I've been a fan of Ambrosia's games since EV, but I feel that arcade games just wont cut it anymore...so I have an idea. I'm pretty sure most people have heard of Bungie Software (if not, they're a really high tech game producer). Anyway, maybe you (Ambrosia) could make a contract with them to make a 3D version of EV. In this game, you are in the pilots seat of your ship. Similar to Wing Commander or X-Wing. To land and take off, you would need to come to the right speed to enter the planets atmosphere and similarly to take off you need the right speed. Boarding ships would be the same and so on. Not only would you be able to fight in space, but also on the ground if the mission that you are in has fighting in it. Being hired as an escort in a bar or by a frantic ship in space would not be the only thing you could do. Sign up for a fighter and become an interceptor pilot on a cruiser. Network play via a bungie.net server would be another thing that fans have looked for in EV for a long time. This is just an idea for now, but I think that its possible...

(This message has been edited by Whurp (edited 02-15-2000).)

Actually, why stop there? You should make it so that you can leave your ship for the express purpose of fighting people. You could be able to pick up weapons along the way, and pick up ammo and stuff. And there would be lots of enemies that pretty much look the same.
Aww, hell, scrap that and make another first-person shooter!
No offense, but I'm just a tad bit not enthusiastic about this idea. But thats just me.

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EVula
(url="http://"mailto:evula@home.com")mailto:evula@home.com(/url)evula@home.com

i wasnt actually thinking of first person shooter...but maybe a movie in which your character is fighting

Heh, I know that isn't what you're thinking; I'm actually making fun of you.
However, think about plugins. How would you go about making them? You'd all of a sudden have a hell of a lot more data to put into a plugin, and if you give the project to Bungie, it won't be Mac-only, so you will need a sperate program to make them, since you won't be able to do everything in the resource fork.

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EVula
(url="http://"mailto:evula@home.com")mailto:evula@home.com(/url)evula@home.com

EV/O is Matt Burch's game. Matt Burch is done with EVO (unless there is a bug in 1.0.2b3)

Meaning, there will not be anymore EV's after that. Period.

As to EVula...
Its actually VERY easy to do plug-ins. You can still use ResEdit-TMPL style programming for them, however, all new graphics would require a 3Dfile.

So, instead you would have to have a "Plug-in data" folder and a "Plug-in Graphics" folder, using 3DMF files. Or just have the game look for two file types as EVO does (QT and plugs) in one folder. Crap, it would be BETTER, assuming everyone could make a 3D file. No more stupid spins or masks or 36 picts, just tell the weap or ship file to load up "Confederate.3DMF" and how big or "transparent" it was....that would be cool....

To Whurp again, keep in mind Ambrosia doesn't make games as a "whole". andrew would tell you "everyone has there own projects that they work on, except for me, I run the company, so I can jack around"
Just kiddin'!

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Unix for business
Linux for development
BeOS for media
Mac OS for productivity
Windows for solitaire

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mikee J wrote:
**EV/O is Matt Burch's game. Matt Burch is done with EVO (unless there is a bug in 1.0.2b3)

Meaning, there will not be anymore EV's after that. Period.
**

Wrong. Escape Velocity is a game that Matt Burch authored with a significant amount of programming and creative assistance from Ambrosia. Simple example #1: who thought of the idea that you should be able to capture other ships and take them into your fleet? Yours truly. Check the secret about box for a record of this.

Simple example #2: the monitor_tool code, sound_tool code, and other important pieces of code that drive the game were authored by Ambrosia.

That's not to downplay Matt's role -- he did a great job producing an incredibly fun game, there's no question about it. However, before you shoot your mouth off, consider that you're essentially clueless when it comes to knowing exactly what went into EV's development.

Ambrosia retains the copyright on the product, and we can do things with EV with or without Matt Burch (though of course, he'll always continue to receive royalties from the original Escape Velocity and EV: Override).

Secondly, since you specifically mention EV: Override, I should point out that in that case, only the game engine was done by Matt Burch (which is essentially the same as the original Escape Velocity engine, with a few enhancements thrown in). The scenerio was done by someone else enitrely (check the credits -- a pair of gents from England).

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**
To Whurp again, keep in mind Ambrosia doesn't make games as a "whole". andrew would tell you "everyone has there own projects that they work on, except for me, I run the company, so I can jack around"
Just kiddin'!
**

Yes, and thanks for your consistently rude comments (I'm referring to another post folks, not this one, and a long history with good old Mikeej). It's a good thing they're so incredibly cluless that I find them entertaining.

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Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

Im sure that in the future (dont know when) there will be a EV3D (or something like that).
i think that we just have to wait and see.

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CaptainG3
ICQ:31162561
AIM:CaptnG3

Have any of you seen Exobattle? It a 3d space flight simulator by Matt Burch (You can get it off his website) were you are in a ship of some sort that looks like a Manta. The source code is also availible for download. I'm sure if someone wanted they could make a 3dEV of of that.....

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100 bottles of beer on the wall, 100 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it arround, 99 bottles of beer on the wall.....

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mikee J wrote:
Its actually VERY easy to do plug-ins. You can still use ResEdit-TMPL style programming for them...

Hey, nifty, I got misunderstood!
First off: If Ambrosia went to Bungie, I can assure you that Bungie wouldn't 'waste' their time making a Mac-only game. This means cross-platform support.
Second off: If it is cross-platform, the plugins can't have a resource fork. Windoze doesn't recognize them; as I recall, it basically deletes the entire fork. This means no ResEdit.
Third off: No Res-Edit means that you would need a seperate program to write plugins. Which is exactly what I said. Thank you.

