lobsters Evolving Ship Idea

Lobster

Quote

Originally posted by orcaloverbri9:
**Um, no...I meant The mrxak Challenge.

**

Oh, that's right.

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Eji1700

Disclaimer: I have some idea of how Nova works using Nova Tools and what not, but I never got to far into developing and haven't used Nova Tools for about 3 moths so the following could be wrong. It's just a thought.

Moving on I think that Lobster's energy creature idea would at least be possible in several different ways. The idea I have I'm almost sure would be possible but it would limit the number of ships someone has in a game. Rather than having varients to a ship you have the evolved forms. Also to avoid the problems with the cron's couldn't you have the cron start a mission which you can only accept if you still have that ship and otherwise you decline. This part im uncertian of but I remeber messing around with the idea a bit a long time ago, and I can't remeber if I ever got it to work or if I ran into some limitation. Still this way you could have sort of a check for the cron so that you don't evolve into a ship you no longer have. The biggest problem is the number of varients you'd have to have which is why it would only feasably work for a entire race with each evolution being a new ship. Othewise only certian ships could evolve or you could have every ship evolve but it would somewhat limit your evolutions or your total number of ships.

Once again I'm tired, not that experienced in this area, and I haven't done anything remotly like this in awhile so if anythings wrong don't jump completely down my throat for it.

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Terek E`Ban

I think I can solve the problem:

Ship 1: On buy = b0001 / on sell = !b0001

Crön 1: Enable on = b0001 / duration = 100 / on end = b0002

Crön 2: Enable on = b0001 b0002 / duration = 0 / on start = E ship 2 / on end = !b0002 !b0001

((Extension to Crön 2: on end = S Mission 1) (Mission 1: Messagebox = You`ve made modifications))

Ship 2: On buy = b0003 / on sell = !b0003

If you sell the ship before crön 2 is activated the ship won`t change after 100 days. Easy, eh?

And if you want to let one ship "evolve" to different versions just use invisible outfits like "good" and "bad" to tell the cröns how to evolve.

Ship 1: On buy = b0001 / on sell = !b0001

Outfit 1 (good): Invisible (Example: Will be given if you are with the Rebels)

Crön 1: Enable on = b0001 O Outfit 1 / duration = 100 / on end = b0002

Crön 2: Enable on = b0001 b0002 / duration = 0 / on start = E Ship 2 / on end = !b0002 !b0001

((Extension to Crön 2: on end = S Mission 1) (Mission 1: Messagebox = You`ve made modifications))

Ship 2: On buy = b0003 / on sell = !b0003

AND

Ship 1: On buy = b0001 / on sell = !b0001

Outfit 2 (bad): Invisible (Example: Will be given if you are with the Federation)

Crön 1: Enable on = b0001 O Outfit 2 / duration = 100 / on end = b0005

Crön 3: Enable on = b0001 b0005 / duration = 0 / on start = E Ship 3 / on end = !b0005 !b0001

((Extension to Crön 3: on end = S Mission 1) (Mission 1: Messagebox = You`ve made modifications))

Ship 3: On buy = b0004 / on sell = !b0004

So you got two possibilities how to let the ship "evolve" in one plug.

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mrxak

About The mrxak Challenge, this would be a terrible idea for a competition. It is so simplistic it would be well below the Easy level. I'm not adding a Pathetic level to my challenges.

orcaloverbri9

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
About The mrxak Challenge, this would be a terrible idea for a competition. It is so simplistic it would be well below the Easy level. I'm not adding a Pathetic level to my challenges.

Actually, if you read Lobster's first post, his suggestions start to make the idea more and more complex.

Besides, I wasn't being entirely serious.

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Guest_UE_Research & Development_*

To quote Tiresmoke:

Quote

Another topic spirals into the toilet.

Outfits that change by themselves are already in the stock scenario, and it would take almost no effort to transpose that system to ships. I think Sephil Saga is doing something like that with ship degradation and such. Too realistic, I tell you, too realistic!

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SpacePirate

Heh... Back in the early-release days of Nova, I recalled someone mentioning making a Dragonball Z plugin... I put a lot of thought into how that might be possible, and this topic reminded me of it.

The way I figured would be best for an EXP based system (as you kill enemies, you get stronger) would be to use invisible missions every time you landed on a planet that created special ships in the system. Destroying these would activate the OnSpecialShipDone field, which would set a few things to upgrade the player, either instantly, or add to a counter that will give a large bonus after a certain amount of time.

