[MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed 1.0 -- 1,400+ portraits, 1,400+ new ships, planets, facilities and more

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Alvek
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by Alvek »

salemonz wrote: Mon May 29, 2023 9:24 pm
Alvek wrote: Mon May 29, 2023 4:58 pm @salemonz
Check your Bacon mod link, file blocked. Probably because they use virus total or something to check zip file and bacon mod exe recognized as virus. (https://www.mediafire.com/file/rzlxsefn ... e.zip/file)
You can try to set password if you want to use this file share.
Ah I see that, thanks. Took a few days before they restricted it, I see.

Looks like I'd have to upgrade to Mediafire PRO to password protect the file. Hrmmm...might have to leave that portion off and just have folks install Bacon on their own :(
You can use google disk for sharing your bacon mod zip.
Alvek
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by Alvek »

Lot of sub-* research have wrong component image (Sub-Space Torpedo use original ship size research image). Some end of line research have wrong images too.
BaconMod added Value 2 and 3 to TerraformingFacility. More info in GameInfo_BaconModAnIntroduction.mht. Your mod set this values at 0.
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

Alvek wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 5:20 pm Lot of sub-* research have wrong component image (Sub-Space Torpedo use original ship size research image). Some end of line research have wrong images too.
BaconMod added Value 2 and 3 to TerraformingFacility. More info in GameInfo_BaconModAnIntroduction.mht. Your mod set this values at 0.
Thank you. The DWU Modding Tool did a lot of "data validation". I looked into many of the changes and they seemed to be legit (pointing out spelling errors), but some of the changes look to have introduced errors like the bad component images and bad values. I'll need to do a refresh of my files and not use the Modding Tool's outputs.
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

Released v0.9.2 of DWUR. Updated the original links.

-- Did away with my links to my BaconMod.exe and files for now. MediaFire (my hosting site) flags it as a virus. DWUR files are still fine, but folks will need to install the BaconMod (prerequisite for DWUR) on their own.
-- Planets had bad shadows. I tried to use a "fixed" shading graphic, but it ended up making things worse. Defaulted to the old shading graphic. Looks much better.
-- Added a few more musical tracks from Stellaris
-- Changed the main menu graphic...just because.


KNOWN ISSUES
-- Bad component reference images for many techs.
-- Bad values for some techs. (Going to re-compile all my files and watch how I merge/overwrite things)

Thanks to Alvek especially for finding several bugs and whatnot in DWUR :)
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

Released v0.9.3 of DWUR. Updated original post.

-- Recompiled my base files to make sure everything was REFRESHED. Hahahaha lolololol
-- Fixed the wrong components on research items. Not sure where it happened in my copy/paste mod compilation merging, but a lot of research projects/items had component pics that looked a little strange. I went through and overwrote them with more appropriate choices (missiles have missiles instead of that dollar-sign graph pic, for example).
-- Looked into some facility stats and verified their values (Terraforming Facility, for example). I restored their attributes to what came with RetreatUE+Bacon+DasChrome combo original files.
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

Alvek wrote: Mon May 29, 2023 9:29 pm You can use google disk for sharing your bacon mod zip.
My Google disk is super full with other things. I'll just disable the affected MediaFire links for now. Luckily folks can still get Bacon via normal means. I'll put a link to the Bacon mod in the post.
Alvek
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by Alvek »

Version 0.9.3 Facility.txt Planetary Shield Value1 set to 50. PlanetaryShield don't use values at all. It's not error, just got confused as there is no mention in mods about modding PlanetaryShield .
Spent some time trying to find where the hell this value used for PlanetaryShield type :?
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

Alvek wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 6:18 pm Version 0.9.3 Facility.txt Planetary Shield Value1 set to 50. PlanetaryShield don't use values at all. It's not error, just got confused as there is no mention in mods about modding PlanetaryShield .
Spent some time trying to find where the hell this value used for PlanetaryShield type :?
Maybe try to redownload? Shows as 0 on my end. I just redownloaded and looked.
0.9.3 facilities.PNG
0.9.3 facilities.PNG (6.93 KiB) Viewed 791 times
Alvek
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by Alvek »

salemonz wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 2:58 am
Alvek wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 6:18 pm Version 0.9.3 Facility.txt Planetary Shield Value1 set to 50. PlanetaryShield don't use values at all. It's not error, just got confused as there is no mention in mods about modding PlanetaryShield .
Spent some time trying to find where the hell this value used for PlanetaryShield type :?
Maybe try to redownload? Shows as 0 on my end. I just redownloaded and looked.

