Not impossible nor a TC...

Reme,ber my phase cloak idea? Maybe you don't but the idea was to make a cloak that when activated, nothing can hit you. Now, after seeing Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, I got the idea to add an Improbability Drive in there to make it alot easier. Here's what I'm proposing:

You get an outfit, called Phase Cloak/Improb Drive. When you buy it, it starts a mission, let's say ID975. When aborted, it will Cxxx you to an invisible ship, without any shan. It will also start mission 976, which when aborted will Cxxx you to a random ship, and start mission 975 again, so you can do it numerous times. The only problem is this: how do you get the random ship? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I like!

Have you already tested parts of your plan?

R(Cxxx, Cyyyy) should give you a random decision between two ships, I think. There has been discussion of nesting (e.g. R(R(Cxxx, Cyyyy), R(Czzz, Cwww))), but I don't remember whether it was determined to work or not. If it doesn't, just add more "R" events earlier in your chain of missions, so that (for instance) there are really 2 or more different invisible ships, each leading to different ship possibilities.

I'd throw in some Hxxx's and Exxx's, just to be more random and (occasionally) more evil.

Ships I'd like to see as possible outcomes:

Cargo drone
Child wraith
Hyperoid
Pirate Carrier
Dart

Or you could make new ships -- there are some wacky sprites out there already, for example in Eeun's shipyard. Or you could spin some of the stock models of things like furniture and household appliances that are included free with most 3D programs. If you want to go that last route, maybe we could talk....

There are discussions of invisibility in at least one of the Hitchhiker's books. The great spaceship Bistromath used a S.E.P. device -- a "Somebody Else's Problem" projector that made viewers assume that the ship was simply an unimportant informal restaurant, rather than something worth worrying about. Improbability may be a better theory for your cloak, though, since it could follow that an improbable ship is improbable to hit....

sep device could be an IFF jammer. They dont notice you, regardless of your evil, until you shoot at them. It seems to fit: invisible without really being invisible.

As for the phase cloak thing, yeah, are you sure that a non-shan ship cant be hit? What about things with blast radii? Hmm... and it would be a bďtch to fly if you couldnt see which direction it was pointing...

The actual phase cloak itself could be a weapon with no lifespan, that explodes at the end of it, which a huge blast, destroying an invisible ship with almost no armor, and a mission with the onshipDone doing the ship thing.

Nice ideas. But i dont think its neccesary to mix the phase cloak and the improbability drive.

sep device could be an IFF jammer. They dont notice you, regardless of your evil, until you shoot at them. It seems to fit: invisible without really being invisible.

As for the phase cloak thing, yeah, are you sure that a non-shan ship cant be hit? What about things with blast radii? Hmm... and it would be a bďtch to fly if you couldnt see which direction it was pointing...

The actual phase cloak itself could be a weapon with no lifespan, that explodes at the end of it, which a huge blast, destroying an invisible ship with almost no armor, and a mission with the onshipDone doing the ship thing.

Nice ideas. But i dont think its neccesary to mix the phase cloak and the improbability drive.

Nested Rxxx attempts don't work.

Dr. Trowel, on May 3 2005, 11:17 AM, said:

I like!

Have you already tested parts of your plan?

R(Cxxx, Cyyyy) should give you a random decision between two ships, I think. There has been discussion of nesting (e.g. R(R(Cxxx, Cyyyy), R(Czzz, Cwww))), but I don't remember whether it was determined to work or not. If it doesn't, just add more "R" events earlier in your chain of missions, so that (for instance) there are really 2 or more different invisible ships, each leading to different ship possibilities.

I'd throw in some Hxxx's and Exxx's, just to be more random and (occasionally) more evil.

Ships I'd like to see as possible outcomes:

Cargo drone
Child wraith
Hyperoid
Pirate Carrier
Dart

Or you could make new ships -- there are some wacky sprites out there already, for example in Eeun's shipyard. Or you could spin some of the stock models of things like furniture and household appliances that are included free with most 3D programs. If you want to go that last route, maybe we could talk....

There are discussions of invisibility in at least one of the Hitchhiker's books. The great spaceship Bistromath used a S.E.P. device -- a "Somebody Else's Problem" projector that made viewers assume that the ship was simply an unimportant informal restaurant, rather than something worth worrying about. Improbability may be a better theory for your cloak, though, since it could follow that an improbable ship is improbable to hit....
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Thanks, that should help. No, I haven't started working on it but I am going to. The furniture and appliances is a good idea too. And for weapons to hit your ship, NebuchadnezzaR, they have to hit the GRAPHICS of your ship. Since the ship doesn't have graphics, it can't be hit. This will be most helpful when you're gunned down by a bunch of Auroran Carriers & Cruisers, because there are still railguns going after you cloak and they stop firing.

The ship has to have a shan resource and some kind of graphic or Nova will choke...

