Why a TC

Vaporware epademic

Why must developers so often announce TCs?
1. creative liscence. the concept of haveing ine's one world storys, caricters, and all ships.
2. diffrent options. nova is ships in space. but a tc can be anything (Almost)
3. overflowing creativity. some people have that much to say.

People announce TCs because they are excited about it, which often makes them think creating a TC is easier than it really is.

However, I'm not quite sure what your point is. Do you want discussion, an answer, what?

It seems as if he answered a question but I don't see anybody with their hand raised...

I refuse to allow Ashen Galaxy to become vapor. You'll never take me alive, Real Life™!

I will never annonce my own TC. Taking part in one, however, I may do.

@phoebus-xebdaz, on Oct 23 2006, 11:08 PM, said in Why a TC:

Why must developers so often announce TCs?
1. creative liscence. the concept of haveing ine's one world storys, caricters, and all ships.
2. diffrent options. nova is ships in space. but a tc can be anything (Almost)
3. overflowing creativity. some people have that much to say.

**I can only assume that your topic title is a misnomer; you seem to be more interested in why it is that developers spend so much time in hyping and announcing their TCs rather than the discussion of why they choose to develop TCs versus expander plug-ins. Assuming the first is true;

4. To generate hype for a project that has little or no substantial work done on it in the hopes of receiving praise and encouragement from others
5. To avoid doing actual work on the TC. Other examples of this are writing preambles, back stories, web stories, and designing fancy web sites that offer little substance
6. Excitement over ideas that will make for a great gaming experience; whether or not they actually develop these ideas is another story
7. To find others to join in a team in the hopes of making the task less daunting
8. To recieve feedback on their ideas

Assuming the second is true;

4. Because it is often difficult to expand upon something that is limited in scope and entirely the creation of someone else
5. The EVN universe is far more compact and dense than previous games. In creative terms it is much more difficult to walk around in it without bumping elbows with pre-existing ideas or stories.
6. TCs are more exciting to the average game player. Everyone would love to see a definitive add-on for EVN, an expansion plug onto each of the various strings, but even more people like to discover new universes, delving into new ideas
7. Flashier graphic styles are characteristic of TCs because there are no preconceived styles/models or general structural standards for ships, planets and stations in a unique universe. It'd be difficult continuity wise to have a ship like the Voinian Dreadnought floating around fighting for the Rebels or a UE fighter-like vehicle blasting away for the Aliens in EV.

Just a few ideas. It's an interesting discussion and certainly worthy of further exploration, regardless of which you intended as the original topic.

_bomb

**

@bomb, on Oct 23 2006, 09:12 PM, said in Why a TC:

**
8. To recieve feedback on their ideas
**

That would be me when I announced Colosseum.

I must really be strange.

I never was tempted by creating a TC. Perhaps because I only truly started to hear about them after releasing Arpia1, due to the fact my involvement in the community only started at that moment.

But I fully agree with the points Bomb makes, except for this:

@bomb, on Oct 24 2006, 04:12 AM, said in Why a TC:

4. Because it is often difficult to expand upon something that is limited in scope and entirely the creation of someone else
5. The EVN universe is far more compact and dense than previous games. In creative terms it is much more difficult to walk around in it without bumping elbows with pre-existing ideas or stories.

It may be common belief, but it can be and will be entirely disproven in a week or two

This post has been edited by Pace : 24 October 2006 - 12:20 AM

I don't think there's any benefit at all to announciing a TC before it's near ready for release.

To me, the most profound reason for writing a TC is that the writing style of the existing world doesn't fit your vision. You could in principle have a completely credible TC in which you had no hand in the graphics, ship types, layout of the galaxy etc -- assuming that there was someone out there who did all that work. But what would make your TC work (or not) was a consistent writing style that encompassed everything.

For myself, I was absolutely certain that I needed to rewrite all the existing text, and create all the missions (aside from the trivial missions) and planetary descriptions from scratch. Here are the timescales:

Creating all new worlds, ship descriptions etc: This can be done in a day
Writing and testing all the missions: Six months
Creating new graphics for all ships: Two months (but in those days they took 24 hours to render)
Creating new graphics for all worlds: One month
Creating all other graphics: One month
Creating new kinds of missions and engine twists: two months
Refining all the missions so that they were only just achievable: Three months
Testing: Two months

This may seem strange, but the creative wiritng and plot twisting was almost most of the project, and testing and refining a further five months. The actual graphics and filling up all the existing slots with code was just four months.