0.9.3 facilities.PNG
Oops, opened wrong file.
sdlkfjhkejskj
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by sdlkfjhkejskj »

Played DW1 last a long time ago. I installed the game from steam on a computer that it has not been installed ever before, verified it works vanilla and then followed your install steps. I cannot get past the step to Switch Theme to DWUR because of an OutOfMemory exception which closes the game and on next run the theme has not been switched.

I searched the forums for an answer and looks like the game(and BaconMod) is a 32bit executable, which cannot use more than 4GB of memory. This matches what I'm seeing in all my system monitors and the game dies roughly at 4GB each time. I have plenty of memory available.

Is there some extra steps that would help getting the assets loaded into memory? Running the BaconMod provided exe as Administrator did not help. The exe is not getting quarantined by any virus protection so should not be about that(I would not be able to start it otherwise). I used the BaconMod 1.82 provided here https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 4#p5023614 because the original post links that this mod installation steps linked to were dead.

I had a look at some assets and the sizes are quite large for their content, for example race_3.png spending 1.5mb on a race icon when most races make do with 250kb. And even those could be reduced in size in my opinion. Also 1MB for a space station while most unmodded ships are 10kb? While browsing the forums there are many (and even recent) complaints about not being able to use large galaxy settings due to memory issues and this mod will probably not help at all in that regard.

The marketing material for the mod looks great and I would definitely like to use it for one last playthrough while waiting for DW2 to mature out of its "Early Access" phase.
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

sdlkfjhkejskj wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 6:59 pm Is there some extra steps that would help getting the assets loaded into memory? Running the BaconMod provided exe as Administrator did not help. The exe is not getting quarantined by any virus protection so should not be about that(I would not be able to start it otherwise). I used the BaconMod 1.82 provided here https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 4#p5023614 because the original post links that this mod installation steps linked to were dead.

I had a look at some assets and the sizes are quite large for their content, for example race_3.png spending 1.5mb on a race icon when most races make do with 250kb. And even those could be reduced in size in my opinion. Also 1MB for a space station while most unmodded ships are 10kb? While browsing the forums there are many (and even recent) complaints about not being able to use large galaxy settings due to memory issues and this mod will probably not help at all in that regard.
Hey there, Sdlkfjhkejskj :)

Sorry to hear about your memory woes. Fellow mod author Alvek has his "Expansion Mod" that does more for the code and efficiency aspects of BaconMod. https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 8#p5093168 . Perhaps that might help in the onset?

I'm more of a graphics guy than a technical dude. So I'm a bit lost on any technical advice, I'm afraid :(

However, I will take a look at streamlining assets, as you suggested. There were a couple of race pics that included the background (Dhayuts, Lipids, Paratis), which does balloon the file size.

I can knock down the resolution on the ship/station pics, sure. They did look a tad better at the higher resolution, but if it's causing that sort of memory impact, it might serve the whole compilation better if they were brought down a bit.

DWU Modding guide recommended 300x300px for ships/bases. I do have my pics at around 1000x1000px...again for the shiny aspect :) But knocking them down a bit would make a difference.

I'll do a little testing.
Alvek
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by Alvek »

sdlkfjhkejskj wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 6:59 pm Played DW1 last a long time ago. I installed the game from steam on a computer that it has not been installed ever before, verified it works vanilla and then followed your install steps. I cannot get past the step to Switch Theme to DWUR because of an OutOfMemory exception which closes the game and on next run the theme has not been switched.

I searched the forums for an answer and looks like the game(and BaconMod) is a 32bit executable, which cannot use more than 4GB of memory. This matches what I'm seeing in all my system monitors and the game dies roughly at 4GB each time. I have plenty of memory available.

Is there some extra steps that would help getting the assets loaded into memory? Running the BaconMod provided exe as Administrator did not help. The exe is not getting quarantined by any virus protection so should not be about that(I would not be able to start it otherwise). I used the BaconMod 1.82 provided here https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 4#p5023614 because the original post links that this mod installation steps linked to were dead.

I had a look at some assets and the sizes are quite large for their content, for example race_3.png spending 1.5mb on a race icon when most races make do with 250kb. And even those could be reduced in size in my opinion. Also 1MB for a space station while most unmodded ships are 10kb? While browsing the forums there are many (and even recent) complaints about not being able to use large galaxy settings due to memory issues and this mod will probably not help at all in that regard.

The marketing material for the mod looks great and I would definitely like to use it for one last playthrough while waiting for DW2 to mature out of its "Early Access" phase.
Variant 1:
Check that you are using BaconMod exe and it is Large Adress Aware, if not find utill to set this for exe.

