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Hmm, I worked out why the first description was missing. It's directly related to the misn ID, so ID 128 has 4001.. and so on, you just have to calculate it right :).
Also worked out the other problem by looking at similar missions already in EVO. I had something set to -1 that should have been 0 and was also using the wrong description field at one point.
Anyway, with all of that I now have 1 mission working with descriptions written - it's hard work fitting a story into those small dialogs! And I've decided everyone should give it a go some time - it really makes you appreciate major plugin designers' efforts even more :)!
Quote
Originally posted by MartiNZ: Anyway, with all of that I now have 1 mission working with descriptions written - it's hard work fitting a story into those small dialogs! And I've decided everyone should give it a go some time - it really makes you appreciate major plugin designers' efforts even more:)!
I agree.
Remember, if you need any help with your project, drop me a line..
_bomb
------------------ "I want to tell you about a time I almost died...."
I had a really good Igadzra string going. It started off as just an experiment to see if I could do 2 or 3 system replacements with visbits and it ended up as a whole plug. BTW, for those who don't know how to do it:
Say, you want the Voinians to invade Yandros. You make the mission of them taking it over, and set two bits (let's say 100 and 110).
You set the old Yandros to disappear with bit 110, and other to appear with bit 100. The new system is under Voinian government ect., but UE ships are set as a dude.
Then, the rest of the story continues, the Voinians win over all of UE space and there are no humans left. To stop UE ships from appearing in Yandros, you make a third Yandros system that appears with bit 120.
Then, in the mission where you set bit 120, you must CLEAR 110. Yandros2 won't exist anymore and Yandros3 will appear, with no UE ships.
Anyway, back to the story. I started at the end of the Igadzra string and they got as far as Zidagar before I gave the project up. I didn't write it in character, see: no paranoia or odd behaviour. Then I sold my computer and that's the end of that.
Still, I did something Bomb never did with ROTV (no offence). I cleared up the loose ends, see. Like above. When the Igadzra take over Vastan, the Zidagar are crawling all over it. When they expand further, I set it so Vastan was abandoned and with only the occaisional Igadzra ship. It pissed me off when I was playing ROTV and I could still get raiding missions at Avann against UE ships that weren't even meant to be there!
Anyway, the moral of the story is, EVN will attract people's attention so much that new plugins for EVO will be very rare indeed.
--gav
------------------ Visit the (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum10/HTML/005883.html#")Anglo-American Dictionary(/url), a well of priceless information!
Yeah, quite a shame really, especially considering that the base EVO story is so much more engaging than the Nova one, and so much more expandable - thus it is way easier to make little add-on plugs for EVO than whole TCs for Nova.
As far as the one I'm working on now, I've got 3 missions set up so far. I guess I should really work on what the story is really going to bring, and probably will now that I know I can get the missions working in ResEdit :).
Originally posted by pistgavin: **
Anyway, back to the story. I started at the end of the Igadzra string and they got as far as Zidagar before I gave the project up.
**
It sounded like a good project. You shouldn't have given it up. Problem is, the more attention you pay to smaller details, the less time you have for the bigger picture, i.e, finishing, testing and releasing the plug. The only reason I didn't fix the Avann thing was because I didn't know about it. Nobody in beta mentioned it and I never saw it when I was playing, so the issue was never addressed. Plus, the idea of all of the UE ships suddenly just vanishing is pretty ridiculous. Though it is an error of sorts, it isn't a totally shocking one, as in, the UEs would still have roving ships to destroy.. It probably wouldn't be their priority (with Earth captured and all..) but you never know.
Pax Crescentia is coming back. hi! thanks for the support. until recently, this plug was dead in the water--lost on a dead powerbook. but i just acquired a shiny new ibook this month, and i'm in the process of resurrecting old files, including pax.
it's going to be awhile before i have anything, but i'll let you know. again, thanks!
chris
------------------
Originally posted by kauthor: **Pax Crescentia is coming back. hi! thanks for the support. until recently, this plug was dead in the water--lost on a dead powerbook. but i just acquired a shiny new ibook this month, and i'm in the process of resurrecting old files, including pax.
