Another serious discussion from mrxak
Name 20 TCs that have been released for Nova. Now name 20 released for EVO or EVC within the same period of time after those games were released.
Indeed, there are very few TCs released for Nova and it has been years since the initial release of the game. Many TCs were announced during the time Nova was still being developed. Clearly, there are problems somewhere if we still don't have them on our hard drives.
The Nova Files folder, in which all the juicy bits that we like to tinker with as developers is contained, weighs in as more than 170 MB. Much of which is included in the graphics portion of the Nova scenario. The original EV was under 10 MB for all data. EVO was under 12.
This means that the developer has to do an incredible amount of work. And they can't do it alone. Groups the size of soccer teams have formed to meet the challenge. These are organizational nightmares for all involved. Gone are the days when individuals made decent TCs in a few months. The knowledge requirements, the system requirements, and the high expectations for everyone involved are proving to be a difficult obstacle.
Think of it like this. Matt Burch did EV. He did the whole thing. And yes, it took him a while. Then we have ATMOS, a very large team of individuals who put together Nova over many years. Clearly the bar has been raised in the personnel-department. Graphics-wise, depth-wise, it's all been pushed to the limits. Look at the number of missions. Look at how the engine has evolved to make many of the resources we were used to in EV and EVO much longer and more complex. NCBs, crön events, shäns... it's a big mess of new features that while make a lot of things more interesting and possible, increase the work-load dramatically. And EV is still alive in our minds, hearts, and a plug-in for Nova. That's stamina from a game that many of us grew up on, and I don't think it's just nostalgia.
I know I'm stating the obvious here. Nova upped the ante in a big way. Ask any developer who started out in EV or EVO and they'll tell you a Nova plug-in is a much larger project. What concerns me, and I think should be a concern for everybody, is that a lot of people aren't getting TCs to play with. Sure, there are many projects underway, but in the meantime, what do we play with?
Nova can only be played so many times before new stories are desired, new universes to explore. A Total Conversion plug-in is a concept that in EV and EVO was a great tool to extend the life of the game, and to keep people interested. They were relatively manageable from the development stand-point. Graphics? Stick a few primitives together and you're set. People didn't expect much. It was gameplay and a compelling story that made the TCs great. There were certainly some excellent 3D models back then, don't get me wrong, but the emphasis was on unique concepts and story, not how pretty it looked, or how many resources it hogged to tell the tale.
I've been thinking about writing up a post like this for a while now. My first idea was to call for people to develop on EV or EVO again (if they think their stories can be told in that medium). Perhaps it's an idea worth suggesting still, but I've moved beyond that. After all, how many people run classic anymore? The only computer in my family that did died a few weeks ago. Instead, I suggest that the idea of smaller, faster, better plug-ins is the way many developers should go. Let us see your stories and concepts sooner, rather than later. Instead of 30 storylines wrapped up into one massive TC, how about writing one storyline, releasing it, then if you think it's worth it later to do so, write another storyline in the same universe you've created and release it as another plug-in.
For a while now, I've been pondering the fate of my own TC I've been working on. The lure of all of the neat new features in Nova was strong at first, and I developed a storyline with complex branching and multiple strings. But looking back, I cannot help but think of one thing: The Frozen Heart. Truly it was a work of great importance and deserves its fame as one of the greatest plugs of all time. Here was a developer with an excellent story, and he got it out in the form of a fairly simple EV engine by today's standards. It was linear, and the graphics were hardly what anybody would consider pipeline-level (the gold standard of our current day). Yet I would honestly rather play The Frozen Heart again than pretty much any massive branching multi-story plug-in that everybody is so intent on doing nowadays. New features are nice, but they shouldn't be the focus.
So while my own TC is still up in the air a bit while I figure out what to do, I know that I want to capture the magic Martin Turner created with his epic plug-in. It seems to me that instead of creating each branch in a massive universe all by itself, smaller plug-ins with just one or two stories apiece gets the product to the player sooner, and it gets the job done just as well if not better. And what about small TCs that do branch? Perhaps a small universe of say, 20 systems, with a few governements, and just few stories could be just as or more compelling than a huge one. To draw an analogy from literature, not everybody is made to write a trilogy of full-length books. There are the short-story writers, the poets, and the one-act playwrights. I urge all of you with stalled TC projects to think this over. Perhaps the stories you want to tell can be told in a smaller form. Perhaps graphics can be recycled from Nova or made on a low-budget system to produce the basic ideas needed. Heck, if you suddenly become an art student with a full version of Lightwave, by all means go back and make a graphics-pack to replace the old art. But for the player's sake, tell your stories! If it takes just a few hours of game-play to do it, that's fine. Not everybody plans their weekends around playing through a 200 mission long string that they have trouble finding in the gigantic universe.
So here's my goal for the community: Provide plug-ins for the player. Provide lots of interesting unique stories that exist in their own worlds, but don't take forever to finish (for the developer or the player). Don't give up on your big projects if that's what you want to do, but do try to ask yourselves if you're just trying to use new features because they're there, or if you're using the features because your stories require them? Are you adding a new storyline because it's needed, or because that other dev team has more than you? Is there a simpler way to do what you're doing, without losing the essence of the story? Do you really need a team of 7 artists and 12 writers to get your point across?
There are many large TCs that I look forward to someday playing. But I haven't launched EVN to spend a few hours playing and exploring for quite some time now. Please, developers, don't forget that the players you hope to unleash your creations on will only still be here if they are constantly entertained, or have legitimate reason to believe your projects will be released some day. There are many projects on the distant horizon that will be great when they come out, but in the meantime, what do we get to play with?
Rather than come up with ideas for a TC, come up with ideas. Then fit those ideas into the form that is most efficient. If it needs its own universe to do it in, try to make it as small as you can, without feeling cramped. If it can work in a universe already made, by all means use it. But conserve your resources, don't force the player to have 8 GB of RAM to load it all, and keep the filler to a minimum.
What I'm asking I don't think is such a big deal, and even if none of the current project teams decide to take my challenge or not is probably not going to matter. We have plenty of new developers coming along, and people around here are looking for work. So here's some work for you, what I see as the fifth generation of developers. We had the initial experimenters who made this all possible, the ones who developed the first real new plug-ins for EV, the new EVO plug-in developers, the early EVN developers, and now we have the new developers who first discovered development with Nova. You have new ideas, you have a clean slate of an engine. I urge you, the late-comers to our community, to lead the way. The old guard have gotten bogged down in Nova's many traps. I know I have, and judging by the in-progress projects to completed projects ratio, many others have too. So you, the fifth generation, need to support this community and the weight it is beginning to carry. Revitalize it with smaller, manageable projects, and show everybody that creativity wins out over the bigger-is-better culture we have begun to adopt.
In short, a bird in the bag is worth two in the bush.
Anyway, I didn't mean to make this as preachy or long as it may have turned out. I'm rather interested in input from all developers and players that have some to share. This should be another serious discussion on the state of the community. Am I the only one losing patience with the announced projects (and my own) not getting done quickly enough? Am I the only one seeing a lack of small and mid-range projects? Are there many of these projects that are simply getting lost in the hype of larger works? What can we do about this?
And please do spread the link to this topic around any sub-communities that exist in the developer world. I am particularly interested in the reactions of large development teams, and the mrxak-dubbed fifth generation.
Let the discussion begin.
). When the others mentioned come out, they too will keep you occupied a little.
