The syndicate's ships are the best in the game. Buy them.

Syndicate ships are lame. Not only are they butt-ugly, they don't have the speed nor protection of some of the other ships. I prefer the Maskirovka Corvette and the Blockade Runner, also from Maskirovka.

I have not made much progress with HoD yet. I'll try to get around to it. First of all I've been playtesting it a bit to get a complete idea of what all needs fixing, and I'm starting to get some interesting ideas...

Maskirovka? someone ripped a name off from the original Clavius and Beyond plug...

Actually, I think it's in the original EVC. Read the Corvette's dësc in EVC for Nova.

QUOTE (darthkev @ Mar 22 2010, 07:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Syndicate ships are lame. Not only are they butt-ugly, they don't have the speed nor protection of some of the other ships. I prefer the Maskirovka Corvette and the Blockade Runner, also from Maskirovka.

I guess that is true in some ways, but they definitely have the best weapons.

If that's right, I better not change the name of that one station in my Clavius rEVisited project. I thought someone had misspelled "maskirova", which is usually said to be Russian for "camouflage", but that's not entirely a fair comparison, really.

Maskirovka was a little-known ship-design corporation in EVC, their only ship being the Corvette. In Realm of Prey, Tim Isles expanded on the Maskirovka line of ships, something he did in a lot of his Empire TCs, as well.

QUOTE (oryhara @ Mar 21 2010, 08:52 PM)

I guess that is true in some ways, but they definitely have the best weapons.

Weapons that the player can mount on any ship. I much prefer to go buy their stuff and put it on another ship rather than use theirs. Besides, Syndicate ships don't show up for purchase until close to the end of the game. I'm not going to go buy one and then run around outfitting it when I've used another ship for practically the entire story already.

On the topic of RoP ships, though, I once went through the entire Earth string using a Cargo Hauler. Not easy, but possible. Also, not Qaanol's famed shuttle run, but still something. Another time I captured a Faction Light Frigate and took it through the Earth string. Man, those Faction soldiers never knew what hit them...

On that topic, my favorite thing to do in RoP is capture a Legion of Honor Heavy Warship in the Earth String. It only gets better when I get the Anti-Viral cannon and the Compressor Beam.

QUOTE (Geek @ Mar 24 2010, 12:35 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

On that topic, my favorite thing to do in RoP is capture a Legion of Honor Heavy Warship in the Earth String. It only gets better when I get the Anti-Viral cannon and the Compressor Beam.

LOL I've actually done that before.

I'm still waiting for HoD to be posted. Is anything happening there? (Sorry to be so pushy.)

Okay okay...

Here you go. Here is a quick and dirty upload of HoD, Mac and PC versions. Since I don't have Windows available, I can't guarantee the usefulness of the Windows translation, and I welcome any volunteer who wishes to take care of the Mac-to-PC conversion for me. The Mac version includes a simple launcher app, made from Guy's template. The icon stinks, but I can't make a better one for now. No read-me is included, but most of MacDevil's original post applies. You WILL need a copy of the official port of EV Classic to run this. My download includes only the plugins and an optional plugin that couples with my expansion of the explosions, and allows you to purchase variants of ships.

Download for Mac
Download for Windows

-----

Changes so far:

- Integrated my default explosion expansion into the main data. An optional plug for ShipVariants (making variants of ships available in shipyards for the choosy) will be available with the same explosions.

- Integrated Guy's Nova Roid Fix for Hi-res monitors. The asteroids are a bit nova-rized, but they do work better for screens with res higher than 1024x768.

- Fixed a bug with a bulk shipping mission.

- Implemented an incomplete gövt classing scheme, hopefully to enable ways to customize availability of generic missions. The changes do not affect normal gameplay in any way, but are being made as groundwork for a possible expansion of the generic merchant missions.

Changes I wish to get done (but I am not delaying a release for):

- Customize the default generic merchant missions (using the govt-classing I'm working on) so that missions offered in one government's space will not go to the enemy's space, with exceptions for independent guilds and Atinoda (who could care less for shipping restrictions). May add additional "Dangerous" missions that involve deliberately smuggling commodities across war borders for extra risk and higher pay. (All these changes are non-essential, but could add a little realism and flavor)

- Make HoD fully compatible with Guy's unofficial port of EVC. HoD currently runs on the official port, and I have had to make general fixes in the plug to compensate for bugs in the official port. Since I don't know what is involved to make HoD work perfectly with Guy's port, I can only recommend the official port for now.

This post has been edited by Geek : 05 April 2010 - 01:08 AM

Hm... what did you change in HOD_graphics (not HOD_graphics 2 and 3, just the non-numbered file)? For some reason, I can't open the Windows version of it in EVNEW, which I could do for MacDevil's version. This would be okay, except the Windows version has many, many cases of '' becoming... õ, I think, though that may be just '... and it appears the planet descriptions are in, er, HOD_graphics.

