Long awaited and finally arrived. Zero point five beta three, baby!
Install instructions:
The installer will list four main components - the mod, the DoW mod manager and two "browsertab" options (Objective Points Mod and FreeUI).
The mod is reliant on the Objective Points Mod and FreeUI Mod, and leaving these options selected will open a browser window to their ModDB pages to allow you to manually download them separately.
Changes:
The number of changes between 0.5b2 and 0.5b3 are numerous, and it has been way too many years since b2 was released so a comprehensive summary is a bit beyond us, however the key features of this update are as follows:
- The AI actually works this time (sorry about that, and the wait on the fix)
- The mod is now split into two component modules - Tyranids and Tyranids_Art
- We've left out Great Devourer Mode (sorry, about that - we're leave alternate game modes up to the wider modding community to cut down our work)
- Numerous balance and ability tweaks
Mod Collaboration Instructions:
For those wishing to create mods that work with our mod, you now have two options:
- You can integrate our mod directly by including "Tyranids" in your mod's RequiredMod list and that will add our mod as-is when your mod loads (although you may experience some code conflicts, we've tried through the OP mod and FreeUI to make the weird parts of our mod as generalisable as possible), or...
- You can integrate just our art and sound assets by including "Tyranids_Art" in your mod's RequiredMod list. This will not include any of our code or UI elements, so you will be free to create your own mod mechanics (and your own mod signature appearance) but still include our models, animations, FX and sounds. It's good for if you just want some NPC models for a campaign line without wanting to worry about code conflicts, or if you want to write an entirely different sort of Tyranid mod from scratch.
This should solve a lot of the pesky questions we keep getting about whether we "approve" of mod collaborations (go nuts!), and also hopefully cut down on scammers trying to make money off stealing our art team's work and repackaging it without our consent.
Obviously we continue to ask that people do not repackage our mod or any elements of our mod into your own mods, please direct people to download copies here - that's why we've made it as easy as possible for you to use a RequiredMod inclusion. :)
YES YES YES YES YES
Congrats - you got first comment. :D
Very grateful) Question! Why don't you encrypt your files with passwords? I think it will be harder to steal! (In fact, I have no idea how it is done))
The game needs to be able to access the files to use them. If they're encrypted, the game doesn't have the means to decrypt them.
I mean it's a nice idea (and certainly there's a lot to be said for the idea of game developers incorporating an asymmetrical encryption method so modders can encrypt their files in a way that only the game can decrypt) but developers tend not to include the necessary features to facilitate that kind of protection.
At long, long last.
at last ...finally
thank you for this beautiful gift
Wow! Happy Christmas team! Congratulations.
mod crashes after 5 minutes
What was going on in game, and what are your system specs?
(Just fyi: it's a little late here, so I may be a bit slow to respond but I definitely want to help sort out the issue)
I normally play a skirmish and crash for no reason
my computer specs
Windows 10
12 gb ram
intel core i7-7700hq cpu 2.80GHz
Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050ti
I can't speak for how well Soulstorm will run on Windows 10... but any idea what races you were playing against, and what was happening on your end when it crashed?
It works well on Windows 10, but some of my friends had to change value in dx8 files to remove stuttering.
Same problem. Haven't encounter any crash when I used compatibility mode window XP
first on mod tyranid in the first match against the imperial guards in the second against chaos and then on unification mod against world eaters and renegade guard
sry for my bad english
Could you please give it a run without merging with other mods? This way we can narrow down what the issue might be.
Soulstorm works fine in windows 10, with unification mod, I can vouch for that. A few things I can think of:
-Recently they broke something with an update that makes the cursor explode in Dawn of War, and can cause other problems:
Steamcommunity.com
-Do you use anything to unlock the RAM limit Dawn of War has? A lot of DoW mods use a crapload of RAM, and might cause crashing in big skirmish games, especially with mods. This is because it's capped at using 2GBs of RAM max. Use Large Address Aware (LAA), it's like the easiest program to use ever:
Techpowerup.com
I had a lot of issues using DoW mods with these two problems, might help fix your problem. I haven't had time to test the mod with unification yet, my basement flooded something fierce for Christmas.
The newest version of the Dow Mod manager also lets you unlock the ram usage.
