For those of you who participated in testing EV Override 1.0.2fc2, I'd like to thank you for your help and enthusiasm. Thanks to you, we found and fixed a number of glitches in EV Override 1.0.2 -- kudos for catching them and helping us make EV Override 1.0.2 a clean, stable release. Moving ahead, we now have EV Override 1.0.2fc3 available (please see below for details).

For those of you who are new to this, we have been working on EV Override 1.0.2, which adds a significant number of changes to the game that are of direct interest to plugin developers. We think that it's ready to go, but we'd like to do a semi-public beta test of it first. Thus, the reason I am posting this message here.

I'm assuming that if you are reading the EV Developer's web board, you have an interest in developing plugins for EV/EVO -- we'd like you to try out what we think will be the release version of EV Override 1.0.2, before we release it to the public. We'd also like you to be able to take some of the new plugin capabilities out for a test drive. Perhaps it'll inspire you to add features to your plugin, or to make a new one.

If you find any spelling errors, and grammatical mistakes, any bugs, any features that don't work as you'd expect (please do NOT ask for new features) -- please mail them to:
evbugs@AmbrosiaSW.com

...so we can take care of them before the game is released to the general public. Also please note that you probably shouldn't pass this info along to general EV Override players; they will be better off waiting for the official release from us (which will be happening shortly).

.....

*** This is confidential information, you'll be hurting us rather than helping us if you give it out ***

EVO1.0.2fc3 is now available in the /beta directory of our anonymous ftp site as:

EVO1.0.2fc3.sea.bin

So the complete URL is:

ftp://ftp.AmbrosiaSW....0.2fc3.sea.bin

This file is a MacBinary II encoded self-extracting archive, encrypted with the password:

moonburn

Please grab this file as soon as possible, and begin testing it. We're hoping that this version of EV Override is the final release; please test it out on as many different Macs/OS versions as you can, and with as many third-party plugins as you can as well. Here's the changelist from Matt:

.....

-- Moved the Marines outfit to the end of the outfit list to maintain compatability with existing plugins (updated the Capture Gualon Station mission accordingly)

-- Removed the fuel-draining "feature" of the shield enhancements.

-- Removed some debugging code for the fighters that inadvertantly got left in

-- Fixed a cosmetic bug that would display the wrong speed for the player's ship

-- Fixed a problem that would sometimes cause beams to not display

-- Targeted escorts will no longer ignore commands

-- Smoke sprite sets work properly now

-- Gave the player their 50% speed bonus back

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Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

Two things:
I can't use older (1.0.1, or even 1.0.2 f2) pilot files with this version. Is this intentional (say 'cause of conflicts with new features etc...)?

My beam works fine, but when my fighters use them, yellow bits of lines flash here and there on the screen.

Yeah, I know I'm supposed to e-mail them, but it's late and I'm tired... :rolleyes:

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-Shade

<-------- The information went data way -------->

(url="http://"http://www.theonion.com")The Onion, America's finest news source(/url)

(This message has been edited by ShadeOfBlue (edited 05-30-2000).)

Thanks for the public beta. EVO 1.0.2 + EVSO + Magma = One happy kid

It's great to have the speed boost back as well.

No real complaints, but a little suggestions: because two final candidate releases were made publically available, it might be wise to mention them and their changes in the "notes" file...

-reg

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"Now, Mr. Mirnas... start at the beginning."

-The Interrogator

The Cargo Transporter does not give the player the fuel regen. bonus. I checked in res edit and the flag is not set. Was this intentional? It says in the read me that all ships with solar panels regenerate fuel for AI and player ships.

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Weird bug. The Freighter also does not allow the player to receive fuel regeneration. When I checked it in res edit, however, the flag was set correctly. I copied the freighter into an empty plug-in, put it in the plug-ins folder, and now it works, even though all I did was copy the ship file from the main file to a plug-in. Odd.

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A few spelling issues:
desc 5036
rasied should be raised
desc 4060
lieuntenant should be lieutenant
desc 4061
discoverd should be discovered
desc 9084
entusiastic should be enthusiastic
desc 5095
relpy should be reply
desc 5098
beahving should be behaving
desc 4159
pertubed-looking should be perturbed-looking
desc 4172
vesssls should be vessels
desc 4197
youself should be yourself
desc 4199
evey should be every
desc 218 Gualon Station
devestation should be devastation
desc 346 Meagh
occassional should be occasional
desc 2145 Lazira
succintly should be succinctly

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NO! I hate that speed boost, it makes it to easy. But if some people want it, maybe it could be something that you chose whether or not to have it when you make a pilot. Like the strict play thing.

