First, I'd like to apolgise to Andrew Welch and everybody else... I didn't quite realise he was doing us a favor by moving us to this board system. Well, the craetion of aa developer's forum certainly revitalised my commitment to this board...
I havn't posted regularly in (literally) years. I've been a lurker most of the time, posting maybe one or two messages a month. Well, I doubt that'll change, but you may be interested to hear the following.
Anybody remember (url="http://"http://omicron.nyu.edu/~jmf9936/gap/")The Gap(/url) plugin? It was, I believe, the second large plugin in history to be killed before it was released (That's more of a trend nowadays than a surprise). ANYWAY, I finally got around to reading the book series that it's based off of. I was very interested in the project, to say the least, so I've contacted the graphics artist and we're contemplating bringing the thing back to life. It will probably have nothing at all to do with its predecessor given my aprehension to finishing other people's dead projects, but the graphics will be similar. I intend to push the EV engine beyond it's limits with this one, cramming the largest sprite size that EV can take without crashing into the top end and squeazing the smallest ships into 8x8 sprites to create a true sense of scale. If EV can take it, planets will be 300 pixels or so accross, stations about as large as the biggest ships. If I can, I'll use pixeltoy to generate an aproximation of particle effects and gigantic explosions (which of course has a 90% chance of looking really ugly). Expect asteroids that you can collide with and/or mine, and a redefinition of kickass weaponry. The plugin won't have a very "EV" feel to it at all. Hyperspace linking will be redefined into Gap drives, which can even transport you arond in-system.
Of course, you've heard all that before countless times from other plugin designers. Unlike them, I make absolutely no garuntee that The Gap will ever see the light of day. I'm not even going to suggest that the plug will have a plotline at this point, but if it does you're ship's functions might be impacted by the death of a crewmember (if you loose your scanner officer, your rader would go dead with static, loosing your helmsman would eliminate your ability to turn)
I'll be developing this pretty much at school, in my spare time, for my friends who have also read the book series. Don't expect status updates or a website, or an announcement more official than this.
-reg
GEV(/url)