Variant 2:
BaconMod and DW:U no longer developing so there is no way to sidestep 32bit limits.
You can try ExpansionMod where I added x64 support and some other features. (https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 2051b9383c)
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

Released v0.9.4 of DWUR. Updated original post.
-- Knocked down the resolution of some race and character portraits (were >1MB each)...specifically on the Dhayut, Lipid and Paratis races.
-- Knocked down the resolution of my custom stations (many were 1000x1000px). Took them down to 500x500px. The DWU modding guide recommends <300x300px, but I do see the graphical difference/sharpness when I go down that low. 500x500px is a good tradeoff between quality and size, IMO.

^^^ hopefully this helps with any memory issues others might be having.

/===== Future Plans =====\
-- Still working on some possible new star animations. That is slow going as some of the nicer looking stars people have tutorials on via Blender are very complicated...and DWU only supports looping star animations of 100 frames. Experimenting with various projects and trying to get the right balance of great-looking stars (flares, prominences, coronal effects) that I can procedurally distort and loop into a 100 frame cycle. Otherwise it looks crappy. Besides, the current star animations are pretty passable.
-- Might expand alien portraits a bit more. Currently I have 4 portraits per job per race. Humans have 10 portraits per job, b/c it's much easier to create good-looking human sci-fi portraits. You have to wrestle Midjourney to the ground to get it to give you consistent looking aliens, especially when you want aliens in job-specific clothing (military vs diplomat, etc). So we'll see.

Real life is speeding up. Employer just laid off a bunch of folks, so they 3x my workload as a reward for not firing me :p And I'm moving cities within a month. ... So we'll see :D
Alvek
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by Alvek »

@salemonz
I can increase limit of 100 frames, shipset limit of 50, component limit and so on. Not sure about performance hit, but 32 bit users will get out of memory sooner.
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

Alvek wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:48 pm @salemonz
I can increase limit of 100 frames, shipset limit of 50, component limit and so on. Not sure about performance hit, but 32 bit users will get out of memory sooner.
Cool, cool, thank you! I'll see if I can make it work with a looping 100 frames. If not I'll let you know and see what we can come up with :D
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by Alvek »

Not sure but I feel like some weapons sounds during game a lot louder then other. To hear laser weapons firing I need to double or triple volume.
Clicks noticeable, with low game volume settings they got covered with loud effects like construction or similar.
Explosion effects cover lot of weapon effects.
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

Alvek wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 1:39 pm Not sure but I feel like some weapons sounds during game a lot louder then other. To hear laser weapons firing I need to double or triple volume.
Clicks noticeable, with low game volume settings they got covered with loud effects like construction or similar.
Explosion effects cover lot of weapon effects.
That is a good callout. I will take a look.

I did try to make a sound pass in the past. Before I published v0.9, I normalized all effects to be roughly the same peaks and lows...but the game seems to arbitrarily add gain to some effects vs others? With 'normalized' levels, some effects were crazy low, while others were jarringly loud.

I reverted to many 'normal' effects and just left the new sounds as is...but it bothers me. I'll try again and will post if I find certain culprits, which might give credence to the hypothesis that the game itself boosts volume of certain effects.

Otherwise my first attempt might have just been user error :D
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by Alvek »

@salemonz
I can send you volume formulas, but not sure they would be helpful. For me they are really weird, like negative volume.
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salemonz
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by salemonz »

Alvek wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 3:14 pm @salemonz
I can send you volume formulas, but not sure they would be helpful. For me they are really weird, like negative volume.
Sure, please do. Thank you! Might mean that they just knock down the dBs of the provided file. Might give me some insights on what to boost more vs normalize.
sdlkfjhkejskj
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Re: [MOD] Distant Worlds Universe Refreshed -- New race art, new planet graphics, +1,400 character portraits and more!

Post by sdlkfjhkejskj »

salemonz wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 7:25 pm Sorry to hear about your memory woes. Fellow mod author Alvek has his "Expansion Mod" that does more for the code and efficiency aspects of BaconMod. https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 8#p5093168 . Perhaps that might help in the onset?
Alvek wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 7:26 pm Variant 1:
Check that you are using BaconMod exe and it is Large Adress Aware, if not find utill to set this for exe.

Variant 2:
BaconMod and DW:U no longer developing so there is no way to sidestep 32bit limits.
You can try ExpansionMod where I added x64 support and some other features. (https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 2051b9383c)
I did a little research and it seems LAA is meant to break the 2GB limit, so not really sure what my problem was in the end. ExpansionMod worked perfectly and I'm running my DWUR huge+huge galaxy with 60 UPS fine so far. Memory usage is also looking better now, although I did not test if it was ExpansionMod or DWUR 0.9.4 that improved it. Thanks for letting me know ExpansionMod exists.

You should update the setup instructions to ExpansionMod instead of BaconMod since EM seems like a straight upgrade to BM not to mention the extra compatibility with modern computers.

p.s. It is awe-inspiring what moddability can be achieved through reverse-engineering the executable and definitely not having any contact with the developers.
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