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Hey everybody,
As you should know i'm making a total conversion plug for EVO, if you want more info on that email me and i tell you more, but as of now i'v done quite a bit for a bit more than a week of work.
I need people to help me with my plug, i'm not exactly #1 on the programmer chart i'm not even #567894, but i'm going fine at the moment, they're is just a few things a need to know about. For one, you may rekon i don't know anything but the 'mission bit' is that like the number of the mission like the code number, or is it like experience which adds up everytime you do a mission?
please help
thanx
------------------ Jt
bangs head on table
You dont even know what a mission bit is??? Hell you thought you could have 9 spöbs in one system!!!
PLEASE! You shouldn't be trying to do 2 TC plugs at once, when you obviously have no clue what you are doing. Take it slow, my advice is to first make a good plug that works with every resource type of the game, in order to get experience.
Total conversions are NOT something to take lightly, they are a HUGE task and require a full understanding of EV/O resources and a HUGE amount of time.
Just ask ATMOS or Martin Turner, its not something you do in a couple of months.... And to try to do one in EV-Edit is down right insane
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Quote
dude5432 wrote: **Hey everybody,
thanx **
Dude, you need more help than we can give you on this board. Mikee's comments are a little stronger than they really need to be, but he makes some good points. The first thing you need to do is get a copy of the EVO Bible, preferably the Lord of Lemmings' annotated edition, and study it thoroughly until you understand the basics of how the various EVO resources work and how to use them. The bible, even annotated, doesn't explain everything and is not always as clear as it could be, but it is an essential reference. There are also some plug making FAQs in the archives on this site, and a beginners guide to ResEdit which you should study. You will need ResEdit to make a plug of any size, both for cleaning up the messes created by EV-Edit and because there are things you will need to do that EV-Edit cannot do.
Best wishes for your plug.
------------------
If I were jewish I'd yell OY!!!
Get the frickin EVO Bible!
------------------ I hope I didn't dain my bramage... ---Homer Simpson, after eating some Insanity Peppers with the help of a waxed tongue.
Folks! Calm down! GS Creation is going to be helping him with his plug. We aren't yet, but we most likely will. So just chill about his lack of knowledge with plugs, alright?
GS Creation..hmm..what the hell is that and why does it not seem to make the situation better...
Wow...ya'l are pretty helpful...
My advice, for what it's worth.
Your TC is only as good as the story and the vision you've got. Write the story first (yes, you'll change most of it on the way). If you can't quite see how to write the story, write the end, then the beginning. The middle will sort itself out once you start programming.
Go with the vision, and you'll probably end up having to change everything in the original game, but
do it a bit at a time. Leave all the ships, weapons etc intact until you need to change them for the purposes of your story.
You may need to do some work with the systems first, but a lot of that can be accomplished by changing names and descriptions, and then finally moving everything when you're finished.
Introduce the minimum number of new ships etc to make your plug-in work. That way, every single one will have an organic purpose and will feel right.
Try to do things that have never been done before
You'll need to play through everything hundreds of times. Tweak the missions so that some of them are only just possible (but not all, or you'll put the newbie's off).
Use Schmelta-V to write missions. You'll need to convert back and forth to EV, but that's a small price to pay. EVO gives some more flags, but you probably won't need these.
Really, really work on getting the text right. People will put up with bad graphics and a poor story faster than they will put up with spelling errors and punctuation mistakes.
Use EV-Edit to flesh out the plug-in, but every time you do, make a new plug-in file so that EV-Edit can't trash your other work. Believe me, sooner or later it will. When you've got the new stuff thoroughly checked, use Res Edit to copy it into the main plug-in file.
Don't give regular updates to everyone on the Board. Otherwise, they will be bored with your plug-in before you've made it. Find a small group of people and work through email.
Get everything thoroughly beta tested before you release anything. Then, when bugs surface, fix them the day they do.
Hope this helps.
Good luck.
M A R T I N T U R N E R
Wow. Martin that was some excellent advice --almost makes me want to try to make a plug-in. Thanks for such a thorough answer to whoever asked the question
------------------ DX "the best don't always win
(This message has been edited by DaboliX (edited 03-11-2000).)
dude5432 wrote: For one, you may rekon i don't know anything but the 'mission bit' is that like the number of the mission like the code number, or is it like experience which adds up everytime you do a mission?
Just so you know, mission bits are 'flags' that can be set by missions to make things either appear or disappear in the game. For example, imagine that a mission sets the mission bit '1' on completion. If that mission requires misnbit '1' to be clear, that misn will never be made available again (unless a later misn clears misnbit '1'). Similarly, a mission that is only available whenbit '1' is set would become available upon the completion of the first mission. If this second misn sets bit '2' and requires '2' to be clear, then it will be made available only once, and will only be available after the first misn is completed (this is how to create a single storyline). Creating branching storylines is more difficult (if you want more info on this, email me and I'll send a diagram out to you of how to do it).
Then you have recurring misns which do not set another misn bit on completion. For example, if you wanted a particular type of 'ferry passenger' misn to only become available after you have done another misn (say you only want the player to be allowed to ferry passengers around one particular govt's systs after the player has done some particular good deed for that govt), then you set this recurring misn to be available after a certain misnbit is set, but do not require any misnbits be clear for it to be available. That way this misn will always be available for as long as a misn bit is set. Of course, the misn is then subject to the other variables for availability like your combat rating, legal status and the 'AvailRandom' setting.
I hope that helps you with misnbits. As for the rest of it, I agree with Martin Turner, have at least a fairly good idea about what you want to do before you really get into it, and I would suggest that you basically know pretty much everything about the universe and the plug you will be making. Of course it will all change significantly as you slowly build up your plug, but if you have no idea where you are going from the start, you are probably going to get lost somewhere along the way.
Other than that beta-test, beta-test, beta-test. I cannot stress how important this is. I sometimes wish a few more of the Nova beta-testers were a little more rigorous in their approach to testing our game. Still they have pointed out a number of things that we would have missed completely without them.
Good luck with your project, I hope it does come to fruition.
Thanx Frandell, your the only one here who actually told me what a misn bit is, although i didn't understand it much --
Thanx a lot Martin Turner that really was some great advice! I'm making everything pretty much from scratch, i won't use the normal systems or anything else from the original EVO. I am doing pretty well with the systems i've done about twenty five, and still expanding.
For the ships, i'm just using the basic stats from EVO (using the EVO ship guide - thanx Hell Fire mcQueen you rule) and changing them a bit to suit my universe.
I remaking all the planet graphix, adding gas giants and that kinda stuff, oh by the way how big acan you make a planet?
thanx everyone for you advice, if anyone does wanna help email me at (dude5432@hotmail.com) cause i'm building a small team of about five dudes to help me!
dude5432