Features List for EV4

Phyvo

Quote

Originally posted by Katana:
**I can't believe nobody mentioned this before, but: MULTIPLE SUBMUNITION TYPES PER WEAPON!!! Sheesh, that's probably the greatest feature that is most lacking.:p You people disgust me...

**

Amen to that!

I'd also like to see more sound channels and higher quality, with maybe support for a smaller format. I didn't notice the sound problem as much in EV and EVO, but EVN can have a lot of different beams/rapid-fire-weapons going off at once and you can't hear most of them... Plus, you could use the background music idea with less of a sacrifice. ^_^

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Katana

Another request: that rand spob missions better handle spobs with conditions in the visbits. As it is, random missions automatically avoid spobs with visbit conditions, and that makes for some pretty screwy things. Like there are exactly ZER0 random cargo missions to Earth. Don't you think it a little odd that with Earth being probably one of the most important planets in the universe, that there are NO random cargo missions that go there? Also, when I was still on Sephil Saga's dev team, I remember we ran into a bit of a problem with the orbiting planets changing all the spobs and making it impossible to have random missions. I don't know if they have this worked out, but I think it's more of a pain in the ass bug than a 'feature'. But I guess that's just my opinion.

-Kanerix

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(url="http://"http://fenris.ma.cx/forum")Fenris(/url)

Masamune

Um, wow... Katana, you're the former p-psycho? Man, I never would have guessed. How interesting! Heheh, we still have your ionization grenades in their original form, with the original graphics... and I still haven't ever tried them to see what they do exactly hehehe...

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

orcaloverbri9

Quote

Originally posted by Katana:
I don't know if they have this worked out

No, unfortunately, it had to be removed and replaced with a static universe for that exact reason. :frown:

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
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(This message has been edited by orcaloverbri9 (edited 01-12-2004).)

Katana

Hahaha, yeah, sorry 'bout that. Hope I didn't leave you guys stranded. I suppose I could work on a few weapons for y'all if you want, but I'm pretty busy with life right now, and quite stressed about it at the moment. Sephil Saga seems to be progressing fairly well from what I see.

EDIT: Static Universe? That's total crap! Surely you guys could work something out? Damn, that would suck if it were static. Anyways, Charlie, I have a few other weapon ideas if you're interested.

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(url="http://"http://fenris.ma.cx/forum")Fenris(/url)

(This message has been edited by Katana (edited 01-12-2004).)

orcaloverbri9

By the way, multiple submunitions has an implementation that may not have occured to you.

A while back in a topic I made, some people began discussing animated guided weapons. The obvious answer was to use Eugene Chin's discovery of the strange behaviour of missiles with submunitions. Unfortunately, however, it would then have unlimited turning and, if necessary, could stop in mid-er-space and reverse course.

However, with the revelation of the effect of negative SubThetas, it is possible to make it only turn the amount it is supposed to. For example, if it was supposed to turn 5°, you would set one SubTheta to some invisible, damageless weapon, and the other to the desired weapon. Set them all to be guided, and there you go. Last I checked, guided weapons passon their attributes to their submunitions. Of course, I could be mixing it up with something else.

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")Sephil Saga Website(/url)

mrxak

Quote

Originally posted by UE_Research & Development:
As soon as a moderator locks this thread

Why would we do that? This has been a very interesting and worthwhile topic.

(Edit: Oh, and whoever mentioned the fact that negative impact works, you're right. I've even used it in plugs before. I'm not sure how that ended up on my list.)

(This message has been edited by mrxak (edited 01-12-2004).)

orcaloverbri9

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
Why would we do that? This has been a very interesting and worthwhile topic.

Because he figures that at some point, it's going to get extremely off-topic, I suppose. As long as the people on the Nova board don't flood it with ridiculous requests, though, it should be okay.

EDIT: Yes, Katana, static. Unless you can think of a way to get around this, we're stuck.

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")Sephil Saga Website(/url)

(This message has been edited by orcaloverbri9 (edited 01-13-2004).)

mrxak

(quote)Originally posted by orcaloverbri9:
**Because he figures that at some point, it's going to get extremely off-topic, I suppose. As long as the people on the Nova board don't flood it with ridiculous requests, though, it should be okay.:).

orcaloverbri9

(quote)Originally posted by mrxak:
**Well that's what the delete post command is for:)

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")Sephil Saga Website(/url)

(This message has been edited by orcaloverbri9 (edited 01-13-2004).)
**

Nick Anderson

I don't think this has been mentioned yet, but a higher mission cap for EV4 then Nova. 1000 or less wouldn't do for a new addition to the EV series.

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Dr. Trowel

How did I forget this before? Did someone else mention it? Am I wrong that it is currently impossible without a ship swap?

An inertial de dampener outfit. For its usefulness and ease of implementation, this belongs right at the top of my wish list.