This way isn't too hard, but could still have some interesting effects.

The other way would be as Terek and UE mentioned, just use Terek E`Ban's method with cröns, and otherwise copy from the carbon fiber, thorium reactor, or cheap fission reactor.

Lobster, I especially liked the degrading idea... That could make the game quite interesting... Imagine that if in Nova, you decided to by the "run down" version of the Valkyrie. Because you purchased it in such poor condition, it will slowly degrade, even under your care. Another idea would to require purchasing tune-ups every "1,000 light-years" or something. In this, you would have a degenerating outfit similar to the carbon fiber to act as a counter, and once it is at its lowest stage, it would activate a crön to change your ship...

Muahahaha! /me runs off to do evil things to Player...
~ SpacePirate

I race past P.E.? Beh.

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Katana

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
**About The mrxak Challenge, this would be a terrible idea for a competition. It is so simplistic it would be well below the Easy level. I'm not adding a Pathetic level to my challenges.

**

Too late.

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AceBlack

This could be easily done with invisible outfits, but to make it really cool you'd need to do a bunch of graphics work so that after doing a couple of polaris missions your pirate valk would have some visible "living" parts on it.
If I were to make a TC based on this, I'd have one ship that would be upgraded automatically with missions/time (missions would change it graphically and add weapons and time would add invisible outfits that increase performance) and instead of buying outfits just have training manuals/crew that would boost your performance.
Just my two cents.

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Azdara

Heh, haven't been here in a while. Sorry guys, I was in hospital.

This is a pretty cool idea, ++ for figuring it out guys.

~A~

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Masamune

Too late, SpacePirate. I already have a "ship maintanence" system in place.... you also have to pay yearly taxes based on your current citizenship... oh, the Evil, the Evil...!

But going back to DBZ, I think a better experience-based system would simply use your combat rating. Just have a bunch of missions, with "experience levels" as the combat rating minimum, and a 100% chance otherwise. Then, when you land, it pops up and says "Thou hast done well. Thou art now experience level 4. Thy HP increase by 4...." or some non-dragon warrior variant (or nothing at all). Each mission, of course, does whatever it is you want it to do to give you a level up. Just make sure each exp. level mission is only available once! <-Important! I wasted some time chasing my tail on this once. D'oh!

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SpacePirate

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
Too late, SpacePirate. I already have a "ship maintanence" system in place.... you also have to pay yearly taxes based on your current citizenship... oh, the Evil, the Evil...!

Taxes?! Oh, evil indeed thou art.

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
**But going back to DBZ, I think a better experience-based system would simply use your combat rating. Just have a bunch of missions, with "experience levels" as the combat rating minimum, and a 100% chance otherwise. Then, when you land, it pops up and says "Thou hast done well. Thou art now experience level 4. Thy HP increase by 4...." or some non-dragon warrior variant (or nothing at all). Each mission, of course, does whatever it is you want it to do to give you a level up. Just make sure each exp. level mission is only available once! <-Important! I wasted some time chasing my tail on this once. D'oh!

**

Yes, but my way allows you to use the same missions repeatedly, giving me more room to for additional evilness. Posted Image

Also, the reason I chose to do it my way was so you could attain the bonuses immediately, as opposed to requiring the player to land after every battle.

The only foreseeable problem would be quickly running out of the 16 missions limit...

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Eat blazing electric death!

mrxak

Quote

Originally posted by orcaloverbri9:
Actually, if you read Lobster's first post, his suggestions start to make the idea more and more complex.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I like it quite a bit. It just doesn't have the complexity needed to be worthy of competition. It is more suited to find its way into actual plug-in scenarios.

mrxak

Quote

Originally posted by Katana:
**Too late.:p

**

What does that mean?

Croikle

The problem with Terek E`Ban's implementation (which is a good start) is that if I buy ship 1, then switch to some other ship, I can buy ship 1 again before the cron fires and have my ship grow, even if it's only 2 days old! The only way I see to fix this is with a long string of crons that enable bits which start the next cron, and so on. They're rolling over to a new cron every day, but checking to see if you still have the ship each time. With a separate 2-3 day cron at the start, we may be able to avoid continuing the cron even when you swap to ship 2 and back on the same landing. This scheme is incredibly messy, but I think may allow for realistic handling of ship growth. You could reduce the number of crons used by rolling over to the next one every 5 days or so, since this doesn't really give players a way to cheat, it just means that if you switch ships, then switch back quickly, you get a more grown up ship. This is a cool idea, and it will be neat to see it implemented!