Seems really good, finished now at last. Spore mines and gargoyles seem a bit weak. I would maybe be tempted to make gargoyles aircraft, currently they are good for gooning the ai by drawing out grenades and orbital bombardments.
*looks in DoW folder*
Oh good, I can finally replace this mutant hybrid of v0.5b1 and b2 I created to fix the broken AI.
Sounds like a unique splinterfleet adaptation to me.
I was rather proud of it, hah. The b2 strain I created still used will of the hivemind units to build, so the AI didn't explode. Took several tries, the other strains just curled up and died in the holding pen.
I noticed a minor bug / inconsistency. The Carnifex tooltips state that it's Heavy Infantry but the actual armour type is monster_high.
>_>
<_<
>_>
Shhhhhhh.... :P
Do I need to have 0.5b2 installed prior to installing 0.5b3?
Or can I just install 0.5b3 fresh without any other prior versions installed?
Also, will this work still on Ultimate Apocalypse, despite major changes?
You don't need 0.5b2.
I'm pretty sure that it won't work with UA without changes to the UA mod to accommodate the differences in the UI.
I'm actually not sure on the UA front. UA isn't intended to work with 0.5b3 (yet) but it's possible that because we use FreeUI to support our UI, it may still work anyway.
But no, you don't need to have ever previously installed the Tyranid Mod - all our Full Version installers are standalone (and will remove any previous version of the Tyranid Mod currently installed).
I confirmed that it doesn't work with UA (at least for me...ver 1.88.731). Im getting a 'fatal data error' (4 of them):
"Fatal data for entity 'data:attrib\ebps\races\tyranids\troops\'tyranid_hierophant.rgd'_ext - ability 'abilities\tyranids_building_depression_aura.lua' is not a valid ability!"
"Fatal data for entity 'data:attrib\ebps\races\tyranids\troops\'tyranid_hierophant_maxed.rgd'_ext ability ' abilities\tyranids_building_depression_aura.lua' is not a valid ability!"
"Fatal data for entity 'data:attrib\ebps\races\tyranids\troops\'capillary_tower.rgd'_ext ability 'abilities\tyranids_building_depression_aura.lua' is not a valid ability!"
"Fatal data for entity 'data:attrib\ebps\races\tyranids\troops\'capillary_tower_multiple.rgd'_ext - ability 'abilities\tyranids_building_depression_aura.lua' is not a valid ability!"
Oh, that's interesting. I don't know what Tyranid-specific stuff UA has done code-wise, but that error is due to a changeup in the way we handle building auras - it's looking for a file we don't have in 0.5b3.
But at least it's not a UI conflict!
(The fix should be pretty easy though - if you take the following file from a 0.5b2 install:
Tyranids\Data\attrib\abilities\tyranids_building_depression_aura.lua
and copy it into the same location in a 0.5b3 install, it should start working again. There won't be any conflicts because our mod will never call for that file, and you're not going to overwrite the b3 version 'cause we don't have that file in 0.5b3).
Hi zahaqiel. I was the 'Guest' in the original post (forgot I had an old moddb account lol).
Your remedy has successfully knocked out those four errors, but now a single new error appears which is rather long-winded (i know...sigh):
"Fatal data for entity 'data:attrib\sbps\races\tyranids\tyranid_squad_gargoyle_max.rgd'. The squad cannot have the 'squad_melee_stance_ext' extension as the base entity data:attrib\ebps\races\tyranids\troops\'tyranids_gargoyle_melee_stance_ext' extension does not have the 'melee_ext' extension!'
I'm thinking the program doesn't like the word 'stance' in 'tyranids_gargoyle_melee_stance_ext', but I could be wrong...
Thanks once again for your rapid response and support!
Ah, that one's curious. So in 0.5b2 we did have the Gargoyle model as a hidden extra, and it appears UA must have capitalised on that to implement their own version of the Garg. So I'm going to give you a guess-work answer because rather than it being us having removed a file in 0.5b3, I *think* this is due to us *adding* files and our new files expecting different things to the way UA set their custom Gargoyle files up (easy rule of thumb: always assume the Tyranid Mod did it different, we're weird like that).
UA has a Data\attrib\sbps\races\tyranids folder in their mod, so open that folder up and take a look through it.
