Hello all.
So I've been working on a TC that uses all hand drawn graphics (and a story to go with it). Factions are done in separate styles. Shown below are some examples of pen, crayon, and marker.

All development on TCs had been halted due to having to work on inconvenient older machines. However, I've found Mission Computer (despite its frequent crashes) to be in the state where I can use it on my main machine. And thus, I seem to find all kinds of time to complete work.

Also in the time department, I quit my job of 10 years over a month ago. And now I have loads of time to work on this stuff.

A few some of you may recall a previous TC I had been working on. (Go back in time scenario) Well development has been indefinitely halted on that one. Mainly due to some unexpected technical constraints, that and there were some complexity issues. Now, there was an extensive "alternate ship construction theory" combined with a complex fighter system. These are interesting, and this project may eventually morph into a showcase plug. We'll see.

Anyway, back to Paper TC (name will probably change). I've been plugging away, and have some good results.
Interesting features thus far:
Wa'eks - 100% complete
• Organic living bug ships drawn in crayon.
• These ships are bought as a tiny larva, and as you feed them, they grow.
• What you feed them changes what they grow into.
• You can eat smaller bugs as food.
• Females can get pregnant and grow new bugs.
• Males can sell sperm on the market.
• Females can also steal sperm from disabled males. (Gruesome, I know)
• Weapons and ship systems are organic as well, they get different nutrients to make them grow into better weapons and systems.
• Likely to appeal to players who want to nurture and grow their ship through a variety of phases, eventually into a large capitol ship

Grapen - 90% complete
• Complex modular ships drawn with pen on graph paper.
• Extensive use of KeyCarried ships, and ship swapping, as you buy different components.
• Can change the role and loadout of carried fighters.
• Changeable weapons in-flight (PD/normal in-flight turret swap, gun mode changes (spread, long-range, etc.))
• Use of changing in-flight characteristics.
• Appeals to players who like the idea of re-arranging their ship. Focus on medium to large ships, and commanding smaller ships and fighters.

Planned faction development:
• Marker on cardboard - Large tough armored ships - probably a permanent enemy.
• Pencil sketches on various scraps of paper - animated to appear "sketchy". Similar play style to stock EVN. Probably have some elements of scavenging.
• One faction that features a "fighter pilot" campaign where you launch from a carrier to fight battles. You can re-arm, and change fighters at the carrier mid-battle. And if you get destroyed, you can eject. If you get back to the carrier, you can get a new fighter. --Feasibility test completed.
• An alien faction made from construction paper - not drawn. Animated.

Aside from the planned fighter campaign, the Wa'eks and Grapen are probably the most complex and challenging code wise. These are the hard ones, and they are nearly done. (And it IS complex)

My original idea was to have "in space" try to simulate various surfaces. Counters, paper, wood, etc. The implementation for these things just doesn't quite pull it off. So I'm moving forward with normal space backgrounds with drawn stars.
Stellars and stuff will feature various paper items, and these items may be themed by location. Post-its, memo pads, paperclips towards on location. Crayons, markers, recyclable paper in another. Newsprint, stamps, lined paper in another.
Still working on whether asteroids will be drawn, or simply paper scraps, or both. And the same for explosions.

Here are a couple of teaser screen shots showing the Grapen and Wa'eks
SS_1.jpg (48.59K)
Number of downloads: 94
Shown are a Wa'eks nymph (left) and a young male (right), with a small Grapen ship (center).
SS_2.jpg (50.32K)
Number of downloads: 86
Here the Grapen ship has just released his "warp wings" with a small nymph (top), and a young female (bottom).

Thoughts and comments welcome.

this is freaken awesome. Good luck with it!

if you need my help with anything, I would be willing to contribute. (I am good at drawing space ships)

Cheers,

Yoda

Hahaha, that looks brilliant and the game play sounds even better.

Have I told you lately that I love you?

