Btw, speaking about megastations - I'd suggest to remake them, they are cool looking and remind a lot of X-Rebirth, but they're killing fps even when simply flying near them (and if I land I get a real slideshow)
Flying through vast spaces inside sectors sounds really good. Hope you won't remove superhighways though.
And what I'm really hyped about is that there'll be planet atmospheres finally. Waiting for some kind of Radiant Haven sector where you could put your stations in the lower atmosphere layers. That'll be so cool.
P.S. I think if you continue modding with this lot of effort you finally end up in bringing planets with a possibility to land on them, the feature all X community's been waiting for ages
P.P.S. yeah I know it's almost impossible, but looking to all the work you've already done I start to believe anything is possible.
Damn! All of this sounds so awesome that I actually want to start right away. But standing in the way are my adjustments to the "More Hotkeys" mods and thus some tests with the unfortunately quite buggy (with 7.5) SirNukes ModSupportApis... That's going to take a while.
And then there's still the really important question about "Timelines," which I don't have an answer to yet. I imagine it like this:
1. I deactivate REM and your other Mods and play the TIMELINE missions that are located outside the save (I've never done this before because my X isn't currently functional).
2. Once I've unlocked all the bonuses for the save, I leave Timelines activated (I assume I have to do this to get the rewards for TL in the save), and I also activate all of your mods and start a new game. This is what I'm looking forward to the most; it's always been a huge joy to start anew and feel lost, and with your mods, it will surely be infinitely vast!!!
3. In the game with your MODS AND TIMELINES, I can enjoy the additional ships and modules (?) from TL, which also work with REM, etc. However, I don't call up any more TL missions externally, and internally, i.e., in the new SAVE, TL doesn't have any missions or anything else (except for the reward things), as far as I know.
Do I understand this correctly? Or unfortunately, does it not work like this?
Oh yeah, one more thing, although I think I asked about this before:
Will all the stories work without problems? I'm thinking of spaceship races or the activation of the highway in the Boron DLC...
Thanks for answers, Trajan von Olb
(translatet with perplexity.ai)
Mein Traum vom Glück ist der Traum von einer anderen Menschheit. (S. Lem)
Ziplock...it's time for us to change the oldy gf card
My RX 580 struggles too close to megastations...and I have the flickering map/cockpit very frequently. It has "only" 4 gb of memory..
This vulkan is optimized as crap! Anyway I am changing/reducing them.
I am working now on funcional asteroid bases and factories. It is very tricky bc the modularity does not apply and I have to spread them through scripts instead of god.
The megastations aka factory cities would be very good on the surface of a small moon or huge asteroid, but I suppose that at that point vulkan would reduce my pc into dust, as its name suggests.
I hated radiant heaven, it was one of the most immersion breaking place of the game: you are inside atmosphere and all those megastations magically float...static. No gravity, no wind, the same as other sectors where at least you are far from a planet, so static things are "acceptable".
Such things are better not be done if not done properly. I added atmosphere for the opposite intention, having an immersion valid way to avoid entering the planet's mesh at high speed and see that is all fake
The way the ship goes now firstly into reduced speed and friction, visible air around, then damage effects before cabooom..makes everything more believable. No stations to be built there
Well my RX 570 is a real dinosaur too, so no surprise at all it's being destroyed by Vulcan Anyway, it has 8gb memory and temperature barely rises above 66 ℃ and the game uses no more than 40 % of memory even near megacomplexes. That's + 64 gb ram and Xeon E5 V4 should be fine, the game barely uses 20% of ram and CPU, but for some reason struggles near megastations
If you remember, we both used to have an issue with huge fps loss in X-Rebirth with Jon Colman's sector mods. For some reason I had very low fps near big roid fields, while X4 running smoothly in nearly endless fields of some XRSGE sectors. In any case, the Task manager always shows CPU/Ram/Graphic card 20/20/40 % usage in almost all situations and fps only drops near megacomplexes for the reason unknown.
Speaking about realism, well if X series games were realistic, we would've had at least planets rotating around their suns and lots of other stuff like Newtonian physics and so on, so basically we could accept some even more ridiculous exceptions like stations in sun corona and stations in lower orbits. Honestly, no single sector in this game makes real sense - the only way to make X realistic is to turn it into Elite Dangerous, but in that case it will lose it's soul, on my opinion. So let's imagine there's some super sophisticated shield and engine tech which helps stations to survive sun coronas and planet's gravity well. C'mon, as long as it's beautiful and immersive who cares
Btw is 4gb ram really enough to mod X4?
