37 replies to this topic

[Chih]

Are you sure you uploaded the correct file? It doesnt seem to work for me - I managed to get the other guy's GFFA to work but this one doesnt seem to work...How do I install it?Sorry to be a nuisance.

That's why I uploaded a cut down version of Darth Stalins GFFA. Since DS GFFA was basically too heavy to be run on any machines. If DS optimizes it or improves on my cutdown version of his GFFA, then it should become fun and playable. If you read through the thread you should get an idea why DS GFFA wont run well on any machines, it's basically EAWs limitations getting in the way. You should be able to run DS GFFA, it just takes 10-15 minutes to load it, and has very low fps and frequent crashes (as DS stated in first post).

Edited by Chih, 21 June 2012 - 03:21 AM.

[Darth Stalin]

Well, have you changed the file name? It should be renamed into GALAXY_FAR_FAR_AWAY.XML - cut the "add-on name".
And yes, the campaign loads rather long, but... not as long as 15 minutes, anyway.

If DS optimizes it or improves on my cutdown version of his GFFA, then it should become fun and playable

Chih, I looked into your "trimmed" version of my file and it looks pretty nice - I think I'll add Pirates on some planets, but maybe not on all of them; for example I think that Hoth or Dagobah should have NO forces at all - these were remote, desolate planets, with only wildlife (Dagobah) or even semblances of life (Hoth)...
And also pirate forces will be rather "not-too-heavy" on most planets, with exceptions being the "most independent worlds" - like Nal Hutta and Nar Shaddaa, as well as "shipyard worlds" - Rendili, Sullust, Fondor etc.

Edited by Darth Stalin, 21 June 2012 - 05:41 AM.

[Chih]

Chih, I looked into your "trimmed" version of my file and it looks pretty nice - I think I'll add Pirates on some planets, but maybe not on all of them; for example I think that Hoth or Dagobah should have NO forces at all - these were remote, desolate planets, with only wildlife (Dagobah) or even semblances of life (Hoth)...
And also pirate forces will be rather "not-too-heavy" on most planets, with exceptions being the "most independent worlds" - like Nal Hutta and Nar Shaddaa, as well as "shipyard worlds" - Rendili, Sullust, Fondor etc.

Sounds good! Just keep a very low pirate unit variety and the campaign should be fine.

I recommend giving more planets to the Empire and Rebels as well. Especially planets that canonically belonged to either faction

[Darth Stalin]

I recommend giving more planets to the Empire and Rebels as well. Especially planets that canonically belonged to either faction

Yep, I know, but I have also bear in mind that my "version" of GFFA will start just at the end of Clone Wars, so some planets will not be "canonically owned".. however, maybe some of them will be...
Like, for example, the "Imperial Outer Rim Complex" - The Maw (research), Danuta (mines and research, maybe with General Rom Mohc), Kessel (mines) and Honoghr (only 2 heroes: Khabarakh and Rukh, with no other Imperial installations).

The "empty" planets will almost certainly be: Hoth, Dagobah, Yavin IV, Korriban.

[Chih]

I recommend giving more planets to the Empire and Rebels as well. Especially planets that canonically belonged to either faction

Yep, I know, but I have also bear in mind that my "version" of GFFA will start just at the end of Clone Wars, so some planets will not be "canonically owned".. however, maybe some of them will be...
Like, for example, the "Imperial Outer Rim Complex" - The Maw (research), Danuta (mines and research, maybe with General Rom Mohc), Kessel (mines) and Honoghr (only 2 heroes: Khabarakh and Rukh, with no other Imperial installations).

The "empty" planets will almost certainly be: Hoth, Dagobah, Yavin IV, Korriban.

Looking forward to trying out your campaign when it is done

Will you change anything else than the GFFA or just leave it at that? At the moment, my submod changes complements of all Imperial/Rebel ships to start at 2 BBY (TIE-Fighters, Z95t's etc.), some ships given hangars (eg. Reef Home), ground bases are very expensive for both the Empire and the Alliance, space bases are expensive for the Empire due to the Empire having a great economy, and I'm playing around with the ground garrisons as well at the moment

[Darth Stalin]

No, I will change only the GFFA campaign file. No messing around with other things - due to my lack of time even such a change requires about a weekend to be done...

[Chih]

No, I will change only the GFFA campaign file. No messing around with other things - due to my lack of time even such a change requires about a weekend to be done...

