Quote

Originally posted by Meowx Design:
**Oooh, ooh, I just remembered another one! (This is actually relevant to the post's purpose.) EVO's engine will actually re-size sprites for you! If you render something the wrong size; say 50x50 instead of 48x48, just type in 48x48 instead of the real size, and EVO will do the rest! This is also handy if you want a ships that looks just like one of the bigger ships, except smaller - go ahead, make a 16x16 UE Cruiser. It probably works in reverse (making stuff bigger) but I haven't tried, it would just be ugly and pixelated...
-david-
**

YEAH! This is the kind of thing I was hoping we'd discuss here. Thanks Meowx! Something that isn't really crafty, but can be used as part of a plot is cloaked planets. As you probably know, systs need to point to spobs, and vice versa, but if a syst points to a spob and the spob doesn't point to the same syst, the planet shows up on the upper right scanner, but there's no picture and you can't land on it. I've used this to make "cloaked planets" that become visible after the correct syst becomes visible after completing a misn and the correct visbit is set.

Anyone else have neat things they've tried out?

-STH

------------------

(This message has been edited by seant (edited 09-25-2000).)

Quote

Originally posted by Danny:
**Someone's done that, I believe. There were sucide shuttles in a giant plug the name of which escapes me for the moment. I think it was Galactic Scourge...
**

Yes, it was.

------------------
(url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/ev_scourge/")www.geocities.com/ev_scourge/(/url)

In several plugs (Empire, others I can't think of), the ships turrets were ofset. How?

------------------
Herodotus: The Histories
"If an important decision is to be made, they discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day when they are sober reconsider it. If they agree, it is made law. Conversley, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered when they are drunk."
Sounds like good government.

There are some nice tricks with respect to shields and recharge rates. If a vessel has no shields, its armor does not recharge. If a vessel has less than 100 shields, shields and armor recharge, but once shields are depleted it will only recharge up to 100% armor. If a vessel has 100 or more shields, recharge occurs as normal. This applies to EVO 1.0.2, but may or may not work with previous versions.

So what can you do with this? Make a race so primitive that it can't even build self-repairing ships! (They might even still think digital watches are a neat idea...)

------------------
(Insert Signature Here)

Quote

Originally posted by Wyvern:
There are some nice tricks with respect to shields and recharge rates. If a vessel has no shields, its armor does not recharge. If a vessel has less than 100 shields, shields and armor recharge, but once shields are depleted it will only recharge up to 100% armor. If a vessel has 100 or more shields, recharge occurs as normal. This applies to EVO 1.0.2, but may or may not work with previous versions.

So what can you do with this? Make a race so primitive that it can't even build self-repairing ships! (They might even still think digital watches are a neat idea...)

Yeah I discovered that some time ago, and asked matt about it, he didn't even know about it. But to make a week race, you just make the other races stronger. I guess this is a bug, since if you want to make a race with any level shields you can, and to make them unrechargeable, make the recharge rate like 100,000 or something.

Chamrin

Quote

Originally posted by rebelswin_85:
**In several plugs (Empire, others I can't think of), the ships turrets were ofset. How?

**

There is a field in the ship resource for turret y-offsets but you can't x-offset them :frown:

------------------
R & R software

Something else just occurred to me, talking about shields and such. I haven't tried it with the newest revision of the EVO engine, but there was a way to make ships so they couldn't be destroyed.

I don't remember if it was to give them 0 shields and 0 armour, or only 0 of one or the others.... Anyway, the ship would behave fine until you shot at it. At the point it would normally be destroyed, it coasted to a stop as though it were disabled. You couldn't select it with the tab key, it wouldn't show up on the radar thingy in the upper right corner, but it would still be visible on the screen. Kind of the opposite of a cloaking device.

I'm not sure how this bug could be used. Maybe "carried ships" that are illusions? Maybe as eye candy in a system that is in "flux" of some other star trekish weirdness (you can see the ships, but they don't show up on radar).

-STH

------------------

(This message has been edited by seant (edited 09-29-2000).)

Guess what I just discovered! The seeker flag "passes over asteroids" can be used to make normal weapons that ignore asteroids, not just seekers! Neat, huh?

------------------
(Insert Signature Here)

here's my little trick:

Ever wanted to create a navbar thingie with a fancy background? Got beaten back by the target picts having a solid background? Then just make the backgrounds white, EV (and EV:O) automatically masks out the white

The problem is that IFF decoders still black out the background...