Not ram, my ram is 32 gb I meean the gf card's memory, is only 4gb. But the card is still very capable of delivering 40-50 fps in most modern games. Anyway it is time to upgrade. My card instead heats a lot but by what you report I suppose it is a question of optimization not raw power, the rx 570/580/590 still being a workhorse. I think all modern engines somehow drain a lot of gf memory where they could use different approaches. But as you remember, it was an issue with Rebirth too (dx9) so it is quite a mistery..
The thing with realism is a discussion since the age of X2, at least when I signed here. Of course making realism too much of the gameplay would remove the soul of this game. But immersion can be improved a lot with few tricks which btw are easily done on current engine. Atmospheric entry effect...not just betty warning then caboom. The result is identical but the immersion changes. Then...we don't need orbiting stuff but if you do make f.i. an animated background, it is a box now, make it a sphere, then let it very slowly rotate, together with the sun flare...that would make the feeling of orbits and that the sector is linked to the planet. Simulating the planet orbiting while in reality it is the background that moves.
These things are so easy to do...if I was decent at using blender I could even do it.
If someone knows how to create a rotating sphere of at least e9 size with a single texture to map, I could then open it as dae and add the texture...and export as xmf for x4 as I did with vanilla meshes I changed them in dae but I don't know how to add animation, if it is even possible. It is in blender..
Last edited by Realspace on Mon, 13. Jan 25, 08:34, edited 1 time in total.
Y-llian wrote: ↑Mon, 13. Jan 25, 00:49
Very much enjoying the latest iteration of your STARS, XRSGE and REM mods, working with the 7.5 beta. Really lovely work - thank you.
Quick question: is there a full map somewhere for XRSGE galaxy?
Thanks kindly,
Best
Y.
Don't know if there's some kind of map for the last version of XRSGE, but the solution may be to use cheat mod and open the whole map with it, then make a screenshot and voila
Realspace, oh no please no rotating sky spheres, I still remember it from No Man's Sky, looks sooo fake. I would prefer X3 static sectors a lot, in comparison to NMS very fake looking rotating skybox.
A map is in my list, the bottom of it. I mean a nice one made with vectorial representation. If somebody wish to do it it would help. Sectors won't change pos in 7.5
At today, I've done:
- resized and reshaped all city factories aka gigantic space stations, also made having reduced modules and module kinds, smaller but prettier
- created the X3 style Ore Mine, Silicon Mine, Solar plant, + other asteroid bases for mining for argon, teladi and split
- created and spawned several "strange" objects from Rebirth
- redone black hole sun 6, only one gigantic sector with planet and moon you can fly, instead of 2 (sub) sectors. Same I did for Sonra II. Will do the same for other vanilla sectors (nopileous?).
- ceated exagons to represent the zones in the map, as in Rebirth. They are clickable as other landmarks I added: center of the sector, always visible ti find the core of the sector even in gigantic sectors (especially for those as me who will play without superhighways), landmark for planet, moon, sun, far out. They are always visible in the map/radar and help navigation. I made a script to generate them but X4 considers every station a zone (while in the files, zones are as in Rebirth) so it generated too many circles on the map so...I have to add the landmarks in the map one by one. But I made a script that assign a random name to each of these zones at game start: cuspid splint, fervid corona, so on...names from Rebirth. Some names I handplace, so as there are some already now in 7.1 version of xrsge.
- created vast regions of atmosphere around planets and suns, they provide travel disrupt, then boost disrupt then damage then caboom game over, the more you enter it + atmospheric visuals
- added danger zones to all the resources of gas, with visual effect. These damage have different strength, the most of them only affect shields. In these regions as in the asteroid field, travel is disrupted
- added several visual effects plus betty messages when the proximity is found (REM Hyperdrive mod), also rewritten the disrupt close to stations and gates, now it triggers always when in proximity, travel is interrupted (REM Hyperdrive mod)
- new visuals for travel drive, similar to that of other games, with light effects reminds of the 2001 space odissey final scene..
