THE BAD NEWS!
That's right...the notion of having land battles in GC/IGC is almost effectively dead. I have deemed it "impractical" as there seems to be a limitation on which faction NAMES can have land structures.
To go into specifics, there is a fatal flaw in Force of Corruption in which Factions that lack the XML faction name "REBEL, EMPIRE, UNDERWORLD, HUTTS, PIRATE, or NEUTRAL" seem to generate fatal crashes in GC/IGC . More specifically, when a land invasion is carried out on a planet, by any faction that does not have one of the aforementioned names, and the planet contains a STRUCTURE, such as a barracks or turbo laser tower, and the battle is auto-resolved from the galaxy view, the game immediately crashes without exception.
I have verified this flaw through meticulous testing of both GaW, the GaW XML files, FoC, and the original FoC XML files.
I have spent the past month and a half attempting to fix this error, and I have yielded no results. This is why I have not updated in so long. I did not want to jump the gun on this news. Between now and my last update, 100% of my time working with GaW has been in an attempt to correct this flaw. Unfortunately...it is impossible, as I see it. There must be something hardcoded into the exe which restricts auto resolving in the aforementioned scenario.
So...why exactly is this a problem? Simple...the AI uses auto-resolve. Before day 1 would end, the game would crash because the AI was auto-resolving conflicts with other AI factions, and as such, crashing the game.
THE GOOD NEWS!
But like I said...there is a silver lining...and I do have some good news. I may have a possible work around...and this is by removing the need to HAVE structures, and have infantry built without the need to have buildings. This idea is WIP and I may also look into other possible work arounds.
however, this is not the total death of land in GaW. There is still two things I ca still do:
1. I can have land structures in 1v1 GC/IGC campaigns...so long as you, the person reading this, never auto-resolves combat from the galaxy view. The AI will never auto-resolve in AI vs Player combat, only in AI vs AI.
2. Land Skirmish will be made available down the road, possibly in 3.0
EVEN BETTER NEWS!
With the the loss of land combat, full GC/IGC , with all 6 factions going at once, is a lot less laggy and far more stable...and doesn't even crash anymore! Huzzah!
PICTURE TIME!
I was bored yesterday...so I whipped up a concept splash screen for GaW. If you guys like it...say yes. If you HATE it...tell me why...
I feel bad for not updating as often as I should, but just remember...this mod lives, and continues to live, until I say so.
So your saying if, for example, if there is a Stargate faction and they have a barracks that doesn't have the faction name REBEL, EMPIRE, UNDERWORLD, HUTTS, PIRATE, or NEUTRAL, the game will crash? That's not exactly true, I played a mod called the Corporate Addon Mod and it had the Corporate Sector Authority as a playable faction. The faction has barracks, a vehicle factory, and a few other ground structures. The game played perfectly fine.
maybe you didn't auto resolve.
To be honest: I never really liked the ground fights. They took kind of long and aren't as fun as space combat. But I am happy to hear it doesn't crash anymore! 2.0 kept crashing in GC for some reason that I don't know of.
In my opinion, space combat only would be an interesting approach for this mod. With so many factions, you could actually turn this game into something similar to Sins of a Solar Empire, with the factions raging war in space. However, if this concept was used, perhaps more could be expanded in space features?
NakedCrook. You really need to consider two things before adding or removing ground combat:
1. Do I have enough ground units for ALL the sides?? I know for a fact that you will struggle with the likes of Trek as they simply do not have enough ground units for that side. In those cases you will need to get overly creative which might be more trouble than its worth.
2. Is land absolutely necessary?? Everyone knows that in reality you only have a limited amount of ground unit caps available on each planet and unless the tools are released to enable a greater amount for a planets pop cap then its a real pain in the arse.
To my way of thinking space based combat is far better in many aspects. Firstly theres an obsolute ton of units available for ALL sides for space so you can pick and choose what you want. Buildings don't cause ANY kind of conflict in space combat so you can't lose with it. Maps, as far as I know, can be made much larger than ground maps so theres a big plus and they are always stable from what I've seen.
I do, however, have a question. Have you managed to get GC space only working?? For my own mod I never could get the AI to move its lazy *** from its home planet so gave up on GC as I had spent several months on that one problem.