There is gonna be a shan resource. However, there isn't gonna be anything in it. 100% blank. That's the pure genius of it. If theory proves to be fact, this will be an awesome plug.

zapp, on May 3 2005, 10:04 PM, said:

There is gonna be a shan resource. However, there isn't gonna be anything in it. 100% blank. That's the pure genius of it. If theory proves to be fact, this will be an awesome plug.
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Is that possible?

You can anyway just make it one single pixel, but i just wonder?

Dr. Trowel, on May 3 2005, 07:17 AM, said:

There are discussions of invisibility in at least one of the Hitchhiker's books. The great spaceship Bistromath used a S.E.P. device -- a "Somebody Else's Problem" projector that made viewers assume that the ship was simply an unimportant informal restaurant, rather than something worth worrying about. Improbability may be a better theory for your cloak, though, since it could follow that an improbable ship is improbable to hit....
View Post

Wasn't the Bistromath set up to look like an Italian bistro to use the altered mathematics found within restaurants, thus avoiding all the dangerous mucking about with improbability? IIRC, all the calculations were done around a table in a glass room with robot customers and servers, and on the waiter's checkpad, where numbers dance.

The SEP field will work on anything (including mountains), it doesn't matter what object it's hiding. At least until the viewers know what it is they are looking at.

There was this whole side story about a guy who bet his life he could make a mountain invisible in a year, and how it could have been done easily by painting it pink and setting up an SEP field. The judges would have walked around or over the mountain and simply fail to notice it was there.

I've been working and am testing the first version to see if it works. It's smaller than I would like, but hopefully it will work so I can make it bigger.

Artanis, on May 3 2005, 11:59 PM, said:

There was this whole side story about a guy who bet his life he could make a mountain invisible in a year, and how it could have been done easily by painting it pink and setting up an SEP field. The judges would have walked around or over the mountain and simply fail to notice it was there.
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Except that he didn't think of an SEP and so as a last attempt to make it invisible he simply removed the mountain. He lost the bet and therefore his life for two reasons. One, when walking around the area where the mountain should have been the judges didn't trip over anything; and two, a suspicious-looking extra moon.

So IFF scrambler would perfectly fir the bill of the SEP field generator. It doesnt actually do anything, people just dont notice you.

Ah, and for the random ships you can do:

R(Caaa Cbbb) R(Cccc) R(Cddd) R(Ceee)

etc, where eee is the 'common one' (50 percent) ddd is less so( 25 ) ccc is even less (12.5 percent chance) and the odds of aaa and bbb are each only 6.25 percent. Add more at your leisure, of course. This ensures that its difficult to get the fancier ships... though somehow that goes against the inverse probability nature... well, not neccisarily.

And as for the invisiship, you guys really are neglecting how hard it would be to fly an invisible ship.

NebuchadnezzaR, on May 3 2005, 08:22 PM, said:

And as for the invisiship, you guys really are neglecting how hard it would be to fly an invisible ship.
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You can just follow your weapons fire. (If for some reason the ship is actually cloaked as well as invisible/perfect black, you just give it a short, damage-less, forward-firing beam weapon set to fire while cloaked.)

Another possibility -- and this may have been something I saw on these boards a year ago or so --would be to give the ship an "engine glow," "running lights," or "weapon glow." Shots might pass right through the glow if there was no base ship image to hit. Added bonus: freaky pulsating ghost ship! :laugh:

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(If for some reason the ship is actually cloaked as well as invisible/perfect black, you just give it a short, damage-less, forward-firing beam weapon set to fire while cloaked.)

No, it is not gonna be cloaked, and the damageless beam is a good idea. Dr.T, I put all the ships you wanted into it, but I'm still running into some problems. I especially would like to fly a Cargo Drone.

I keep on getting this message when the loading bar reaches the Starbridge on the loading screen (what's that other ship, by the way?): "Resource ID: Error loading sp*n resource from PICT Code: 768 Resource not found". 768 is the shan for the ship and the ship ID. Then when I do the only thing I can, click OK, it says this: "Nova will now quit. The failure occurred file: Sprite.c, line 838". I don't get it, can I have some help here?

Okay, you need a sprite. Check the shän resource, and see if does indeed point to the BaseImageID and BaseMaskID of the blank image PICT that should be in your plug.
If you don't manage using a blank thing, then give it one pixel.
If you still don't manage then, just ask and I'll give you an invisible ship shän (I'm sure other people have some too).

This post has been edited by Pace (haldora) : 04 May 2005 - 10:10 AM

It still isn't working, even though I made it one pixel, made sure all the IDs were straight (even though they weren't, matching them up didn't help) and I could use that invisible shan right about now.

The way I do it is have a pict which is just a single black pixel. BaseImageID and BaseMaskID both point to that pict. FramesPerSet, BaseSetCount, BaseXSize, BaseYSize all equal 1 and with BaseTransp of 32 for good measure. Don't need anything else just make sure that your pict ID doesn't conflict with any rleDs.