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Originally posted by Phyvo: **That could work, as long as the turrets have their own masks. Perhaps you could have an option for whether the turret is placed above the ship sprite or below, like with beams. Still, it would be difficult to have turrets both above and below the ship. **
If we're going to have such complex sprites like this we may as well have proper 3D ship models as someone once suggested in another topic. And if we're going to have 3D ships we may as well have EV3D. Which wouldn't be a bad thing...
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Originally posted by Guy: If we're going to have such complex sprites like this we may as well have proper 3D ship models as someone once suggested in another topic. And if we're going to have 3D ships we may as well have EV3D. Which wouldn't be a bad thing... (/B)
I disagree. I, for one, appreciate the top-down arcade look that EV has. A 3d EV would be quite difficult to play, I suspect. I like that EV is cargo running/mission based. A 3d EV might make it more of a shooter.
Having said that, it seems like there is room for a 3d space game in Ambrosia's lineup. If some enterprising person were to write a 3d space shooter, I suspect Ambrosia could be convinced to help market it.
-STH
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Originally posted by seant: **I disagree. I, for one, appreciate the top-down arcade look that EV has. A 3d EV would be quite difficult to play, I suspect. I like that EV is cargo running/mission based. A 3d EV might make it more of a shooter.
**
I too appreciate the top-down look EV has and yes, a 3D EV would most likely be more difficult to play. But being 3D wouldn't make it more of a shooter - that's still up to the scenario developer. EV's primary feature will always be it's missions.
Maybe you could have an option to play in 2D so it would look just like it does now but with nice 3D models with all sorts of moving parts and animations.
I'm glad that EV will remain 2D.
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With all of the trouble with people being reluctant to make new plugins/TCs that are of the calibre of Nova's stock scenereo, a EV3d would more or less condem itself to oblivion after the playability of it's built in scenereo passed.
Aside from that, I think that if there was a new EV engine it should simply elaborate on what it has now to offer with perhaps some additions (that I've already listed in a prior reply to this topic). There really isn't any reason to try any more complicated graphics simply for the reason that if and when an EV3D came out the graphics/gameplay of console and PC games would rival that of actual camera shot moives, and anything less than that would lack it's appeal. But a traditional kid of video game, which games with the relatively unpretentious graphics of EVN are, will always have thier niche of the market and the gaming community. EVN is good now, what can be made TC/plugwise by hobbyists (I strongly stress the point here that we are all hobbyists, since we don't get to do our plugins for our jobs and they have to compete with the real world and it's problems for dev time) is certainly more than sufficient if we just stop being intimidated by ATMOS and thier wonderful job (and me with my writers' block!) and just get to work. With strong community feedback the Nova engine will be a basemark for quite some time.
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It would be nice if EV4 came with a utility that took a 3D model and generated rle and shan resources, including banking if requested. Extremely unlikely, but nice.
Originally posted by geek#1: **It would be nice if EV4 came with a utility that took a 3D model and generated rle and shan resources, including banking if requested. Extremely unlikely, but nice.
The problem with that (I don't dispute that it would be nice) is that there are so many file formats (many of which are non-standard) for 3d models that it would be impractical to write a program that could read all of them and then have a built in renderer and compressor. Luckily, almost all 3D programs (most of the free programs, and all of the programs that you have to pay for) come with renderers, so you just render, drop into pics2sprites and then enRLE (w00tware, for Mac only), and you're done. We're very fortunate that the sprite making process is as easy as it is. It's the 3D programs that are the biggest challenge there.
Matrix
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I revoke any previous requests I have ever made and hereby limit my new requests to the following, in order of how badly I want them:
1.) The sort of {} parsing talked about here: (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum9/HTML/005510.html")http://www.ambrosias...TML/005510.html(/url)
2.) Allow përses to be the main ship of a fleet (so a përs can have escorts).
3.) Be able to toggle the "seenIntro" bit in pilot files on and off via misn bits so plugmakers can have different intro text (via {}) depending on what has happened in the game. This would allow for plugin 'chapters'. Right now one can manually set the seenIntro flag to 0 in the pilot file, but the engine ignores it.
More complex graphics is a waste imho, multiplayer would be a complete rewrite, and strategy-based "control your planets" can be accomplished via clever mission crafting (made all the easier by my the first suggestion (see above).
How about millions of colors? Most everything graphic wise is made in millions of colors and is then put into a game that can't properly show off those graphics to their full potential...