Man, I would fight the biggest fleets, anger the Krypt-toch in a Terrapin, and sell off 6 Heavy Weapon Platform Pirate Carrier escorts, all for a chance to buy an outfit that would let me fly a Nik' Raven backwards.

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(url="http://"http://home.comcast.net/~drtrowel/")Dr. Trowel's E.S.W.P.(/url) -- Featuring Cold Fusion Graphics for EVN Override, and an EVN/O outfit bug fix.
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Interests: The Good, The Bad, and The Loopy.

Katana

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
(Edit: Oh, and whoever mentioned the fact that negative impact works, you're right. I've even used it in plugs before. I'm not sure how that ended up on my list.)

Yes, if I'm not mistaken, it's actually used in the weapon Masamune mentioned.

Orca: How many mďsn resources do you have left?

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(url="http://"http://fenris.ma.cx/forum")Fenris(/url)

orcaloverbri9

Quote

Originally posted by Katana:
Orca: How many mďsn resources do you have left?

Hang on...

Currently, we have 951 mïsn resources left. However, no real missions have been worked in yet.

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")Sephil Saga Website(/url)

AnubisTTP

Well, here are some of the features that were on my wish list when I was developing Polycon.

Add a animate while firing flag to the shan resource: This would allow the creation of ships with Gatling gun style spinning weapon barrels or guns that recoil into the surface of the ship when firing. Basically an extra flag could be added to the shan that, when set, would tell the engine to animate the extra frames in the base sequence in succession whenever the ship was firing. A flag would also probably have to be added to the weapon resource to flag a weapon to use the ships weapon animation, similar to the flag that is used to make weapons use a ships weapon glow now. This would also solve the problem of giving weapon glows to a ship like the fed ships in Nova that have deck guns. You could give the guns weapon glows, but it would look somewhat bizarre, because the weapon blasts would alternate between the deck guns, but all of the guns would light up at the same time. With an animate while firing flag, you could make the base frame of the ship the same between frames, but have the weapon glow rotate between the different deck guns so it would not look so odd. For added effect, have the engine use the frame advance set in the shan for the animation speed to be used when the player only has one occurrence of a weapon flagged to use the while firing animation, but have the engine increase the animation speed with each occurrence of the weapon so that the animation would speed up to match the amount of weapons the player had.

Pers OnKill string: Add a ncb field to the pers resource that is evaluated when the player kills the person. This would open up the doors to bounty hunter missions from hell, or allow a government to retaliate against the player if the player killed the governments flagship.

Shipswitch ability: This is probably way to complicated to implement, but would open the doors to quite a bit of interesting possibilities. An extra key would be added to the keyboard setup, a special ability key. A field would be added to the ship resource that would contain the ID of another ship, a ship that the player ship would be swapped with whenever the player pressed the special ability key, similar to the ncb that is in the engine now which gives you a new ship, but retains all of your current outfits. This would allow you to, for example, have a Star Wars style X wing that has the special ability of being able to open and close its s-foils. You would have two X Wings, with different speed and maneuverability, one would have a sprite with the wings closed, and the other with them open, and each of their Shipswitch fields would point to the other. A few other things would have to be added to complete the effect (a flag in the shan to tell the engine that extra frames are used for the shipswitch animation, a sound ID that is played during the change, flags to tell what happens to the weapons that come on the ship when you switch, etc), but all kinds of cool stuff could be made, like a transformer style ship that changes from a ship into a big robot, or a ship that has some massive weapon that has to be powered up before it is used.

A OnBuy/ OnSell field for junks: Add two ncb fields to the junk resource, one that is evaluated when the player has any of the junk, and another that is evaluated when the player has none. This would allow, for example, the pirates to know when the player is carrying opals or bioweapons or some other valuable cargo, and for them to make much more of an attempt to disable the player and steal it.

Projectile groups: Add some fields to the boom that contain the IDs of weaps and roids that are expelled from the boom when it is used. This would allow, for example, a weapon that splits into multiple types of submunitions (say a cluster missile that explodes into separate warheads and drifting fragments of the original missiles casing), or a ship that actually breaks into recognizable pieces of its former self, or ship remains that have metal inside that can be salvaged by the player, or asteroids that explode into ship- damaging shrapnel when they are hit, or , well you get the idea. The roid limit would have to be increased quite a bit for this to really be exploited well.

A Link Resource: A resource that has a fields defining two different resources , say, two goverments, that will swap the first resource for the second whenever an ncb string is true. This would not only give people a way to have a goverment change sides without having to replace all their systems, it would allow for many other interesting possiblities

Retrorockets: An outfit that acts as a retrorocket when the reverse key is pressed. The modval would be the speed of the rocket, similar to the speed value of the ships speed field. For optimum effect, a flag would also have to be added to the shan to tell the engine to use the weapon glow or something as a retrorocket glow. I faked this in Polycon with weapon recoils, but it could be done so much better.

