Kame's Plugin Challenge

Kame

Ha ha, no not another one. This one is VERY specific. I'm trying to create a plug that allows the player to switch between an inertialess ship and one that behaves normally on the fly. Obviously the first thing I need is two ships to represent both flying styles. And we have that handy H(?) operator that switches ships. Now I was thinking about creating a weapon similar to a fighter bay so that when the "fighter launched" the ship would be replaced with the other variant. Then when you recalled the ship, your's would switch back. The "fighter" you launch would have no graphic and not be visible on screen. But from what I can tell there doesn't seem to be any way to use ncb's from the weapon or outfit resources. Key Carried may be another option but I don't have any idea how to use the field in the Ship resource. If anyone would care to enlighten me on the KeyCarried thing please do so. I know it can be used to change ship graphics but can it do more? The biggest problem I see with this if it is possible is keeping any weapons and outfits. Most outfits actually won't be a problem since in the plug most are learned abilities and cannot be lost. Weapons/Outfits can be easily carried over from ship to ship provided those outfits have been programed to do so.

The only other way I can see to implement this would be to just give the player the option of buying either ship. The ships will be free to the player anyway so changing would be simple but not the effect I'm looking for. Another option would be to always have a ship following you around that offered a mission when hailed. Accept the mission and you switch ships. But trying to hail the right ship in the middle of a fight would be too difficult to make it reasonable and it would throw off the feel of the game as well.

So here is my challenge... Figure out a way to switch ships with a simple keystroke. Chances are it's not possible. But there may be a workaround that could be implemented behind the scenes.

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((Ż'ˇ.¸(Ż'ˇ.¸Ť-KAME-ť¸.ˇ'´Ż)¸.ˇ'´Ż))
I used to jog but the ice kept falling out of my glass.
(url="http://"http://www.0three0.net/l-1551/")L 1551(/url) - The official site of RONIN and The Way and the ten thousand things

SpacePirate

I seriously doubt this is possible.

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Eat blazing electric death!

(This message has been edited by SpacePirate (edited 10-11-2003).)

Krypt-tokh6

Checked all the fields in EVONE for both weap and outf
Didn't see anything to help you, like OnFire, or OnExplode.

Don't thunk it'll work

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T the Omnipotent went where no mortal had gone before. Now he comes back to make sure none do again.
(url="http://"http://forums.tildesoft.com/")Oblivion:(/url) An upcoming TC for EV: Nova
Visit (url="http://"http://www.EVula.com")EVula's Lair(/url) for a wealth of knowledge.
Get (url="http://"http://forums.ariossoftware.com/")EVONE(/url). Period.

Azratax2

Outfit with appropriate modtype can turn a ship from inertial to inertialess.
-Az

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Aprosenf

As far as I know, the only control bit strings that are evaluated mid-game (i.e. when flying around space) are those activated by a mission being failed, aborted, having its special ship goal completed, or accepting a mission from a person. Maybe you could create two missions that, when aborted, activate each other and grant the inertial dampener outfit or take it away? Then to change your inertia, you just hit 'I' and abort the mission.
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C:dos
C:dosrun
rundosrun

(This message has been edited by Aprosenf (edited 10-12-2003).)

Icos

The aborting of one mission to get the other would work especially if you start the first mission automatically when you buy the ship, but why switch the entire ship when you can just give and take away an outfit that makes the ship intertialess?

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Ephialtes

Just to point out that I don't believe you can switch ships while on the fily.. I could be wrong... I haven't tried outfit switching yet though

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Kame

Ahhh, I forgot about using an outfit. Ok, might be getting closer here. I'll have to experiment with that. Oh, and I'm fully aware that this most likely isn't possible - but that's why it's a challenge

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((Ż'ˇ.¸(Ż'ˇ.¸Ť-KAME-ť¸.ˇ'´Ż)¸.ˇ'´Ż))
I used to jog but the ice kept falling out of my glass.
(url="http://"http://www.0three0.net/l-1551/")L 1551(/url) - The official site of RONIN and The Way and the ten thousand things

Krypt-tokh6

Actually, the idea of two mďsns that activate the other on abort of one seems like it has a very high chance of working.
Just have one give the inertialess outf and the other take it away.