Yeah, I have a lack of time as well. But I've been editing files on free time and don't really rush it. I initially had my GFFA done from scratch in 5 days I think. I've since modified it further, and balanced it. Since I wanted an accurate representation, I had around 50 ISD's for the Empire as well as several VSD's as starting units. But turned out it gave the Empire a too easy time with the pirates. I'm rather happy with the current representation, I basically gave the Empire several level 4 shipyards on canon planets that had them, meaning the Ai builds a nice amount of ISD's, so when playing as Rebels it still feels like the Empire has a lot of powerful capitals at their disposal. Anyhow, when I am done with my changes and release, if there's anything you like feel free to grab it

[mrazek666]

No, I will change only the GFFA campaign file. No messing around with other things - due to my lack of time even such a change requires about a weekend to be done...

Yeah, I have a lack of time as well. But I've been editing files on free time and don't really rush it. I initially had my GFFA done from scratch in 5 days I think. I've since modified it further, and balanced it. Since I wanted an accurate representation, I had around 50 ISD's for the Empire as well as several VSD's as starting units. But turned out it gave the Empire a too easy time with the pirates. I'm rather happy with the current representation, I basically gave the Empire several level 4 shipyards on canon planets that had them, meaning the Ai builds a nice amount of ISD's, so when playing as Rebels it still feels like the Empire has a lot of powerful capitals at their disposal. Anyhow, when I am done with my changes and release, if there's anything you like feel free to grab it

Definetely looking forward to it and thank you good sir!

[mrazek666]

Hey Darth Stalin any progress with your sweet looking campaign?I have just wiped out the rebel scum from the galaxy far far away and I am not too sure whether to start a new campaign or wait for your release...

[Darth Stalin]

At least a week or two - now I have lots of my job-work to do (half a dozen actions to be started as well as full stack of other legal and judicial works, including some nice contracts on real estates...) and I have completely no time to work with it, though I've made a framework of it - I know what planets I want and how will they look like - I hope to get quite nice space for the AI opponent to expand and thus nice area of fighting the "real" enemy (I mean Rebels/Empire, not the "independent" pirates).

[Darth Stalin]

Hey, guys!
Unfortunately the real-life work consumed more of my tme than I'd predicted... but now I'm gonna slowly be back into business.

So far optimizing with heroes' planets of origin and made a list of planets for each faction... with at least some planets completely "empty" due to canonically quite insignificant forces there.

However, I have one trouble:
I wanted to include Corporate Sector Authority as a "fourth" faction in GFFA campaign and copied appropriate lines of code from Core Worlds campaign (the only one where the CSA is as a faction, though on-playable). But... the game crashed-to-desktop during initial start (even before the initial start screen).

So, can the reason be that there are other files related to CSA that are conected only with Core Worlds campaign and "adding" CSA into GFFA requires more work than jst placing "starting planet" etc?

[Darth Stalin]

The only limit on planets and trade routes that I've run into is the character limit of the XML buffer, which is some number shy of 4096 (header and/or footer data presumably takes up some characters). If you hit the limit, the game will crash on load at the splash screen. If that happens, the first thing to do is eliminate the whitespace characters, including carriage returns.

_{What are the “whitespace characters” and “carriage returns”?
My question is: can the commas be removed without causing trouble to the campaign file?
Well, I’ve tried the campaign with 217 planets and trade routes from all 6 campaigns, i.e. GFFA, Core Worlds, Mid Rim, Outer rim, Skyhook, Shadow hand and Thrawn... and the game crashed while loading (on splash screen).
I’ve copied Planets and Trade routes from XML file to word document to see the number of characters, which is 8794 including spaces... and also commas after each line of planet and trade route (7291 without spaces).
What is even more strange, is that the campaign file that Chich has trimmed, has 5887 characters including spaces and commas (4830 without spaces).
Can anyone explain, what’s wrong?}

Edited by Darth Stalin, 12 August 2012 - 07:02 PM.

[Darth Stalin]

Hey, it seems that I found the correct number of trade routes that Gould not Cash my „huge campaign” – and allow having 217 planets.
However, as I thought previously on having the CSA as a “third party”, I also thought if it would be possible to… “reshape” the Core Worlds Campaign to fit the “GFFA” size.
Of what I saw inside the Core Worlds campaign, I thought that there should be done the following changes… and the sections of code should look as follows:

<Campaign Name="Sandbox_Core_Worlds_R">

<Campaign_Set> Sandbox_Galaxy_Far_Far_Away </Campaign_Set>
<Sort_Order>1</Sort_Order>

