FQM 5.00 Beta 2

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Announcing the posting of FQM 5.00 Beta 2, for SE5.

download link (321 KB)

This mod features:

* More realistic placement of planet types, with rock in the inner rings, gas giants in the middle, and ice on the fringes.
* Most of the funky quadrants from FQM for SE4, such as Spaghetti, Old, Newborn, Paradise, Super-Grid and Maze.
* Nebulae that look more like nebulae, with 70 storms per system.
* Multicolored nebulae for more variety.
* More ability variation on stellar objects, including asteroids and storms.
* 4 and 5 star systems.
* Protostars, with storm color coordinated to star color.
* Real star names instead of the wacky stock ones.
* And more!

Please note that this is a work in progress. There are bound to be quirks, which you should report. All suggestions for improvement are welcome!

albi_joe · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 19, 2005 Location: USA

Fyron, what do 4 and 5-star systems do to balance in relation to the crystalline Solar Collectors?

As it is, I just need one good BINARY system (with 3 or 4 planets) and my resource needs are more than met...

A question: will there be more non-planet systems, less, or about the same?

Fulgrymm · Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:58 pm Post subject:

Sounds awesome. Can I plunk this into the Balance Mod folder without screwing anything up?

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

4 and 5 star systems are fairly rare in normal quadrants. Without increasing maximum system numbers, you will typically see 1 or 0 of each, even in large quadrants.

===

At present, all of the stock quadrants except Ancient have:

60% standard
16% binary
4% trinary

The corresponding quadrants in Adamant have:

57% standard (which have more variation in planet numbers than stock)
16% binary
4% trinary
2% quadruple
1% quintuple

Also, 1% of the nebulae in FQM are replaced by Protostar systems, which have 3 planets.

Assuming you choose a "normal" quadrant, there are about the same number of systems with planets and planetless systems as stock. Many of the new quadrant types (eg: Maze, Spaghetti) use the same distribution. Newborn is similar to Ancient in terms of planetless systems, Old is halfway between Ancient and Mid-life. Paradise has no planet-less systems at all. Star heavy has the same number of planet-containing systems, but only half are single star systems. The rest have multiple stars.

===

You can probably combine this with the balance mod without any issues. You probably don't want the settings file from FQM, but other than that, the rest of the files would be needed. Note that the balance mod actually uses some of the older features of this already, notably the more realistic planet placements. Wink

albi_joe · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 19, 2005 Location: USA

cool, glad you have things worked out!

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Yeah, it helps to write programs to generate it all for you based on percentage inputs. Wink

FQM SE4 was a frickin mess.

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

I have uploaded Beta 2.

Version 5.00 Beta 2 - 05 February 2007:
1. Changed - Warp Points now have more variety for abilities.
2. Added - Fancy lightning effects to non-nebula storms, courtesy of Suicide Junkie.

CapnKy · Space Emperor Joined: Jan 01, 2005

Do quintuples still have the fun random movement effect? Wink

Santiago · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 26, 2006

This was posted over at the SEV Forums about FQM beta2 but I'd prefer this site a lot better.

Fyron stated:

I have no plans to put moons in the same sector as the planets. If you've got python installed, you can easily make your own copy of FQM do so by editing this line in _solar_systems.py (around line 188, near # Generate moons, if necessary.) and running it:

buf += 'Obj ' + str(i) + ' Position ' + spaces(i) + ':= Offset ' + str(pnum) + ' Ring ' + str(ring) + '\n'

Change it to:

buf += 'Obj ' + str(i) + ' Position ' + spaces(i) + ':= Same As ' + str(pnum) + '\n'

I tried changing this thru Editpad and didn't see any results ingame. I'm not a python expert or even a python newbie, but I figured to give it a shot. Is that second line correct? Am I missing something? Do I really need to have Python installed? And "running it"? Is that just running the game?

I like FQM and the other mods that are out, and appreciate all the work you guys have done, but for me at least, I find it difficult at best due to not having a programming background. The use of scripts/formulas/python is probably best for the future of the game but I think it turns people off who have no familiarity with it and may well limit the amount of players willing to mod extensively.

