaded the files that I have ever added to any of my posts. So instead of telling me to start over, actually take alook at the information and everything else that I've posted to actually get the problems fixed instead of ignoring it and saying what you want to. Problems don't fix themselves and you're not going to know the full extent or even how easy they could be to fix without playing the mod (permissions be damned at this point, I'll e-mail the mod to anyone who will actually test it and stop repeating the same information that I've already said more than once that I can't do because I'm already behind schedule and all that advice is going to do is to make things FAR WORSE because I'll be even further behind schedule.

I've been trying to be nice about this but I see no one knows how to listen to reason or just want to ignore the truth and the facts that I'm reporting.

I will say this, I gave some of the mods that 'm using and another Armada II CD I had to one of my friends and he too is having the same errors and also at different points and he only has a 50 of the mods that I'm using and as I said, the results are the same, the same crashing errors and like with my game, they happen at different times, all random. For the record, he has no new races just mods for the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans and all the same problems.

I call that RANDOM since he's getting the exact same crashes, s These problems aren't unique and only happening to me, they are happening to others.

The only reason I gave him the mods and the game to mod was to prove that what you are saying about my mod having all these problems is false and that its not related to the other additions that I put into the game, it has nothing to do with the new races. Each crash is still happening from the one involving the Trading Stations and Cargo Ships to the warship.odf all the way to the one with Species 8472 through the Armada III Concept Species 8472 Mod. and the Destroy All Weapon.
What this means is that the problems are happening faster and are the same ones but in a started over version of the mod. So I know it is a waste of time for me to start over if my own friend is having the exact same problems. Finally, my friend Eric is a person who knows coding, is a game freak, plays almost every game and is good at them and he an his brother want to open up their own compant to design games, so guess what, this is right up his ally and if he's having the same problems in a clean install that is a started over version of my mod, what do you call that?

I call it that I know what I have been talking about and have been trying to tell you all here. I haven't been trying to be rude,(here or at Armada2Files, or any site in the Armada II Community) instead I've been telling the truth and the truth is that this is a repeating problem that always appears with this mod. 

posted on September 14th, 2010, 9:30 pm

This is for the increased Shield/Health HitPoints Values Crashing Error, some of these errors I actually think might be connected. For some of them taking Screenshots haven't worked out and the ones from the Patch Project 1.2.5 Patch sometimes miss the crash and get the desktop for some reason.

Attachments

[The extension has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

bugreport (5) Borg Crashing Error - The Cube here was targetted by the sphere's transphasic torpedo, when the cube should have exploded the game crashed instead..txt

(21.82 KiB) Downloaded 224 times