Useful to those who need a twist

I was working on my TC for EV:O, the Master of Orion one if you're not following, when I this question bothered me: "How am I going to encorporate the separate landings that the original EV:O has with MOO?" For those of you who don't know, Master of Orion (at least the original) had only one landing zone for each system, and the colony was defaultly named the same as the system.

Should I introduce stations and outposts?

I decided not to add stations or moons, for this would stray away from the original Master of Orion game, and people who want to play the MOO TC want the game to be a derivative of the game they love; others who haven't (or can't) play Master of Orion want the basic idea of the game set up in the TC.

So how could I make different stellars in a system without detracting from the original game?

I went back to playing Master of Orion, and had upgraded some form of terraforming, when it hit me: "Increases the colony's max population by x% for a one-time cost of 300BC." The colony's max population. The development: different colonies on the same planet!

Stack the stellars on top of one another, name them something like, "Sol Colony 1" and "Sol Colony 2", and it would appear to the player that there are two landing zones on one planet! Of course, this could lead to some fun and interesting battles, because you could have one "stellar" (Base) under one government, and another under their enemy, and have an offensive there.

Basically, I was wondering if it were possible to have "multiple" landing sites on a planet, provided the stellar image was the same and in the same place. Could be interesting.

BOGWarrior

BOGWarrior,
It is possible. This particular trick was used to quite great effect by Martin Turner in "Frozen Heart". While I wouldn't know off-hand how to implement it effectively, it is a possibility, and should work well if you get the graphics to work.

-Bob

Consul Bob, on Feb 15 2006, 04:48 PM, said:

BOGWarrior,
It is possible. This particular trick was used to quite great effect by Martin Turner in "Frozen Heart". While I wouldn't know off-hand how to implement it effectively, it is a possibility, and should work well if you get the graphics to work.

-Bob
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You can improve on the technique by setting the base stellar as a planetary sized object, and then very small 'city' sized objects which appear over them. I've used these for Frozen Heart 2. It's a cool effect.

This would also mean (though I haven't done it yet) that you could have a city destroyed and regenerated separate from the rest of the planet -- for example, with its destroyed state being a huge black cloud.

Hope this helps.

Martin Turner, on Feb 15 2006, 05:26 PM, said:

You can improve on the technique by setting the base stellar as a planetary sized object, and then very small 'city' sized objects which appear over them. I've used these for Frozen Heart 2. It's a cool effect.

This would also mean (though I haven't done it yet) that you could have a city destroyed and regenerated separate from the rest of the planet -- for example, with its destroyed state being a huge black cloud.

Hope this helps.
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Sorry - just realised you are working in EVO. The smaller city type will still work, but you won't be able to do separately regenerating cities, unless you do it as a VisBit (which would work just as well, but is less elegant).

Very cool idea, Martin. I was going to suggest something very similar, but only got as far as determining that, in EVN at least, it's lower-number spobs that appear in front of higher-number spobs. This matters because if the corners of the higher-number spob graphic are covered, you won't see those corners of the selection brackets. (This affects some stations that are partially occluded by planets in Cold Fusion, I think.)

That ports could be separately destroyed w/o destroying the planet is a another very neat idea. My guess is that this would only be true with nova bits, not with planet-type weapons -- they'd hit the host planet's sprite before they hit the selected port, wouldn't they?

I am using a separate 'city' spob sprite for more than one occasion where you can land on a planet generically and also a certain city on that planet.

I can't recall whether all the EV games tolerate spin-resource-governed sprites with all-white (and therefore all-transparent) masks. If such things were used for city locations, the selection brackets could highlight a spot on a planet's surface without the plug-maker having to go through the bother of copying a patch of the planet graphic to make the city sprite, and then having to get that patch perfectly lined up atop the planet in the syst resource.

I think I've seen fully transparent sprites in EVN 1.0.9. but that was in malfunctioning PICT-based sprites; I don't know whether we can count on the same glitch being present in the next version.

Slightly off topic: why the heck are you doing this for EVO? The EVN engine is infinitely better.

EVO is easier to understand, and it's easier to make a TC out of it, or maybe he's not registered EVN (neither me). Frozen Heart absolytely rocks ( ) and neither it hasn't been made on EVN engine (propably because EVN wasn't ready but who cares!) and it's still been played and played again by players who own a copy of EVN.

This post has been edited by Zealot : 16 February 2006 - 07:57 AM

Zealot, on Feb 16 2006, 11:56 AM, said:

EVO is easier to understand, and it's easier to make a TC out of it, or maybe he's not registered EVN (neither me). Frozen Heart absolytely rocks ( ) and neither it hasn't been made on EVN engine (propably because EVN wasn't ready but who cares!) and it's still been played and played again by players who own a copy of EVN.
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Nice to hear people are still playing it. Actually, I never expected that anyone was going to download it when I first released it.

We are working on FH2 for EVN.

The CrimpMaster, on Feb 15 2006, 10:12 PM, said:

Slightly off topic: why the heck are you doing this for EVO? The EVN engine is infinitely better.
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He has your answer:

Zealot, on Feb 16 2006, 05:56 AM, said:

EVO is easier to understand, and it's easier to make a TC out of it, or maybe he's not registered EVN (neither me). Frozen Heart absolytely rocks ( ) and neither it hasn't been made on EVN engine (propably because EVN wasn't ready but who cares!) and it's still been played and played again by players who own a copy of EVN.
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And I really don't need to have city sprites, right? I mean, I could use the same sprite for all of them, just have them stacked on top of one another. Unless, of course, I have more time. Then I could make "colony" sprites.

BOGWarrior, on Feb 16 2006, 10:58 AM, said:

And I really don't need to have city sprites, right? I mean, I could use the same sprite for all of them, just have them stacked on top of one another. Unless, of course, I have more time. Then I could make "colony" sprites.
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Right!