Mmm! Now that's a tasty ball of hydrocarbons! :P

Now everyone's trying their hand at planet suggestions... Nah, I love it - it makes this mod feel more like a community effort than a one man show!



I've PM'd Steph - with more lobbying of this sort we can get these delicious planets into our galaxies quite soon! :P



So, out of interest, what are you looking for in making new planet types/anomalies? Are you aiming more for realism or variety?

Now, that's an interesting question...on the one hand, realism is always nice. On the other hand, we don't know exactly what's out there in the universe, and given we're playing as several different races, all with an attachment to a wonder-substance known as Dust, that's not exactly all there in our own reality...so, Variety I suppose. Relatively realism bound variety, but still variety.



Incidentally, I think that I was a bit mistaken in what I'd posted above for the Dust Ball Moon - it should be more of a wonder, if anything.



Hopefully, even if the bug isn't fixed, the mod will enjoy considerable success. :-)

With the earlier-than-expected release of Disharmony, i will, of course, be waiting to see if the planet rotation bug is fixed, and also making the mod Disharmony compatible!

Working on getting the mod Disharmony-compatible. Almost there. Have to tackle the Expansion and Warfare tech trees next. Those are going to hurt. Good news is, those aside, Disharmony was not too rough on AGED.

Nice and so fast too, good job!

So i spoke too soon. I've come accross a crippling bug. When selecting a planet to "in-system" colonize (i.e. without a colony ship), i get a bad crash. I've looked into this extensively, and have no idea what's causing it. It happens with any custom planet, i've even tried adding a bare-bones one from scratch using the Disharmony files as a template. I need some help here.



This is the crash:





And this is the only thing that looks amiss when clearing the window (note: unless a planet has anomalies or moons, then all those are F'd up too):





This occurs whether you have the correct technology for colonization or not.



However, if you colonize when a colony ship, selecting the planet works fine, and there are no problems.

i would upload the mod into your question so people or the devs can have a look at the code, so they can try to help fix it.

The mod is 100mb or so, so i can't just upload it here. Also, I wouldn't because its not ready for release. However, anyone can replicate this outcome by simply following the directions for adding a custom planet in the ES modding tutorial thread.



I'm guessing there's a new step that's been added that hasn't been documented, or a change somewhere that hasn't been documented. Just have no idea what that could be, because I call myself having looked over this very thoroughly.

Just decided to stop by and give you some coding fuel.

I'm really looking forward to this mod.

I appreciate the work that you are doing, and if you need any help, I offer my services to you.

Awesome, Thanks! I'd love help figuring out this latest bug.

I can't find it. I'm sorry guys, but this bug effectively kills this mod. And i haven't a clue what's causing it.



I've looked extensively for any changes disharmony may have made, and i can't find what's causing this bug. I've taken the CustomShipsAndPlanets mod supplied by Amplitude as a guide, and copied over instances of every change it makes from the disharmony files, and still it crashes. Either i'm missing something so completely obvious that i'll kill myself later, or there has been a fundamental change to the way custom planets are to be added that has not been documented.



For the record, this bug:

• Occurs when selecting a custom planet "in-system" to colonize (or just to view)
• Does not occur with custom planets colonized by colony ship
• Causes a "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" crash
• Displays error claiming "Missing Technology: $Tech", regardless of the fact that you may indeed have all the required technologies to colonize the planet
• Completely borks up every panel after that:
  • Anomaly reduction icon does not display properly, cites incorrect missing technology "Gravity Shield"
  • Terraformation options panel is present but with no options
  • Moon Survey panel displays the text, "Require technology %%% to survey"
  • Exploitation panel displays no current exploitation, but has the following text, "This is a text with a very long content"
  • Explotation options do not show up at all
    
    

Here is a quick mod, the CustomPlanetsAndShips mod, provided by Amplitude as a template, and updated to Disharmony specs. You can use this to duplicate the crash.



CustomPlanetsAndShips.rar

LogicSequence wrote:
I can't find it. I'm sorry guys, but this bug effectively kills this mod. And i haven't a clue what's causing it.

Let me be blunt. I'd be surprised if the devs came around and fixed up the game so that your mod works within the next month.



Your mod is drop-dead gorgeous. However, it is a mod. No mod will ever be as important to a dev team as the base game. And right now, Disharmony resembles a semi-debugged beta.



You might have to wait 3-6 months. Good luck?

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Let me be blunt. I'd be surprised if the devs came around and fixed up the game so that your mod works within the next month.



Your mod is drop-dead gorgeous. However, it is a mod. No mod will ever be as important to a dev team as the base game. And right now, Disharmony resembles a semi-debugged beta.



You might have to wait 3-6 months. Good luck?

Well allow me to be equally as blunt. Your tone of arrogance aside, this isn't my first rodeo. I've worked for several studios and am a dev myself, i know how the game is played. I made an appeal to my fellow modders to help figure out this bug. I posted in the tech support section to make the dev's aware of the bug, if i wanted more attention from them than that i would have messaged them directly, but i have not because i am aware of how busy they are. So, if you have something useful to contribute as to how to squash this bug, awesome! However, backhanded compliments and passive aggressive valedictions aren't exactly ringing with an abundance of good will and aid, and are similarly unappreciated.



