Yeah, I made an update because alternativGalaxyGenerator stopped working. I'm giving the mod its own thread now, for posterity. All this mod does is add some larger-than-Huge galaxy sizes. This mod is so simple, literally anyone could make it for these transitional eras when the major galaxy generator mod dies off. I'm also 99% certain that one could easily update the mod by simply copying the Public files and only replacing the \Plugins\GalaxyGenerator\GalaxySettings.xml and \Localization\english\Localization_Locales.xml files from my mod, so long as there are never any major overhauls to the modding process. And so, without further ado, the download location:



http://www.mediafire.com/?btngwpsyub3xc48



Users beware, larger galaxy sizes take exponentially longer to load. The major allure of alternativGalaxyGenerator was that it loaded galaxies a hell of a lot faster for some reason (I think it had something to do with Java recoding, but I have no clue what I'm talking about). This mod, though, is the barebonesiest of all possible mods, meant to do only one thing. You can easily merge this mod with others by simply overwriting another mod's GalaxySettings.xml with mine and looking through the Localization_Locales.xml and manually adding the changes I made in that one to the other mod's Localization_Locales.xml (hint: you'll want to search for the word massive and copy the obvious things). Eh, screw it. Tutorial time.



Instructions



Installation



1. Download the mod from the mediafire location.

2. Unzip the file with 7-zip.

3. Put the folder in the appropriate location.

3. a. My Documents\Endless Space\Modding for Windows users.

3. b. ~\Library\Application Support\Endless Space\Modding for Mac users.

4. If the \Modding folder isn't already in that location, go ahead and create it.

OPTIONAL

5. To load the mod automatically, open Steam.

6. Go to your Library.

7. Right-click Endless Space.

8. Click Properties.

9. Click Set Launch Options.

10. Type "+mod BigGalaxies" without quotation marks, or whatever name you decide to give to the mod's folder. If you have another launch option set (i.e. -nologo), separate each option with one space.

11. Be aware that only one mod can be loaded at a time. If you want the benefit of multiple mods, you will have to merge them. Mods can be used in multiplayer as well, but all players must have the exact same copy of the exact same mod loaded.



How to create/update this mod (WINDOWS)



1. Go to your Steam folder.

2. In your Steam folder, go to SteamApps\common\endless space\

3. Copy the Public folder (do not cut) and paste it on your desktop or elsewhere.

4. Rename the folder to whatever you plan to name the mod.

5. Delete the Audio and Movies folders and the Registry.xml file from the mod folder only.

6. Within the mod's folder, go to the Plugins\GalaxyGenerator\ folder.

7. Open GalaxySettings.xml in notepad.

8. Hold Ctrl and press f.

9. Type GalaxySizeHuge and click find next.

10. Add the following lines after the GalaxySizeHuge line, but before :







11. Save the file.

12. Go back to the mod's folder.

13. Go to the Localization\english folder within the mod's folder.

14. Open Localization_Locales.xml in notepad.

15. Search for the following lines:

80 star systems scattered in a 111-parsec galaxy

Empires

16. Between these two lines, add the following lines:

Massive

104 star systems scattered in a 128-parsec galaxy

Supermassive

128 star systems scattered in a 140-parsec galaxy

Endless

160 star systems scattered in a 158-parsec galaxy

17. Save the file.

18. Put the folder in Endless Space's Modding folder.



How to merge this mod with any other mod (WINDOWS)



Follow Steps 6 - 18 of "How to create/update this mod" for the folder of any mod you wish to merge this with.

Thanks for making this mod. Players who use it will probably complain that it takes too long to generate a galaxy, which is what has happened the last few times this type of mod was posted. For posterity, the vanilla galaxy generator uses a very inefficient method to generate the "strings" that connect systems, and the "alternativ" used a more efficient method. I guess the dev team is not very interested in using the more efficient method, but hopefully someday they will speed it up. Please see the other threads in this forum about huge galaxies for more details.

Alright, I had about 15 minutes of spare time, so I decided to make a tutorial on how to do this yourself. If it seems condescending to anybody, I tried to make it so anyone could make the mod, whether it's a 10-year-old kid just getting into 4X games (not unlike myself when Master of Orion II came out) or a middle-aged person with too little time to be bothered with figuring stuff like this out on his or her own.

I don't find it condescending at all it's a pretty simple change and an excellent candidate for something that can be explained in detail in a post.



The point being this kind of thing inspires people to get into modding because it shows them how simple it is to get started and often that leads to people delving deeper into modding in general.



So I say bravo and good job, the mod itself may not solve the build time issue in game for very large galaxies but it does present the process of achieving the desired effect very nicely.



Good work.



~Crymson~

I will definitely use this, I had just gone and modded the huge size, not realizing I could simply add sizes. I found that with a smaller amount of warp lanes it takes a bit less time, though I usually go do something else while it generates the map.

In case people have not noticed, there is a mod which greatly reduces map generation time:

/#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/16276-released-alternativ-galaxy-generator

Yeah I caught that right after I posted this. Trying it out right now.