[REL Beta] [Shadows] Star Trek - The Picard Era

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ehsumrell1
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RE: [REL] TRSE Star Trek Mod v1.2

Post by ehsumrell1 »

ORIGINAL: Cruis.In

is this hosted anywhere else? the link at thing is broken. gamefront
Hello Cruis.In, I just tried and successfully downloaded the mod zip file.
Please try it again. If it doesn't work for you, give myself or Igard a PM. [:)]

http://www.gamefront.com/files/21691516/Star+Trek+Picard+Era+v0.9.2.zip
Shields are useless in "The Briar Patch"...
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RE: [REL] TRSE Star Trek Mod v1.2

Post by Cruis.In »

musta been gamefront error last night. the link works now. I tried three different browsers. Also do I need the mod and the total conversion if I want to play the total conversion or just the TC file?
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RE: [REL] TRSE Star Trek Mod v1.2

Post by Igard »

Sometimes gamefront links go down, so thanks for reporting all the same, Cruis.In. [:)]

Yes, the TC mod only contains the files for all the extra stuff, not the rest of the mod. So both mods need to be installed for the TC to work.
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RE: [REL] TRSE Star Trek Mod v1.2

Post by Cruis.In »

ok I installed them both. Works fine. But I uninstalled (gonna do separate installation on different drive) I uninstalled DW and reinstalled and patched up to latest and still get an error I was getting when starting a new game when the mods were installed. Didn't stop me from playing but it some dialogue box.

Datagrid Default Error Dialogue. It gives this a couple times when moves on to the game creation screen. A couple more times when setting up the game and thats it. Only happened after I installed the mod. I figured a clean install would work. Uninstalled DW. Deleted the matrix games folder. Reinstalled all 3 and yet this same problem, even tho the mod files are gone and I have a fresh install. Even tho things seem playable its annoying.

Maybe there is somewhere some settings are stored since I installed the mod. Because inotice every time i go to start new game all the parameters ive set for a new game are the same.


http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2807/11745426.png

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Igard
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RE: [REL] TRSE Star Trek Mod v1.2

Post by Igard »

That looks like an old error caused by the list of races in the 'Other Empire' setup screen.

I just tested this myself by creating a list of races in the setup, then changing theme to the default one.

Starting a new game produced the same errors you got. It pops up when you start a new game, then pops up again when you reach the other empire's setup.

This was fixed in a previous patch, but looks like it's crept back in. I'm surprised no one else has noticed it by now.

I'll make a report in the tech support forum. Thanks Cruis![:)]
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by sgt_rico »

Hi, i just started playing distant worlds a few days ago and was immediatly seduced. Then went to the mod area and saw this huge star trek mod but the link seems broken. I tried a few times now, it just doesn't work. So is there another way to grab it?

Moreover, when i searched the forum for another link i saw a lot of attachments and other files and screens for an ideal star trek experience setup. Are those included in the zip or will i have to search each page for relevant information?

Thanks for your time.
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by Igard »

Welcome to the forums Sgt_rico and thanks for the interest in the mod. I just checked the links and they're still up. I'll upload them to a different location for you.

I think the other files you speak off are part of the total conversion pack which is all completely available to download on the first page. It's an optional extra that overwrites main game files. Please read the instructions on the first page before installing.

Try these links:-

Picard Era mod 0.9.2 - http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?y8v6rrb3066hxat

Total Conversion mod - http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?taqg3ock3ka2lr9
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RE: [REL] TRSE Star Trek Mod v1.2

Post by SecuransRule »

Great Mod. Thanks for doing it. You've turned DW into one of the best Star Trek games ever. Also, I'm using both the Kirk-era and Picard-era music sets, and they are wonderful! Playing DW with the Star Trek mod makes me almost miss Star Trek Online. [;)] I would also add that the mod makes me feel very nostalgic, and serves to remind me how strong the Star Trek IP is. Fortunately not even a hack like JJ Abrams can ruin it, as hard as he may try. [;)]
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RE: [REL] TRSE Star Trek Mod v1.2

Post by Igard »

Thanks Securan!

Word is there might be another Star Trek series in the pipeline. However it will most likely be animated.

Link :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KxLg0fCRvM

I'd much prefer live action, but Clone Wars showed us that an animated series can work (and a significantly cheaper cost than live action I might add).

