Well, that's cool, definitely a big help for any remaining Windows plug-in devs. But it still doesn't fix all the other problems that'd prevent me from doing EVN stuff again.

This post has been edited by JoshTigerheart : 16 November 2017 - 01:49 AM

I got locked out of my account trying to remember my password here. Doesn't help ASW's email server seems to be down now. But yeah, someone tracked me down to YouTube to alert me to this post.

But anyway, unfortunately, this project has been dead for six or seven years now. It was always an open project though, so I'd be happy to share the files with you. ...well, if I had them. My laptop died about two years ago and, while I was able to salvage most of my stuff from my back-up files, I had a few casualties because File Vault was too busy flipping me the bird to let me get at them. However, if you want, I can try to see if I can't get access to the OSTC email and dropbox and see if the files still exist tomorrow.

Unfortunately, that'll be about all the help I could be, since I don't really have time to do EVN development anymore due to other (and sadly, more relevant) projects on top of Real Life. Plus I've moved to using Windows and, unless Mission Computer was ever ported to Windows, I'd be stuck with EVNew and I'd really not fancy going to such a downgrade (assuming EVNew even runs on modern systems). Plus losing all the tools I had for converting sounds to the proper format, no longer having access to a registered copy of EVN (dad bought it for my birthday and I don't know what registration credentials he used, not that I could use lostcodes these days anyway), and other stuff like that would really prevent me from operating in any capacity even similar to what I could do back in the day.

Real shame this project never took off. There were a lot of cool concepts for it, like defensive thresholds and police ships.

This post has been edited by JoshTigerheart : 15 November 2017 - 10:34 PM

It's worth mentioning that graphics and sounds from other Ambrosia products, such as Ares and Sketchfighter, have also been used in EV plug-ins without any repercussions that I'm aware of. So I suppose they're okay with using their content for user-created add-on content for their products, but I doubt the same would hold true should you, say, put a Starbridge into a Starcraft 2 map.

Well, if the jump key dropped your shields in Ares, you'd explode instantly. And shooting while in FTL was a pretty silly strategy that really never worked.

But it worked for Ares because Ares was a strategy game. Jumping allowed the rapid repositioning of your fleet or to quickly mobilize to intercept and engage attacks at various locations on the map or incoming Transports (which, importantly, couldn't use FTL). Plus the distances were often large enough that even FTL took some time to get places. In EV, the only real reason for it to exist would be to make overly spaced out systems less annoying (or getting to wormholes). You can generally reach most places in a EV system in a few seconds at normal top speed, whereas in Ares it would take several minutes or more.

In-system FTL is cool, but you'd basically have to design all the star systems in the game around having just a cool feature for it to have any point.

Another one: ally support weapons and outfits. Including stuff like ECM Jammers that affect allies, missiles that restore shields to the ally they hit, a pulse that increases the rate of fire of allied ships within range, and other such stuff. While it might be hard to explain for a setting with a more realistic focus, it'd still open up lots of gameplay potential and could force a player to do more than decide between destructive capabilities and cargo capabilities of escorts.

Off-topic: The picture comes from Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, which is, indeed, a truly horrid game, though the trophy and the text is a bit of a minor meme. If you want to see how bad it is, here's a hilarious review of it: http://www.gamespot....directElement=1

On topic: Crew damage can be interesting, but how would it affect the player? Getting sent to a game over screen without your ship exploding in an extraordinary fashion would be annoying, especially on strict play. Making the player immune would also be pretty lame. It might be better just to expand on ionization and allow for developer-made status effects. Acid Missiles could slowly eat at armor after they hit for a little bit, a Gyro Destabilizer could cause the ship to spin out of control briefly, the Ion Cannon can do it's good old trick, and so forth, whatever the developer decided to make.

@reclusiveone, on 11 February 2012 - 06:42 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

-some kind of backwards or side firing beam (the former would've been a great thrust upgrade for ctc instead of that flamethrower)

I have an explanation for why I went with what I did, and it turned out longer than I meant. But here we go.

There's multiple reasons why I went with the Flame Exhaust over other rear weaponry, such as a beam. Under the current engine, a backwards firing beam is possible. However, the A.I. would also always try to fire it while facing you, so they'd never hit you with it except through sheer dumb luck. Setting up turreted weapon for the A.I. with front and side blindspots, similar to how their version of the Flame Exhaust is a rear quadrant turret (the player Flame Exhaust is an unguided projectile), would mostly work mechanically, but would have two serious issues if we wanted it to fire just straight back, as is the case with the Flame Exhaust. First, the beam would have a set length, which would be a problem for both A.I.s and players as you'd need to stay a set distance away to actually hit with it, which kind of defeats the point of a weapon you fire while retreating whereas projectiles could be launched backwards and actually "travel farther" based on how fast the shooter was traveling. Second, the fact the A.I. has a turret would be far more obvious. Ridiculously obvious. The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard obvious. With the inaccuracy and the fact the A.I. turns away totally when retreating, combined with fast turn rates, it's hard to catch the A.I. shooting flames at angles. But with a beam, it'd be very clear.

Then there's the reason that I largely avoided beams in CTC due to how ridiculously strong they can be, even with low damage numbers. I kept the Thunderbolt Generators because it was a cool idea and it's the token beam weapon. They cut out after shooting a bit to recharge and they have a shortish range, so while they're strong they're also pretty fair. It'd be tricky to keep that sort of balance with multiple beams, as you can see in vanilla Nova where even the sucky beams pwn face.

But, most importantly, the Flame Exhaust is inspired from a weapon of the same name in the game XG2 (a fun, but flawed, game that I had as I grew up). Blasting out fire from your engines to sear enemy pursuers or, in the case of XG2, the other races behind you, was a pretty cool idea. And it gave you a boost to speed as well. This is represented in CTC with the Flame Exhaust shooting fire and giving you a bit of a speed boost (until you're at top speed anyway) while searing those behind you. I was also going to adapt the game's Laser Mine for the medium and possibly capital ship classes as well, but I never developed those due to plug-in making burnout.

Considering the huge number of variables in a ship's stats, let alone potential weapons and outfits, that'd be incredibly difficult to do with any reasonable accuracy. Especially when you include stuff with non-standard behaviors, such as the Ionization Field in Colosseum. If such a thing were included, I'd like a way to manually override it to make certain targets more or less valuable to kill in terms of combat rating as well as to control how quickly the player's combat rating rises.

Do you have Knight of the Red Branch?

Well, that's why I said mandatory. If plug-ins could have you juggle ship fuel, fighter fuel, missile fuel, computer systems, power generation, heat management, weapon hard points, crew happiness, multiple currencies, cargo space, cargo bay sanitation, and a whole lot of other things, that's fine. If every plug-in had to do that without any way to just be simple, then it wouldn't be fine.