I haven't played FH or FF, though I grabbed the Override port mainly in the hope that I would be able to do so (not yet, apparently, alas).

It may be banal, but my main observation from playing Nova, Override, and a bunch of TCs or extensions, is that a good ev game design has to fine tune the management of boredom.
Sounds silly, but what I mean is that the stock action of deliveries, travel, one-shot missions, etc., is mildly entertaining, and worth continuing for a while just to deepen your appreciation of the universe. (I love how the bar descriptions in Polycon are correlated with distance from your starting point to give the impression that you gradually develop a taste for eyes.) Past a certain point, though, it is just really tedious. Somewhere there is a brief interval of near-boredom, where you are still having some fun, but if a whole bunch of new opportunities suddenly opens up, you're ecstatic. In my experience, this is the most fun ev delivers.

The reams of cool new ideas you have listed sound fabulous; my only comment is that they would be even more fabulous if they became accessible in a series of well-timed bursts.

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It is not enough to learn how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem.

Quote

Originally posted by Student of Trinity:
**I haven't played FH or FF, though I grabbed the Override port mainly in the hope that I would be able to do so (not yet, apparently, alas).

It may be banal, but my main observation from playing Nova, Override, and a bunch of TCs or extensions, is that a good ev game design has to fine tune the management of boredom.
Sounds silly, but what I mean is that the stock action of deliveries, travel, one-shot missions, etc., is mildly entertaining, and worth continuing for a while just to deepen your appreciation of the universe. (I love how the bar descriptions in Polycon are correlated with distance from your starting point to give the impression that you gradually develop a taste for eyes.) Past a certain point, though, it is just really tedious. Somewhere there is a brief interval of near-boredom, where you are still having some fun, but if a whole bunch of new opportunities suddenly opens up, you're ecstatic. In my experience, this is the most fun ev delivers.

The reams of cool new ideas you have listed sound fabulous; my only comment is that they would be even more fabulous if they became accessible in a series of well-timed bursts.

**

Erm, without wishing to be rude, I think you should find a copy of EVO and play it. Again, without wishing to blow my own trumpet, Frozen Heart is not like any other plugin. You may love it, or you may hate it, but it will either exceed or fall below your expectations substantially.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evo&category;=plugins&display;=downloads&file;=FrozenHeart104.sit.bin")Frozen Heart(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evo&category;=plugins&display;=downloads&file;=FemmeFatale.sea.bin")Femme Fatale(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl?path=evo/plugins&file;=Frozen Heart - the No.hqx")Frozen Heart - the Novel(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
**

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**The original novel was as much about moral philosophy as archaeology. Lars Sřrensson: Christian, Alana de Quinet: utilitarian, Virana Chabarti: Hobbesian egoist, Mordillo, agnostic existentialist, Piper: nihilist/übermensch

I kind of feel I've done the Christian character. The next storyline is about Mordillo, because after the Vayella Ays character in Femme Fatale, it was always going to be. This will take Mordillo deep into the anti-hero world, although maybe he comes out the other side different.

Importantly, all of the various moral positions of the characters make perfect sense to them. Femme Fatale was a further exploration of that idea - when a character has developed a particular moral view and discovers progressively that they have a past which conflicts with it.

**

Wonderful. Perhaps rename the "bar" button something like "community," and have your photos & descriptions show not just bars but also other kinds of places where people congregate and talk -- temples, town halls, plazas, markets, post/communication offices, theaters, stadiums, etc. This would let you give snapshots of motivations and beliefs for a wider range of individuals and sociocultural subgroups, at a rate of one group per planet. Gambling, news reading, hiring, and job seeking are plausible at all these places.

**

I've been thinking about your post. The idea of exploring other cultures beyond what FH currently does appeals to me a lot.

Obviously, one of the innovations in FH which was particularly appreciated by the non-English speaking players was the acknowledgement that there is more than one language in the world. French, Dutch, German, Turkish all make their appearances in the game.

In extending the universe, I'm bringing in a number of clusters which are alluded to in the original Introduction - worlds and groups that have been cut off from galactic civilisation for some time, and have developed in their own way. Each cluster has a different kind of development. A Turkic speaking cluster has gone into various kinds of insularity, in the way in which the Turkic speaking peoples did subsequent to the end of the Ottoman empire. On the other hand, a humanistic cluster develops a planet entirely devoted to a library project, and another where science is the official religion and all others are forbidden. In another cluster one world has been the fashion leader, but it is a backwater which becomes the main link to the core worlds - as a result, the fashion leader becomes unfashionable and all the new wealth and ideas are channelled through the despised world - result, well, I let you know.

Anyway, just to thank you for inspiring me to create some of these clusters. I'll see where it all takes me.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evo&category;=plugins&display;=downloads&file;=FrozenHeart104.sit.bin")Frozen Heart(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evo&category;=plugins&display;=downloads&file;=FemmeFatale.sea.bin")Femme Fatale(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl?path=evo/plugins&file;=Frozen Heart - the No.hqx")Frozen Heart - the Novel(/url)

Neat ideas! It sounds like exploring these clusters will be very interesting.

