New TC

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forums, not to the various ev games in their various incarnations. So I'm like one of those people you see on tv or the radio "long time listener, first time caller".

Anyway my brother and I are working on a new tc, its using the ev nova engine. We thought of doing a tc based on the colonial council which would have been good fun, but then we realised that ships such as the ida frigate would be cutting edge technology, and we'd probably be forced to crawl across space agonisingly slowly, so that idea was scrapped. :wacko:

Then we thought about doing an aftermath type plug, but after doing a little research, I found that there were quite a few people working on the same sort of idea.

In the end we decided to do a tc with mankind in the same galaxy but with many different races, much like override and nova both have sol and centauri but don't have any of the same factions or plot. We have only just started working on it for the last week or so, and so far have managed to overcome the minor problems that we've faced.

We've got most of the concepts laid out and we don't really need much help. All we need help with is for minor things like names of ships. We're also going to use new graphics for different spobs, and although we can make images for the spob in space, we can't for the life of us do landscapes. And at the risk of sounding like one of those army posters saying "I want you!" we just need some people to bounce ideas off and maybe get a little help with graphics.

Anyway... I'll see you guys around the boards, I'll add this to the list of tc's being made once we've thought up a suitable name for it. If you want pics, just complain loudly enough and I'll get round to putting them up

Do you have a name for it? Any planned storylines? Beyond that, how much do you have planned anyways? There will be some who are happy play "bounce the idea", as long as you can actually go through your work and not go the vaporware route. Don't expect anyone to help with graphics until you actually got something to show off. Very few people, especially graphics people, want to join a TC team that has "A great idea and a little minor work done."

Sorry if I sound cynnical, but the vast majority of promised TCs become vaporware.

As a show of good faith, here are some pictures that I've been working on:

Ship1

Ship1 behind

SpaceStation2

Mercury, Venus, Earth, the moon, Mars

So far I have made about 4 ships and I've only seriously been working on it for three or four days and I think I've made quite good progress. I've also made three governments and two systems, along with a few outfits. I haven't made much more progress because progress on Sol is quite slow as I've decided to put in all nine planets, our moon, and a spacestation, with the possibilities of including jupiter's or mar's moons. I have also decided to make the planets to scale. This means that Jupiter is HUGE (it takes up most of the screen) and the image i was using has become distorted, but I'm working on that.

Plot and namewise, I'm not as far, I've decided to have about six major races whose names aren't finalised. Practically every race also has an uprising, seperatists, or seedy corporations. Sol and Centauri and our other local stars are not at the centre of the galaxy as before, but are on one of the spiral arms as in reality. (speaking of which, I've been trying to find a good map of our galaxy with known stars named on)

I also have some ideas on interesting things to do if we can find the time. Things such as financing terraforming companies (this would cost HUGE amounts) and Ships of several relatively 'young' races lacking shielding and you have to buy shield generators in the outfits section and other things.

If you could help me think of a name for it, that would help loads. So far we're calling it ev orion

Anyway comments, criticisms (sp?) and suggestions greatly appreciated.

This post has been edited by Foreign Object Impact : 20 April 2006 - 01:11 PM

A TC for EVO takes about a year, doing three hours a night.
A TC for Nova will probably take about three times that.

Just so you know.

Well this is certainly sounding more promising than other TCs that have cropped up in the past. Hope it works out

@foreign-object-impact, on Apr 21 2006, 06:09 AM, said in New TC:

This means that Jupiter is HUGE (it takes up most of the screen) and the image i was using has become distorted, but I'm working on that.

This may not be a good idea. Huge sprites really kill the framerate - Nova's sprite engine is a bit old and can only handle so much.

Sounds like a team with the right kind of attitude.

@martin-turner, on Apr 20 2006, 03:45 PM, said in New TC:

A TC for EVO takes about a year, doing three hours a night.
A TC for Nova will probably take about three times that.

A TC for Nova can also take merely a couple of days, as evident in Edwards' Teacup TC. The point of Martin Turner's post is not to expect a quick project, but I think you guys know what you're doing. Good luck, best wishes, keep us informed.

I wish my brother had the skills necessary to do EV TCs...

Wow. A person telling the board about their new TC who actually has proof of what they've done so far. There's a first. Seriously, you sound like a competent bunch. And those are probably some of the best things I've seen in Wings 3d.

I like the name "Orion", it has a nice ring to it. If you need help with plot-writing, I'll volunteer my services, but only for idea-bouncing, as my schedule is a little busy right now.

Keep up the good work.

