This Sins of a Solar Empire modification brings the various Stargate franchises into the fold. Choose your race as the Tau'ri, Asurans, Goa'uld, Wraith, or Asgard. Build your empire, research technology, command mighty warships, engage in diplomacy, make allies and trade. The Invasion has begun...

Post news Report RSS Stargate Invasion ❅ December Change Log ❅

The Goa'uld ships have received numerous fixes, refurbishments and addition. In this change-log you can read about these improvements and see images of the ships before and after as well as other fixes and improvements in various mod sections. We've also included a breakdown of the new texturing system which shows the various Substance Painter filters that have been updated/created since the last changelog and their effect on a test texture.

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Stargate Invasion ❅ December Change Log ❅

Presentation2


Intro

Beware, the Goa’uld are on their way! We’ve been working on the Goa'uld pretty aggressively and addressing other general tasks. In this changelog you can also find out about some of the technical texturing work that has been going on since the last changelog.

Download

SGI is available as a GitHub repository. These files are public and can be downloaded or synced freely, even without a GitHub account. Our experience with GitHub has been very positive so far.

In general, please refrain from attempting to push changes to the server. Instead, contact us on Discord to let us know what you have in mind.

Link: GitHub Repository

Link: Instructions for installing / syncing the mod via GitHub

Current Faction Release Order & Roles

The order may change but we'll keep this section updated if it does.

Playable:

  1. Tau'ri (Enabled)
  2. Asuran (Enabled)
  3. Goa'uld (Disabled - beta release February 10th 2018)
  4. Wraith (Disabled -release date to be determined)
  5. Asgard (Disabled -release date to be determined)

Not Playable:

  • Travellers
    • Multiple possible roles - Events, Neutral Planet Fleets, Outlaw Sectors Fleets
    • Currently under development - 5 ship designs so far including original Traveller ship from the show as a high detail model.
  • SG1 Replicators
    • Pirate Faction
    • Concurrent development with other factions starting sometime next year.
  • Ori
    • Planned for Events mainly but an entire faction could be designed and built eventually.
    • Release date to be determined.

Spotlight Videos

For anyone that wishes to post spotlight videos featuring SGI:

  • Please mention that this is a developer build and that not everything is as we intend it to be.
  • Since this is an incomplete mod, don't treat the spotlight video as a review. Presenting the work is fine but comments about what should have been included are obviously not since we may already have plans that we haven't stated. Once we are ready, we will let you all know that reviewing is in order.
  • Before making the video, download and install the mod again from our GitHub repository so that you are featuring the latest version (or fetch the latest updates if you are using the GitHub Desktop app).

Thanks for sticking to the above! Now for our change-log:

Goa’uld Faction

All Goa’uld ships that were already uploaded before the previous change log were scaled up slightly to improve the general feel of relative size between the factions.

Goa’uld ships and structures fixed or added to SGI:

  • Titans
    • Anubis
      • Normal Map fix - added alpha channel and converted through command tool to fix issues.

Before:

Anubis Before NormalMapFix

After:

Anubis After NormalMapFix

    • So'kar
      • Normal Map fix - added alpha channel and converted through command tool to fix issues.
      • Model was cleaned - lower triangle count by about 200, fixed some geometry issues.
      • Model size was corrected.
      • Hard Edges set - fixed shading.
      • TangentUVs created - fixed lighting.
      • XSI scene with hardpoints so we can easily edit these later if necessary.
      • Shield mesh created.
      • Minimum zoom distance set.

Before:

Before NormalMapFix

After:

After

  • Capitals
    • Shu'tak
      • Normal Map fix - added alpha channel and converted through command tool to fix issues.
      • Model was cleaned - lower triangle count by about 380, fixed geometry issues.
      • Model size was corrected.
      • Hard Edges set - fixed shading.
      • TangentUVs created - fixed lighting.
      • XSI scene with hardpoints so we can easily edit these later if necessary.
      • Shield mesh created.
      • Minimum zoom distance set.
      • Entity weapons adjusted to fit the new weapons setup.

Before:

Before

After:

After

    • Ha’tel
      • Model was cleaned - lower triangle count by over 700, fixed geometry issues.
      • Model size was corrected.
      • Hard Edges set - fixed shading.
      • TangentUVs created - fixed lighting.
      • XSI scene with hardpoints so we can easily edit these later if necessary.
      • Shield mesh created.
      • Minimum zoom distance set.
      • Entity weapons adjusted to fit the new weapons setup.

Before:

Before Rework

After:

After Rework1

    • Ha’tak
      • Model was cleaned - lower triangle count by over 700, fixed geometry issues.
      • Model size was corrected.
      • Hard Edges set - fixed shading.
      • TangentUVs created - fixed lighting.
      • XSI scene with hardpoints so we can easily edit these later if necessary.
      • Shield mesh created.
      • Minimum zoom distance set.
      • Entity weapons adjusted to fit the new weapons setup.