I'm willing to give the next JJ movie a chance, but I'm not a fan of him or his writing staff, so I'm not expecting a true Trek movie. Karl Urban's Bones was the only good thing about the first film!

Maybe a new series can recapture what Trek is all about. Exploring space and the human condition through great characters that are likeable.
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RE: [REL] TRSE Star Trek Mod v1.2

Post by SecuransRule »

I agree with you Agard. Karl Urban (from LOTR) was about the only thing I really liked about the JJ Abrams reboot, and even he was a bit underutilized. Come to think of it, to be fair I did like Spock's sarcastic "Live long and prosper"comment. lol Still though, if you take out the Star Trek characters, the movie becomes your typical scifi action/adventure with too much emphasis on CGI and time travel. I would also mention that I hated JJ's Fringe. What a weak and shameless ripoff of the X-Files. I agree though, I'll give his second movie a chance, though I think the title (Into the Darkness) is both simplistic and pretentious.

Again though, really like your Star Trek work. It made a great game even greater. [:)]


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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by Igard »

Cool screenshot!

I think it's very difficult to make a good Star Trek movie in todays world. If you look at the projects the writers and JJ Abrams have been involved in recently, it's pretty obvious these guys are all about creating style over substance material. "Into Darkness" will have our crew sporting leather jackets and acting all "Dark". Pretty much the Christopher Nolan trend these days. Like I say, I'll give it a chance, but it needs a good story and for NuUhura and NuScotty to stop being annoying.

Television is completetly different though. People don't want to tune in week in week out to dark and dreary stuff. BSG got away with it because it put some excellent characters in place right from the beginning with lots of mystery surrounding the cylons. Stargate Universe tried to follow the same style, and failed because the characters were shallow and the premise was simplistic.

JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof (both writers for the new Trek movies) created a little show called "Lost". It had great characters, very stylish and what seemed to be a great mystery. Turns out they didn't really have much clue what they were doing with it and the whole thing ended with most of the audience still asking what was going on. This is one of the primary reasons why I think they're hack writers, feeding off their ability to create interesting scenarios and sometimes cool characters, but without the necessary skills to resolve those situations and construct a fluid story. Lindelof co-wrote "Prometheus", need I say more?

I guess we'll find out in May if my concerns are justified. No doubt the movie will make a huge prophit and will be hailed as another success for the JJ team.

My hope is that this will lead to enough revenue to create a new Trek series. An animated series would still be better than nothing. I really hope that they get the right people in to write the thing. It needs to have the Star Trek 'tone'. If not, I can't see the regular movie goers tune in to watch it.

I know this is turning into a rant, and I don't want to sound all doom and gloom, but this could be sci-fi's last chance. If they do make it live action, it will be expensive. If they fail to draw an audience (and they have a large group of existing Trek fans to draw upon), then it could be the end for sci-fi on TV. Youtube, blip.tv and other internet media formats are drawing people away from their televisions. We need something that will bring them back. We need our Star Trek!
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by ehsumrell1 »

+1 [:)]
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by SecuransRule »

Again, agree completely Igard. Kirk and crew going Goth????? Please! Someone wrote an interesting comment about JJ. "It's easy to write a decent mystery, but a lot harder to come up with satisfying explanations and resolutions, something that JJ total fails to do." I would also add that JJ wrote that dreadful screenplay for Armageddon. Oh well, I guess it helps when you have Spielberg as a friend.

Yes, Prometheus was entertaining for the most part, but no where near as good as it should have been. I think Ridley Scott has been in serious decline for years. Of course his best work was done thirty years ago.

Speaking of TV series, I love Firefly. I thought it was the best scifi on TV since the Canadian Outer Limits reboot. Alluding to what you said about being dark (a la Christopher Nolan), Firefly worked very well because it was an upbeat series that gave us darkness in carefully measured doses. Also, I liked Firefly for the same reason I liked Star Trek, in that the ship crew was great and the cast worked really well together.