Simple.

When/If you get it done, make sure to post and offer it.
Sounds like I could incorporate it into both the (url="http://"http://forums.tildesoft.com")TC(/url) or the independent Bar plug I'm doing.

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T the Omnipotent went where no mortal had gone before. Now he comes back to make sure none do again.
(url="http://"http://forums.tildesoft.com/")Oblivion:(/url) An upcoming TC for EV: Nova
Visit (url="http://"http://www.EVula.com")EVula's Lair(/url) for a wealth of knowledge.
Get (url="http://"http://forums.ariossoftware.com/")EVONE(/url). Period.

Icos

If anyone is interested I've made the plug. I got bored while waiting for my pumpkin to cook so i can brew a beer. It's simple and you can buy a heavy shuttle and that sets up the two mission system. I'll e-mail it to anybody who wants it.

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Engla

I also built the plugin, because I was so neugierig I didn't even want to wait for a mail.

Inertial/less switching works perfectly in space with the Abort method.

Switching ships in-system actually do work, except that you will be disabled...

edit: You seem to keep your shiled amount, and thus switching to a Raven from a Shutte (which I did) renders you disabled. Switching to and from a raven and Starb works great.

edit2: Praise Kame! Wonderful challange.
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(url="http://"http://ulrik.no-ip.org")ulrik.no-ip.org(/url)
I hope that a future EV Nova will hold the gövt-switch set expression, working like Wxxxyyy: hereby treat and let behave what belongs to gövt xxx as if it belonged to gövt yyy. This is the small tool we lack to build a believable scenario without unrelaistic amounts of resources and work.

(This message has been edited by Engla (edited 10-12-2003).)

Engla

My solution is not very good - but it works like this.

You start out with a shuttle. You go to the Mission BBS and get the mission "Raven". In the system, you can abort it, and your shuttle will gain lots of armor and recharge it fast. Then you can abort the next mission that was started on the abort of "Raven", "Shield bump". Aborting this gives you the Raven with the Hxxx switch, with full shields and armor. Fuel is not implemented.

Freaky thing to be able to do with the engine, really.

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(url="http://"http://ulrik.no-ip.org")ulrik.no-ip.org(/url)
I hope that a future EV Nova will hold the gövt-switch set expression, working like Wxxxyyy: hereby treat and let behave what belongs to gövt xxx as if it belonged to gövt yyy. This is the small tool we lack to build a believable scenario without unrelaistic amounts of resources and work.

Masamune

Engla, you beat me to it. Kame, you have your answer- I'm pretty sure using an outfit and two missions with OnAbort is the only good way to do it. Make the outfit invisible and it's pretty seamless. There's a few basic functions in SS that work this way (Like advancing time in space, or a fun outfit that gives you basically unlimited top speed, but makes you blow up more often than not. Great for blockade running). The two different ships method is not recommended, it seems to do wierd thing to Nova in my experience.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

Kame

Yeah, I know how to do it using missions. Really using an outfit would be a better way to do it though. The mission could also be invisible and activate whenever you landed. But, although it's close, it's not the effect I was looking for. Wait, would it be possible to have missions run rings around each other? Just thinking out loud here... Land on a spob and a hidden mission activates. Take off. Fly around. Abort mission which grants the inertia dampener outfit and starts another hidden mission. Abort that mission and it'll remove the inertia dampener and activate the previous again. I guess you would only need one initial mission to get the cycle going. But this way you could turn it on and off multiple times.

(edit) Wait I guess you can't abort hidden missions. I spose you could just have no text desc and make the first mission non-refuseable.

Better, but again not quite what I was looking for. I wanted something to work smoother. If the engine behaved a little differently I actually would have solved it. I made a fighter bay and stuck it on my ship. Then I made the ammunition with the inertia dampener outfit. So theoretically you'd shoot your fighter and you're ship would have inertia again until you called the fighter back. But the engine doesn't work this way since it believes that even if the outfit "leaves" your ship you still have it. I even made the ship blowup after it was sent out and I still retained the outfit. Quite disappointing. I was planning on making a lot of use of such a feature. One being a light cargo freighter that could ditch it's cargo and thus move around more quickly and with better manueverability, then come back and get it. Of course it can still lose the cargo and retrieve it but the point seems moot without gaining fighter like performance.