Shans for weapons: Missiles that spin on their axis. EMP torpedoes with blinking lights and engine glows. Rockets that bank. There is a lot of interesting stuff you could do if shans could be used for weapon sprites.

Weapons that bounce and pass through: Add a flag to the weap resource that tells the engine to allow the projectile to pass through targets without detonating. Weapons with this flag would have to be sorted so they always appeared below the ship sprites in the game to complete the effect. One could make, say, a railgun that can hit two targets at once if they are lined up. A flag to allow a weapon to bounce off of a ship would also be interesting, for making bullets that ricochet and such.

The ability to put sprites into the parallax starfield: This is probably pretty far out, but it would be interesting if you could flag a stellar object to actually appear in the parallax starfield instead of on top of it. Such a flagged planet would not be able to be landed on, would not show up in the radar, and would have to have a field to set its scroll speed in relation to the starfield. If this were possible, one could put galaxies or nebulas in a system that would appear in the background, that would scroll very slowly in relation to the starfield, giving the illusion that they were very far away. You could see say, the Obatta nebula in the background of an adjacent system before actually jumping into it.

Textured systems: Add a few fields to the syst resources that allows the definition of tiled textures (from a spin resource) for the various layers of the parallax starfield. You could make systems that are inside nebulas have several layers of cloud textures for example. If combined with the ability to stick sprites into the parallax starfield, I imagine it could be used to create some really jaw dropping effects. One could have an asteroid field system, with the normal roids, several layers of textures with smaller distant asteroids, and a few slow scrolling sprites for large, distant asteroids. I imagine it would also be useful to the people making the ship or airplane conversions, they could have grass, or water textures in their systems.

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68K Mac Liberation Army-- 22 Macs Liberated.
(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/anubis/index.html")Polycon EV(/url), a total conversion for EV Nova. (url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=20")Polycon EV Fourm(/url)

Zacha Pedro

How the hell could I have forgot that! A flag in the bööm ressource to mka eit possible to set the asteroid to be a deadly one! This way, Maelstrom and Asreroids will be back, played by the Nova engine.

Yes, I prefer bulleted lists, odd thing is that IE shows them as dots, and Mozilla as squares.

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The (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/tshirts.html")1337 EV Nova T-shirt(/url) - 22$. The (url="http://"http://w00tware.ev-nova.net/")NovaTools(/url) by wOOtWare to tinker with your Nova - FREE!
The feeling you're a Nova geek - priceless.
There are things you can't buy or that are free, for everything else, there's indeed Eurocard Mastercard.

Dr. Trowel

Quote

Originally posted by AnubisTTP:
**A OnBuy/ OnSell field for junks: Add two ncb fields to the junk resource, one that is evaluated when the player has any of the junk, and another that is evaluated when the player has none. This would allow, for example, the pirates to know when the player is carrying opals or bioweapons or some other valuable cargo, and for them to make much more of an attempt to disable the player and steal it.

**

Yes!!! It's not the only way to give us the ability to add the kinds of missions/events I described earlier, but it's a good one.

Quote

Originally posted by AnubisTTP:
**A Link Resource: A resource that has a fields defining two different resources , say, two goverments, that will swap the first resource for the second whenever an ncb string is true. This would not only give people a way to have a goverment change sides without having to replace all their systems, it would allow for many other interesting possiblities

**

Wow. That would make a lot of things simpler from our perspective. From mcb's perspective, it could be a really huge job, or it could be a pretty straightforward task if Apple or someone else has already put together a canned way to do this with two-fork programs. But what do I know about programming? (Answer: nigh zilch.)

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(url="http://"http://home.comcast.net/~drtrowel/")Dr. Trowel's E.S.W.P.(/url) -- Featuring Cold Fusion Graphics for EVN Override, and an EVN/O outfit bug fix.
Very Good Stuff: (url="http://"http://ev-nova.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2832&sid;=43627ead61761e7f19060b00c14c739c")Big Nova FAQ(/url) (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=31&SUBMIT;=Go")Bomb's Plug-in Guide(/url) (url="http://"http://www.evula.com/escape_velocity/")EVula's Lair(/url) (url="http://"http://w00tware.ev-nova.net/")NovaTools(/url)
Interests: The Good, The Bad, and The Loopy.