As an aside, I'm currently watching The Game of Thrones and love it. Best thing on TV since the Rome series. In fact, although I enjoyed seeing The Hobbit at Christmas, it has been totally overshadowed in my mind by Game of Thrones. I think my next capital planet/moon in DW is going to be called Westeros! lol

Has anyone here done Star Trek Online? I played it for the better part of three months, and it seems that for everything the game did well (beautiful visuals, great ship combat, cool character customization and clothes), there were other things about it that were lame (repetitive and grindy missions, meaningless PvP, ennui after reaching the level cap). I would say though that I really liked hanging out at the beautiful StarFleet Academy grounds and chatting with Trek fans, and some days I miss that. Also, I did enjoy all the Star Trek milieu tie-ins like the Doomsday machine and Q, and meeting the daughter of Tom Paris and B'elanna Torres brought a smile to my face. [:)]
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by Igard »

Had no idea JJ was involved in Armageddon. One of the few movies I had to walk away from!

I'm reading the Game of Thrones books as each season comes out. Almost finished book 3 now. It's fantastic stuff. If the show keeps to the books, there's some interesting and shocking stuff still to come.

I played STO for several months a couple of years ago. Some good memories. I loved the missions in the Romulan city, the Doomsday Machine was one of the best missions. It's like you say, there just isn't anything to do after level cap. I'd have liked to be able to craft items, but it was too grindy for that. The gameplay wasn't quite good enought to keep me hooked over long content droughts.
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by SecuransRule »

Uh, uh, you're not going to believe this. Yes, I was enjoying your Star Trek mods so much that it made me hugely nostalgic for the Star Trek universe, and against my better judgement I reloaded Star Trek Online and created a new account and character. I have to say though that I'm enjoying it now even better than I did this time last year. For one thing I was an MMO noob then, but now know what to expect and how to get the most out of the experience. Also, I was clueless about my science vessel last time, and now I have one that rocks! Also, Cryptic has not been idle and has been making improvements and adding content. Of course the acid test will be if ennui sets in after the level cap, as it did the last time I played it. You know what they need to do with STO though? Make it more like EVE Online, expect without all the cutthroats that inhabit that very dark place.

Anyway, I expect I will return to Distant Worlds probably just in time for Shadows. Probably just as well. DW is an amazing game and I was in danger of burning myself out on it.

BTW, I've been reading Game of Thrones and although I think it is very well-written, I haven't touched it in five days. Too busy playing STO I guess. ;) Also, it was a bummer with Sean Bean. He was no luckier with Eddard Stark that he was with Boromir. ;)
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by Igard »

Yeah, Sean Bean was born to play heroic deaths! [:D]

I'm not sure if I'll ever go back to STO. If they introduce a new playable Romulan faction, then I'll be there in a heartbeat, but I can't see that happen.

I really liked the story in the game. I liked how they explained the Hobus supernova (fixing JJ's mistakes). I'd like to see where they're going with the Iconians and their alliance with the Tal Shiar. I didn't like all that stuff about Romulan refugees coming over to the Federation (traitors all of them!). I heard there is a New Romulus now. That might be worth checking out (Rator III) was a terrible place for a new capital).

Come to think of it, there might be enough to get me back in this game, but they need to work on the exploration and space travel parts of the game. The ground stuff isn't bad, but they need better puzzles and problems to solve. PvP, I don't really care about anyway. If they can open up the galaxy and let us fly from Deep Space 9 to Qo'nos without going through any 'barriers' between sectors, then I'll be jumping for joy!
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by SecuransRule »

Speaking of a playable Romulan faction, you are not alone there. A poll conducted by Cryptic shows that a lot of people want that. The trouble is, I really think they need to flesh out the KDF more before they start building a new playable faction. Playing the Klingons was actually kind of cool and quite a bit different from playing the Federation, but it seemed like a work in progress when I tried them.

Yes Igard, you nailed it concerning the main problem with JJ. Apart from his cliched and simple-minded story-writing, in a stroke he invalidated the entire Star Trek cannon that came before, leaving a lot of long-time Trekkers very unhappy.

Concerning STO, it has actually been doing quite well these days. In fact it has been thriving at a time when long-established MMO's like WoW are in decline, and others like Star Wars: The Old Republic are struggling. I think what I like best about STO though is what I call the 'ritual'. That is, I'll login, do one or two missions, then go back to a spaceport and do all sorts of between-mission things like leveling up, shopping and trading, managing duty officers, and socializing with other Trek fans. In fact I think the social aspect is where MMO's have it all over single player RPG's. Between quests stuff in single player games like Fallout or Dragon Age tend to be rather boring by comparison.