Good luck. It looks like you guys have a cool concept. How big you going to make the universe. Say the size of EV or EV Nova? I would recommend sizing it down at least a bit from Nova as it is massive and would seriously cut your time for production.

This is actually a more positive response than I had hoped for I do realise that it is going to be a huge undertaking and it will probably take ages but we're trying to be optimistic. I'm not sure quite how many systems there are in the nova universe, but in ours we've got about 375 systems, about 200 of which are uninhabited or empty. Here is a rough map of it with political relations on it.

Rough Galactic Map

As usual comments/ criticisms are accepted.

Here are some pictures of a flying saucer I made:

Flying Saucer 1

Flying saucer back

Wow! Very impressive saucer designs. The other graphics you had earlier look great. Keep up the good work and best wishes to you and your brother on making this TC.

Wow. That's pretty cool. Best of luck to you.

The map is very neat, and I love the planing in what races do what. The only thing id like to mention is that rectangular universes remind the player they are playing a game, which is very bad. Just make it a little more blobular, but everything else is fantastic.

Like everybody else has said, this looks pretty cool and promising. I look forward to seeing more in the future!

I must concur that the planets being to scale isn't a very good idea, as put that Jupiter is taking up most of the screen, and for Earth to be to scale with that, it would need to be practically the size of one of those tiny inaccessible Polaris stations you'll find in Nova. Things being to scale isn't all that important in the Nova universe, and most people aren't too picky about it.

Also, the flying saucer looks a little too much like the Viceroy capital ships from Star Wars.

The starmap seems good, with the exception of that being square-shaped thing. It looks like that with all those races, we'll be given a very intricate and complex universe to explore (that's good!).

The appearance of young races sounds pretty cool (and kinda makes me think back about the wooden-looking Emalga ships). I think that you should have very VERY few, or no ships appear in most of those systems, such as it's a race that's believed to not be ready for the rest of the universe (kind of like what some people might speculate is the case with Earth, and the very rare appearance of UFOs).

But all in all, this looks like it will be REALLY cool! I can't wait to hear more!

You might want to save that map as something other than a .bmp, since in that form it's 2 MB.

This looks like it's coming along fairly well. It's great that you actually have work, and not just a few crazy ideas like most people who announce a TC. This is looking promising.

Very Nice! I really am impressed, you have made some progress, better than half of the other people who claim to be on the verge of an amazing TC. I am looking forward to seeing more stuff!

(oh and, good job in the wings3d moddeling. I can be irretating at times, i know)

Good idea, I can bounce ideas... For the name, Orion sounds really cool. Unlike Nova, it should have some relevance to the game, though. Maybe a species of aliens that finds themselves in the middle of a power struggle for control of the universe? Hey man, I wish I could do graphics... it would help ALOT.

You also might wanna not include the gas giants... unless you intend to make something like a mining firm that mines gases out of them, which would be a good idea. You ever notice how Federation ships have better shields and Auroran ships have better armor? I think that the same idea should be incorporated into this, where more advanced species have better shields and less advanced use thicker armor. Humans (they play a special part in the game, since we're humans) should be the balance point, with pretty much equal shields/armor.

This post has been edited by zapp : 21 April 2006 - 08:54 PM

Its good to get so much positive feedback

I'm thinking of taking out most of the planets in sol leaving just:
mercury, venus, Earth, Moon, Mars and putting pluto very far out so its sort of a challenge to find it.

I think the idea of balancing races with different levels of sophistication with different levels of shields and armour is a good one.

I also thought it was a good idea to call the tc something that was relevant but sounded good so I did a bit of research and eath is in the orion spiral arm of the milkyway galaxy

"The next arm we intercept will be the Sagitarius Arm. The last arm we intercepted was the Perseus Arm. We are in the Orion Arm, which is expanding past us. Hope your dizzyness subsides a little...."
from: astronomy.com

The next update is the loading page i've been working on, sadly I can't find a good program to put in the title text, but I'm experimenting with different online programs. here is the backdrop

http://www.fileden.c...ng%20Screen.jpg

Sadly I don't have photoshop or any sophisticated editing programs (yet) so what I've done so far is all down to photo editor and microsoft paint

EDIT: Also I'm going to make an outfit which is basically an afterburner, but it is ALOT faster than your standard one but it consumes fuel at an ungodly rate and when you use it you damage your armour. The idea is that you're going so unhealthily fast, your ship can't cope with it and starts breaking up, but we're not sure how to do that, any ideas?

This post has been edited by Foreign Object Impact : 22 April 2006 - 06:01 AM

This looks to be an excellent TC, and though it may be a basic concept, the quality you end up with could make this very, very nice indeed.