I likes. Mind you, I'm pretty sure someone attempted a similar thing in the past but didn't manage to finish it, so maybe you could get some ideas off them. The thread should still be around here somewhere...

Ooooh! Make the explosion look like paper being crumbled up!

@desprez, on Mar 2 2008, 07:12 PM, said in Paper TC:

• Females can also steal sperm from disabled males. (Gruesome, I know)

I never imagined I'd be plundering seminal fluid in Escape Velocity.

Keep up the good work, it looks great!

I remember when you started this. It looks awesome. From the screenshots and the descriptions it looks like you've definitely outdone me in the TC department (Can't say for other TC's but your gameplay ideas are really top-notch). I really hope to see this released

@belthazar, on Mar 2 2008, 08:46 PM, said in Paper TC:

Mind you, I'm pretty sure someone attempted a similar thing in the past but didn't manage to finish it, so maybe you could get some ideas off them.

I think that was the same project. I'm not sure, though.

This post has been edited by Crusader Alpha : 02 March 2008 - 11:18 PM

^what they all said...

Ingenious.

Oh, damn. I just found the max cron limit of 512. For some reason I thought it was more, and the max is not listed in game constants in the bible.

I've not exceeded the max, mind you. But the index numbers do for spacing reasons. So now I have to manually re-number over 300 crons.
Hello setback city!

Edit: Oh, wait. I only have to change 100 or so.

This post has been edited by Desprez : 03 March 2008 - 12:32 AM

ConText/ResStore should dominate mass-renumberings.

Sketchfighter: Nova

This looks quite interesting. I'm guessing your using the gender selection to affect ship choice, or do you get to choose between male and female "ships" in the "shipyard"?

@joshtigerheart, on Mar 3 2008, 04:37 PM, said in Paper TC:

This looks quite interesting. I'm guessing your using the gender selection to affect ship choice, or do you get to choose between male and female "ships" in the "shipyard"?

Neither.
There are food outfits that your ship consumes during an "eating cycle", which are every 4, 8, or 16 days depending on ship size.
In addition there are hormone outfits. During the nymph stage you buy male or female hormones. When the eating cycle comes around, you ship will consume some, and slide you more towards male or female. Enough towards one or the other, and you get a permanent gender. So if you want to become say, male, you only buy male hormones.

In addition, your male or female biochemistry will effect weapon development. So that Cah'ros Sprayer (Stage II) upon hitting stage III will be a different weapon depending if your ship is male or female.

@Yoda,
I'm not opposed to other people contributing. At this point I have a pretty good idea of what I'm looking for, but send me some samples if you want, and maybe I can find a place for them. No promises though

Wonderful. The future of Nova just got brighter.

Human-voice sound effects to continue the scrappy made-at-home feel?

Can't wait to see what you do for the landing pics.... How about photos of dioramas that use stand-up paper cutouts?

@dr--trowel, on Mar 3 2008, 08:32 PM, said in Paper TC:

Wonderful. The future of Nova just got brighter.

Human-voice sound effects to continue the scrappy made-at-home feel?

Can't wait to see what you do for the landing pics.... How about photos of dioramas that use stand-up paper cutouts?

I was just going to post about help for sound effects, but that's really a great idea Dr. Trowel.
I was probably just going to make hand drawings for the landing pics, but that's not a bad idea either. That might be labor intensive though. Hmmm.

@dr--trowel, on Mar 4 2008, 07:32 AM, said in Paper TC:

Human-voice sound effects to continue the scrappy made-at-home feel?

I was making a human-voice sound effect plugin for standard Nova - I started a while ago, when someone I don't recall the name of challenged the EVDC to make a plugin with a recorded sound as a weapon sound. I've done about two-thirds of the sounds, but I've run out of noises I can make with my mouth that sound distinctly different when recorded and played back, so it kinda got stalled.

I've used recorded sounds for weapons before, but not i ntheir unedited form. Making a noise like a torpedo launch with your mouth, then sufficiently running it through assorted sound-editing filters til it doesn't sound like it came out of your mouth anymore, is a pretty decent way to make sounds in my experience.