-new asteroid bases that can be claimed (but I am still working on the script to make the claim..)
- new hidden asteroid pirate bases, means you can see them but not on the radar/map. They are in teladi and argon sectors where they can hide (asteroid fields etc).
- newly redone station logic, stations are almost all close to planets and are less (performance gain)
- remade several sectors, cleaner, bigger, more regions
- (started) remaking sectors with 3 versions: 1. Internal superhighways as they are now (many), 2. reduced nr of internal superhighways (only the very long ones), 3. No internal superhighways at all (to cope with REM Hyperdrive where very high travel speed is possibile without ships bouncing around, travel disrupted close to stations, asteroid etc and instant stop/exit from hyperdrive).
Todo:
adding resources in the low orbit of gas giant...mean, they already are there but I want to reshape and reposition them to be exactly a circle around the medium orbit of the planet (where travel is disrupted but still no damage) and another with more dense res in lower orbit, where shield damage happens.
Same with sun coronas, they already are there but can be set ar different distances before caboom happens.
I've lot of work to do to remake sectors to better fit the above changes.
Experimental: adding stations on the surface of small moons/big asteroids. Not the regular moon that are huge, but there are some small models I already put in many sectors. So I have to test how ships handle the collision, but the idea is putting all those manufacturing cities I made scattered on the surface of these models instead of floating (static) in the void. Again, not much of a change in gameplay but good for immersion. Have to see how detailed the textures are when very close, but in general the big asteroids are very detailed, even too much (I play the game at texture quality: low and don't see any difference).
Last edited by Realspace on Sun, 19. Jan 25, 00:43, edited 1 time in total.
Wow, sounds soo cool. So many changes. I'm really hyped, especially about new strange objects from Rebirth, been waiting for something like that for eternity. Think that there should've been some more mysterious objects, not only aqueducts and here you come Big thanks! In X Rebirth there were at least some cool looking stations as Badlands colony and another strange station with glowing green energy fields in Albion, strange looking asteroid base in Omicron Lyrae... Btw your decision to add X3 asteroid bases is great! And if they could be built on asteroids and planetoids where you could walk... man, Ego guys should hire you immediately (actually, in my opinion they should have already done that. Your space and planets design is way beyond of what they are trying to do in X4).
Transforming small sub sectors into one big sector is quite logical (according to that superhighways are less buggy that way) and is better and for immersion. However, I'd recommend to save Rebirth names like Fevrid corona, cuspid splint etc. to X Rebirth sectors in case if you decide to add them (do you? ) and use some random names for zones to be more lore friendly.
Atmosphere flight (plus asteroid bases and moon cities) sounds absolutely amazing, adding some more hazard areas, maybe some hidden treasures... Actually it does sound like X5 now more than X4
P. S. Asteroid's and moon's textures sure don't need improvement, but some planets do, especially vanilla planets in sectors located in low orbits where you can see pixelated clouds and terrain. My favorite planets still are Heretic's end and Sacroscant Conclave - close, but not too close to planet surfaces, but still you can see some detailed elements such as cities, islands, ocean trenches and mountains.... Btw, maybe you could add some red nebulae to Heretic's End to remind good old X3 Terran Conflict sector?
...entering the atmosphere resulted into...caboooom
I've gone further into XRSGE 7.5 development, a lot of new features and a radical change of the map to host the new gigantic sectors.
I'd need some beta testing for the new features, since I am still changing/adding a lot of in-sector superhighways (some are more than 200.000km ) I can't release the mod if not for testing because old saves will not be compatible.. let me know if somebody want to help.
This is a preview of the new map and, btw, Nopileos has finally found a new single sector home (I had to rewrite a lot of missions for this little change )
As you can see, the new landmark on map showing the planet..
I' m ready to test, very interesting what monster you' ve created
Anyway, I have very big experience of starting a new game (been doing it after almost every small update ) so if you need someone for beta testing, you're welcome
Does your mod still require switching off Timelines? (Which is a pity, because of the missing ships (X-Perimental and Dart) which are basically my standard personal ships now ))
I am close to an ALPHA release. I eventually went into making an XRSGE 8 more than a 7.5, it changes everything. Someone will not like the ...reduction ... of sectors, but with time I hope you'll see it is better. They are internally 10x times bigger. Almost every sector is a Rebirth system, so not really a reduction of space, just a reduction of space boxes.