This post has been edited by LordInsane : 09 April 2010 - 08:54 AM

Well, I did a bunch of new explosion sprites (just different sizes and colors), and I tweaked all the ships so that they actually have a real final explosion, which the official port of EVC always lacked. I also removed rlë8 resources in favor of the better rlëD (and to save space, since few computers are incapable of handling the rlëD. Of course, the problem may even have been from the conversion to PC by MissionComputer.

I suppose I could try adding back in the rlë8 resources, and maybe attempting a native PC conversion when I eventually get Windows 7 dual-booting (for college purposes), but that will be a wait for an update either way. If you have EVNEW, maybe you can help me find the issue, and we can collaborate to make it work for all Windows users as well as Mac.

QUOTE (Geek @ Apr 9 2010, 08:17 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, I did a bunch of new explosion sprites (just different sizes and colors), and I tweaked all the ships so that they actually have a real final explosion, which the official port of EVC always lacked. I also removed rlë8 resources in favor of the better rlëD (and to save space, since few computers are incapable of handling the rlëD. Of course, the problem may even have been from the conversion to PC by MissionComputer.

I suppose I could try adding back in the rlë8 resources, and maybe attempting a native PC conversion when I eventually get Windows 7 dual-booting (for college purposes), but that will be a wait for an update either way. If you have EVNEW, maybe you can help me find the issue, and we can collaborate to make it work for all Windows users as well as Mac.

I've got EVNEW; what, specifically, is the problem you're having?

QUOTE (Geek @ Apr 9 2010, 01:17 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I suppose I could try adding back in the rlë8 resources, and maybe attempting a native PC conversion when I eventually get Windows 7 dual-booting (for college purposes), but that will be a wait for an update either way. If you have EVNEW, maybe you can help me find the issue, and we can collaborate to make it work for all Windows users as well as Mac.

I can try (after all, the reason why I found it was that I was messing around with the files to fix the Wierd Symbols issue), though I suppose I should try whether HoD works on Windows, now that I've found the vanilla EV Classic conversion again- that it doesn't open in EVNEW is not large an issue, just a bit annoying if you want to correct and/or change something.

There is something quite wierd with the Windows HoD_graphics- I tried starting the game with this conversion and the vanilla Classic port, and it crashed- with the same stated problem as trying to start HOD with Guy's port! Switch out the HoD_graphics for MacDevil's, however, and it starts- but the problem with Guy's port apparently lies with CICN resources, who, if I understood you correctly, you didn't change.
I'll try downloading the Mac version you provided, and converting it on my end, to see if that changes anything.

Funny, considering I've been using it on the vanilla port all this time. Maybe I should switch to Guy's port, and work on getting it running on that now. As for Windows, I'm still not sure what's causing its issues. On a side note, I started fixing HoD as a just-for-fun project, and I have never intended to maintain it officially. Still, I'll be glad to do what I can, when I get around to it.

I'm still wanting to do the AbsoluteMinimum thing. Does someone have a Mac version they can toss my way?

EDIT: Just to show I'm not a snooty dev person, here is a link to some plugs you can test if you want. They are the original HoD Graphics plug and the explosion expansion plug that I made, both converted to PC format by MissionComputer 4.0.7. The HoD Graphics plug in my "release" is simply these two plugs combined into one, with resources from my expansion overwriting the vanilla resources. My expansion plug added the explosions, associated spïn and bööm resources, and overwrote all the shïp resources with new settings for explosions types. Maybe you can mix and match, and get something that works on Windows.
link

This post has been edited by Geek : 12 April 2010 - 07:14 AM

QUOTE (Geek @ Apr 12 2010, 01:06 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Funny, considering I've been using it on the vanilla port all this time. Maybe I should switch to Guy's port, and work on getting it running on that now. As for Windows, I'm still not sure what's causing its issues. On a side note, I started fixing HoD as a just-for-fun project, and I have never intended to maintain it officially. Still, I'll be glad to do what I can, when I get around to it.

I'm still wanting to do the AbsoluteMinimum thing. Does someone have a Mac version they can toss my way?

EDIT: Just to show I'm not a snooty dev person, here is a link to some plugs you can test if you want. They are the original HoD Graphics plug and the explosion expansion plug that I made, both converted to PC format by MissionComputer 4.0.7. The HoD Graphics plug in my "release" is simply these two plugs combined into one, with resources from my expansion overwriting the vanilla resources. My expansion plug added the explosions, associated spïn and bööm resources, and overwrote all the shïp resources with new settings for explosions types. Maybe you can mix and match, and get something that works on Windows.
link

No worries; I've gotten your version to be openable in EVNEW, and working in game. It seems MissionComputer 4.0.7's bin-to-rez process produces different result than the converter coming with Win-EVN (wierdly, the converted-from-Mac file not only is different in working for Windows, it also has 4 more resources :huh: ). It seems there is something in HoD Graphics- not the explosion expansion- that MC's converter doesn't quite agree with.

I assume you used the plugin converter included with the PC version of EVN? I'll download the files and see if I can get it working in WINE. Maybe I can get a better PC conversion next time.