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SpacePirate

Well, as I went through and looked at his post again, the only problems are minor ones.

First, as you pointed out, buying a ship, selling it, and then buying it again before the crön expires will cause errors. But, in reality, all this will do is delay the upgrade for an additional 100 days. This is because you must wait for the crön to first expire. After it expires, the crön will activate itself again, starting another 100 day countdown.

Additionally, I realized that you must have two unique control bits and two unique cröns for every ship you want this method to work with. This will probably not be of much consequence, with the 10000 NCBs available, as well as 512 cröns... So long as you have less than 256 ships that are available to the player (and use this method, of course), you will be fine.

~ SpacePirate

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Terek E`Ban

Okok, than give all other ships not affected by these cröns etc. on buy = b9999 and use the following specifications:

Ship 1: On buy = b0001 / on sell = !b0001

Crön 1: Enable on = b0001 / duration = 100 / on start = !b9999 / on end = b0002

Crön 2: Enable on = b0001 b0002 !b9999 / duration = 0 / on start = E ship 2 / on end = !b0002 !b0001

((Extension to Crön 2: on end = S Mission 1) (Mission 1: Messagebox = You`ve made modifications))

Ship 2: On buy = b0003 / on sell = !b0003

And if you want to let one ship "evolve" to different versions just use invisible outfits like "good" and "bad" to tell the cröns how to evolve.

Ship 1: On buy = b0001 / on sell = !b0001

Outfit 1 (good): Invisible (Example: Will be given if you are with the Rebels)

Crön 1: Enable on = b0001 O Outfit 1 / duration = 100 / on start = !b9999 / on end = b0002

Crön 2: Enable on = b0001 b0002 !b9999 / duration = 0 / on start = E Ship 2 / on end = !b0002 !b0001

((Extension to Crön 2: on end = S Mission 1) (Mission 1: Messagebox = You`ve made modifications))

Ship 2: On buy = b0003 / on sell = !b0003

AND

Ship 1: On buy = b0001 / on sell = !b0001

Outfit 2 (bad): Invisible (Example: Will be given if you are with the Federation)

Crön 1: Enable on = b0001 O Outfit 2 / duration = 100 / on start = !b9999 / on end = b0005

Crön 3: Enable on = b0001 b0005 !b9999 / duration = 0 / on start = E Ship 3 / on end = !b0005 !b0001

((Extension to Crön 3: on end = S Mission 1) (Mission 1: Messagebox = You`ve made modifications))

Ship 3: On buy = b0004 / on sell = !b0004

Solved the problem

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Croikle

Actually, this just makes you buy a partially grown ship 1 (like before) if you:
Buy ship 1. b0001 set. Cron 1 starts ticking. Day 0.
Buy ship 2. b0001 unset. b9999 set. Cron 1 still ticking. Day 50.
Buy ship 1. b0001 set. b9999 still set. Cron 1 can't fire since it's still ticking. Day 75.
Cron 1 fires and sets b0002, but cron 2 can't activate because of b9999. b0001, b0002, b9999 are all currently set. Day 100
Cron 1 starts and unsets b9999. Cron 2 fires and grows your 25 day old ship. See?

All this would be incredibly easy if we just had an ncb set string Rxxxx (say) to kill cron xxxx. Just put that in ship 1's onSell, and you're practically done. Any way we can get that in 1.0.8, when the beam bug is fixed?

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Bomb

Quote

Originally posted by SpacePirate:
**Well, as I went through and looked at his post again, the only problems are minor ones.

First, as you pointed out, buying a ship, selling it, and then buying it again before the crön expires will cause errors. But, in reality, all this will do is delay the upgrade for an additional 100 days. This is because you must wait for the crön to first expire. After it expires, the crön will activate itself again, starting another 100 day countdown.

Additionally, I realized that you must have two unique control bits and two unique cröns for every ship you want this method to work with. This will probably not be of much consequence, with the 10000 NCBs available, as well as 512 cröns... So long as you have less than 256 ships that are available to the player (and use this method, of course), you will be fine.

~ SpacePirate

**

Now the real trick: Anyone know how to make the ship actually evolve (as in change graphic) in front of the player's eyes?

Cause I do.

somewhat cryptic grin

_bomb

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(This message has been edited by Bomb (edited 01-07-2004).)

Masamune

Are you talking animate the evolution, bomb, or just switching the graphic quick-quick?

The first would be toughish, but I don't think impossible... the second is pretty obvious.

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