But yeah, mouth sounds in an unedited form would be interesting.

@desprez, on Mar 4 2008, 05:28 AM, said in Paper TC:

I was probably just going to make hand drawings for the landing pics, but that's not a bad idea either. That might be labor intensive though. Hmmm.

Dioramas would be labor-intensive at the start, then get easier as you re-used elements in different combinations. You could get the same efficiency gain by sketching backgrounds and then simply laying your ship model cutouts on top of the background.

But with dioramas, you could have guest appearances from other toys. Break out the plastic dinosaurs! :laugh:

Quick update: (WARNING! Wall-of-text ahead!)

• Grapen are nearly done, I just need to complete art on a couple weapons, and do outfit/yard pics. And those shouldn't take long.
• Lots of weapon code ground work laid for a all the other factions. The weapon and fighter bay system is in place, now it's just a matter of plugging in different factions' items. (This framework was non-trivial)
• Did some early balancing.
• Beginning work on the Sketchi faction graphics.

---------------------
Long-winded discussion:
There are lot of mix-and-match missiles, launchers, fighters, bays.
This is neat to be able to buy from different places, but one thing that happens is that it can be hard to find what you need, and remember what everything does in the middle of a battle.

With a logical, and consistent naming system, things are easier to track. A lot of the organizational theory comes from a previous plug I was developing, it seemed to work well, but it does require getting familiar with it. I'll go over how it all comes together later.

For instance, I have four different missile launchers (+2 for fighters) that can all share various ammo.
• Forward Launcher - FWD - basic launcher, most compatable, fires 4 shots then a reload delay. Fires standard medium-range and long-range ship-to-ship missiles.
• Turret Launcher - TUR - also fires standard missiles, but out of a turret. fires 2 shots then a reload delay. Good for slow turning ships.
• Rack Launcher - RAK - fires standard missiles, but six all at once. This is intended to better saturate thick PD defenses.
• Forward XL Launcher - FWDX - fires large missiles. These include tough skinned high-yield missiles. Plus, a couple specialty (MIRV, EMP) missiles.
(There were more launchers, but I've stripped them out for this plug.)

Missile classes:
• MSS: medium range ship-to-ship missile
• LSS: Long range ship-to-ship missile
• MSSx: extra large medium range ship-to-ship
• _ _ _a: a relatively advanced missile of a particular class

I have plug space for four different standard missiles. These will vary between factions with different strengths and weaknesses.
Additionally, there are four variations of long range missiles. And again with large warhead missiles.
Also, some specialized missiles:
• MSSv: Medusa - This MIRV (misnomer) goes to it's target, then breaks into six separate warheads. Again, this is designed to defeat PD.
• MS: EMP - The EMP flies to the target then bursts into a radial spread that can hit fighters, missiles, and ships. It doesn't do much damage, but heavily ionizes targets and kills missiles.
Additionally, there is a specialized anti-fighter turret launcher (AF) that fires a specific missile. (AF - MSF: Crossbow)

Fighter based systems:
• Light Missile Rail - LT - holds short range missiles
• Medium Missile Rail - MD - holds medium range missiles
• Heavy Missile Rail - HV - holds medium/long range missiles/bombs (Not used in this plug probably)

Fighter based missile classes (plug space for 4 each):
• SFF: Short range fighter-to-fighter
• MFF: Medium range fighter-to-fighter
• MFS: Medium range fighter-to-ship

I may not use all the missiles, but I've built in the space so that things are easy to add later.
The effect is that one can buy different missiles from various factions and load them into your existing launchers. And certian launchers may only be available at certain factions. Going around and trying to get good combos will be advantageous.

