No TCs Just Ships

Shorten the wait time?

I know it takes YEARS to build even a small Total Conversion. What I see little of online is just the ships as plugins. I have gone through some TCs just to get the ships to play in the regular game. Thoughts?

I thought the Star Trek TC did that. Personally, I am more interested in story than a re-skin.

It takes away the whole point. Would you play EVN if it had no plot, and was just a bunch of random guns firing? Also, you underestimate the time it takes to make the models. That's over a year of development, and if you're going to put that much work in, you might as well go all the way and make it good.

It's hard enough to balance ships in your own, custom built universe without having to make them balance the Novaverse also. Otherwise I would have done that already; I even made for my expired dev team a long time ago a Nova plug that inserted the (insert in-universe reference here) Sasmut Battleship, and her two-hundred-seventy something frames of unfolds-to-fire into Nova. But, considering that it's main gun is built to handle KFL level opponents, there is little point in having something that massive in Nova as it destroys everything.

I did that once, but no one off the Sketchfighter boards paid any attention to it

Um, I don't think anyone understands the OP. I'm talking about building just ships as plugins. Also I never underestimate the time it takes to build the ships. I have played with Wings 3d so I know I can't possibly do what others do when they build their ships.

Still, I have been to the Just Graphics board. There are people around here who have no wish to create a TC but love to draw and create ships. It shouldn't be much of a leap to make the ship plugins.

Are you guys daft? He's just talking about making small plugins that add ships to the Nova universe itself, not a re-skin or a plotless TC.

Okay, sure, people can do that. But what about people that want to make things with plot lines, or modify it in big ways?

@0101181920, on Jul 17 2008, 01:11 AM, said in No TCs Just Ships:

Okay, sure, people can do that. But what about people that want to make things with plot lines, or modify it in big ways?

He's not saying that people shouldn't make TCs, he's just saying he'd like to see more ship expansion plugs. I understand his point--sometimes it's fun to just play the stock scenario with new ships, but I also understand that taking the time to render any decent number of new ships (not just variants) takes a good bit of time, time that could be spent making that number of ships for a TC/major plug. It's kind of one of those "In for a penny; in for a pound" kind of situations. When you add as many new, graphically advanced ships as something like, say, Arpia, you are probably going to want to at least add a new major string, which takes longer. I suppose the production time would be a good bit shorter if you did simpler, EVC style sprites, but they also wouldn't have quite the same feel as Nova and would seem a little out of place.

I'm sure there are also plugs that add some new ships, or at least new variations of ships, kind of like the plug I made recently. Vast Deathmaster, if you're interested in trying it out, you can find it here:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/elutjen/Plug/W...tions%20Mac.zip
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/elutjen/Plug/W...s%20Windows.zip

@erikthered, on Jul 17 2008, 06:53 PM, said in No TCs Just Ships:

He's not saying that people shouldn't make TCs, he's just saying he'd like to see more ship expansion plugs. I understand his point--sometimes it's fun to just play the stock scenario with new ships, but I also understand that taking the time to render any decent number of new ships (not just variants) takes a good bit of time, time that could be spent making that number of ships for a TC/major plug. It's kind of one of those "In for a penny; in for a pound" kind of situations. When you add as many new, graphically advanced ships as something like, say, Arpia, you are probably going to want to at least add a new major string, which takes longer. I suppose the production time would be a good bit shorter if you did simpler, EVC style sprites, but they also wouldn't have quite the same feel as Nova and would seem a little out of place.

I'm sure there are also plugs that add some new ships, or at least new variations of ships, kind of like the plug I made recently. Vast Deathmaster, if you're interested in trying it out, you can find it here:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/elutjen/Plug/W...tions%20Mac.zip
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/elutjen/Plug/W...s%20Windows.zip

I was never interested in EV or EVO games, especially when I downloaded the EVN updates. I didn't like the old ship styles.
I also get the idea, if you are going to build the ships you might as well make the whole TC, but I have seen TCs that have used stock ships. That just means there are people out there that are willing to go the distance of making a TC but not add ships.

I have used the deRLED program to edit ships (as I have done to make the red hypergate that I have uploaded to the website) just to make them a little different. But if I was good at making ships, I might not be inclined to go the distance and make a TC. But that's just me.

About the file. I might get to it this weekend, as I don't have a broadband line here and I would have to go to the local library. Even 5mb is a long download for dialup. Thanks though.

I'll say it:
people wanting to make ships without a TC + people wanting to make a TC without ships = people making a full TC
(kind of like Acheron and mission strings, although Acheron takes a larger portion of the balance)

We released the PuddleJumper form Stargate last year as a stand alone for normal EVN, it seemed to work pretty well, but balancing was an issue from what i was told.

This post has been edited by Lostpinky : 20 July 2008 - 09:29 PM