What i would like is help from the modding community in figuring out what exactly is causing this bug, so that if indeed it is a bug i can better assist the devs in eventually fixing it; and if it is not an actual bug, but an undocumented change in the way custom planets are modded, a way to correctly implement the custom planets in my mod.

LogicSequence wrote:
Well allow me to be equally as blunt. Your tone of arrogance aside, this isn't my first rodeo. I've worked for several studios and am a dev myself, i know how the game is played. I made an appeal to my fellow modders to help figure out this bug. I posted in the tech support section to make the dev's aware of the bug, if i wanted more attention from them than that i would have messaged them directly, but i have not because i am aware of how busy they are. So, if you have something useful to contribute as to how to squash this bug, awesome! However, backhanded compliments and passive aggressive valedictions aren't exactly ringing with an abundance of good will and aid, and are similarly unappreciated.



What i would like is help from the modding community in figuring out what exactly is causing this bug, so that if indeed it is a bug i can better assist the devs in eventually fixing it; and if it is not an actual bug, but an undocumented change in the way custom planets are modded, a way to correctly implement the custom planets in my mod.

Well said! I'm afraid I can't be of any service to you since I have no experience with modding this game, but still. I hope this problem will be addressed and fixed by either the devs (since the problem seems to occur with the official dev's files you adapted to disharmony) or the modding community who, without a doubt will be able to help you!

I wish you the best of luck and hope to see this mod in game as soon as possible.

SOLVED!

Or rather, workaround found.



Well a fresh look at this bug seems to have proved fruitful. I can confirm it is, at least, in my opinion a bug. But there is a workaround. I was finally able to trace the problem directly to the PlanetColonization.xml table. I took the affinity for amoeba (which i always use for testing since they can see the galaxy by default) and loaded their home system with terran planets. As you would expect, no problems. Then i decided to copy the ColonizeTerran entry from the disharmony files to the mod file, and BOOM, null reference exception. So at this point, i knew that, because a null reference exception means an object being pointed to is null, that the engine was saying something was missing. So i copied over the ENTIRE colonization table from disharmony to the mod directory and all of a sudden we have no errors.



Ok, so what's in the default disharmony table that's not in mine, other than colonization entries for other planets? Wait... what's that second to last entry? "ColonizeBase"? I wonder. So i added the entry for "ColonizeBase" into my modded PlanetColonization.xml table, and VOILA! No more Null Reference Exception. So what it boils down to, is somewhere along the line in making Disharmony, something was probably overlooked in the code, and the game was told to look for "ColonizeBase" in the mod directory instead of the default directory, when a mod is active. This is undoubtedly a bug, but the workaround is obviously simple, add the "ColonizeBase" entry into the modded table. Which i have now done, and can move on with working on the mod!

LogicSequence wrote:
SOLVED!

Or rather, workaround found.



Well a fresh look at this bug seems to have proved fruitful. I can confirm it is, at least, in my opinion a bug. But there is a workaround. I was finally able to trace the problem directly to the PlanetColonization.xml table. I took the affinity for amoeba (which i always use for testing since they can see the galaxy by default) and loaded their home system with terran planets. As you would expect, no problems. Then i decided to copy the ColonizeTerran entry from the disharmony files to the mod file, and BOOM, null reference exception. So at this point, i knew that, because a null reference exception means an object being pointed to is null, that the engine was saying something was missing. So i copied over the ENTIRE colonization table from disharmony to the mod directory and all of a sudden we have no errors.



Ok, so what's in the default disharmony table that's not in mine, other than colonization entries for other planets? Wait... what's that second to last entry? "ColonizeBase"? I wonder. So i added the entry for "ColonizeBase" into my modded PlanetColonization.xml table, and VOILA! No more Null Reference Exception. So what it boils down to, is somewhere along the line in making Disharmony, something was probably overlooked in the code, and the game was told to look for "ColonizeBase" in the mod directory instead of the default directory, when a mod is active. This is undoubtedly a bug, but the workaround is obviously simple, add the "ColonizeBase" entry into the modded table. Which i have now done, and can move on with working on the mod!

I see; so this was fixable through XML hacking. Congratulations.

Awesome! I've been fighting this with my mod for the last week. Thanks!

Off course you should take all the time you deem necessary to make this mod as great as it promises to be right now, but it would be great if you could give us some indication about the steps you're going to take from this point on? (much like the progress bar of endless space) This will give us some insight about how far in this project you currently are (and how long we will have to wait for this awesome mod

Ok, quick update. The mod is now Disharmony compatible! YAY! I am still coming up with and adding in anomalies and improvements, so those may change right up until release. Now, barring myself coming up with any brilliant additional planet types, they are all done.



The additional planet types will be:

• Paradise
• Toxic
• Radioactive
• Desolate
• Plasma
• Storm
• Carbon
• Shattered

What's left to be done (as of now):

• Sower Affinity/TraitScience03 Compatibility (Compatibility with affinities that can colonize all worlds by default)
• Technology Costs
• Terraformation Costs
• Improvement Costs
• Anomoly Reduction Costs
• Descriptions for anomalies
• Descriptions for improvements
• Descriptions for technologies, etc.
• Figure out the solution to this issue

And of course, to my sadness and dismay, the planet rotation bug that has been plaguing me since i started this mod still exists.