Oh, as for making 3DMF models of ships: yeah, that would be cool. But keep in mind that he was talking about getting out of the space ship. You would need 3d files for: ship exterior, ship interior, weapons, outfits, characters, planets (terrain), locations on those planets (spaceports), any extra stuff at the spaceports, boxes (when you jettison ) as well as probably a dozen other things that I can't think of.

Well, I hope I've shot down the idea.

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EVula
(url="http://"mailto:evula@home.com")mailto:evula@home.com(/url)evula@home.com

ut what about a network version? Everyody would need the same plugs, but I think it could be made to work? How feasable is that?

Drew
Send any insults or threats to andrewnsutherland@hotmail.com

How utterly ridiculous. It's a great idea in theory, but 3d, multiplayer, and non-Ambrosia? Ambrosia always has been and will be an independent software company, helping programmers with innovative ideas, like Matt Burch and Ben Spees. The memory and computer power to run this sort of affair would be mind-boggling: as if it wasn't hard enough to do EV multiplayer as it was. It would be great for a commercial game. The whole idea would basically negate the values of EV as we know it - a small, highly expandable game.

I'd say there might be a small chance Ambrosia might do this sort of project, but Ambrosia really goes for new innovations, not recycling old games. Myself, I'd rather see an EV/Ares hybrid - independent fleet command.

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ColdFusion

I'm waiting for the day when "this side up" arrows appear on grocery bags.

Exactly! That was the whole point in my making fun by saying 'lets make this into a first-person shooter.' The memory requirements are constantly going up in the genre.
Anyway, I agree that an Ambrosia-Bungie project would be bad. It would kinda 'taint' Ambrosia, as far as the whole "mac only" thing goes.

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EVula
(url="http://"mailto:evula@home.com")mailto:evula@home.com(/url)evula@home.com

(url="http://"http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~mburch/exobattle/faq.html")Exobattle FAQ(/url).

matt burch wrote:

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Is this Escape Velocity 3D?

No. But if you want, you can use the Exobattle source code as a stepping stone to writing your own 3D space game!

anyone else think he was hinting at something???
he has released the source code, too.

speaking of exobattle, anyone else having trouble running it on OS 9?

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I wasn't speaking of a 3-D game or a multi platfrom, but just a muilti player. A thing like that, even over just a local network, would be sompthing to see. I'm not talking about any online network with a universe populated aith people not AI's. Anybody get what I'm talking about?

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What do you mean, I've got to get a life?

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OctoberFost wrote:
**Have any of you seen Exobattle? It a 3d space flight simulator by Matt Burch (You can get it off his website) were you are in a ship of some sort that looks like a Manta. The source code is also availible for download. I'm sure if someone wanted they could make a 3dEV of of that.....

**

whats matts website?

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OctoberFost wrote:
I'm sure if someone wanted they could make a 3dEV of of that.....

I think Mikee's writing a 3DEV from the source code

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Andrew Meilstrup / JAE / Coruscant Software, unInc.

(url="http://"http://www.blackrockmac.com/ajm/")My website(/url), (url="http://"http://www.blackrockmac.com/ajm/corusoft/")the Coruscant Software website(/url)

(url="http://"mailto:ajmeilstrup@mac.com")mailto:ajmeilstrup@mac.com(/url)ajmeilstrup@mac.com

for all of those people complaining about my idea...i'd like to say that i got it from the start up screens on EV/O. also, bungie wouldnt be making "EV 3D" they could make a totally new title and such...with a similar rpg/action-in-space genre

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Whurp wrote:
**for all of those people complaining about my idea...i'd like to say that i got it from the start up screens on EV/O. also, bungie wouldnt be making "EV 3D" they could make a totally new title and such...with a similar rpg/action-in-space genre
**

Even if somebody made it, it would be huge and run as fast as a Confed Crusier. There are to many ways to expand on a game like EV, and to try to do them all just won't work.

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What do you mean, I've got to get a life?

Thats funny andrew (Welch) I have strange memories of you saying that EV was "Matt Burch's game" in reponse to a question about the future of EV and how there wasn't going to be anymore. I do know that EV:O was by Burch and someone else, however, if Matt is not going to write up anymore engines, then your are simply going to just add new resource fork data to an existing engine and charge for that. At any rate it would be a EVO with new resources and another price tag, don't get me wrong, that would be more than fair....

Now, I was reponding to the idea of a "3Dev". Matt, I assume, won't be writting another EV engine, especially a 3D one like he described. So all these cool ideas and features people talk about WON'T go into any future engine, unless its done by someone else.... and you have been giving the vibe that no one else wants to dedicate that much time to it...

And in response to you post on the other board about 3D games = $$$ hardware, 3D games DON'T require that much hardware. Honestly, space games make wonderful low-RAM games. Consider Quake for a second, all those walls, floors, ceilings and such require all sorts of framing and high-quality patterns to make it look good.
3D Space games, of course, only require a nice black background, some stars and the following objects for each "system"
a planet
an atmosphere
a station
enemy ships
asteriods perhaps...
and a few other things if you like...

Compare the amount of framing in THAT as compared to something like Quake.
And about me being rather rude, I was proving a point about you that I argued with someone a while back... I hope he is reading this =P

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Unix for business
Linux for development
BeOS for media
Mac OS for productivity
Windows for solitaire

(This message has been edited by mikee J (edited 02-13-2000).)

Why don't we worry about an Escape Velocity Multiplayer first? It would be easier to make, and would still retain all of the aspects of Escape Velocity (instead of a completely new game, which an EV3D would make). And in my opinion, an EV/O Multiplayer would be a heck of alot more fun than a EV3D.

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"Mess with the best, die like the rest!"
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