[WIP] [TC] X3 Galaxy

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celludriel
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[WIP] [TC] X3 Galaxy

Post by celludriel » Sat, 8. Dec 18, 17:49

Description
===========
This is a WIP for a TC to model part of the X3 galaxy into X4. The entire galaxy is created by a description json file and then ran through a java engine to output a generated playable X3 galaxy. Current status is in the refinement phase. All the moving parts are there but now it needs to be balanced and made fun to play.

I need testers now that are willing to endure the aggravation of starting over a few times. You can use any cheat mods you like to make it easier on yourself of course. I hope you are with me in testing this and make it fun.


WIP alpha release
===============
Alpha release : This can and will update daily until it all works and is fun, chances are saves will not be compatible between updates

INSTRUCTIONS
=============
- Unzip the release
- Go to the root of your gamefolder fe on steam: steamapps\common\X4 Foundations
- If you don't have it yet create a folder \extensions
- Copy the folder x3Galaxy into the \extensions folder
- Launch the game
- Start a new game !!! DO NOT LOAD AN OLD VANILLA SAVE !!!

testing feedback
==============
I'm not sure how to handle this but lets try it like this, bugs you just post with BUG als first line in a reply, but you could also send in some feedback

scale 1 - 5
no technical difficulties: 4 How well did it run any technical difficulties ERRORS in the logs, crashes
boredom: 2 Where there many stretches of boredom (gates to far from eachother, to much travel time, no fights)
fun: 5 Where the fights balanced, did you get trashed a lot, enough to do, any wars going on
game mechanics: 4 Are npc's trading, did any wars start, did sectors change side, any game stoppers ?
Last edited by celludriel on Sun, 16. Dec 18, 21:05, edited 6 times in total.

Tattoonation
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by Tattoonation » Sat, 8. Dec 18, 18:47

celludriel wrote:
Sat, 8. Dec 18, 17:49
Hey,

I'm trying to get feet wet in modding for X4. I skipped rebirth and only dabbled in X3. So I'm trying to learn the ropes, and thought to start simple. I took a look at blackgalaxy and tried to recreate it from scratch and build from there to rebuild the top left part of the old X3 galaxy. Nothing fancy, from argon prime to cloudbase southwest and to cloudbase southease. I tried keeping exactly to the blackgalaxy setup, but I can't get it running X4 just crashes without any feedback. Well some C dump that a virtualization address can't be addressed. All nice and well but it doesn't have a stacktrace or any other indication so usefulness is zero. This is what I have sofar

https://github.com/Celludriel/x4_x3_gal ... ee/develop

Maybe if a few are interested to have a look ? Cause I don't see what I'm missing.
Hey. Can´t help you, but i´m very exited about your Plan :mrgreen: . Be sure, i´m your Fan!
X2-Illuminatus wrote:
Fri, 14. Dec 18, 23:34
Wer enttäuscht vom Spiel ist, darf das hier äußern und muss sich nicht anhören (respektive lesen), welche Fehler oder Unzulänglichkeiten man aushalten soll. Solche Kommentare also bitte hier sein lassen.

celludriel
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by celludriel » Sat, 8. Dec 18, 19:40

Well I'm a few steps further. The game doesn't crash anymore but I'm stuck on

[=ERROR=] 0.00 Unable to start game. Player zone 'tzoneCluster_Argon_Prime_Sector01_Zone_macro' not found in gamestart 'The X3 Galaxy'.

I can't see why it is not finding that cluster ... it should be there and connected

celludriel
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by celludriel » Sat, 8. Dec 18, 22:57

Ok so we got progress, I had a typo in the clusters.xml file which set me back like five hours. But I got my first empty sector so this is my gameplan

- Learn how to populate a sector with the god engine (stations, starter ships)
- Create a second sector and link it with gates (no highways)
- Create the top left part of the old x3 galaxy as efficiently possible

If I can get this done, we might be able to start dreaming on recreating the entire x3 galaxy ... but ... babysteps

XTC0R
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by XTC0R » Sat, 8. Dec 18, 23:58

Sounds awesome! I hope you have the time and motivation to continue on this! I'm very excited.


lavak9
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by lavak9 » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 00:30

More luck wishing from me too

Tattoonation
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by Tattoonation » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 01:07

Oh ........it´s Christmas Time.... :D

The whole X3 Galaxy, without highways ........ f ** k yeah. If you can do that, you are my Personal Godfather of Mods...... :x3: :x3: :x3: :x3:
X2-Illuminatus wrote:
Fri, 14. Dec 18, 23:34
Wer enttäuscht vom Spiel ist, darf das hier äußern und muss sich nicht anhören (respektive lesen), welche Fehler oder Unzulänglichkeiten man aushalten soll. Solche Kommentare also bitte hier sein lassen.

Tkdmaster
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by Tkdmaster » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 02:11

I'd absoutely love to see this! The highways are almost a game-killer for me honestly, and would love to see a map with none of them around, and better yet, the x3 map we all know and love!

youdotkay
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by youdotkay » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 04:15

Tkdmaster wrote:
Sun, 9. Dec 18, 02:11
I'd absoutely love to see this! The highways are almost a game-killer for me honestly, and would love to see a map with none of them around, and better yet, the x3 map we all know and love!
no superhighways mod https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/80/

celludriel
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by celludriel » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 06:54

Just showing some progress and how it might look like in the end. It's gonna be a puzzle getting the hexagon to work with the old square system

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 1C16E0581/

aerojet029
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by aerojet029 » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 07:10

Argon prime NEEDs it's own sector (in my opinoin)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1581470834

this shows the current map which shows a bunch of empty space not utilized.


My opinion (and please ignore this as criticism; I'm only trying to be constructive) it may be more efficient to design around the already existent coordinate system.

I love the highways system and not having to rely on SETA (granted I can just teleport...) but by building around the already existing networks, the highways would serve to increase mobility. I didn't like Xrebirth's minigame though and glad they removed it. hell, X3 Albion prelude foreshadowed highways were coming.

maybe make all the sectors neutral space and the AI dynamically duke it out for control instead of X3's static system?

MutantDwarf
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by MutantDwarf » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 08:49

My understanding of the system is that the smaller-hexagons within the larger hexagon all have to have the same backdrop, though from different locations. So you'll have the same planets, moons, etc all present in all three of Ringo Moon, Argon Prime, and Heron's Nebula given that design. I don't think that's what you're after.

Largely, you should have only a single small hex per large hex (a single sector per cluster? A single sector per system? I'm honestly confused as to the terminology at this point) unless you have a very good reason for doing otherwise - the Sol System Saturn/Jupiter/Uranus 1-3 sectors are good examples of where you could squish things, though I honestly wouldn't have a problem with just dropping all of those and just making use of the fact you have larger sectors where each can hold more things than an X3 sector.

qwizzie
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by qwizzie » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 10:56

Good luck, i will be following this with interest. I dont like the highways / superhighways in X3 Rebirth & X4 Foundations at all, so if you manage to get rid of them (or sideline them) and re-introduce
the normal gate system with the familiar sector lay-out i would be very gratefull. Normal gates combined with travelspeed and teleportation is good enough for me.

celludriel
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by celludriel » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 11:14

I get what you guys are after, but I need to keep things reasonable for system resources (memory, cpu, savegame size). So lets try and clarify about the structure

The world exist out of a galaxy, that consists of clusters, that has 1 ... 3 sectors, who have zones (point of interests)

- Cluster = Solarsystem
- Sector = fe a planet area
- Zone = a station or two floating near a planet

This is an image someone on discord made to quantify the size of a cluster

https://i.imgur.com/M1pfTGy.png

If this would be the position of the first cluster

<position x="0" y="0" z="0" />

then the next closeby cluster could be

<position x="15000000" y="0" z="8660000" />

everything is measured in meters in the files. Knowing this and the old x3 universe is at least 21 sectors across we would have 21 * 15000000 on the x axis. so that would be 315000000 for the furthest out. These numbers are getting pretty big. So I'm not sure how much the engine can handle or memory to keep it all managable. So either I take the decission now to take a chance and get into trouble later. Or I play it safe and start condensing everything now in clusters and sectors. What we want and what a programming system can handle are not always the same things. I have to convince pesky marketing business at work all the time of that !

Hope this clarifies my choice to work with sectors.


{Images posted directly to the forums should not be greater than 640x480 or 100kb, oversize image now linked - Terre}

MutantDwarf
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by MutantDwarf » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 15:48

Given the size of the numbers in the map files, I don't think that's accurate, celludriel. I think that everything has a position in relation to the center of the cluster, not in relation to the center of the galaxy. At the very least, the location of everything in the map files is specified in relation to the location of each individual cluster, not by some global location value.

The game very well may have a limit on the number of clusters, but I doubt that just doubling the number of rows/columns in the map will result in the positioning system not having enough precision to map everything and suspect that just having that number of clusters period will result in significant performance drain simply due to number of units in the universe.

celludriel
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by celludriel » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 16:02

Well I'll make two first versions. One in sectors and one in clusters. We'll get an idea about the actual situation from there. It's all experimental at this stage anyhow. Currently I'm struggling creating an acceleration gate between sectors. The gates are spawned but they are not active. I can't get the connection to work

Code: Select all

	  <connection name="x3g_gate_c01s001z001_c01s002z001" ref="destination" path="../x3g_cluster_01_connection/x3g_cluster_01_sector001_connection/x3g_zone001_cluster_01_sector001_connection/x3g_gate_c01s001z001_c01s002z001_connection">
	    <macro connection="destination" path="../../../../../x3g_cluster_01_connection/x3g_cluster_01_sector001_connection/x3g_zone001_cluster_01_sector002_connection/x3g_gate_c01s002z001_c01s001z001_connection" />
	  </connection>	
I checked the paths though they should be right

celludriel
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by celludriel » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 18:25

Well we got progress

My first connection to another sector

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 99B2CC5CD/

It's quite a bit of xml you need to maintain, and one little slipup makes everything go down on you. Satisfying if you get it all going though. Now I haven't figured out yet how I can rotate it all properly so don't mind the current ... bend ....

MutantDwarf
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by MutantDwarf » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 19:58

Yeah - with all the stuff that goes into creating a map, a map editor program would be super handy.

Xe-131
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Re: [WIP] [EXPERIMENT] X3 Galaxy

Post by Xe-131 » Mon, 10. Dec 18, 01:26

MutantDwarf wrote:
Sun, 9. Dec 18, 19:58
Yeah - with all the stuff that goes into creating a map, a map editor program would be super handy.
It's amazing how people manage without it - how do they do it??

I'm very excited to see this and be one of many to test it out. Best of luck!

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