Pax Crescetia is comig back? Cool! That was one cool plug, where you could play all sides of the Strand War as separate plugs. Dont let it take too long though, or you will be reported to Vaporware plugs <evil grin>.
------------------ I am eager to try to ansver mission questions
(This message has been edited by General Cade Smart (edited 02-19-2003).)
Are you kidding me? It was over a year when it was last updated. I did some contacting, and voila! Pax Crescentia is coming back!
Originally posted by kauthor: **Are you kidding me? It was over a year when it was last updated. I did some contacting, and voila! Pax Crescentia is coming back!
Sorry. It was just weird sense of humor that striked again. Ofcourse I realize that.
Originally posted by Bomb: **It sounded like a good project. You shouldn't have given it up. Problem is, the more attention you pay to smaller details, the less time you have for the bigger picture, i.e, finishing, testing and releasing the plug. The only reason I didn't fix the Avann thing was because I didn't know about it. Nobody in beta mentioned it and I never saw it when I was playing, so the issue was never addressed. Plus, the idea of all of the UE ships suddenly just vanishing is pretty ridiculous. Though it is an error of sorts, it isn't a totally shocking one, as in, the UEs would still have roving ships to destroy.. It probably wouldn't be their priority (with Earth captured and all..) but you never know.
Now Bomb, don't take this the wrong way: I really enjoyed playing ROTV and its sequal, and I'm glad that you made it, but I'm afraid you're making excuses for sloppiness. I know about details and such, but it really isn't that hard to create a clean-up system. When you play as UE (in original EVO, no plugs), when you attack a place and make it into a UE outpost, the other outpost is abandoned (for instance, Yandros is abandoned when you do the D'Erlon missions). I'm making a plug at the moment (check the topic on it for details), and it changes a lot of systems, but I'm covering up as I go. It take five minutes in Res-Edit: just duplicate whichever system needs to be changed, make the changes, add all the hyperspace links and that's it.
Okay, so it's not a major thing, but it's frustrating to see things not making sense. It wasn't just in Avann: in any Voinian system that had UE ships attacking it still had them even when every UE planet was captured.
It just looks so much nicer, that's all. (don't get me wrong, it was a great plug. Great fun, being evil)
Originally posted by pistgavin: **Now Bomb, don't take this the wrong way: I really enjoyed playing ROTV and its sequal, and I'm glad that you made it, but I'm afraid you're making excuses for sloppiness.
I understand what you're saying, but I don't think you really understand what a disrespectful thing that is to say. I have made mistakes in the past, yeah. Plenty of 'em. But I genuinely did not know about the error. Is that my fault for bad beta testing? Probably. But there's no way I can catch everything. I am, as you said, one person. If people don't report things, there isn't any way I can know to fix it.
** I know about details and such, but it really isn't that hard to create a clean-up system. When you play as UE (in original EVO, no plugs), when you attack a place and make it into a UE outpost, the other outpost is abandoned (for instance, Yandros is abandoned when you do the D'Erlon missions). I'm making a plug at the moment (check the topic on it for details), and it changes a lot of systems, but I'm covering up as I go. It take five minutes in Res-Edit: just duplicate whichever system needs to be changed, make the changes, add all the hyperspace links and that's it.
Gosh, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't need you to lecture me on plug-in making. I'm glad you're going for complete continuity- maybe you'll succeed where I failed.
** Okay, so it's not a major thing, but it's frustrating to see things not making sense. It wasn't just in Avann: in any Voinian system that had UE ships attacking it still had them even when every UE planet was captured.
You're right- it is frustrating. But at some point you need to draw the line between what is really important and what isn't. Otherwise, you'll just get caught up in the tiny little things and eventually you'll be overwhelmed by it and just give up.