Before:

Before InGame

After:

After InGame

  • Cruisers
    • Isis
      • Rebuilt with new TextureUVs - ready for texturing in Painter
      • Model size was corrected.
      • Hard Edges set for shading.
      • TangentUVs created for lighting.
      • Shield mesh created.
      • Minimum zoom distance set.
      • Entity weapons removed - Envoy Class Cruiser.

Inside Substance Painter:

Isis SP

In Game:

Isis In game

    • Jantak
      • Normal Map fix - added alpha channel and converted through command tool to fix issues.
      • Will be textured and reqorked further at a later point.

Before:

Jantak Before NormalMapFix

After:

Jantak After NormalMapFix

Strings

  • Numerous strings have been added / updated for the Goa'uld along with updating strings for other races.

Balancing

For Asuran & Human Factions:

  • Updates to all ships in overall balance effort

For Asuran Faction:

  • Decreased the resources upkeep cost for Asurans
  • Increased the supply cost for the Anteus

Various Fixes

  • Normal Map fix for Asuran Aurora Hero (original model and textures provided to us by Stargate Space Conflict) - added alpha channel and converted through command tool to fix issues.

Before:

Before

After:

After 1

  • Normal Map fix for Human Capital Factory - added alpha channel and converted through command tool to fix issues.
  • Normal Map fix for Human Hermes Envoy Cruiser - added alpha channel and converted through command tool to fix issues.
  • Fixed the smuggling specialization icon that was missing
  • Fixed the visibility of the relationship stat that was difficult to see
  • Fixed various hud icons that were not visible
  • Fixed the Asuran envoy so that it provides relationship bonus
  • Fixed the Asuran pulse weapons that were described as lasers
  • Fixed bombing values for some ships that were missing them

UI / Skin

  • Player Setup - race selection screen updated to show all 5 races (on Goa’uld release)
  • Race Portraits - New race pictures, higher quality, all sizes (on Goa’uld release)
  • Crystals and Metal - Images for the resources have been updated to better reflect the color of Trinium Metal and Naquada Crystals.
  • New Shield Research Icons

Player Setup

Abilities & Research

New/Modified Abilities

  • Goa’uld - Anubis Titan: Superweapon Beam & Superweapon Discharge
  • Goa’uld - Sokar Titan: Planet Subjugation
  • Goa'uld Research - In development

We welcome suggestions for possible Artifacts or research based on Artifacts both for currently available and potential new ones. These Artifacts should have considerable quasi game changing benefits for at least one, or possibly two faction. Post your ideas in the comments section of this progress report and we will see if they can be incorporated into the new Exploration research sections.

Texturing & Modeling

See Goa’uld section above

Workflow & Pipeline (Technical!)

Since the last changelog, work has continued on the new texturing system. This section remains quite technical but should be interesting none the less:).

Here is a basic breakdown and overview of the new texturing system that was created for SGI. There have been many improvements and extensions since the last change-log. It isn't an actual ship, just a test object. However the texture setup may be used on something like the Asuran Destiny, with some further modifications.

First we separate the model into material masks. These are painted and can take any shape:

Material 1 Mask:

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition

Material 2 Mask:

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 1

These are converted into ColorID masks by the ColorID Filter in order to increase the total masked material count:

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 2

Once the ColorID masks are available, the Height Blend Filter can be applied to give different details to the various masked materials like in the image below. To increase the complexity of the texture, an additional plug-in was created that can blend up to 8 textures with various blending options and levels adjustments. The plug-in can also be applied on each of it's 8 texture inputs which allows us to magnify it's functionality. In theory, we could combine tens of textures or even hundreds to form just one of the 8 currently available masked materials. The Height Blend Filter can also use any information coming from height layers that are below the filter in the stack and will apply them as a base height:

FiltersSetup HeightBlending 01

Once the Height is available, a separate filter is used to generate Ambient Occlusion and Normals information from the Height so that generators above have something to work with:

FiltersSetup NormalsAmbientOccl

The next filter in the stack is the Material Base Blend Filter. This is where the base texture is created with the same 8 ColorID material masks. This filter is also able to use the magnification plug-in described above in order to increase the texture complexity with tens to hundreds of textures as inputs blended together to form the final look. Here's a very basic example with only a couple of textures for the more detailed section and a base material for the front (no textures):

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 3

Once the Base Materials are set, the Overlay Material Filter is used to create a secondary layer with similar capabilities to the other blend filters. Allowing additional blending options against the base in order to add more subtle detail to the texture. In the example below, the texture created was intended as a painted layer and is therefore simple but could be made a lot more complex if necessary since this filter also supports the blending plug-in:

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 4

Once both Base and Overlay materials are set, a damage filter can be used to reveal the base below the overlay. In this case to create the effect of damaged paint but it can be used to also just add discoloration if it's applied with different settings:

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 5

The above is the main process. The following filters are intended to improve the base look.