------------------
--blackhole
(url="http://"mailto:blackhole@mac.com")mailto:blackhole@mac.com(/url)blackhole@mac.com

I don't know if it comes as a surprise to anyone, but it struck me, last night, thinking over the idea of 'extra crew'.

You could do a number of things (particularly regeneration, but also, possibly, shield strength bonus, manueverability bonus, etc) as 'crew'. The 'size' of a crew denoting the extra bridge space, living quarters, consoles, equipment room, and life support for each extra crew member.

The COOL part is that these extra crew could ALSO add to your 'crew rating' with the two cool EVO 1.0.2 features, marine and a second outfit ability!!

It might be relatively minor, but that strikes me as freakin' cool.

------------------
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I
know it is wrong.
- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

Another idea that just occurred to me (and may have been pointed out before)

At least until EV3, EVO 1.0.2 allows you to set up 'staging' rockets, or things like laser missiles (missiles that, as they explode, lase)

Just set them up as the only weapon aboard a 'fighter' which 'destroys craft' when fired. The missile launcher is then handled as a fighter bay.

Huh.

------------------
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I
know it is wrong.
- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

I recently checked the EVO data file, and discovered that needle missiles use the supposedly non-functioning guidance type 2. Does anybody know why, or what difference it makes, if any?

One undocumented thing in EVO 1.0.2 is that the AI ships will not fire homing weapons if they have zero ammo, regardless of whether or not the weapon uses ammo! If you're having problems with this, try setting the ammo load to negative one.

------------------
(Insert Signature Here)

i regrettably have nothing to add to this topic, but it was one of the most memorable and useful. i think it ought to be revived on a regular basis, perhaps eventually finding its way into a faq file.

------------------
Natural Resources Defense Council - the Earth's Best Defense
www.nrdc.org

Quote

Originally posted by astro:
**i regrettably have nothing to add to this topic, but it was one of the most memorable and useful. i think it ought to be revived on a regular basis, perhaps eventually finding its way into a faq file.

**

yea, you're right, maybe for the Best Posts Archive(how's it called, btw?)

------------------
Captain Orne
AIM:CaptnG3
ICQ:31162561
Yahoo!:BOrnelasPT

Quote

Originally posted by Captain Orne:
**yea, you're right, maybe for the Best Posts Archive(how's it called, btw?)
**

Too bad... It has to be dead for three months before making it to the archives, and you guys just revived it.

------------------

Idea for the organic multiplying ships, in uhbaitated systems set the Maxships to 2 and insert this desc at the abandoned station/planet/debris:

Due to the massive _____bomb explosion back in the ___century _______station is now uninhabitated due to the startling amounts of radiation present. This has the unfortuant affect of killing off any unshielded organic lifeforms (ie the former occupants of this station).

And that would mean that any organic lifeforms would die. The mothership organism would, OF COURSE, be convienintly shielded

------------------
--------------------------
Wham!Man - The original and still the best

Heres something, if you have resorcerer, you can edit the data files of the EV app, and change things you wouldn't expect to be able to change. Mostly just titles and stuff that aren't editable via strings. My favorite, (no I'm not the first to do this) is editing one of the easter eggs. The one where if you shift click on the title, you hear it use the finder's built in text to speech, it says "Greetings Professeur Falcon, would you like to play a game?" I changed mine to "Greetings human,tell me your thoughts,your ideas,your dreams" it is important that you keep the data file length exactly the same as it was before, so back ups are always helpfull.

Chamrin

Yeah, there's also the one where you simulate time-travel using the system message buoyies. And many more..

_bomb

Quote

Originally posted by Chamrin:
Heres something, if you have resorcerer, you can edit the data files of the EV app, and change things you wouldn't expect to be able to change. Mostly just titles and stuff that aren't editable via strings.

Can you provide documentation on what can be changed and how to do it? Afterall, the point of this thread was to share how to do undocumented stuff.

-STH

------------------

how to make it impossible to dominate planets, from a recent topic, posted by Gage Stryker:

Generally, a fleet not occuring is a bug. The field controlling number of ships can be set to something completely absurd. The best way to do this is to use non-numerical symbols in the filed, something like 9@Y* (just don't start it with $, or EV might think it's a hex field).

------------------
coming soon: (url="http://"http://thunder.prohosting.com/~vasska/strandwar.html")War Without End(/url), a continuation of the Strand saga