Well, not sure if this really classifies as a full-blown expander plug, but I've been working on a new EVO plug called "The Great War". Originally, it was only supposed to intensify the battles between the Voinians and the UE, with more fleets attacking each other, more ship battles in the UE and Voinian outposts, etc. Then I started to just increase and intensify all the battles in EVO. Then, however, I decided to add more missions as well. Right now I'm working on the extra Azdgari missions, then I'll work on the Igadzra, Zidagar, Zachit, Renegade (NT and Human), UE, and Voinian missions. So wish me luck.
------------------ If at first you don't succeed...Hit it harder! - Me -------------- Millennium. Its coming, prepare for it. Coming to the (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiaSW.com/games/ev/chronicles.html")EV Chronicles(/url).
Originally posted by Captain Carnotaur: **Well, not sure if this really classifies as a full-blown expander plug, but I've been working on a new EVO plug called "The Great War". Originally, it was only supposed to intensify the battles between the Voinians and the UE, with more fleets attacking each other, more ship battles in the UE and Voinian outposts, etc. Then I started to just increase and intensify all the battles in EVO. Then, however, I decided to add more missions as well. Right now I'm working on the extra Azdgari missions, then I'll work on the Igadzra, Zidagar, Zachit, Renegade (NT and Human), UE, and Voinian missions. So wish me luck.:)
Extra missions are always nice, but im not sure about the intensify part. Will they be too hard if you arent a super player? That you add Human Renegades is awesome, no plug-in has done that before (except one that was not released),and their string is pitifully short. It is frustating, actually. That you add Igadzra missions is welcome too, they dont accomplish anything in their missions, hope you make them do something.
What I meant by intensify the battles is this (for example): Bakka has (this is all made up, just to give an example) an average of 5 ships in the system. 30% for Frontier Express people, 30% for UE warships, 20% for UE interceptors, and 20% for Voinian warships. I would, to make it IMHO a bit more fun, change that to an average of 7 ships in the system, 15% for Frontier Express, 35% for UE warships, 20% for UE interceptors, and 30% for Voinian warships. Lots more battles.
And actually, wasn't there a mission expander plug called "Captains of Freeport" which did a huge expansion to the Human Renegade missions?
Yes, there was. Right now, there is only the update on the Add-Ons Files. YOu should contact the creator.
Hmm, the intensifying plug sounds like fun, as does the addition of more missions, but it might actually be a good idea to delegate amongst all of that or we're going to get overlap. For instance I'm working on extra missions for the Human Renegades as well - I've never played the Captains of Freeport plug - maybe I should and see if I can build onto it. Or I could just do my own take on it altogether.. or at least, I don't see why not. But if we got several people working on extra missions for one side each it would speed things up and get us some serious expansion quicker :).
But I imagine we'll all just keep doing what we're doing for now. In the long run it would be cool to have one big plug that expanded lots of things, and had been contributed to by many people.. but the logistics are shocking!
Another problem is the fact that most players will have their own ideas about what would happen after where EVO left off - just most wouldn't take it to the next step - so a plugin by various different people with their different styles and different ideas might not be such a good idea after all.. and that leads back to having lots of little expanders - except that then they tend to be used only once and then deleted. Not sure how to get around all this, or if it even makes any sense :).
(This message has been edited by MartiNZ (edited 02-22-2003).)
Mate, it isn't disrespectful. If you make a mistake, I can point it out to you, it isn't a matter of respect, it was sloppy, plain and simple. It may not have been your fault, but it doesn't mean it wasn't there. Don't get me wrong, I thought the plug was great, but you should take critisism a little better (especially on these boards). Don't make it personal, I'm not looking for a fight.
Um, **** attitude there mate. You're taking this like an insult. And I don't think you have any right to say that. You don't know who is a better developer out of the two of us since I've never released the plugs I've made. Just because I can't upload my plugs and can't get feedback doesn't mean I'm any worse than you, mate. I've made expander plug-ins for UE, Igazra, Miranu and the renegades, and I finished two of them. My iMac is ****ed so I can't go on the internet at home (got a BRAND NEW G4 btw), but I still did them, and they were VERY GOOD if I do say so myself.