One more thing. Have you tried Eve? For me it was the most miserable 4-5 hours of gaming I've ever done. I was feeling ill and nauseous afterwards. I think its sandbox paradigm (with no instancing) is great, but the interface is clunky, the implementation is boring (even if the game looks pretty), and I could see in my short time there that the game's well-known reputation for being a haven for sociopaths is indeed true.

Didn't mean to get too off-topic from Distant Worlds. I'm assuming the admins won't go ballistic as long as one doesn't get too carried away. ;)
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by Igard »

I think all off-topics are valid as long as it's fine with the OP, which happens to be me in this case. So don't worry about it! Besides, it's Trek so it's not really off-topic.

I really hope STO continues to grow. I remember playing the KDF and being very underwhelmed by the experience. Especially when it came to the big missions, which were just the same as the Federation ones, only from the KDF side. I never got a true impression that the 2 factions were at war and that really annoyed me. So I totally agree that they need to finish the KDF and produce more content before they can even think about a Romulan faction. I'd love to see all 3 of the original Trek factions all interacting with one another. Would be so cool.

Eve has never interested me for some reason. I'm an old Elite II:Frontier player. That's the sort of space game I want to play. I want to be able to land on planets and explore unseen star systems. I pledged to the Elite IV kickstarter, so I'm really looking forward to that. I've heard there won't be landing on planets to begin with, but it will be implemented. Kind of disappointing but at least it's going to happen.

I'll probably swing by the STO forums sometime to check out the game's progress. I'd the thing I'd most like to see done right now, is an improvement on exploration missions. There's so many cool things they could have us doing. Some of those missions are just running around a planet pressing 'E' when we find an alien console. Really? That's supposed to be fun? It was just crazy. It's Star Trek, there's a whole catalogue of interesting things they could get us to do. I hope they've done away with those alien console missions by now.
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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by SecuransRule »

So you are an Admin? Cool. :)

Elite? I've not heard of it. I will look it up. I agree, landing on planets is cool. In fact I tried the demo of Evechron Mercenary, and the best thing about it was that it was absolutely breathtaking landing on a planet.

Concerning Eve, it was pretty in a dark sort of way, and it had this eerie Blade Runner-esque ambiance, but from what I saw the ship combat is no where near as intricate as STO, the interface was clunky, and again, that game has to have the most hostile and elitist community I've ever encountered.

Revisiting STO after a year, I think it has improved from a 7 to an 8. The ground combat used to be very clunky, but now it is almost as much fun as the ship combat. Yes, although the randomly-generated missions are better than they were, they still not quite there yet. You will still occasionally get one that entails, as you said, beaming down to a planet, running around and clicking a couple of alien devices, then beaming back up to ship. To be fair though, sometimes the visuals of these planets are quite beautiful. Also, you are correct in that since STO is not a sandbox like Eve, you never quite feel as if you are at war with the Klingons. Still in all though, as I recall from last year I thought the Klingon science ship required a different approach than its Fed counterpart, and I liked how the duty officers missions were in keeping with an 'evil empire'. ;) Also, the capital planet Qu'nos to me looked like Mordor. lol

My current favorite science ship toy, the energy siphon:



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RE: [REL 0.9.2] Star Trek - The Picard Era

Post by Igard »

I'm not an admin, but I've taken part in enough off-topic discussions to know that we can get away with it as long as no body minds![:D]

Elite was pretty much the first ever 3D sandbox game. Frontier, it's sequel came on a floppy disk and contained hundreds of thousands of star systems. For a game in 1993, it humbles some of todays modern games when you take into consideration the file sizes. It used some kind of mathematical trickery to create all the stars and planets, but it blew my mind back then, and I don't think any game has done that since. I'm hoping the new sequel, Elite: Dangerous (which just successfully completed it's kickstarter), will provide the same thing.

Eve looks really nice, but I've watched some gameplay and heard many tales of it's harsh community. Just looks kind of boring (flying from 1 metal box in space to another). Not something I want to sink time into. I felt the same about the X series. I saw these beautiful planets, but I couldn't fly into their atmosphere and land like I could in Elite II.

I do miss those STO space battles!
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