Anyway, I've integrated Timelines into the map, but still not played it once...can someone tell me what happens to the Timeline sectors after Timeline story is ended, do they open to the normal space or remain separated? To know better what to do with these...
So you deleted most of the small sub sectors and made main sectors bigger, am I right?
Timelines sectors appear as normal sectors on the map after completing the story, so there should be no issues.
Ok, interesting. I noticed they have active gates but linking to a stange code, while f.i. boron dlc has inactive gates that are opened after a stage in the plot, I used those also for opening additional gates in the mod, but these use a different approach..will study them...anyway I must then rework Timelines sectors to suit the galaxy then.
Yes I removed ALL sub-sectors, and they were a lot, vanilla and mine. But also removed a lot of additional sectors used in xrsge 7 as far away position of remote planets. These positions are now inside a single sector where internal superhighways can reach up to 300.000 km inside the same sector. I could do even more but the burden to calculations is unknown.
I had to patch all scripts related to superhighways that in vanilla are considered always as gates leading to a different sector not internal connections. Still there seems to be a deeper check routine that considers the distances too high. Only a dev can adress those, there is nothing in the accessible files.
Anyway you'll see soon, any main sector is like 2-4 previous sectors for views and positions. This also leads to a reduction of resources which is not bad because 1. Saves are lighter, 2. There were to many in xrsge 7. 3. Should induce factions to invade more.
I also got rid of some solar sectors, they were too many and somehow spoiled the immersion of crossing one. The ideal one should be as DeVrie in Rebirth, unique looking. Solar sectors serve, as in 7 but even more, as remote connections where Xenon opened their gates, as in Frontier sectors.
Also I work on having few to only one gate in each sector, if multiple they are distant and linked through superhighways.
The general idea is to have less boxes but each more dense and richer..a single sector like a Rebirth system, in practice not so rich but they are a lot more than in Rebirth. Let's say that the accuracy of xrsge 7 (each system having its sun, orbits etc) is exchanged for a better experience both in the map and in the sector, I hope..
Edit: I see significant stuttering due to large use of sys RAM. The very big distances are a burden for RAM, it starts with minimum 18gb of usage while vanilla is 9. The 1% fps is almost half. I have an old gf card but it handles vanilla graphics very well and the 1% is very good in vanilla so this is due to the sys RAM usage.
I will try to reduce ships in the universe and see. Maybe a better system will handle this mod better, I mean newer faster RAM, I am still on AM4. GF card is not an issue, my rx580 with stars mod in vanilla has a steady 50/60 fps or even more if I remove the cap (but I prefer a fluid fps than high numbers and lows).
Last edited by Realspace on Wed, 5. Feb 25, 15:14, edited 4 times in total.
I agree this approach is the best to suit X4 more than previous versions. As much as I love huge map and big amount of sectors I' m ready to make this sacrifice
As for sun sectors, yes - a few, but unique as DeVries (and maybe DeVries itself? one can hope)
I vote for this andaybe for some even more X3 touch - make some even more old X3 sectors look like...old X3 sectors Lucky Planets, Bluish Snout, Montalaar, Depths of Silence (remember the dense red nebulae in this one and mysterious music) and especially Legends Home (need to add OTAS to this one for more immersion, but I'm afraid it's too much work)
Well, sounds like a mix of X3 and Rebirth, as X4 should have been from the start (In my opinion)
Anyway, I get it - quality over quantity.
I've made a test and removed all ships from galaxy, stuttering is no more and low 1% fps neither. RAM is back to 12gb. So this confirms that the huge distances to calculate where ships go, it causes the burden.
I will reduce some of the jobs and hope to see better performance on pc that are better than mine.
Other than this the only big patch would be to entirelly rewrite the move.gate script that gives errors in order to let it calculate distances in less precise stes upto more precise steps when close to destination.
The issue is with move to gates not other move scripts, so maybe I can reduce the range of patrols and some traders..
Fewer but bigger sectors like X-Rebirth? That's sounds very promising. Hopefully the performance will be better than the last XRSGE version 7 from last year. I'm looking forward to your work.
I changed them in dae but I don't know how to add animation, if it is even possible. It is in blender..
)
) so if you need someone for beta testing, you're welcome