Similar to the missiles, I've built in plug space for around 10 different fighter classes that can be used with different bays. (small, standard, and large bays)
So you can hold just about any fighter you come across, assuming you have the space for it. Wa'eks are a different story.
Additionally, the Grapen can change the role of their fighters. They have two basic classes, Orb and Bolo.
• Orb - light fighter, can swap between interceptor and strike roles.
• Bolo - medium fighter, can swap between fighter, strike, and escort roles.

I suppose at this point I should define some of my terminology and game-play theory.

Fighter: Any smallish ship up to 99 tons.
Ship: A space ship 100 tons or greater.

Light Fighter: approx 5-35 tons
Medium Fighter: approx 35-65 tons
Heavy Fighter: approx 65-99 tons

Small Ship: approx 100-250 tons
Medium Ship: approx 250-750 tons
Capitol Ship: approx 750-2000 tons
Large Capitol Ship: approx 2000-4000 tons

Fighter/Ship roles:
Interceptor - INT - Light-armored fast anti-fighter craft. Intended for short lived engagements using missiles.
Fighter - FTR - Heavier anti-fighter craft that can better sustain extended engagements, less reliance on missiles.
Strike - STK - Light anti-ship craft that employs anti-ship missiles at range. Cannot survive up close to large ships.
Attack - ATK - Heavier anti-ship vessel that has better armor and heavy guns.
Multi-role - MLT - Balance between anti-fighter and anti-ship roles. Designed to last extended engagements.
Escort - ESC - Emphasis on PD weaponry. Larger craft may also carry additional anti-fighter or anti-ship weaponry.
Patrol - PTL - Advanced scanners, and extended combat durations. (Not much use in this plug, probably)
Bomber - BMR - Anti-station/planet weaponry. (Probably not used in this plug)
Carrier - CAR - Ship that primarily uses fighters as weaponry.
Drone - DRN - Remotely-controlled kamikaze fighter loaded with explosives.
Shuttle - shl - Fighter sized cargo hauler. (Probably not used)

There are a bunch of lower-case (non-combat) role codes as well. (Like fgt, lux, mng, and others) I'll get to these in another posts about ships. Though honestly, they might not be used in this plug. The secondary weapon organization is out of necessity, but getting all specific with ships might not fit the flavor very well.

Ok, so how does this all work?
All of these things are fired using the secondary trigger, so they look like this:

You have some Khopesh ship-to-ship missles, some Cyclone ship-to-ship missiles, and a forward and turret launcher.
So the possible weapon cycling for these looks like this:
FWD - MSS: Khopesh - 10
FWD - LSS: Cyclone - 5
TUR - MSS: Khopesh - 10
You know what launcher is being used, followed by the missile class and name, then ammo remaining.
The Khopeshes can use both launchers, while the long-range Cyclone is limited to the forward launcher.

Ok, another example. This time with the Medusa, Khopesh, and Eagle, and the same launchers plus an XL launcher.
FWD - MSS: Khopesh - 10
FWD - MSS: Eagle - 8
FWDX - MSSv: Medusa - 4
TUR - MSS: Khopesh - 10
TUR - MSS: Eagle - 8

So, as you can see, things can get complicated. With an understanding of the naming system it can be parsed quickly.

Fighters get a similar treatment:
Since large ships may have a lot of different fighters, it can be hard to remember what they all do.
Say you have four Orb class interceptors, and five Bolos that are split between strike and escort roles.
The secondary weapon display contains the relevant info:
• INT: Lt - Orb • - 4
• STK: Md - Bolo • - 3
• ESC: Md - Bolo • - 2
Role, then size, then name, and finally number on hand.
(the "•" make it easy to distinguish fighters from other weapons)

Landing on any planet/station lets you re-tool the fighters, so the display lets you know quickly what you happen to have.
In the next battle you might need lots of anti-ship ordinance. You change their roles and you might see this:
• STK: Lt - Orb • - 4
• STK: Md - Bolo • - 5

Whew! I'll go over other weapons in a different post.

This post has been edited by Desprez : 04 March 2008 - 07:18 PM