MajorAPayne:
I have actually nearly perfected Space-Only GC. The one problem that remains is the AI does not attack other AI factions. I am close to fixing this. When I release the 2.1 patch, you are free to use my scripts and AI files as you please in your mod.
Admiral-Ace:
When I say faction name, I am talking about their XML identifier, not the .dat string. I actually experimented with Z3r0x's addon mod. A major problem in his 3.0 release was the game crashing when auto resolving combat for a new faction when a building was present. He fixed this in 3.5 by removing the ground buildings.
This bug might be fixed if there was something hardcoded in the exe itself...but exe modding (I will call it modding to avoid using taboo words) is a no-no on moddb.
I didn't say anything about the dat string, I knew what you were talking about. The Corporate mod had ground structures with Affiliation set as the Corporates. A recently version I played had the Rebels, Empire, Underworld, Corporates, Vong, Galactic Alliance, Sith Empire, Old Republic, CIS, and the Clone Wars era Republic as playable factions.
But I think a Space only mod would be better if possible. It would mean less stuff to work on for the mod.
Interesting. I will re-check the Corporate Mod. perhaps they did find a work around.
I also downloaded the Corporate Add-on mod (4.2 Beta) and I experienced the same problems in their mod.
Now, I run Windows 7 64 Bit with > 4GB of Ram. As all my computers match or exceed these specs, I have no basis of comparison if these specs cause the problem or not. However, if you could tell me which version your downloaded, I would be interested to see if, in fact, it IS possible to save land in GC.
you know why not put the factions together and have say stargate stuff only build able on stargate type planets, same for UNSC, Trek and so on but have a mix of them on earth and thin make a neutral buildings that would look like all those factions would probably use for land, same for the other side too, put all the bad guys together and make buildings that all of them would probably use which would be a little hard cause of the borg and wraith would use something so very different
I agree with Dr. McKay. If it saves land battles mix up the forces and put some together. I was really looking forward to land combat in GaW. Whatever you choose, the mod still kicks butt.
There will still be land in Skirmish, and possibly in the 1v1 GC campaigns if I can work it out. I dunno how many people play against the AI and how man play against other players, but I will do my best to strip down IGC as little as I can.
I like the land battles aswell, thats like half of the game gone? I was hoping for more gameplay not less.
Like I said...I am trying to make it work as best as I can. There is little I can do in the grand scheme of things. If this is a hard coded problem then no amount of XML editing will fix it.
I am sorry if this displeases you, as it sure as hell displeases me that this bug exists. I will do my level best to try and reduce the loss of game play.
I know nothing about modding but could a work around be that you somehow put one of those names in front of the faction name and then make it invisible and or really small? An example would be "Rebels UNSC" but the rebels part wouldn't be visible.
I wonder how RAW fixed it.
In the Faction XML files, you have code like this:
<Faction Name="Underworld">
...
</Faction>
Where it says UNDERWORLD, that is the XML identifier for a faction. As it turns out, only certain identifiers work.
Although I have not played RaW, or any other mods for that matter, I assume that RaW did not change the XML identifier for either Rebels, Empire, Underworld, Pirates, Neutral, or Hutts and they simpy coded a faction using identifiers that worked.
This is a possible patchwork-fix for the problem I am having, but this doesn't solve the base problem, as I plan on adding more factions down the road, and as such, this problem will just come back to bite me in the ***.
I have spoken with several other "High Profile" modders in the scene, and one of them told me that there is a file that lists which factions can be played as...but he is unsure what said file is called. It is possible that I may of missed this "file", but yet again, I would have no idea what syntax I am looking for so it would be very difficult to isolate which "file" it is, or if it is a script, AI Equation, or XML document. Furthermore, I am unsure if this is, in fact, the cause and solution of the problem I am faced with.
In the end, It's a toss of the coin. I finished coding space only AI, that actually does a good job of working. I am open to keeping land, but I am not going to invest very much more time into finding a solution to this problem. If I stumble across it, I will implement a fix, but I am not going to waste any more time TRYING to fix this.
I see, I see. Well i'm impressed with the work you've already put into it. If you do try to implement it then good luck to you!