<Text_ID> TEXT_CAMPAIGN_GALAXY_FAR_FAR_AWAY </Text_ID>
<Description_Text> TEXT_CAMPAIGN_GALAXY_FAR_FAR_AWAY_DESCRIPTION </Description_Text>
<Camera_Shift_X> 40.0 </Camera_Shift_X>
<Camera_Shift_Y> 0.0 </Camera_Shift_Y>
<Camera_Distance> 600.0 </Camera_Distance>
<Home_Location> Corporate, Rendili </Home_Location>
<Home_Location> Empire, Coruscant </Home_Location>
<Home_Location> Rebel, Mon_Calamari </Home_Location>

<Starting_Active_Player> Rebel </Starting_Active_Player>

<Rebel_Story_Name>Story_Plots_Sandbox_Galaxy_Far_Far_Away_R.xml</Rebel_Story_Name>
<Empire_Story_Name>Story_Plots_Sandbox_Galaxy_Far_Far_Away_E_AI.xml</Empire_Story_Name>

<AI_Player_Control> Corporate, AI_Player_None </AI_Player_Control>
<AI_Player_Control> Empire, AI_Player_Empire </AI_Player_Control>
<AI_Player_Control> Pirates, AI_Player_None </AI_Player_Control>

<Markup_Filename>Corporate, DefaultGalacticHints </Markup_Filename>
<Markup_Filename>Empire, DefaultGalacticHints </Markup_Filename>
<Markup_Filename>Pirates, DefaultGalacticHints </Markup_Filename>
<Markup_Filename>Rebel, DefaultGalacticHints </Markup_Filename>

<Supports_Custom_Settings>True</Supports_Custom_Settings>
<Min_Custom_Starting_Credits>185000</Min_Custom_Starting_Credits>
<Max_Custom_Starting_Credits>1339000</Max_Custom_Starting_Credits>
<Show_Completed_Tab>True</Show_Completed_Tab>

[of course changed also in similar way for Imperial player]
…and then it would be also enough to increase the number of planets and trade routes as well as adding forces to these planets.
Do you think that would be enough? (except that the CSA would have the “AI module” acting as described for Core Worlds, while other sides will be set for GFFA…)?

[Darth Stalin]

Okay, I've tested that - but such a change does not work. The Sandboxes etc. must be left as "Core Worlds", though it is possible to add more planets and trade routes as well as heroes... however, I'm not sure if the "campaign sandboxes" have any important meaning for the course of the campaign.
Thus maybe I'll first finish the "typical" GFFA campaign, and maybe later I'll re-make the Core Worlds, to have CSA troops as separate power in the galaxy.

[Darth Stalin]

Okay, now it seems that most of the work is done - the campaign seem completed and ready to play.
I had to cut-away lots of unit types (like different levels of pirates/smugglers etc. on "pirate" planets", or most of corvette-class ships for both Rebels and Empire) from starting forces; but due to the fact, that Rebels and Empire have each some 50 planets (Empire 56, Rebels 63), with total of about 80 planets of different "pirate" factions (with "subfactions" as 12 "CSA" planets with ships specified to fit their production abilities and Espo garrisons, and 6 "Hutt Space" planets, which are the only planets with Hutt civilians etc., yet with very potent fleets), the pirate garrisons, as well as "opponent" starting forces were numerically increased. Pirates were given full compliment of starbases and ground bases on every planet, as well as full contingent of 10 units per each planet.
There are also 19 planets with no garrison, as these were either almost empty wildernesses or balls of rock/ice/sand with only temporary outposts or with so insignificant military forces that it would be useless to give them any - thus the player (or AI) can have a chance to capture something without using force.
But, as I watched the campaign file to grow up and up, I've decided to make the file first in "Empire only version" - it means that the part for "Rebel human player" has only planets for Empire and Rebels, without Pirates, and all planets have only space station and heroes, without any forces - in fact in this version of file the player can play ONLY as the EMPIRE.
I'm gonna to make a "mirror" version of this file, to be playable as REBEL player only (with similar method - preparing forces for Rebel play, with Empire part of file being cut away).
Thus the complete "EMPIRE" file has about 645 kB and seems to be fairly handleable for players' machines.

Now I'm gonna to try this out and see, how it's going.

EDIT:
after some trials the file got trimmed once more - by some 100 kB, with complete removal of Lwhekk and its trade route as well as making two Imperial planets empty (as too unimportant for the Empire).

Edited by Darth Stalin, 31 August 2012 - 09:54 PM.

[Darth Stalin]

Well, after some more tests I had to further cut down units of both Empire and Rebels, as well as pirates. It seems to go quite well, anyway...

[Ghostrider]

It takes a while setting campaigns up doesn't it!

I've got the whole range to update for V1.3....

[Darth Stalin]

Indeed that is!

After I fnish it, I'll try to implement these changes into "Core Worlds campaign" and see, what happens - how does the CSA behave in such "changed" environment