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This is a companion topic to the 110 commandments.
Please add your crafty tricks of pushing the envelope on the EVO or EV engine. Don't worry that someone else may use your idea (in fact, they should): people always use game ideas in very different ways, so the result will be more and better plugs for all. I think most of my tricks are fairly well known, but here they are for the record.
Trick 1) Play with the look vs type of resources. For instance, my Black Hole was a 'ship' that looked like a stellar object, my wrecked alien vessel was a spob that looked like a ship. You can have outfits that look like characters (especially in the EVO 1.0.2) and missions that look like messages.
Trick 2) Use the extra STR resources to give extra information ย stellar beacons are great for this, as is changing the legal status and the combat ratings.
Trick 3) Use Visbits to create time delay missions that won't resolve until another mission has been completed ย but give your players some warning of this.
Trick 4) Planets with two ports can be created by putting to planets on top of each other. Ok, so everyone knows to do this now, but it still challenges a lot of players.
Trick 4) Use invisible beam weapons a lot. I love invisible beam weapons. There's nothing like them for instilling fear into the hearts of even the most sturdy players.
Trick 5) Use the aspects which really, really annoy you in the standard game to your advantage. One thing that used to annoy me most about EV was having to board a Confed ship, but by the time I'd got near it, it was gone. Another thing I hated was the 'wall' at the edge of the systems. As a deliberate ploy, though, this can lead to hours of fun.
Trick 6) Make ships that look like weapons and weapons that look like ships. Just more on trick 1 really, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Trick 7) One way hyper-links. I love one way hyper-links. You could even have a maze of systems piled on top of each other where you kept on going deeper into 'mirror' worlds (like parallel universes) which seemed to be on the same place on the map, but were totally different, and from which there was no escape without going through the entire sequence. Now that's an idea for a plug.
Trick Make some outfits that don't do what they claim to do, or which damage the player (like real life really) ย how about a 'shield core blown' outfit given at the beginning of a mission which can only be fixed by purchasing the 'shield repairs' outfit which becomes available at the end of the mission.
Trick 9) Find a use for the tribbles flag.
Trick 10) Have ships which launch more of themselves. I love that trick, though I've never used it myself.
Trick 11) Make the player do different things from must trading to raise cash. Ships that start disabled (now that they work in EVO 1.0.2) are great. Or what about a mission that gives the player a useless outfit which will fetch a high price on the right world.
Trick 12) Make some weapons which are so powerful that they almost destroy the player unless used with great care. Like space bombs in EV. I loved those.
Trick 13) Use visbits in other ways. You can have planets which appear, disappear, replace others, or even alternate. Alternate is something I haven't seen yet ย how about a planet which goes through an annual cycle of darkness, where the look and feel of the place is totally different, and all the bars are closed down. It would take the player quite some time to work out he had to come back during the summer period.
Trick 14) Muck around with the average ship characteristics. Most ships with high acceleration tend to have high speed and good turning. What about a ship that had magnificent turning and high speed, but low acceleration?
Trick 15) Use 'Always pers' to make a player consciously choose between different mission strings ย either go to Dagobah and talk to Yoda, or city in the clouds and rescue Han.
Trick 16) Use the complexity of mission bits to your advantage. Strings can branch and rejoin, they can go dormant until other strings are completed, they can split into multi paths (although I'm not so keen myself). Use the new refuse bit to allow the player to make a decision on the moment about which way to go.
Trick 17) Use other mission requirements creatively. What about a mission string which begins with the player being given a free pardon for a government, but then having to work their way into the underworld in order to go undercover. The main sequence wouldn't trigger until their record was, say, minus 100. You can also make a mission require a particular ship, and yet have a free cargo space requirement which was too much for that ship, until the player bought the ACME Super-Cargo Bay, which comes with a computer virus that messes up his turning.
Trick 18) Ships do not have to be on a square grid. As long as the dimensions are a multiple of eight, the 'ship' can be ten times as broad as it is high. This might not be much fun for a regular ship, but a stellar hazard like a vortex works well.
Trick 19) Put some spobs so far away that the player will never find them until a particular mission says look for them.
Trick 20) Have some invisible ships and invisible weapons. There must be some use for them.
