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I'm working on this ridiculously huge TC Plug. It features: 500+ systems 30(about) ships with all new rendered graphics a preposterous # of governments somewhere around 30 landing pix+planets
And I am having trouble structuring it. ShipWrite is helping me piece together most of the ships, but I'm not sure about corresponding resource IDs to PICTS and stuff. Any help/advice would be appreciated, although I'm not willing to send a 15MB e-mail attachment for beta testing or something...(yes, it's that big already... :frown:) Summary: Are there any efficient ways to lay out a TC while you try to structure its IDs and stuff?
-Lequis
------------------ All your base are belong to us.
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Originally posted by Lequis MX: **I'm working on this ridiculously huge TC Plug. It features: 500+ systems 30(about) ships with all new rendered graphics a preposterous # of governments somewhere around 30 landing pix+planets
**
Okay, first off, Pontus' EVO Formula Calculator is in the add-on's page of this site. Very, very handy for figuring out all those little resource numbers -- ShipWrite gets most of them right, tho, and the big display is helpful in indicating if you forgot any.
I was just over at the internet gaming company my friend works for, and I read a couple books on interactive storytelling. Out of all that, all I can really tell you is to be organized. Start off with a prose work describing exactly what your plug intends to do. Then another prose work detailing the history and back-story. Then another piece of creative writing for each of the major missions, told in story form all the way through that mission chain.
Okay, then you flowchart the durn thing. I'm not into software planners; just get a pad of graph paper and start drawing boxes. Each box has the mission number at the top, some descriptive note to yourself in the box proper, and Y/N choices at the bottom.
But, really, the best advice is that which my engineer father gave me; DIVIDE AND CONQUER. Divide any problem into smaller problems. Divide any plot into smaller plot chunks. Divide any universe into quadrants. Divide your ships into basic classes. That way, you can test, say "All the Earth Govt military ships" as a seperate plug and rule out any problems with them -- rather than dig into a 17 meg plug-in looking for one bad resource!
------------------ everywhere else, it's -- "Nomuse"
The best advice I can give you huge TCs is... don't make them. Over the last few years there have been literally hundreds (on this board and its predecessors) of people posting 'I'm going to make a huge TC'. As far as I know, none of them have ever been realised.
On the other hand, if you try to make a plugin which is in every way excellent, then you have a good chance it will succeed and a fair chance that, by the time you've finished it, it will be huge. If you look back at some of the original Nova posts, the Nova guys were interested in making something which was excellent (even to the extent of videoing explosions to make them realistic). Eventually it developed into something bigger than EVO.
At the other end of the process, the problem is trying to keep the file size down to something people will be willing to download. Most new plugins come in at the top of the plugin chart of the addons page (because the author rates them five stars). About fifty people download them. If they spend twenty minutes downloading and are not instantly entranced by the quality of the plugin, they may never get as far as playing it (most of us have been burned by boring or buggy plugs), but may well go back and rate it as 'ok' or 'terrible', so it will probably drop off the top ten fairly quickly, at which point it becomes 'invisible'. So the real trick is to make a plugin which makes people think that they've got something amazing for the time and patience it took them to download it.
Think 'exciting' rather than 'huge', and you should be fine.
------------------ M A R T I N T U R N E R
Well, my TC SHOULD be finished some day... after all, it has a lot of potential; I tried to make a plugin like three years ago and it never got done; full of stolen graphics and non-existant spöbs and stuff. But now, Ok, ok, my TC will.. er... SHOULD get finished some day. It does have a huge galaxy though, and the structure is basically done for the systems; in turn creating a basis for the plug-in. (it is kinda annoying though, how for a dude resource you must have a ship resource, and for a spob resource you must have a dude resource and a govt resource... but oh well)
I assume that formula calc will be my lifesaver here. BUT... If anyone wants to see this TC definitely ever be finished, perhaps I can get some help along the way.... or a good editor... ALSO!!!! my TC should have a webpage within the next week or two. Yay. Thanks all, -Lequis
Originally posted by Lequis MX: **(it is kinda annoying though, how for a dude resource you must have a ship resource, and for a spob resource you must have a dude resource and a govt resource... but oh well) **
Yup, that's why I usually start with weapons, they require the least other resources. Then I go to govts, then ships, then dudes, then outfs, and so on... usually I do the misns last, right after the systs and spobs. This is, of course, after I plan out the storyline and technology, usually during a history or chemistry lecture.
-Matt
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