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on a random subject of fleets it would be cool if you could have infinate escorts.
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Originally posted by Zaku: **on a random subject of fleets it would be cool if you could have infinate escorts.
No. Then you become too powerful, and it steals system resources away from other ships in the game. Incidentally, the most ships you can have in an escort formation (if I remember correctly) is 18. Any more than that and the extra ships can't figure out where to go so they just mess up the formation by sitting randomly nearby. I figured that out when I made a plug to beat a certain "unbeatable" mission in an upcoming total conversion. It was entertaining for almost a day and a half.
(This message has been edited by what_is_the_matrix (edited 07-15-2004).)
Originally posted by Ragashingo: **How about millions of colors? Most everything graphic wise is made in millions of colors and is then put into a game that can't properly show off those graphics to their full potential...
Fah! What would more colours add to game play? Sure it'd look good, but what's it actually add (besides increasing the size of data and plugin files with millions colour graphics)?
GET OFF MY LAWN YOU DAMN KIDS!
Originally posted by geek#1: **It would be nice if EV4 came with a utility that took a 3D model and generated rle and shan resources, including banking if requested. Extremely unlikely, but nice. **
I'm sure it would be possible for someone else to make such a utility for Nova. Of course, you could only expect it to be able to read one or two standard formats.
But I still like the idea of EV being able to use 3D models in-game. It would just use one standard format and then you could write little scripts to define the animation and how and when all the different parts work. You could have as many animated or moving parts on it as you like instead of having 20 different RLEs.
Ah, but we could have a 3d engine that only renders onto a plane. I mean, it would be 3d, but the ships would only move on a 2d plane, possibly top-down view. The camera would follow your ship exactly, just like in EV, but ships would actually project out onto the 3d plane for better dynamics.
Then we could have more dynamic lighting from stars and such, and ships wouldn't have to be very complicated... even if they were just EVO caliber, I'd actually be happier. TCs with really good graphics might come out, of course, but people would still make their sphere ships able to fly around. You could have better effects, with lighting from that...
It would be soooo cool to be flying around in a shuttle, and seeing the blue light from a manticore's ion cannon reflected onto my ship before I'm torn to pieces. Ah...
Lighting can be so cool.
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(This message has been edited by Phyvo (edited 07-15-2004).)
That's actually a really cool idea, and it opens up lots of possibilities for custom-defined ship effects. At the very least, there'll be no more 'render your ship spinning at x angle with lighting at y position, and then render it glowing white again to make a mask, and then take both movies and turn them into grids of frames, and then import them, and then go back and see what you did wrong, and then do it ten more times for every effect you want to put in, and then pull out your hair because the banking animations are all wrong' :p.
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(This message has been edited by UE_Research & Development (edited 07-15-2004).)
Well, I see only one problem with it. In EV, ships that "collide" just pass over each other, 'cause they're sprites. In a 3d engine, you'd have to add something to that effect, or you get the ships meshing together in a mess. Not pretty. But, if we're lucky, it'd be easy to code.
Originally posted by Phyvo: **Ah, but we could have a 3d engine that only renders onto a plane. I mean, it would be 3d, but the ships would only move on a 2d plane, possibly top-down view. The camera would follow your ship exactly, just like in EV, but ships would actually project out onto the 3d plane for better dynamics. **
Yes, that's exactly what I was imagining when I said a 3D EV with the option to play in 2D. So really, it is EV3D with movement restricted to two dimensions. And then you could have 32-bit colour without taking up too much more space.
Another couple of interface features I would like to see is the ability to use ppats for the shield/armor/fuel bars (like with the armor bar in EV/O), and also a mask for the sidebar as well as being able to lock it to a different corner on the screen.
Another feature request: different categories of point-defense susceptibility. An anti-fighter defense syestem would only hit fighters (which would have a flag checked), whereas only missiles would be targeted by a flare launcher. Four categories would be enough.
Originally posted by geek#1: Another feature request: different categories of point-defense susceptibility. An anti-fighter defense syestem would only hit fighters (which would have a flag checked), whereas only missiles would be targeted by a flare launcher. Four categories would be enough.
You can already customize whether ships or weapons are hit by it. However, there is nothing like the jamming.
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Originally posted by seant: **Fah! What would more colours add to game play? Sure it'd look good, but what's it actually add (besides increasing the size of data and plugin files with millions colour graphics)?
Well, better looks. I always found it strange that a game made in this modern day still uses thousands of colors...