Plug-In Design:How do I make people allied to a government?

Ingredients:

- characteristics as described in the përs and düde resources
- s˙sts in which the people can be found
- gövt for the people
- names for the people

Uses:

There are two types of people you can create in Escape Velocity: përs resources and düde resources. The përs resource describes one person and the düde resource describes a number of people.

The düde resource can be thought of as a class of people. It describes the types of extra characters a player may find throughout his travels. A düde has a government, a type of ship, and a personality. Düdes are a very important element in Escape Velocity because they are the link between ship types and the use of those ships. In missions, systems, planets, etc., you don't use a specific type of ship, you use a düde resource that links to that ship or a group of ships, all of the same government.

The përs resource is what you would use to create one person. These characters are usually associated with missions, and appear when the mission is accepted. However there will always be a chance these people will show up when you enter a system without having that certain mission accepted.

Construction:

Before starting your construction of these resources, make sure you read though the EV Bible and plan what you wish to do. You will want to create several düde resources for your governments, since this resource describes the people of that government. The përs resources are usually associated with missions, but you can create them to provide atmosphere as well.

These are the two resources that deal with Artificial Intelligence (AIs) for the other ships in the game. The describe how the ship will react to you and your actions. If you shoot at this guy, does he run away or does he pummel you. There are four basic AI types, but the përs resource has a few more options that can be set in the Agress, Coward, and Flags field.

One interesting thing to note here is that both of these types of people can be affiliated with a government The gövt field also has characteristics available to describe people in the game, giving you another layer of ship behavior to work with.

düde:

The düde resource is easy to create. Just take a ship, or a group of ships, that you want to affiliate with each other (say, Confederate Warships), and put their IDs into the respective boxes and the chances of that type of ship will come up when the düde resource is called. If you want only one ship in the düde resource, put that ID in all four boxes, and assign the percentiles below to 25 each.

përs:

Also an easy thing to make, përs resources are usually linked to missions. By choosing a mission, this person may show up. Also, you can get a missions from hailing or boarding a ship. Also, one përs resource is a single person, not a collection of people like the düde resource. So you will want to give these guys names and even reputations (like the dreaded Cap't Hector )

Also, the cool thing about përs resources is that when the player jumps into a system, there is a 5% chance of this type of përs being created. This makes it possible for the player to bump into përs from time to time while playing the game.

(This message has been edited by Chamrin (edited 09-02-2000).)