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I'm new to nova, but I've laready made some non-grpahical plugins for personal use. This string is for reminiscing about back in the day (imagine rocking chairs and pipes).
My first plug was a cheat, of course. In about five minutes my new pilot had 100 mil and a raven. My second plug was a new planet, selling everything low, using an existing pict file set. My third plug was a new ship variant, same looking but deadly as could be. (Think manta with 1000 mass and 1000 cargo, max weaps and turrets at 10, and you get the picture. that was FUN for a while.) I later reworked the auroran area to invoke some sanity on the mess. no more 10 hyperjumps to get one system away. i made a new weapon for my tricked-out manta, a beam called the 'beam of death', creatively enough, the 'ionizing beam of death', the 'ultimate beam of death', the 'invisible beam of death', the 'evil (black and purple) beam of death', the 'turreted beam of death', and finally some non-beam weapons that used hellhound, railgun and even blaster pictures to destroy things. Then, about three weeks after discovering the game, obsessively playing it, defeating it every which way, making easy plugs, I got lightwave 7 and am trying to teach myself 3d modeling. ooh man, that's a mindbender. So, relate your plugin indexes, your interesting stories, your nova love, and what you are and will develop in the future. I am interested to hear your ideas, dreams and past and present projects.
------------------ 'truly, if there is evil in the world, it lies in the heart of mankind.' -Edward D. Morrison
Well, back in my day we didn't have this wussy-non worrysome limit of anything. We had to deal with extreame ship limits, outfits and weapons limited to less than 100, man, we had it hard.
But I made ships and weapons and things for it none the less. I've gotten several hundred megs of hard drive space taken by my plug mess, graphics library, and other random stuff. Five picts per ship adds up quickly.
I don't remember what my first plug was, but I do remember making a space station-ship. Some 3000 proton turrets, missiles and torpedoes, a frontal-locater laser, unlimited shielding and fuel, man, what stopps me from making one of those now? Make it cost 500 million dollars, do some other stuff... Got to get a space station pict...Maybe I can convince someone to help me make it....
------------------ I am ME hear me roar! Meeoowwwww
Imagine having to make a new copy of the EV Data files if you wanted to make changes, but not lose the original data.
Matrix
------------------ "Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought -- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things." - Woody Allen
(url="http://"http://htf.mondominishows.com/valentine/main.asp?seed=7375&serial;=214877")The funniest valentine I've ever gotten.(/url)
...just as we have to do with almost all other Ambrosia games.
I know I began by making an essentially cheat plug, which allowed you to buy the disco machine gun (in EVO). Then I made a plug for EVC that made pirates use upgraded ships instead of the stock ones (stock argosies for pirates was ridiculous, yet they were using that), then a plug that made the Cydonians and he Letheans each have one special ship, which actually were hue-rotated (red and yellow, respectively) versions of the Corvette and Argosy for the appearance, and upgraded with weapons and a fighter bay. These are lame, but actually the least lame of the plugs I made myself for my own use, thus the reason I uploaded these (yes, you can find them in the respective add-ons pages). Also, I participated in Samurai's quite popular Dark Station for EVO, and (somewhat unrelated) made some testing of seant's Pilot File Editor. I began to envision to make a ROTE (ROT Emalghas, yes), but I never got around to actually make it. I've begun reinteresting myself to plug designing with Nova, but i've yet to make anything significant (or anything at all) for it. Come to think of it, I've modified the StarLiner shäns and Rle8/D so that the running lights light in sequence (the red and white lights are on, then the white and green are, then the red and green, and so on). Yes, lame. I'm practising now.
------------------ The (url="http://"https://secure.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/store/hazel.cgi?action=serve&item;=breakdown.html&BREAKDOWN;_SKUID=1480")Ambrosia Mac CD(/url) with other registrations - 5$. Paying for (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/")EV Nova(/url) as it's such a great game - 30$. The (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/tshirts.html")1337 EV Nova T-shirt(/url) - 22$. The (url="http://"http://w00tware.ev-nova.net/")NovaTools(/url) by wOOtWare to tinker with your Nova - FREE! The feeling you're a Nova geek - priceless. There are things money can't buy or that are free, for everything else, there's indeed Mastercard.
Except for an interesting little plug called the "Cloak Hunter Missile," all of what I've done so far was for my own use.
My earliest attempts at plug-in making related to EV:C, specifically to the planets Quake and Opal. They caught my attention because in all of Classic, you never see any two planets so close together. They were, IIRC, closer to each other than Earth and Luna; having two Planet's at that distance was unique. I wound up altering both planets, making Quake habitable, making both tech level 5 with some special tech levels set, adding a third planet and putting them all under a new government...
However, at the time I was simply altering the data file. One day, James wanted to play EV without my changes, and... Let's just say I wasn't in the habit of making backup copies yet.
