Blackthorne Kestrel has been released!

The plug-in contains two plug-ins, Blackthorne Kestrel and Easy Deliver Kestrel Parts.

Blackthorne Kestrel gives you a truthful description of how much the Kestrel you get in the Deliver Kestrel Parts mission is weaker than the Atinoda Kestrel.

Easy Deliver Kestrel Parts gives you the possiblity to get the mission Deliver Kestrel Parts 100% of the time on all Independent planets. No combat rating is required either, so you can get it as soon as you start a pilot.

The download link is: http://www.ambrosias....php?addon=3434

I saw that my plug-in has 3 downloads. One of those is mine, when I tried that link in a E-Mail. But two of those are from other people. So people have downloaded it without so a much as a post that it is released. I wonder how people found out? By looking at the EV Add-ons? My plug-in is more popular than Flying High 2.1, which has 0 downloads. And it was earlier avaible at the Add-ons than mine as well I think. Because it says that in the date which is 08/30/2012. My plug-in says 08/17/2012, but was really avaible for download only on September 10. I don't know if 2 downloads in 3 days is stellar or not. Does a lot of time need to pass for a lot of downloads to happen? I guess 2 downloads is some interest anyway, and maybe more people will download now that I made a release topic? Question I would like a answer: Are people interested in my plug-in anyway?

I don't know how much people are interested, since my plug-in is small.

I hope people reply to this topic, so I know if people are interested or not.

To be brutally honest, the main point of what your plug does is to fix a single typo that is rarely seen. While it's great to fix mistakes, the interest in such a tiny fix is going to be equally tiny, especially given how few people play (or are even capable of playing) the original EV these days. That said, I must thank you for finding the error - I've corrected it in the rEV plug and have kept a note of it in case I ever need to update the EV port sometime

(edit) If you're interested, there are a number of other typos and minor errors in EV besides this one. Take a look at the "EV Fixes" file in EV Classic for Nova to see all the ones I'm aware of.

This post has been edited by Guy : 14 September 2012 - 06:55 AM

I've been watching the development of this plug-in since I came back here a little bit ago, and I have two comments:

1. Cool plug. It's a little explored aspect of the game, and it's nice to see people still interested in all the finer details of EV. Goes to show what a complete game it was/is.

2. You are ridiculously cute.

Well corrected. When i came across those Kestral parts a few months back the typo irritated me. Good work sir!

Guy: You say the main the point of my plug-in is to correct a single typo. Except that it isn't. The point of my plug-in is that a ship with 25 less shields, four less Missiles, and no Lightnings is not "not quite up to the Atinoda specs". And you get a truthful description how much the ship is weaker than the Kestrel.

Here is the description of the original Deliver Kestrel Parts Kestrel:

The Atinoda Kestrel is the most powerful ship available to civilians. In addition to its already formidable complement of weaponry, this sleek, black vessel carries a pair of Lightning fighter-bombers; this combination is the reason the Kestrel is classified as an escort frigate. Kestrels are manufactured here from subassemblies captured from a disabled freighter, and are discounted twenty percent off the regular price. Unfortunately, they aren't quite up to the Atinoda specs...

The original description has no typo to fix. The only thing I can think of that could be taken as a typo is that the original description says the discount is twenty percent. The actual discount is twentyfive percent.

Here is my version:

The Atinoda Kestrel is the most powerful ship available to civilians. And Kestrels are manufactured here from subassemblies captured from a disabled freighter, and are discounted twentyfive percent off the regular price. They are worse than the Atinoda version of the Kestrel, but not by much. They come with less shields, a few less Missiles, and with no Lightnings. This is perhaps the only thing that actually weakens it.

I changed almost everything - not just a single typo.

As for a tiny plug-in generating equally small interest: Flying High 2.1 is 7.9 MB and has only 3 downloads. When we compare the amount of downloads Flying High 2.1 and my plug-in have, my plug-in is massively more popular. When we only measure the amount downloads I have compared to it, not the actual amount of downloads. I have more than four times the downloads.

I have also had people downloads my plug-in faster- I had 6 downloads in the 2 first days.

After that, people have kept downloading it at a faster rate than Flying High 2.1. Though it has been slow.

Also, it has been the Add-ons for longer than my plug-in- since August 30, my plug-in has only been avaible since September 10.

A 7.9 MB plug-in is not small, shouldn't it have more interest because what you said about tinyness?

Here are two pictures that show what my description and the original are like.

The original Deliver Kestrel Parts Kestrel:

https://skydrive.liv...61AE866B274!264

My version of the same Kestrel:

https://skydrive.liv...61AE866B274!265

P.S. Earlier, people had downloaded my plug-in and Flying High had literally 0 downloads. And what's with the lack of interest in the newest version of Flying High?

Edit: My plug-in has gotten 2 more downloads! I thought people would no longer download it after it had gotten to 13 downloads. Now it's up to 15. Flying High 2.1, too has 2 more downloads, up to 5. It's interesting that it is always behind mine in download amounts. And yet still downloaded. No really, I wish I knew why it has so little downloads.