Cheers
------------------ M A R T I N ย T U R N E R
Trick 21) Use invisible weapons in combination with contrails - running low on different weapon graphics? No problem! The invisible weapon can be used with any contrail, and I don't know of any limit on the number of contrails.
Trick 22) Use the turret blindspots to balance things out. How about a ship that has very powerful weapons, but can't fire them to the rear? Or a fighter that can carry turrets, but can only fire them forward. Or a ship that only fires to the sides.
Trick 23) Be creative with gun and turret slots. Make a sensor array so complex it has to be mounted on its own turret. Or use the gun slots for all fixed-forward weapons, from blasters to torpedo tubes.
Trick 24) X-offset plus 2 guns with the fire simultaneous flag set just looks cool.
Trick 25) Be creative with the multiple effects of outfit items. Such as antimatter torpedoes that drain fuel to run the containment field. Or a device that increases turn rate at the expense of thrust.
------------------
(Insert Signature Here)
Some more specific ideas related to what others have said: 1. I have a plug in which there is a mission where the player has to destroy a Xeck ship called the bacterium. It has a single shield dilator cannon, but it also has a fighter bay with one of itself. When the player jumps in, he/she is thinking that it is a joke, then it fills the system up to max ships with little things that eat away at shields slowly. 2. Use contrails of invisible rockets as something like a flamethrower, with a high reload rate it would look like the ship shot flame out of thew front and when the rockets hit they would do significant damage. 3. put in regular weapons with a blank sprite/mask. i think its better than black beam. 4. In the same plug as #1 there is a weapon called the Shield Dilator mine. it acts like a fixed gun in frozen heart but it is launched from a fighter bay all this looks to the player like a high tech weapon. Ill try to think of some other stuff later. modtype2 rocks!
------------------ They have good fish on Dispa Prime (p.s.: hint for upcoming plug) All hail the good people of Ambrosia Software!
Quote
Originally posted by Wyvern: **Trick 25) Be creative with the multiple effects of outfit items. Such as antimatter torpedoes that drain fuel to run the containment field. Or a device that increases turn rate at the expense of thrust. **
Some more ideas for multiple Outfits:
Armor plating that also jams guided weapons Adding the Marine Outfit = to the crew value for any carried ship (What are those pilots doing when they're not out attacking your enemiess?) Shield enhancements that slowly drain fuel or decrease your ship's thrust (It's drawing its power from somewhere, right?) Extra thrusters that divert power and decrease your ship's turning rate Weapons that use fuel as ammo but also slowly recharge it like a mini-ramscoop
------------------ Jon Potter Thank you for your cooperation. Good night.
(This message has been edited by Jon Potter (edited 12-10-2000).)
How about making a weapon that you can fly? Make a ship that looks like a missile, and give it a weapon that doesn't go anywhere, but blows up as soon as it is launched and kills everything on the screen, including you. It wouldn't be good for strict play mode, but it would be an excelent stress reducer, or "April Fools" plug.
------------------ "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in groups."
omg that would be very cool. you could have a fighter bay, but instead it would be a smart missle bay, where you would have missles kinda like the long range tactical something or other on stv. the missle could have defensive weapons and have a main weapon that would blow itself up, along with the target.
------------------ "I'm getting out of this place alive even if it kills me!"
Yea! And if you where on the receveing end you could attempt to shoot down the missile before it reached you instead of running from it!
Originally posted by Captian LeGrenadier: **Yea! And if you where on the receveing end you could attempt to shoot down the missile before it reached you instead of running from it!
**
That is a great idea! To create a ship that had a weapon sprite that had a proximty detonated weapon or such. Perhaps such a "weapon" could only be used by planet defenses, therefore you have to destroy the missiles before they reach you.
And the best part, have the 'weapon' (ships) launch the exact same ship over again. Scary idea huh?
"Oh, just one missile after me...now 2...now 4...uh oh..."
CS
<old capt'ns voice>
yar. arrgg.
us capt'ns know how to make a good missle.
arrr maty
</old capt'ns voice>
Do some stuff just to piss people off. For example, build four identically named planets in one system. And have like five copies of that system. Then give them a time-limited mission without any flags to get something there...
Turn the few downsides of EV:O to good. I'm guessing i'm the first one to actually turn the system flood slow-down into a feature
s
(This message has been edited by Sarcas (edited 12-10-2000).)
