Five years of Nova: what does the future hold?

@starbridge21, on Apr 11 2007, 11:27 PM, said in Five years of Nova: what does the future hold?:

How is that a problem? Isn't bigger and better a good thing? I don't see why anyone would want to make scenarios that are smaller and worse. That's not what people want; they want improvements on the original Nova scenario.

It's a problem that, if is viewed as the only measure of success, leads to inordinately long development times, giving plenty of time for a project's team to break apart, grow tired, or otherwise get a project canceled. The problem is not so much the bigger and better part, it's the way too much to do so it never gets done part. Expectations, as a result of such a high bar set by the ATMOS team, kill off a lot of good TCs.

True. When you think that ARPIA2 took 2 and a half years to finish, on top of the 9 months total for Arpia1, development does take some time

As I just posted over in JoshTigerheart's thread on the Nova board, I think the reactions he's getting are a good sign.

View PostDr. Trowel, on Apr 12 2007, 10:23 AM, said:

A while back, when people posted should-I-release-the-plug-early-even-though-it-doesn't-include-everything-I've-dreamed-of-or-go-for-the-grand-slam-OMG-uber-plug-that-will-take-a-lot-more-work threads, I often felt I was in the minority in recommending releasing sooner and smaller. I'm hoping that this means that today's community has more realistic appetites, and that that will mean more releases.

There are a bunch of awesome TCs out there that would be awesome and available if their developers had been able to curtail their ambitions, either at the start or along the way. I understand the importance of being true to one's art, and that that is a personal decision. Still, sometimes (often!) great art dies because an artist can't bear to release it less-than-perfect, even when it's already brilliant.

We need more Terek E'Bans, Guys, Paces, and CaptJoshes, by the way -- people willing to contribute by leveraging the contributions of others (with permissions where appropriate, of course). There are existing plugs that would benefit from being combined, old plugs and scenarios worth updating, and existing game universes (EVN, EVO, EVC, even Polycon!) worth writing for.

As for the "public alpha" concept that Pace raised in his initial post, and that originated with UncleTwitchy.... Obviously I'm a fan. I tried to do something similar with Voidspace as well and, while posting incomplete builds on an easily-discoverable-but-not-overly-traffic-heavy board (the old EV Void) didn't get me to be as diligent as I had planned to be about posting updates, it did keep me motivated at at least an above-zero level.

Yeah, I agree with Dr. Trowel. We need more people willing to make ports and expansions. Very large TCs are probably just not worth the effort. And something I can play today is worth a hundred I can't play for another 5 years.

well, i have a rather healthy collection of ships from Babylon 5 if anyone is ever interested in doing a B5 TC for Nova...

apart from that, meh. i've beat all threads several times, i play every now and then, but not that much at all really... if i ever get polycon to unstuff i would love to play that, but it never works....

@pace, on Apr 10 2007, 06:28 AM, said in Five years of Nova: what does the future hold?:

One exception: Dr. Trowel's idea of getting the ev-nova.net users involved in writing dëscs for SFA, so that they can "earn the latest alpha".

I've been doing that for years with EV Firefly. Not so much here, but on Firefly-knowledgeable boards. As long as I always do an edit pass to keep a consistent voice, it works great.

Quote

First of all, to the (still active) developers: what is your progress?

Storyline writing is slow. One desc a week, if that, these days. But now and then I go into surge mode and get a bunch done; if more people were involved on a consistent basis, those could happen more often.

Quote

I just hope you guys and girls will be able to prove me wrong, and show me that EVN still has a future to look forward to. Not just tomorrow, not just in five years when this or that TC will be completely done. But also in the meantime.

EVN Firefly will be divided into multiple parts. Part 1 is probably 4/5ths done, so it's not too far away in terms of content; how long it will take to create that content is unpredictable, though.

@starbridge21, on Apr 11 2007, 06:03 PM, said in Five years of Nova: what does the future hold?:

What do you mean?

He means that you can have the ship and shan (no, I'm not going to bother putting in the umlauts. :p) resources use sprite IDs that exist in the original Nova data files instead of extracting and repackaging the graphics for inclusion in your plug.

I, Zapp, the Unfinisher of Stuff, am working on a TC. I've learned to keep my expectations low in terms of size, but I'm shooting for decent quality. It's called EV:First Contact, and is set in the year 2246. In terms of size, the Sol system takes up 12 actual systems, one for each planet and the sun, the asteroid belt, and one that is just open space. There are Martians and Tryians (both hostile) knocking on our doorstep, but there's a whole galaxy (so far a small one) of aliens waiting to be met. Each time you land on a new planet, you make 'first contact' with them, some times friendly and sometimes not. I'm using EVC/O graphics (EVC graphics are for the humans, while EVO graphics for the aliens) though that's just currently, when I wrap everything up I'd like to get some different graphics.