SpacePirate

Quote

Originally posted by Zzap212:
**-add a feature to allow classes of jump and 1 way jumps. I.E. you can jump to, but you can't jump back. i.e. you can land on wormhole class 1 and it will take you to another wormhole with a class specified as "1" "2" or "3", so that certain wormholes link only to other ones. I.E. inside nebula X, you have wormholes that get you out of the 1-way jump nebula. all wormholes inside are class 1 while all wormholes surrounding the nebula are class 2 and all class 1 wormholes link only to class 2 wormholes.
**

For wormholes, this is already possible- merely use the Hyperlink field. This is how it was done in returning wormhole from Our Spiel. Additionally, if Nova's one-way hyperlinking fields were returned, it would be quite useful. Rather than "assuming implicit one-way link"'s to other systems, the DebugLog could merely note that it is a one way link, so the developer could fix it if it is not intended.

Quote

Originally posted by AnubisTTP:
**< snip>
**

Oh, hell yes. Those are all incredible ideas- especially the shipswitch and the added background effects... Additionally, using the shan resources to animate weapons would be very cool.

Additionally, all of the various morphing ships ideas, if an OnFire field were implemented, this could be done with a secondary weapon, saving a bit of programming time, and another key.

More suggestions:

Make a way to have weapons fire other weapon types at a given percentage. Two rects should do it- one for up to 4 different weapon types, and their respective percentages.
Improve the wimpy trader's AI, by doing this: Have the engine calculate the average amount of damage per second their enemies are dealing to it, and compare it to the time it will take to jump out of the system. This way, instead of turning and running in a different direction every time the player comes within firing range, it will calculate if it is able to jump to safety rather than trying to get far enough to jump.
Because it is nearly impossible for the wimpy trader AI to jump out from a system when it is being actively attacked, we should add a way to give the ship a break... A linked mission to normal AI ships to be activated when they are in danger. If they are being attacked, and hail the player for help (Help, we are being attacked!), they player should be able to hail them, and do the mission, for a fee. It would replace the current ship with a special ship, with the goal to be to protect that ship. If you fail, the mission's onFailure field could be evaluated, perhaps lowering their status if they are a mercenary, or such. On completion of the mission, the player would recieve their fee, and perhaps a boost in that ship's government's rating.

Additionally, if the player is attacking, hailing the ship would allow them to beg for mercy. If you continue to attack, it could lower an honor rating, or somesuch.

Having either a "paint mask", or an option to or not to color the Alternate sprites in the shan resource. This would allow ships to have different colored trim, but insignias, chrome, and engines, etc. could be left the same color. Having the alternate sprites appear above the ship, while not being painted, would achieve the same effect. (This would be incredibly helpful in my creating custom ships idea...)
Repair gravity to reflect actual physics. Rather than having the Gravity field in the spob, have a "Mass" value. If the mass is greater than 0, the spob will have gravity, calculated by the equation g=(Gm1m2)/d where g is the acceleration due to gravity, G is the gravitational constant (6.6730010^-11 m^3kg^-1*s^-2), m1 is the mass of the planet, m2 is the mass of the players ship, and d is the distance from the stellar. This way, the gravity would be nearly nothing away from the spob, but increase as the player gets closer. The mass would have to be scaled in order to correctly reflect gravity values.
Finally, as I mentioned in my BGM thread, having a way to stop all sounds currently playing would be quite helpful, perhaps by using "p000".

Keep up the good ideas, guys! UE, you could probably start compiling a list of the best, most reasonable ideas as they are mentioned. We really need to start putting all of the good ideas into one place.

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Eat blazing electric death!

(This message has been edited by SpacePirate (edited 01-13-2004).)

Zzap212

"For wormholes, this is already possible- merely use the Hyperlink field. This is how it was done in returning wormhole from Our Spiel."

Unfortuantely, this is not what I want. Link always links to "Obatta", no matter what. I want it to be random one-way.

Don't presume that I haven't looked over my requests.

I would also like to add:

-outfits that activate special properties, i.e. fuel collector and such, only when activated by a keyboard trigger, similar to a secondary weapon. Only deactivated when the key is pressed again.

-support for spöbs to fly around like ships (stated before) and to have shields and such and fight on ships as well. This would make for an interesting scenario if every large capital ship was actually a spöb that you could land on and get missions from, although it could be destroyed.

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When viewing a Terrapin for the first time, I realized that anything flies-if you throw it hard enough!

Katana

Quote

Originally posted by Zzap212:
**"For wormholes, this is already possible- merely use the Hyperlink field. This is how it was done in returning wormhole from Our Spiel."

Unfortuantely, this is not what I want. Link always links to "Obatta", no matter what. I want it to be random one-way.

Don't presume that I haven't looked over my requests.
**

Um, well, if you specify multiple wormholes in that field, it will randomly send you to one, and it will be one way, as wormholes that have at least one spöb in their hypergate fields are no longer linked to the "random network." If the S7evyn wormhole had links to every other wormhole in it's hypergate fields, it would act as a random one way wormhole. Go read the Nova bible again.

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(url="http://"http://fenris.ma.cx/forum")Fenris(/url)