Anyway enough ranting about that. Keep up the great work Smile

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

SE5 does not use python in any way, shape or form. I wrote the scripts to help me generate the mod and keep track of it all. SE5 only parses the data files. You have to run the python script to see any changes in the data files. You'll probably have to install the Python runtime first.

Santiago · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 26, 2006

Thanks for the info, I'll give it a try

Santiago · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 26, 2006

It worked fine using python. Even had some planets with more than 1 moon - properly labeled A, B

Thanks for the help

WillTheGreat · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 18, 2006

I believe I speak for all the forumites when I say, "W00t."

Santiago · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 26, 2006

Hi

1. What would be the best way to increase/decrease the number of moons, planets, asteroids etc?

2. What's on the agenda for future versions?

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

If you are comfortable editing python, the easiest way is to modify the _solar_systems.py script. The alternative is extremely tedious manually editing of SystemTypes.txt. The systems are created around line 810. Look for:

# Small Solar Systems with extra asteroids

Each system is created by the create_solar_system() function. One parameter is a list of planets to place in the system. For each planet in the list, you specify ring # (for position), type and number of moons.

To increase the number of moons, simply assign more moons to various planet slots.

To increase the number of planets, you need to add new planet slots into the list for the particular system you wish to have more planets. Note that the systems are ordered from least number of planets to highest number. It doesn't really matter to SE5, but it keeps things easier to keep track of for the user. For purposes of overall balance, the script prints out the number of rock/ice/gas entries it added to system types when you run it. Try to keep those numbers equal.

The number of asteroids placed in a system is a constant. For the smaller systems, it is set to 4, around line 812. For the larger systems, it is set to 3, around line 909.

You can also change the number of planets in Binary, Trinary, etc. type systems, if you wish.

Of course, make sure to run the script before you test out your changes in-game. The best way is to double click on "a.bat" in the data folder. This will open a command prompt window in that folder. You can then type "_solar_systems.py" to run the script. Doing it this way means you will see the errors and planet count results printed out. If you just run the script from explorer, the window will close after completion, preventing you from seeing anything.

Santiago · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 26, 2006

Thanks for the info. I'll try and put it to good use.

JonMacLeod · Space Emperor Joined: Jan 13, 2006

Any word on MM fixing the planet names so that moons can be named similarly to SEIV e.g.: Procyon V A (the first moon of the fifth planet in the Procyon system).

I took a quick glance through the FQM text files and it looks as if this one stumped you as well (I've bashed my head on this problem for many hours with no success).

Fyron if you, or anyone else has some insight it would be appreciated.

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Any moon with "Same As X" positioning, which appears in the same sector as its parent planet, will get the SE4 styled lettered naming convention. It is only the (IMO better) "Offset X Ring Y" type moons that do not get the letters. Evil or Very Mad

I've asked for moons with "Offset X Ring Y" positioning to get the same lettered naming convention as those with "Same As X" get many times in the past, to no avail. If more people send such a request to se5 at malfador dot com, perhaps it can become a reality...

JonMacLeod · Space Emperor Joined: Jan 13, 2006

Yeah, that kind of sucks. SEV is not well suited to having moons in the same sector. Even if they put the little number back in from SEIV that denoted multiple stellar objects in a sector, that would be workable (though not as pretty). I guess I'll have to start a pester MM list... uh, I mean, a wish list, yes a wish list (no pestering here) Very Happy

.

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

I've created a handy Wiki article for the moon info.

ColonialAdmiral · Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 2:25 am Post subject:

Must suck being the only one who knows how to use moons... Very Happy

JonMacLeod · Space Emperor Joined: Jan 13, 2006

Nope. Then he gets to be our glorious leader, putting the very moon in our darkened skies, to light our way on the path from ignorance.

ColonialAdmiral · Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 5:36 am Post subject:

Moonsword · Space Emperor Joined: Jan 14, 2005 Location: Georgia

Eat your humble pie and like it.

JonMacLeod · Space Emperor Joined: Jan 13, 2006

I can't remember: is "..." awkward silence or chuckling. It doesn't seem to be in my chat abbreviations list.

Thanks Fyron, I hadn't noticed that the 'same location command' used the SEIV moon naming convention. Not sure I can use it for the display reasons mentioned above (no number in SEV to denote more than one stellar object in a sector). I did take your advice to pester... ahem, I mean advise MM about the problem.