I know I've tried this before, and gave up, but this time is different (I sincerely hope).

@zapp, on Apr 18 2007, 10:12 AM, said in Five years of Nova: what does the future hold?:

In terms of size, the Sol system takes up 12 actual systems, one for each planet and the sun, the asteroid belt, and one that is just open space.

8 planets + sun + belt + space = 11. What's your 12th system?

Pluto!

Sheesh, this thinking that Pluto isn't a planet is really messing us up...

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 17 April 2007 - 05:32 PM

Pluto is the forward base of operations for the USE (United States of Earth, yeah, I know it's cheesy) fleet against the Tryian menace I just love the word 'menace'.

So in theory, you finish the storylines, timline, planet/ship/outfit descriptions/descs, and the map; what is the timeframe for getting a responsible group of people to make graphics for the outfits and ships. I really don't know. I know we have a lot of people who can do that stuff, but really how many would be willing to help with finishing up a TC?

If you show them what you have, my dear friend, they'll make marvels to fit your work of art

I don't think that it always works that way, Pace. But that is the theory.

Aye, it's the theory, but if we never (get to) put it into practice

I could put it into practice...

Okay, not quite yet. But soon. Very soon.

:cryptic grin:

I was thinking about your topic of the future of Nova...
It seems to me that one of the things that really revitalize things is changing the way the game plays, rather than just replacing ships, spobs, maps, and whatnot. Obviously stories are great, and the most important part of a plugin, but what about something reasonably simple that could change the way the game runs?
As a non-practical example; remember that ancient web-based space game, Space Pirate? Probably even older than EV if I am not mistaken... (somebody resurrected it and it is now going strong in nearly original form). In that game, obviously the combat is totally different to EV, but one feature of that system was very cool. You had to collect crew, the crew would effect the combat capability of your ship (which makes sense if you consider the skill of a tailgunner and not just the joules of output of a laser), and the crew's morale would degrade based on lightyears traveled to complete missions. The navy buddies I know tell me this is pretty realistic; crew morale slowly goes down on long cruises. In addition to this, armor wouldnt just automatically heal, as in EV/O/N, but you would have to assign the crew to repair the ship and this would also wear on morale (hours spent in extravehicular activity, sweating into a spacesuit...). To get your morale up, you have to buy drinks for the crew in the bar. (Always thought it was odd that one of the things you CANT do in the bar in EV is drink...)
Anyway; some of the plugs do add crew that effects the ship's performance, and the whole morale thing may be impossible in the Nova engine, but something like another factor of that kind would make the game sort of new and fresh, even after all these years...

...which reminds me; to you experienced developers out there; I am trying to do something with my TC that I instinctively think is possible, any ideas on how? That old space pirate game had a VERY simple graphic it displayed every time you landed on a planet; sort of a spinning wire-frame globe that shows a reentry path. Now, I think that in Nova you can make a planet display a movie when you land on it, correct? Would it be possible to make a very simple movie file like that which will display before anything else when you land on a planet?

I find myself in a different situation from most TC developers I read about on the board. Rather than having a great story with epic timelines and galactic alliances, I usually focus on just making spaceships in wings. I'd like to get into focusing my efforts in a specific direction by helping with a TC, but it is so frustrating to start making a line of ships for a particular gov't, and then realize that the TC is not going to go anywhere. If I had some expectation that my hours would end up in a final product, I'd be willing to make graphics for others. Instead, I just digitally doodle, making whatever looks cool in my mind, but may have no application in any TC. My TC attempts are small, I don't cryptically grin, and I sure as heck don't post pages of story and then disappear from the Nova world a few weeks later.

So, here is my plea. Make a TC look good enough for graphics people to want to have their work on it. Sure, it may not be fair for the writers and designers having to 'prove' their work to those graphics people first, but the time costs are different. I know that writing desc's is hard, time-consuming, etc, but imagine making a whole class of starships that have just the right menacing look. I've done both, and I vote for writing being easier.

Werhner

The crew thing would be possible through use of crons, much like how degrading carbon fiber works. When you enter bars, if you have "degraded" crew, you could have a mission trigger where the player can purchase drinks for the crew. If he does, the player looses a thousand credits (or however many), the "degraded" crew outfits are replaced with the original ones, and the crons are reset.

And yes, you can have movies play when you land on a planet, but they play before the planet's options, description, etc. appears. You can't replace the static picture with a movie.

Might be nice to see some of the Shipyards happen again in a real way. Get some amateur graphics folks make a few sets of ships, then maybe somebody else will come along and turn them into plug-ins with stories and the like. People could make some real quick and dirty TCs with some cool new weapons or something, small but interesting universe, and some neat (if short) storylines.

I've certainly been meaning to get back into graphics a bit (maybe this summer I'll have time), but don't have the time to work on my actual TC.