Trick 32) Make missions with the same name, with different outcomes. Using this, you can make a relatively benign cargo trip from the mission computer turn into a boarding attempt by pirates, by making there be a chance of an identical-looking mission with a very different outcome. (Sorry, I don't know if this was already posted)
(corrected trick #)
------------------ <font color="gold">Bronze: the other gold metal.</font> Bacchus Publishing: (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evo&category;=guides&display;=date&file;=ChroniclesByJake101.sit.hqx")Chronicles by Jake101: the unposted chapters(/url), (url="http://"http://users.erols.com/alkrauss/Once_Again.html")Once Again: on the web.(/url)
(This message has been edited by Talos (edited 12-11-2000).)
Trick ?) take a look in (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum9/HTML/000919.html")http://www.AmbrosiaS...TML/000919.html(/url)
Heres some I never got to impliment into my plug in.
#99 (or whatever) Make a station graphic into a ship, but enlarge it a bit. Give it not speed and turning etc. Have it as a defense fleet for a station, and viola you actually have a station that fights back. You can give it fighters and capital ships to launch or whatever. Good idea use it. Oh ya enlarge it's graphic because once it's launched from the station it will no longer be right over top of the station and for it to look real it has to be completely covering the station.
#100
Along the same line of thinking create defensive platforms and fighter bases to be launched from planets, face it fighting line after line of ships is just plain boring. Having a hard battle (rather than tedious) is much better, just don't give them unlimited long range weapons, that's just plain annoying.
Umm I have more, let me think...
Dragon
Originally posted by Captain Scurvy: **
CS**
You can do fragmentation weapons in override this way! Have a ship that looks like a missile, with an outfit that both self detinates the "missile" ship and launches 5 smaller missiles! It would look so cool!
Originally posted by Arada Pilot: **Use contrails of invisible rockets as something like a flamethrower. **
I tried that once, and ran into a problem with maximum number of contrails on screen. Keep the firing rate of weapons with contrails low, or keep the duration of the shot low, or both. It works best when used for slow, powerful weapons. And also keep shot speed relatively low, otherwise the contrail images may end up too spread out to make a decent looking trail.
yikes, the numbering went wild!
origonaly posted by Captain LeGrenadier Yea! And if you where on the receveing end you could attempt to shoot down the missile before it reached you instead of running from it! and by Captain Scurvy And the best part, have the 'weapon' (ships) launch the exact same ship over again. Scary idea huh? "Oh, just one missile after me...now 2...now 4...uh oh..."
of course, with evn you could just use point defense weapons and submunitions, but until i saw those in the proggress log, i thought about doing the same sort thing that way.
------------------ why
To keep this topic manageable, please limit it to tricks you've actually tried and know work.
Sorry to be a pain.
; )
Martin
Originally posted by Captian LeGrenadier: **You can do fragmentation weapons in override this way! Have a ship that looks like a missile, with an outfit that both self detinates the "missile" ship and launches 5 smaller missiles! It would look so cool!
You cannot make weapons in the way you suggest. Immediately after the "missile" is fired, it launches its 5 fighter/missiles and heads toward the enemy where it detonates itself. Then the 5 fighter/missiles will do the same thing. Thus, you will not have a fragmentation weapon. The closest you can get is a flak-type weapon using EVO v1.0.2's new weรคp flag.
------------------ Those who are blinded by the light shall stumble in the darkness... Visit the (url="http://"http://pub40.ezboard.com/bthecatacomb")Unofficial EV Webboard(/url)! (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/search.cgi?action=intro &default;=")USE ME, DAMNIT!!!(/url)
If you're making a plug-in in the EVO universe with mission strings and you don't know which ones are available, go duplicate Override Data 1, go into ResEdit, and make the copy a plugin! Then, you can go into MissionWrite and see all of the EVO missions and their strings! Great for seeing all the missions and recording their strings!
God bless,
UE Patriot
------------------ "Turn me over, I'm done on this side."- St. Lawerence at his martyrdom "The glory of God is man fully alive"- some saint whose name I can't remember Voinian lovers are ignorant of the UE marines taking over Borb Station. Reign of the UE: Coming next year!