Asteroids. Hard ones.

As opposed to the ones that are all spongy and sqooshy?

Okay, my dad installed a game on his laptop at some point between now and the last time I used it, which must have been ages ago; that isn't the point. It's called Argonaut, and as many of you are coughrabidcough Mac users, and as this game appears to have gone the usual circuit that certain quality little mac games go, I'm sure there are at least a few of you have heard of it. I've found it to be pretty fun. That isn't the point, either.

The point is that it makes me want to see if I can do something like that in EVN.

I did a little searching--not nearly enough, mind you, due to the hulking mass of plug-ins available on the site--through the plug-ins--you know, the ones available on the site. But I did do a fair bit, which is probably fair.

I couldn't find anything quite relating to the concept of "asteroids that hurt when you run into them."

Now, it's been ages , but I remember the topic coming up a few times back on Nova.net when that was still alive--I just found out that it isn't today, and I'm not entirely sure how long that's been going on, and it makes me quite sad--and I don't remember if anything came of it. So this query is bipartite.

First: Has this concept already been brought to its natural conclusion? In effect, does this plug-in either exist, or has been shown to be impossible, or at least very, very impractical, given the limits of the engine?

Second: If not, I could use a bit of a refresher--as it's been at least eight or nine months since I cracked the data files open. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head that would concievably work would be to create shďp resources using asteroid graphics, eliminating their maneuvering, jacking up their acceleration, setting their speed to a decent, though generally slow pace, and leaving them jack for hyperspatial fuel; giving them beam turrets that cause a varying level of damage depending on the size of the asteroid, limiting that beam's range to the approximate diameter of the asteroid--given that the visual won't be perfectly round, that'll have to be a bit inaccurate, but it can still be pulled off, I suppose--, giving larger asteroids "escape pods" that are smaller asteroids (can that be done, actually? I'm pretty sure I remember there being an option for a certain number of escape pods jettisoning from a doomed ship, but, now that I think about it, I don't think they gave you the option of choosing a particular shďp... damn), making these belong to a xenophobic gövt, and making flëts of them appear in virtually every system. Can't remember how much you can toy around with how many ships in a flët you can set in any given system, though, and the maximum number of ships possible in a system at a time (can't recall exactly how many, though I remember it being something around fifty... ish?) could be a problem in systems that ought to be densely populated with 'roids.

Now, I realize the normal asteroids would still be as naught to a ship, even if it's hell on your missiles, but the way I'm suggesting, I suppose, would be feasible. You'd want to use different graphics than the normal asteroids, of course, so you didn't mistake the two and get yourself killed.

There is one major flaw in the idea that I presented, of course, which is that I can't for the life of me think of a way to get the asteroids to self-destruct after "crashing" into your, or anybody else's, ship. Unless... does the option in outfitting for making your ship asplode work for AI ships, as well? If the use of the beam turret could set the 'roid to self-destruct, that would fix that...

I dunno. There's a lot of problems with it. I just wanted to see if I could get some second opinions, or maybe entirely different ideas.

-dmy

This post has been edited by Flawed : 14 November 2007 - 12:44 AM

Try this. Made by Guy. ^_^

Come to think of it, I once played Argonaut too. It's been updated recently, I think...

This post has been edited by Geek : 14 November 2007 - 12:53 AM

Haven't actually plugged it in yet, so to speak, but looking through the file in Mission Computer it looks like it operates roughly along the same idea as I laid out?

It's almost, but not quite, completely unlike the idea you laid out

Does it use still use shďps as asteroids, though? Gonna have to take a better look when I finish all the junk I'm doing with ships right now.

No, it doesn't. There are way too many unsolvable issues with using ships as asteroids.

Beating a dead horse here, but you could set the asteroids to always be hostile and fire a weapon with 1 range that kills you and kills the ship that's firing it.

Hehehe... I love it. Guy, this is extraordinarily fun.

This post has been edited by Crusader Alpha : 15 November 2007 - 11:21 AM

Glad you like it