Stormbringer - again?

Martin Turner

Years ago there was an agreement among plugin makers called Stormbringer which was a helpful system of deciding what to put where.

Would something like that be helpful in the much more complicated world of EVN?

Some suggestions would include:
Special Tech Level:
the basic special tech level for a Spob which was the only purveyor of certain equipment would be its Spob ID

Ncbs:
The base ncb to set relating to a mission would be its mission ID
The base ncb to set relating to a pers would be 7xxx where xxx is the res number of the Pers
The base ncb to set relating to a ship would be 8xxx where xxx is the res number of the ship
The base ncb to set relating to an outfit would by 9xxx where xxx is the res number of the outfit

Mission Descs:
Accept desc 5xxx where xxx is mission Idx *
Refuse 24xxx
Quick Brief 6xxx *
Load cargo 8xxx *
Dump cargo 9xxx *
Mission done 7xxx *
Ship done 27xxx
Fail 20xxx
Some of these (starred) were standards in the old EVO and EVC games. The others are by extension.

What does everyone think? Would a system be useful? What else should it contain?

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kauthor

Well, if it is very helpful to novice developers, then yes. It should be brought to EVN.

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mrxak

I have a very different system that I am using for ncbs. It's based on government, and then order within that string.

The dësc IDs do make sense though.

Masamune

Heheh... I actually remember stormbringer... I downloaded it thinking it was a development tool! Man, those were the days...

As far as its applicability to Nova, I think it would be just as useful as the original- which is to say, not very. I only say that because most people seem to get a sence of accomplishment from just being able to download and install a plug- "Stormbringer Compatible" would fly right over the heads of most people, it seems to me. That, and simply coordinating everything is nigh-impossible. Sure, I'm making a plug, and I choose SB sets 5-8 for my plug. That's fine, except there is no guarantee someone else isn't using 3-6. Kind of the same problem as the internet, seems to me... not enough central control to keep things organized (not that I'm bashing the internet- but when manufacturers reuse MAC addresses in their hardware just 'cause they can get away with it... errgg).

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~Charlie
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Regulus

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
(B)Years ago there was an agreement among plugin makers called Stormbringer which was a helpful system of deciding what to put where.(b)

Sort of. A few things to consider:

1.) I can name from memory the only plug-in of any reasonable popularity that was ever released using Stormbringer, and that was "Astex".

2.) Small "tweak" plugins to just add a few new worlds/missions and maybe a ship or two are very much more of an EV thing than either of its sequels, and in any case the vogue is toward large TC or similar plugins anyway. To whit:

EV: EVGE, Final Battle, Pale
EVO: F-25, Babylon 5, your E3 universe
EVN: Polycon

The only exceptions to this really were the small mission-oriented plugs for EV such as Bounty! Plus, Clavius and Beyond and Eye of Orion. For these, especially given EV's limited resource space, it would be desirable to ensure mutual compatibility. But few plugins of this sort were ever created for EVO or EVN. The only one that readily springs to mind is Beyond the Crescent, and perhaps RotV I and II.

With such specific instances of highly popular "mission pack" plugins, it makes more sense for later developers to just intelligently design around the resource uses of their more popular predecessors. Really all stormbringer accomplishes is decreasing the granularity of resource conflict, since with it any range off ID numbers ends up being mutually exclusive, no matter how small the overlap.

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
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David Arthur

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
Years ago there was an agreement among plugin makers called Stormbringer which was a helpful system of deciding what to put where.

Stormbringer always seemed like a good idea on paper, but I never saw an effective use of it, and as Regulus said, it's sort of irrelevant to the most popular types of plug-ins these days.

On the other hand, standardised dësc ID conventions (which have been around semi-informally since the beginning) have always seemed a good idea, more for the convenience of developers than for compatibility - I always found it convenient to continue using the original EV conventions in my plug-ins, though of course it's a bit more complicated in Nova.

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