But I think I found a workaround for the inertia thing that I actually prefer as it makes more sense storyline wise. I just jacked up the manueverability insanely high so that when you accelerate you almost instantly change direction. Actually works quite well as it allows the ship to drift if the pilot isn't actively controlling it's direction

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((Ż'ˇ.¸(Ż'ˇ.¸Ť-KAME-ť¸.ˇ'´Ż)¸.ˇ'´Ż))
I used to jog but the ice kept falling out of my glass.
(url="http://"http://www.0three0.net/l-1551/")L 1551(/url) - The official site of RONIN and The Way and the ten thousand things

(This message has been edited by Kame (edited 10-13-2003).)

mrxak

Meh. You should have sent this to me as an email, and I surely would have included it in The mrxak Challenge this weekend. Oh well. Do you have any other good ones?

Kame

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
**Meh. You should have sent this to me as an email, and I surely would have included it in The mrxak Challenge this weekend. Oh well. Do you have any other good ones?

**

Yeah, I thought about that but decided it was too specific for my plug and wanted to get some thoughts on it "quickly." No other ideas at the moment but I'll let you know if I come up with anything else.

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((Ż'ˇ.¸(Ż'ˇ.¸Ť-KAME-ť¸.ˇ'´Ż)¸.ˇ'´Ż))
I used to jog but the ice kept falling out of my glass.
(url="http://"http://www.0three0.net/l-1551/")L 1551(/url) - The official site of RONIN and The Way and the ten thousand things

mrxak

Quote

Originally posted by Kame:
**:) Yeah, I thought about that but decided it was too specific for my plug and wanted to get some thoughts on it "quickly." No other ideas at the moment but I'll let you know if I come up with anything else.

**

I certainly hope so!

slouch

I'll apologize in advance for gravedigging, but I was just messing around with some outfits I'm working on and remembered this topic.

Quote

Originally posted by Kame
I made a fighter bay and stuck it on my ship. Then I made the ammunition with the inertia dampener outfit. So theoretically you'd shoot your fighter and you're ship would have inertia again until you called the fighter back. But the engine doesn't work this way since it believes that even if the outfit "leaves" your ship you still have it. I even made the ship blowup after it was sent out and I still retained the outfit.

I was playing around with the same basic set up as Kame described above, but I found that simply hitting the 'P' (Player Info/Dialogue) made the game recognize the outfit change. The ship went immediately from non-inertial to inertial on exiting the player info. Would this be considered a viable workaround? Any chance that players would tolerate an outfit that required hitting the 'P' to work properly? Of course, it would have to be explained that they need to do so. I suppose you could always activate/deactivate a rank which describes the change so they have something new to look at. If it's tolerable, there's tons of possibilities for using it.

Just some thoughts, sorry for the gravedigging.

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Kame

Wow, interesting. Thanks for posting this. I have to say I was a bit surprised to see this topic back up. But I think others will agree that grave digging in this sort of situation is acceptable. At least I appreciate it I think my workaround works better but what you've found certainly opens new possibilities. I could maybe implement my cargo hauler/light fighter concept now... definetly worth checking out.

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((Ż'ˇ.¸(Ż'ˇ.¸Ť-KAME-ť¸.ˇ'´Ż)¸.ˇ'´Ż))
I used to jog but the ice kept falling out of my glass.
(url="http://"http://www.0three0.net/l-1551/")L 1551(/url) - The official site of RONIN and The Way and the ten thousand things

Phyvo

Actually, another workaround (though one which leaves a problem - you can't die) would be to simply buy an weapon that destroys your ship (along with an outfit for an escape ship). When your ship blows up, an escape ship launches and it's inertialess. Then when you die again it switches back, because the escape ship has the default outfits. I think this is interesting... But of course, it isn't quite as good as the other options.

I haven't tested it in game though, so who knows whether it would work.

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