This post has been edited by General Cade Smart : 23 September 2012 - 12:17 PM

Sorry, I meant no disrespect to you or your work. I was under the impression that you made the plug after finding the twenty percent error.
My point was really just that the EV community as a whole is nothing close to what it was 10 years ago. Interest in the original EV on OS 9 is only a fraction of that of Nova and yet even the Nova board has only half a dozen active topics from the last month. So when you're asking about interest and how long it needs for a lot of downloads to happen, it really depends on how you measure it. If you compare downloads to the number of people who still play the original EV, you're probably reaching a high proportion of them

@guy, on 27 September 2012 - 12:40 AM, said in Blackthorne Kestrel released!:

If you compare downloads to the number of people who still play the original EV, you're probably reaching a high proportion of them

i think that the number of EV players is still probably relatively high, but the majority of us play EV via the EV TC for EVN; and thus rarely have any use for any EV plugs.

edit:
still too many acronyms in that last statement.

This post has been edited by daowei : 27 September 2012 - 12:48 AM

For what it's worth, General Smart, I'm glad you released this plug-in. EVC still deserves attention and respect. After all, EVN might never have come about if EVC wasn't made. More than that, the ships in EVC still influence my own ship modeling today. Plus, not only did you make a plug-in for EVC, you made one about a little-known aspect that might get others to play it more, others that might not have known about the Blackthorne Kestrel.

I salute you, General.

@daowei, on 27 September 2012 - 12:47 AM, said in Blackthorne Kestrel released!:

i think that the number of EV players is still probably relatively high, but the majority of us play EV via the EV TC for EVN; and thus rarely have any use for any EV plugs.

edit:
still too many acronyms initialisms in that last statement.

Fixed. Acronyms can be pronounced like words. Like NASA and NORAD. Initialisms are not words and are pronounced one letter at a time. Like FBI and GPS.

Sorry. Pet peeve.

@darthkev, on 28 September 2012 - 01:32 AM, said in Blackthorne Kestrel released!:

Acronyms can be pronounced like words. Like NASA and NORAD. Initialisms are not words and are pronounced one letter at a time. Like FBI and GPS.

The idea that acronyms need to be pronounceable is derived from an overliteral subservience to etymology, and has little basis in present or past usage of the word. Nor have I ever seen any sign of benefit from such a distinction, apart from giving people a point to complain about in others’ writing (much like the split infinitive, or parents who tell their children to say ‘may I’ instead of ‘can I’).

Personally I’ve only ever seen the word ‘initialism’ on Wikipedia, which in any other case would be grounds to remove it.

@daowei, on 27 September 2012 - 12:47 AM, said in Blackthorne Kestrel released!:

i think that the number of EV players is still probably relatively high, but the majority of us play EV via the EV TC for EVN; and thus rarely have any use for any EV plugs.

edit:
still too many acronyms in that last statement.

I think people mostly play the EVN Classic port.

Better?

@terr-vel, on 01 October 2012 - 05:09 PM, said in Blackthorne Kestrel released!:

daowei said:

i think that the number of EV players is still probably relatively high, but the majority of us play EV via the EV TC for EVN; and thus rarely have any use for any EV plugs.

I think people mostly play the EVN Classic port.

Better?

I think you two are saying the same thing. :ninja:

However, I completely agree- I play the EVN classic port if I'm playing classic, mostly because classic doesn't even run on my old-school imac very well (too fast). And that machine is at least 12 years old. I wish that some of the old features (flares) worked properly, but I'll deal and just use the new port.

@meaker-vi, on 02 October 2012 - 10:15 AM, said in Blackthorne Kestrel released!:

I think you two are saying the same thing. :ninja:

However, I completely agree- I play the EVN classic port if I'm playing classic, mostly because classic doesn't even run on my old-school imac very well (too fast). And that machine is at least 12 years old. I wish that some of the old features (flares) worked properly, but I'll deal and just use the new port.

I was trying to help shorten his (what he felt was) overly long post.

While we are on the subject of small errors...

In the Deliver Kestrel Parts mission, the name of the commodity you get on your ship has rubbish at the end.

You can see this by going to a Commodity Exchange. You will see Kestrel Subassembl ) and a box character.

Look at this picture: https://skydrive.liv...61AE866B274!270 .

Then press zoom in. The magnifying lense. At least the cursor looks like a that in Firefox.

Then you can read the text.

Also: When you finish the mission, you are mentioned a 20% discount. The actual discount is 25%, so this is the same typo as in the ship description. Or whatever you call that when something is actually different from what the text reads.

I have also a picture of that.

https://skydrive.liv...61AE866B274!272

Zoom in that too to be able to read the text.

Will Guy fix these? He said he fixed the ship description thing in rEV.

Edit: Made tbe link work for the Commodity Exchange picture.

This post has been edited by General Cade Smart : 04 October 2012 - 10:25 AM

Perhaps the people of Blackthorne are not notable for their precision. And given that the missing Lightnings are worth a million credits each, the discount isn't actually very large at all.

Thanks for spotting the other desc error, I've made a note of that one too. I won't be releasing an update just to fix a typo or two but if ever I do update it for some reason, these will get fixed.
Can't reproduce the bracket and the box but the string gets cut short simply because it's too long to fit in the window. For the record, Nova doesn't list mission cargo there so the issue doesn't occur in the port anyway.

P.S. If I do update the port, I will probably also implement Qaanol's "Active Flares" to make flares manually operated like the original. They still won't actually attract missiles though.

This post has been edited by Guy : 03 October 2012 - 11:59 PM