I disagree on that point. Of course you have to draw the line, but I think that neat presentation really is important. It's like having a plug full of spelling mistakes: it just isn't on. Clearing up systems is easy and quick, and I personally wouldn't class it as 'a detail'.
You say that you didn't notice Avann, but don't you realise that you did it with every system? When you take over Huron, UE are still attacking Sol, Dogovor, Ariane et cetera. If you don't clear up the systems then at least justify this by saying something like: "Groups of UE ships are hiding out in the asteroid fields and waging a guerilla war on us".
Bomb, you're a great plug developer, but don't take this argument so seriously.
Originally posted by pistgavin: **I disagree on that point. Of course you have to draw the line, but I think that neat presentation really is important. It's like having a plug full of spelling mistakes: it just isn't on. Clearing up systems is easy and quick, and I personally wouldn't class it as 'a detail'.
I'm not taking it terribly seriously. It's just that 4 years of criticism wears on a person after a while, especially when it seems like people are just looking for things to bitch about. This isn't true in your case; you have a legitimate point. But in the past, the general consensus of players here is that it's just easier to tear things down (and I'm not the only plug-in maker who's felt this, not by any stretch) rather than give good, constructive criticism. It'd be along the lines of "I don't get the dreadnought fast enough" or "the missions don't pay me as much as I deserve.." or "I didn't read the mission text, and now I don't know what to do or where to go.. is this a bug?" I never hear a word about the plot, the new uses for the engine, anything along those lines. It's always about what I did wrong, or what could have been better. Don't get me wrong; criticism is a good thing, when it has a solid foundation, as your argument clearly does. I've just been worn out over the years of baseless bitching. That's why I tend to have a knee jerk reaction when this sort of thing comes about.
On the flip side of the coin, a lot of people have expressed how much they enjoyed ROTV and ROTV II. Nothing makes my day more than someone talking about their favorite mission or how much they loved playing for the Voinians. But again, it's always easier to stew about the bad (which I have a tendency to do..) and ignore all the good.. I think you'd understand better if your work was out there for the public. Speaking of which, is there anything I can do to help? If your work is half as good as your boasting, then it should see the light of day.. Can you put it on a disk (since mission only plug-ins can fit on floppies) and upload it/email it somewhere?
I've got my emulator working quite nicely now and I'll be done polishing up F-25 2.0.1 relatively soon and I'll need some new plug-ins to play..
(This message has been edited by Bomb (edited 02-23-2003).)
Originally posted by pistgavin: ** Um, **** attitude there mate. You're taking this like an insult. And I don't think you have any right to say that. You don't know who is a better developer out of the two of us since I've never released the plugs I've made. Just because I can't upload my plugs and can't get feedback doesn't mean I'm any worse than you, mate. I've made expander plug-ins for UE, Igazra, Miranu and the renegades, and I finished two of them. My iMac is ****ed so I can't go on the internet at home (got a BRAND NEW G4 btw), but I still did them, and they were VERY GOOD if I do say so myself.
Not to get into semantics here, but I never said anything about you as a developer. All I said was that I didn't need the advice, I clearly know how the system works. But at this point, it's all rather inconsequential. Still, it's better to argue with one another rather than have this board die a stale death..
Originally posted by Bomb: **Not to get into semantics here, but I never said anything about you as a developer. All I said was that I didn't need the advice, I clearly know how the system works. But at this point, it's all rather inconsequential. Still, it's better to argue with one another rather than have this board die a stale death..:)
Damn right.
About all of the critisism (sp?), it's natural to believe the bad stuff about us even if there's so much more to the good. Never mind, I really enjoyed playiong ROTV btw (if you're after a favourite mission, the one where you take over Outpost Alpha with a captured UE fleet was really clever, I thought, and I've used that idea in my plug to some extent).
I can't upload it, but it'll be out soon enough, so just wait a week or so.