I'm amazed I still remembered that. I must have been 10 or 11 at the time.
After that, I got into using the plug-in system. "EV Tuner" was still relatively new, and I didn't quite trust it yet (... That must make me sound so-o-o old...).
I remember using Mechanisto to try and render ships back then. My very first ship was supposed to be a Confed planet-killer. It was larger than any other ship in the game, and I can remember thinking that a half-hour to render a ship was too long; I avoided doing anything that big again. It looked like a large, long cylinder with four other cylinders attached by rectangular, backward-swept columns.
My second ship was something I called a "Confed Attack Fighter." It was as fast as an alien fighter, and had a non fuel-eating "Proton Beam Cannon" as it's weapon. I had wanted it to look something like a jet fighter, and I redid it four times before I was satisfied; remember I had wanted it to be special, the best of my work. Looking back now, I can't help thinking... how Frikkin' Ugly it is compared to what I can do today!
Much of the rest of my work from that time was uninspired, and I drifted away from developing after EV:O came out; For whatever reason, it just didn't inspire me. I was lured back by Nova though, and I'm playing around with what I can do with it; we registered it the day we downloaded it, within two weeks of when it came out ("We" being myself and my older brother James Chin from the Banter and Brawl).
After I had played through the major story lines, I fired up Mechanisto again and started working. Some of the first things I did for Nova with Mechanisto were remakes of the Hawk and the Alien Fighter from EVC, and a cross between the Cantharan Schooner and Cruiser from Ares. This was mostly for practice, and to brush up on what I knew about Mechanisto.
For a free product, Mechanisto has done a lot of good for me, but I think my imagination is beginning to exceed its limitations. I've lost four ships because, either they or their scenes, were so complicated that Mechanisto didn't save properly, and corrupted the files. With one, there were too many (Four+) light-sources for it to save properly; for another too many moving parts; for the rest... I'm just not sure.
------------------ "... Look, I designed the Cloak-Hunting Missile. I know everything there is to know about it, so I know exactly what I'm doing..." "MISSILE SELF-DESTRUCT ACTIVATED: 5... 4... 3..." "... Of course, I could be wrong..." - Me.
Well, 3d horror stories are a little disconcerting for me. I got Lightwave 7, and have been trying to learn how to use it. I am now at the point where I can make a bowl, but not know how to fill it with anything. Basically, I suck at it, but we've all got to start somewhere. I got my own 3d horror story early on, though. I was trying to make an escape pod, and was in the middle of modelling it when my computer shut off. No shutting down, no restart, just click! turned off. It might have something to do with the fact that it's bee on for four years straight now, but I'm probably just cursed.
I think my first foray into the plugin-making scene was when I modified the 1 Million plugin to give me 100 million credits. After that, I did a bunch of small, personal plugins (One fun one made Earth, Mars, and Europa have lots of gravity (in both directions; it was really hard to leave Earth. Another one allowed you to buy 5 CPLs.)
I eventually started making larger personal plugins. I made one that basically gave you the advanced Polaris tech if you weren't in the tech branch and added Owen Greylock as a pers (because he made the added outfits). I also made one that added my little sister and a planet of her own into the game (It was in the Procyon system, and I made it partly so that she could fly around and see another version of herself, partly on request.), and one that reopened the Polaris hypergate system as a closed system that is opened to you near the beginning of the string (the first time in the string that you go to N'ila Mjolnir) and made all the hypergates in the game a simple two-frame (closed mouth, open mouth) smiley face.
Finally, I started a project which originally added a system in Polaris space where you could get all those Federation ship upgrades (Port and Polish and the like) and Sigma upgrades without leaving Polaris space. I started building on it, and it evolved into a series of missions which let you build that station, a la Nirvana in the Procyon system (It also made the Sigma ships a bizarre electric green color.). That plugin I released as SigmaStation.
Since then, my other projects have been two plugins whichj I have done nothing in, an elaborate personal mini-TC which will probably never be released (you never know, though), and that Polaris Mining plugin in the addons section (I sent in an update almost immediately due to changes made right after submitting version 1.0. It's not up yet :mad :).
The only graphics I have done have been combining the Hellhound launcher picture and a picture of a sword for my mini-TC (I'll post a link to it soon), making the smiley gate, and doing a bad job of making the Hyperioid red (I'll try again soon).
Edit: Here's that sword image thingy. ------------------ I'm president of the United States and I refuse to eat broccoli! - George H. W. Bush But the elevator is broken in this building. So I'm gonna have to jump! - (url="http://"http://www.homestarrunner.com")Strong Bad(/url) (url="http://"http://www.tashian.com/multibabel/")Lost in Translation(/url)
(This message has been edited by froggy (edited 04-17-2004).)