The problem with advice such as mine is that it can lead to never-ending development of background, at the expense of the actual story. At least, that's the problem I've had with several of my (pen & paper) RPG projects. The process of building believable worlds and universes is pretty enjoyable, though!

So I sort of feel like the more I say, the longer it might be until I actually get to play your plug. But I can't help myself from underlining this point: each world is vast, and a lot of your planets are going to to have large populations. With my bar/community suggestion, I was trying to expand the options for exploring the internal diversity of each world. Your stacked spobs have much the same effect, which I appreciated.

Keep up the excellent work! If nothing else, from reading through this topic I can see that it has gotten a lot of other good EV developers to think creatively. I hope you don't mind if (non-story) ideas pioneered here show up in other people's plugs.

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OK, I downloaded the original EVO, and am now trying The Frozen Heart. I confess that I spoke without knowledge. It's different all right. You will be an interesting chap to have in (Old) Brussels, Mr Turner, with your "trilingual/drietalig/langue dominante"!

As to feature requests, given what I now realize you are doing: economics.

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It is not enough to learn how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem.

Quote

Originally posted by Student of Trinity:
**
As to feature requests, given what I now realize you are doing: economics.

**

I don't think that's going to help much. What context are you using for economics and why have it in in the storyline? Elaborate

--gav

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~~ SARZ, WZ ~~ **SARZ
~~ |-(DUKEr)-| // ~~
~~ -(FOX)- ~~
**

I figured that if Martin has any inspirations along these lines, one word would be enough to indicate that someone wanted them. Now, I'm not through with FH, and haven't started FF, so maybe this sort of thing is actually already in them. But what I mean is this.

Trade is a big part of the game engine, but it generally offers a very comic-book version of economics. What is the point in bringing ten tons of food, say, to an entire planet? Even ten thousand tons hardly seems enough to be worth shipping between worlds. Making this sort of thing out to be the pulse of far-future commerce is like imagining that today's economy consists mainly of such enterprises as flying a Cessna full of corn flakes from Kansas to Calcutta. Shipping such minuscule cargos of food, machinery, etc. between planets with populations in billions should be, at most, a tiny niche in the galactic economy.

But with some re-interpretation it could all be made more plausible, and even interesting enough to make some major plotlines around. Ten tonnes of food may be nothing, but ten tonnes of cell lines for a new generation of virus-resistant hydroponic beans might perhaps make a difference to a whole world. Instead of ten tonnes of 'equipment', think ten tonnes of starter colony for a self-assembling nanobot factory. Whatever. I'm not urging the invention of dozens of new junks, but rather the replacement of the standard trade items with more plausibly significant equivalents.

Cargos don't have to become so powerful that ten tonnes can change the universe, just significant enough that commerce would really matter. Then it would become interesting to work into the game things like trade wars, embargoes, minor industrial revolutions, etc. There could be plot lines that involve setting up new trade routes, against whatever initial opposition, that would result not only in changed commodity availability and pricing, but in major changes to whole worlds, and changed ship traffic patterns.
A backwater could boom, a hub collapse, as a result of player actions.

A lot could be done, and clearly Martin could do it well if he chose to. (E.g. add some more of his 'duplicate' spobs, such as 'Rigel IV Black Market'.) I think it would fit with the themes of corporate power and injustice that figure so prominently in his universe. He says he's thinking about making a diplomat string. Why not a merchant string?

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It is not enough to learn how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem.

Woohoo!

That said, the only "suggestions" I have are for storylines, which I'm sure you have covered.

I liked all of the character development in FH & FF, and especially the moral and political choices.

Bring on the ethical dilemmas, Martin! Howsabout some genetic /creating a "master race" vs. "curing genetic illnesses" problemas?

Or "individual freedoms vs. the welfare of the masses" kinda thingys?

I repeat, woohoo!

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Grave-digging approved by Chamrin

I was wondering what's going on with FH2? You had told us that it was complete, but you were asking for features. What's going on with FH2?

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Quote

Originally posted by kauthor:
**Grave-digging approved by Chamrin

I was wondering what's going on with FH2? You had told us that it was complete, but you were asking for features. What's going on with FH2?

**

Martin's finished porting Frozen Heart to Nova. He still has yet to port Femme Fatale and finish the new game. He will not be releasing any of them until all 3 are complete.

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no fair, FH2s gonna be for nova. :frown: I suppose I'm a alone on this, I don't like nova. The engine is all very nice, but there is nothing new, exept its price. I have no intention of registering it so I won't be able to play FH2. Its just not fair. :frown:

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Well, if you don't consider it worthwhile to upgrade, don't upgrade. I personally would've felt that FH2 was reason enough to pay $30...

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Mike Lee (Firebird)
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