HSL Filter below, uses Curvature and Ambient Occlusion information generated by the height and normals to modify the color, saturation and lightness of areas on the model that are affected by Cv/AO:

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 6

The next filter is based around the Mask Builder node as well as some custom nodes and is designed to apply dirt to the texture. It comes with many options both in terms color/blending and grunge pattern type/effect spread:

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 7

After this filter, the custom Leaks Filter is applied which carries presets for different looks such as Clay, Sandy, Muddy, Rust and so on. It also has a custom gradient for the color and is able to hue shift any of the presets:

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 8

In this case a second Leaks filter is applied with the Rust pre-set where the first was the Gray pre-set. The HSL, Dirt and Leaks filters are able to blend on top of the incoming Basecolor, Roughness and Metallic information of the layers stack and are therefore stackable to enable creation of a more varied look:

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 9

At the end and on top of the rest of the filters comes the Emissive Filter. This filter provides gradient pre-sets for the light, hue shift/saturation as well as the ability to paint lights that will have one color pre-set, and use a tile generator to create procedural lights with another color pre-set. It also allows us to mask sections that we don't want to be affected like the image below shows. The masking is done from multiple sources, lights can be painted out by simply painting black in a layer below the filter, they can be removed by using the curvature derived from the texture normals (so that they aren't present where the texture has deep insets or on the model edges) and can also be masked based on the ColorID of the material like in the image below. The front section is a different material ID and the effect has been disabled for that particular ID.

FiltersSetup MaterialDefinition 10

Here is a version which uses the Emissive Filter ability to have both painted and tile generator lights. The blue glow is painted (just basic white paint, the filter takes care of everything else) while the windows were created with the integrated tile generator:

Combined Gradients

There are a lot of filters here and a lot of options so I won't post images for each one here but as an example, below are some of the options available to us for the Emissive filter:

Emissive Filter New Options


Post comment Comments
dalekKharn
dalekKharn

WOW the Goa'uld ships looks stunning and look to good the blow up! I love the texture work going on. can't wait to see them in action. Also hope you guys have a merry christmas :) :)

Jaffa kre!

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Reacon11
Reacon11

The Replicators will be a Pirate faction?

Oooh! Will we have a kind of survival mode against them then? With them infesting starships as we have to try and fend off their waves?

Merry Christmas!

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Guest
Guest

Thanks for your hard work.

Merry Christmas

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dotNfg Author
dotNfg

Thanks for the support guys:) Merry Christmas to you all!

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{HEROIC}Doci
{HEROIC}Doci

Merry Christmas!

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Freez12346
Freez12346

wohooo more progress =D <3

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Guest
Guest

Please next time you release an update for this mod clean up the GalaxyScenarioDef file just like the GalaxyScenarioDef from Sins of a Galaxtic Empire so some of us can add some items or planets. Because now i and most people who want to edit something have to put a lot of time making everything in order to make it more visible

Thank you
love your mod tho

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dotNfg Author
dotNfg

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by cleaning it up but I think this may be a case of the disorder bug inside Notepad. Try opening it up with Notepad++, it display everything as it is on our end.

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Guest
Guest

I will try that,

thank you

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Guest
Guest

Also are you still working on the Asuran- and the Human faction because not all textures are hd and the frigate drydocks from the Humans is just white and doesnt have any texture

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dotNfg Author
dotNfg

Yes, the Asurans will be textured although this will happen after the Goa'uld release. I'm currently working on the first live material that will be made with the texturing system. It'll be for the Human Concordia model and other Asgard inspired designs. Join our Discord channel to get more up to date news as we post there regularly.

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dotNfg Author
dotNfg

The Human Frigate factory should not be white. Either you are missing a texture/s or there's another issue. Make sure that you disable team colors in the game options, SGI is not meant to be played with team colors enabled as we don't use them and some of the older models can cause issues when this 0ption is enabled

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GulDukat
GulDukat

I love this mod it is truly amazing great work so far. My only question is there any way to fix the extensive lag? I have good system with Intel I5 4690k 16gb ram and a nvidia 1070 and even on a small 3 player map it lags to the point of unplayable late game.

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Guest
Guest

We haven't really done any direct work on optimization yet since the mod is still under construction. Is it a slow down or a stuttering? I suspect it's stutter but will have to check. What would be really helpful if you experience this, is to make a video and post it on youtube then provide the link on our Discord channel. This also goes for anyone else here experiencing issues. Providing either an image or video where appropriate would save us a lot of time.

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GulDukat
GulDukat

It runs for about 5 seconds then freezes for nearly 10 seconds and keeps doing it. I will have to make a youtube account and find a video recording software I've never done what your asking before but I will help best I can thank you for responding. Also note this is after about an hour of play so later game.

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Guest
Guest

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