Now this all depends on the size of the TC you're making, correct? For example, Tea Cup TC only took about 3 months to create and Star Fleet Adventures has been in the works for about 2 years now. (I could be wrong about this)

Edit: Clarity.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 25 October 2006 - 03:49 PM

SFA has been around a lot longer than two years. More like five or four-and-a-half.

TCTC was actually about two, maybe three weeks. It's just that I did all the graphics about two-three months before I wrote the story and universe (which took a few hours of coding and a few days of testing).

Edwards

@pace, on Oct 24 2006, 12:19 AM, said in Why a TC:

I must really be strange.

I never was tempted by creating a TC. Perhaps because I only truly started to hear about them after releasing Arpia1, due to the fact my involvement in the community only started at that moment.

But I fully agree with the points Bomb makes, except for this:
It may be common belief, but it can be and will be entirely disproven in a week or two

Pssh. It'll never happen.

Well..OK. "A week or two" is November 8 at the latest. Can you deliver??

@phoebus-xebdaz, on Oct 23 2006, 07:08 PM, said in Why a TC:

Why must developers so often announce TCs?
1. creative liscence. the concept of haveing ine's one world storys, caricters, and all ships.
2. diffrent options. nova is ships in space. but a tc can be anything (Almost)
3. overflowing creativity. some people have that much to say.

I hope I don't get pounded for this but I realy don't see how this is realy related much to his topic. Then again I couldn't understand half of it anyways... (and I'm not trying to make fun of his typeing... I just can't figure it out...)

@pace, on Oct 24 2006, 05:19 AM, said in Why a TC:

I must really be strange.

I never was tempted by creating a TC. Perhaps because I only truly started to hear about them after releasing Arpia1, due to the fact my involvement in the community only started at that moment.

But I fully agree with the points Bomb makes, except for this:
It may be common belief, but it can be and will be entirely disproven in a week or two

**If said promises are delivered upon, I will write up a full retraction of my statement.:p

In all seriousness, I've had a lengthy disconnect from the community and I lost track of things, most especially the various successful and unsuccessful ventures into plug-in making. When I do have the time, I assure you, playing through Arpia remains high on my list of things to do in order to catch up.

_bomb

**

@bomb, on Oct 27 2006, 04:08 AM, said in Why a TC:

**If said promises are delivered upon, I will write up a full retraction of my statement.:p
**

I'll take you up on that one

@bomb, on Oct 27 2006, 04:08 AM, said in Why a TC:

**In all seriousness, I've had a lengthy disconnect from the community and I lost track of things, most especially the various successful and unsuccessful ventures into plug-in making. When I do have the time, I assure you, playing through Arpia remains high on my list of things to do in order to catch up.

_bomb

**

Heh… If all goes well in Aussie Land, you might have to find the time very soon

This post has been edited by Pace : 27 October 2006 - 01:50 AM

It is not an epidemic. It is a pan demic. It would only be an epidemic if all developers of TCs lived on the same continent.

Which reminds me: people who live in bamboo houses should not throw pandas.

It's funny when you really get all these dreams of making a TC. ToLazyToMakeAnAccount and I were working on a graphical re-make of Nova Classic (I was doing graphics and ships, he was doing weapons and outfits and making that work), and I did probably about a third of the ships. I thought it was so cool, but then we realized that it's really already been done, and my graphics work wasn't really that good and it wasn't worth it at all. The allure of a TC is great, but the challenge is too great for many.

@pace, on Oct 27 2006, 06:49 AM, said in Why a TC:

I'll take you up on that one
Heh If all goes well in Aussie Land, you might have to find the time very soon

**Knowing certain Aussies as I do, I can only pause and speculate whether or not this will actually come true.;)

Though if they are the same folk I've known and worked with before, I'm sure the work will be well worth any kind of wait.

_bomb
**

Didn't a number of expansion for Override suffer similar fate as well? When I did FOTVE, I was smart enough not to announce it, I figured I'd wait to hold off to tell anyone about it until I had over half of it done. If I was doing a TC, I'd keep it a secret until most of the work for the project was easy downhill, cause this way, it would be very certain that the project would get done.