Hey there! I'd be highly surprised if anybody here remembers me, but I'm an old-school EVer from back in the days of escape-velocity.com who stopped forum-whoring in lieu of having a life back in 2002. Anyhow, I have a question about a Plug I'm making for Nova.

I've been developing a plug on and off for the past year or so, introducing 4 new ships with their own graphics, 18 weapons, and some missions to go along with them after the Fed storyline. I've run into 2 questions I can't figure out myself.

1: How do I link the 800x600 shipyard renders to the individual ships? I've experemented with Resource IDs to no avail.

2: One of my weapons, a gauss/flack cannon, would propell shrapnel at very high velocity at the expense of a great deal of energy in addition to ammunition. Is there a way to make one weapon consume both ammunition and energy, or is it an either/or proposition.

Thanks in advance, keep making that magic!

~Archon

Well I don't remember you, but welcome back all the same

1. Make sure you have Nova 1.0.10 and then read the bible. Some new additions have been made (hint: check the desc section).

2. Yeah, this is an either/or thing. But if your weapon is primary you could make two of them, one to use the ammo and the other to draw the energy.

@archon, on Jul 28 2006, 05:36 AM, said in Nova Plugin Question:

2: One of my weapons, a gauss/flack cannon, would propell shrapnel at very high velocity at the expense of a great deal of energy in addition to ammunition. Is there a way to make one weapon consume both ammunition and energy, or is it an either/or proposition.

How about this: say the gauss/flack cannon uses cartridges that each contain both physical ammo and a powerful source of explosive energy (antimatter, perhaps). Because each cartridge must be hooked up to the ship's generator in order to provide containment for the antimatter (or what-have-you), there is a continuous drain on the ship's fuel level proportional to the number of cartridges aboard. Each time you fire, the rate of energy drain decreases. You should be able to get this effect by giving the ammo's outf a second function: a fuel scoop with a negative value.

Another idea to try would be a weapon that went into an energy-draining "charged up" state in (many) combat situations, regardless of whether or not it was fired. Make a pair of weapons (as Guy suggested), but instead of making them both primary, make the ammo one be a secondary and make the energy one be a non-listed point-defense weapon with zero damage and a blank sprite.

Ah, awesome! I never thought to link it through the dësc resource.

I think for the gauss idea, I'll just go the route of the Railgun, saying that any little piece of scrap metal can be used since the projectiles are simple, small pieces of metal that can be stored in the thousands without taking up noticable mass or costing anything. Just crush a pop can and stick it in the tube.

There's one more bug I'm trying to work out involving a mission linked to a new përs, but I'm going to mess around with it a bit more and see if I can get it working. Thanks for the advice!

@dr--trowel, on Jul 29 2006, 04:29 AM, said in Nova Plugin Question:

How about this: say the gauss/flack cannon uses cartridges that each contain both physical ammo and a powerful source of explosive energy (antimatter, perhaps). Because each cartridge must be hooked up to the ship's generator in order to provide containment for the antimatter (or what-have-you), there is a continuous drain on the ship's fuel level proportional to the number of cartridges aboard. Each time you fire, the rate of energy drain decreases. You should be able to get this effect by giving the ammo's outf a second function: a fuel scoop with a negative value.

I think there's a problem with that one - modtypes added by ammunition won't be cleared until you open the player info or similar. I think.

@archon, on Jul 29 2006, 10:59 AM, said in Nova Plugin Question:

There's one more bug I'm trying to work out involving a mission linked to a new përs, but I'm going to mess around with it a bit more and see if I can get it working. Thanks for the advice!

Remember that you need to start a new pilot for any new pers you add as they are 'dead' by default.

@guy, on Jul 28 2006, 11:48 PM, said in Nova Plugin Question:

Remember that you need to start a new pilot for any new pers you add as they are 'dead' by default.

Ah that would be the problem.

How many hours did I waste fiddling around with the NCBs, systems, and përs trying to figure this one out? Thanks again!

And if you're interested, here's a render for one of the 4 ships I've fully implimented so far.

Those ships remind me of a certain MoBo, I just can't remember which device has a black one.

@archon, on Jul 29 2006, 03:59 AM, said in Nova Plugin Question:

...
And if you're interested, here's a render for one of the 4 ships I've fully implimented so far.

Nice, but perhaps you coud anti-alias the ships, especially for this kind of render.

@guy, on Jul 28 2006, 07:48 PM, said in Nova Plugin Question:

Remember that you need to start a new pilot for any new pers you add as they are 'dead' by default.

Or just use seant's app...

Bah, it's classic only. I can't run it.