I'm going to guess they *don't* have "tyranids_squad_gargoyle_max.rgd" and consequently when their mod loads our mod, the lack of equivalent means their mod loads this file from our mod along with all the other base files they haven't made their own versions of to override ours with... and obviously our file expects our basic Gargoyle to work a specific way, and their basic Gargoyle doesn't do the same things ours does. Hence why it's getting weird over the melee stance - our Gargoyle does melee scratchy-scratchy, UA's doesn't.
If you can confirm that their folder doesn't have this file, the solution may be as simple as creating a blank txt file in the UA Data\attrib\sbps\races\tyranids folder and renaming it "tyranids_squad_gargoyle_max.rgd" just so that way the UA mod can blank our file out. If they don't have a file with this name, then I'm pretty certain their mod doesn't need our version of it because we didn't have this file in 0.5b2.
...Of course it's vaguely possible that this may create a different error (oh no, a file with no instructions!), but I don't believe it will.
okay so continuing on this thread...
First and foremost, the error with the file "Tyranids\Data\attrib\abilities\tyranids_building_depression_aura.lua" is easily fixable with the way you described above, no problems there
After fixing that the only error remaining so far is with the gargoyle stance acting weird.
I have looked in UA 1.88.731 and they didn't have a "tyranids_squad_gargoyle_max.rgd" so I made one like you said
and the game recognizes the file being there but unfortunately, another error occurs...
Fatal data error for
squad'data:attrib/sbps/races/tyranids/tyranids_squad_gargoyle_max.rgd''squad_loadout_ext' extension. entity does not exist
Sorry for continuing to find problems...
it's great you're back and it's amazing that you've been responding to comments to help us solve these
this is the author... sry for the guest post
just thinking,
maybe we could just copy another creatures .rgd that has the 'squad_loadout_ext' extension already in it?
is there such a creature or would this totally break something?
*le sigh*
That's the thing I thought was an outside possibility. A blank file means an invalid file apparently.
So... as I see it there are two avenues for an actual fix - and I'm not sure either is really doable for the average user.
The first is we develop a valid-but-unused tyranids_squad_gargoyle_max.rgd for UA to block out our mod's file. This is where I'd have to defer to Miros (or someone on the UA team) to develop such a file.
Edit: Or, yes, it's possible another creature's copied-and-renamed RGD (like the gargoyle squad RGD that's already present in the UA folder?) could work here, but I think that might be a bit risky. Then again... it only has to be parsed correctly... so yeah, I guess that's the next thing to try!
The second is replacing UA's gargoyle files entirely with ours... which seems more likely to cause errors. They'd be consistent with each other, but I'm not sure they'd necessarily be consistent with the rest of the UA Tyranid files.
And short of the UA team releasing a new update for 0.5b3 compatibility (which would likely involve something akin to either of the above fixes) I don't see any alternatives.
thanks for your help zahaqiel. Much appreciated. At this point, I'll wait on the UA boys to make a move on this, as I think this rabbit hole is a little too deep for a layman like me. I think the release of 0.5b3 has turned many heads (hopefully UA's heads too). And I really hope it does, because 0.5b3 is absolutely pristine.
Not a problem. If other people are still interested in chasing this issue I'll still be on to give advice.
UA's a pretty popular mod so if we can work out a relatively simple way for re-establishing compatibility then that's always going to be a plus. If we sort the issue out before UA next updates I'll do a news post with the details.
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I've looked at this problem and got it working but the UI and models are subsequently broken. The only quick way to get around this is to have 052 in a separate folder and repoint UA at it.
Thanks for the heads-up!
says tyranid mod isnt commonyl downloaded ;/
Best thing to happen in 2020!
Just a question about that new map you guys added. What is the purpose of it? It don’t seem to understand its use.
Something of a defence map or so?
I'd have to check, I know we had a tutorial map in the works... it may be some version of that?
Nah, the tutorial happens in a vanilla map. It's Tarsis Ultra, but that's been in at least since beta 1 iirc.
OH right, yes.
I don’t think it’s a tutorial map. There is a thunderhawk at the back of the map and there seem to be some sort of gates that seperate the map in 2. Also the terrain is made like it is some sort of defensive wall
Yeah that sounds like Tarsis Ultra. I believe it was designed to be a siege map to hold the line against the Tyranids - not exactly how the canon battle of Tarsis Ultra went down, but c'est la vie.
I was beginning to think it would never come out. XD
Time to OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM