sta2 classic mod and my personal mod

[rifraf]

posted on March 3rd, 2013, 8:19 am

Last edited by rifraf on March 3rd, 2013, 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So, trying my hand at putting my A2 mod in FO using the STA2 Classic mod as a parent. FO is v3.2.7 (latest) and plays fine, the STA2 classic mod plays fine and my personal Armada 2 mod plays fine on its own. Didn't post an error report yet, but wanted to list a few issues.

1. I hear weird sounds during play when I zoom in/out or rotate the camera like little servo motors or electronic sound like robo cop or c3po noises, but only when playing my mod.

2. I have a gtx 460 GPU and just today updated to latest 314 drivers, but am getting weird graphical coloring only on select things like fscout and forbital no other fed things. Also my fscout and forbital textures have been changed to better in my mod, but the game keeps using the stock ones from the A2 classic mod for some reason and then displays them with weird glitches? Again only while playing my mod.

3. Some of the stack dumps show problems in for instance, fscout.1.tga and another showed one in master.tga? Not sure why textures would be listed in the stack dump? I may try updating sod/odf/texture/sprite of one item at a time in the STA2 Classic mod itself and see if there are any adverse effects. If I can update the complete mod with new everything and still play then problem solved.

Anyone seen these before?

posted on March 3rd, 2013, 1:12 pm

Yes, for the texture problem your having, just another reason why I went the standalone route. Using STA2_Classic as a parent was causing problems like that, reverting to the parent mod way too much for things it should be doing so. I had my reasons for not wanting to use it as a parent mod now didn't I. Only mentioned my major ones, you have the other.

posted on March 3rd, 2013, 9:37 pm

Weird sounds might be due to an issue with the audio ODF configuration file - STA2 has some issues with that in 327, as the older version of FmodX wasn't so well suited.

Not sure about the other issues I'm afraid

posted on March 3rd, 2013, 9:41 pm

Ok, I deleted the audio.odf file in the odf/other folder as Blade recommended some time ago in the STA2 Classic mod thread and it got rid of the wierd noises but also took away the sound effects. I'll add it back and see how it plays.

Also, I deleted all the extra LOD textures (the _1 and _2's etc...) in the STA2 Classic Textures folder and now my textures in my mod all seem fine on screen. No graphical anomolies or anything plus it never crashed in a play through so that seems to have fixed it but will continue to experiment.

Thanks, D_N. We must have posted at exactly the same time.

posted on March 3rd, 2013, 9:56 pm

I had those issues with audio too. Simply copy over the audio.odf from FleetOps. Works fine then Something to do with the bitrate and the distance values.

As for the textures, yes, thats why KA2 works the way it does. Those pesky _1 and _2 files cause no end of trouble.

posted on March 4th, 2013, 3:32 am

Thanks SJ. I copied the audio.odf from FO into the STA2 Classic mod and it fixed the noises about 99%. Still hear an occasional odd background noise zooming in/out. The only bad thing is I can hear ships warp and battle rage from across the map so that's kind of distracting. May have to play around with the values.

1. I'm loving the FO shield effects, just awesome. They are blue in the STA2 Classic mod so I swapped the green shield textures from FO that match the blue ones that were used but the sheilds are still blue? Is that something that can't be changed?

2. In the minimap all the icons are black and really hard to see. I can't seem to locate a .tga that represents those icons so I can change them to white? Any ideas?

Great work/continued work all, both FO and the STA2 Classic mod. Been playing some more games now of my mod and no crashes. Knock on wood.

posted on March 4th, 2013, 6:01 am

@SquireJames: What do the _1 and_2 files for textures even really do? They are really just smaller versions of the main texture files with the same name. Why would they cause a problem in any mod?

@rifraf: I still think you should make a standalone version for your mod, it well make things easier than encountering more problems using STA2_Class as a parent. I did that with my StarGate - Star Wars Mod that I had to remove from my FleetOps Mods Directory because after fixing problems like the ones with the audio one (it didn't have problems with textures) it all went downhill after working pretty well with the parent mod.

I also had problems when trying to use STA2_Classic as a parent mod with STA2_Generational.

Either way, I'd like to hear your steps to get my mod working right, like you pretty much said you would, and two, try another version of your mod as a standalone, PLEASE, since no one else will actually help me!

posted on March 4th, 2013, 6:46 am

As Rifraf says, the _1 and _2 files are LOD texture files. Ordinarily, I wouldn't expect them to cause any problems, however...

It seems that if you take say the Fed Mining station "fmining.sod" and you alter that SOD file and remove the LODs from it (since LODs are not really required these days for Armada 2) , if you have fmining_1 and fmining_2 left in your texture directory, the engine automatically tries to stick those textures on a LOD, but it can't.

The result is weird texture distortions often followed by crashes. This was a source of great annoyance to me with KA2, since despite discovering this problem after release and explaining how to fix it, all I got on A2files was "it just crashes an the texturs r messed up LOLz this suxs" from morons who apparently couldn't read.

*steams*

Okay better now Very annoying when it's actually STOCK files causing the issue, not anything you've personally modded yourself.

posted on March 4th, 2013, 7:16 am

@SquireJames: Do I have to edit the _1and _2 textures from the SOD files if I was to remove them? Way I'm understanding about what you are saying is that they are just extra files.
I'm not good at editing premade SOD files, or really making my own SODs.

What happens with mods others have made that have the _1 and _2 textures, can they be deleted in the same means as the stock ones, or do I have to edit the SODs as well? (Or is that what you mean by:

Very annoying when it's actually STOCK files causing the issue, not anything you've personally modded yourself.

?)

posted on March 4th, 2013, 7:21 am

You can remove _1 and _2 files without modifying any SODs. In fact, it's a good thing to do as it saves your system loading a texture file 3 times, and it means the most detailed one is always used (the original tga rather than a LOD)

The problem arises when you edit SODs and don't remove the _1 and _2 files. That's when it gets confused

In this modern era of 512mb and 1gig (or larger) graphics cards etc, the tiny textures in Armada 2 don't pose any problems and the _1 and _2 LODs are completely obsolete.

posted on March 4th, 2013, 7:49 am

Ok SquireJames, thank you. One other question, what does "LOD" mean? I can't figure that out.

posted on March 4th, 2013, 7:51 am

Level of Detail , so the abbreviation LOD is really for a "LOD Mesh"

posted on March 4th, 2013, 4:46 pm

I think the issue was is that I use a lot of ships/stations from Aad Moerman from over at A2 Files. He named his textures the same as stock and if he did include any LOD textures I didn't use them. Anyway, my mod was using his SOD and base texture but because the STA2 Classic mod had LODS named the same with the _1 and _2 it was trying to apply those on top of my updated texture giving me the graphical anomolies.

I made a slight change with the sound values last nite but won't be able to playtest more until after work today.

@Je_mezu: My mod seems to be working 98% ok with the STA2 Classic mod as a parent but I may mess around with trying it as a standalone. I'll let you know if/when I do. Something I thought of though is when I first installed my mod I copied "everything" from my Activision/Armada 2 folder into my new modname folder under mods in FO. I didn't work and crashed. I then deleted anything that was extra (already in the STA2 Classic folder) and kept only the folders/files I had actually changed in my mod. So the only thing in my mod folder is the AI, bitmaps, bzn, misc, odf, sod, texture, techtree, sounds folders and then the art_cfg, dynamic_localized_strings_cfg and rts_cfg files and that's it. My mod fired right up then.

posted on March 4th, 2013, 7:56 pm

@rifraf: When I started my STA2_Generational Mod in FleetOps, I totally copied the STA2_Classic Mod's folder and pasted it into the FleetOps Mods Directory with a new name (my mod's name) and then I deleted its AI, Animations (a folder STA2_Classic has named wrong, missing the "s" at the end whuch i fixed in that mod since it actually hilds Cinmantic Videos for some missions for inside the game, which could be related to your sound problems) Bitmaps, BZN, misc, missions, objectives, ODF, SOD, Sounds, and Textures folders from that STA2_Classic Mod copy. Then I replaced all of those deleted folders with my own folders with modded content. For the textures folder I copied all the textures in the RGB folder and placed them directly in the Textures folder. Lastly I replaced the sprites directory files in the STA2_Classic Mod with the ones from STA2_Generational ones that were modded. Did the same with the files within the Techtree folder. Lastly replaced the main directory files with my modded files for: armada2.map, ART_CFG.H file, Dynamic_Localized_Strings.H file, events.DAT, game_cfg.H file, input.MAP, label.MAP, mshell.SET and lastly the RTS_CFG.H file since all if them had changes.

I only did all of this because using the STA2_Classic Mod as a Parent Mod failed miserably with crash after crash trying to get it to work following the guide's guidelines on transferring a stock mod into FleetOps using STA2_Classic as a parent and that's because some modded games totally are not compatible with the parent files in the STA2_Classic Mod yet the game uses the parent ones over the ones it needs in the "child mod's directory", hence the importance of standalone mods. Only those who haven't changed much are lucky enough to have a mod that works with the STA2_Classic Mod as a parent mod and that's because I tried it out to test some of my theories and those test mods with the STA2_Classic Mod as a Parent Mod work just fine because they don't have major changes. Depending on what you've changed in your mod this test proved some mods work fine with a parent mod others don't. I don't know what you've changed in your mod or added so that's most likely where the differences lie in your mod working with a parent mod and mine failing miserably.

posted on March 4th, 2013, 9:11 pm

My personal build is fairly tame in that it's stock Armada 2 with the 1.1 patch and the Midnite Univers 2.0 mod. (I decided against using the Upgrade Project Vanilla Ultimate 2.0 mod just because there is so much in it and I wanted to start from scratch. Freyr did a great job with it, don't get me wrong.) Beyond that all I did was change the .sod and textures/odf of every ship station and then swapped out some weapon/shield/explosion textures and updated the requisite sprites. I changed all the damage values/resource costs so I don't care about missions as they would be all out of whack with what I did. I only care about instant action play.

Some things that stand out about what you did when deleting things out of the Classic mod and inputting your own are that I know for sure the RTS_CFG was changed, Blade added extra coding to the bottom of the file so if you deleted his file and added yours you'll be missing this extra code unless you added in to your mod.

Also, I know he changed the shields to be more like FO so he has specific shield .sods and their requisite textures so if you deleted all those and are using your own, who knows if that will present problems. The reason I say this is because I have my own shield .sod and textures in my mod but the Classic mod flat out over-rides mine and uses it's own that Blade specifies. Which his are 100% better anyway since they are the FO shield effects which I like.