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Sir! Our shields are dropping!
_What?!?
They're firing! _ says the lieutenant as a torpedo appears on the view screen.
Well, it seams you won't have the last laugh today Therg. Says Captain Fullers voice over the speakers.
Dang.
The torpedo strikes the ship removing it from the sky in a violent explosion.

IMO, the player's and AI's stock speeds should be equivalent , not an imbalance.

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OpenGL Avara!

AIM: EVAndrewM

Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?

Perhaps the speed boost could be a permanent pilot option chosen upon creation, like a hardcore feature. I think that would balance it better for people that want realism versus people that want an advantage.

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That's what I was saying, but I didn't word it very well.

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Sir! Our shields are dropping!
_What?!?
They're firing! _ says the lieutenant as a torpedo appears on the view screen.
Well, it seams you won't have the last laugh today Therg. Says Captain Fullers voice over the speakers.
Dang.
The torpedo strikes the ship removing it from the sky in a violent explosion.

Quote

Originally posted by Bob:
**NO! I hate that speed boost, it makes it to easy. But if some people want it, maybe it could be something that you chose whether or not to have it when you make a pilot. Like the strict play thing.
**

Hmmm... I could easily enough make the speed boost go away if you have strict play turned on. Opinions?

mcb

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Matt Burch
(url="http://"mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com")mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com(/url)mburch@ambrosiasw.com

Quote

Originally posted by mburch:
**Hmmm... I could easily enough make the speed boost go away if you have strict play turned on. Opinions?

mcb

**

Maybe, but I'm not sure the regular EVO player would know about this change as well.. Maybe you could have different settings like "Easy, Medium and Hard." With different speed boosts, though that would make things much too complicated on your part, I'm sure.

One thing I've noticed, though, is that AI ships don't stack up on planets anymore (like you said in the addition list), which is good, however, when they are approaching a planet, they "land" much too far away from the planet, at least a good six-seven inches. This really doesn't bother me, but for continuity sake (since the player can't land from this distance) you might want to have them land a bit closer than that.

~Bomb

Quote

Originally posted by mburch:
Hmmm... I could easily enough make the speed boost go away if you have strict play turned on. Opinions?

That'd be great. It'd make strict play more strict.

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OpenGL Avara!

AIM: EVAndrewM

Who's General Failure and why's he reading my disk?

Teeny question: is it possible to change the reverse-target cycle modifier key to control, or make it player-configurable? It's really annoying to launch hunter missiles when you're trying to select a target...

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"His Strangelove All-Purpose Do-It-Yourself Defensive First Second or Third Strike Indestructible Fantastic State-of-the-Art B-Ware Offensive Attack Bomber can't compare with our M & M E & A Sub-Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second-Strike Offensive Attack Bomber."
- from Closing Time , by Joseph Heller.

Quote

Originally posted by ColdFusion:
**Teeny question: is it possible to change the reverse-target cycle modifier key to control, or make it player-configurable? It's really annoying to launch hunter missiles when you're trying to select a target...
**

The default second trigger key is now Option, for precisely this reason.

mcb

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Matt Burch
(url="http://"mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com")mailto:mburch@ambrosiasw.com(/url)mburch@ambrosiasw.com

The changes are great. it's good to be able to fly w/out having to worry about activating your own space mines: BTW: the FINE mission works fine. HAHAHA, Get it, get it!!!

Anyway, I was jumping from sol to Rimor (freeport system) and I noticed that I jumped into one system and jumped out of it in less than a second, just bam bam, with no acceleration. It happend on several other occations. Is this normal??

Suggested changes:

Make mass and Cargo expantions sellable. (Already did it on mine)
Make more illegal outfits. (Krait bay and the fake ID)
Make the Krait Bay sellable. (Already did this one)
Make the turncoat illegal in UE space.

I have ways to make all of these work, trust me.

-Dino

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Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

Quote

Matt Burch posted:

**Hmmm... I could easily enough make the speed boost go away if you have strict play turned on.

Opinions?**

Quote

Originally posted by Dinoman:
**
Suggested changes:

**

We are not looking for any changes/additions at this point -- only bugs that need to be fixed. It is a final candidate, not a beta version.

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Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

Testing out the FC...

The only thing I've noticed so far is that on my 1280x1024 display, one-pixel width yellow beams are leaving artifacts on screen when the ship firing them turns. Whether other width/color combinations are also doing it, I'm not sure. I'll test this more tonight.

Izuna,
getting a mad test on of smoke trails, too

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My opinion on the speed "bug":
Having the speeds slower than we're used to can be considered a bug.
Having the player's speed being higher than the AI's causes a bug-like imbalance. (this is all so andrew won't think it's a feature request )

I think the speed boost should be wired in for both the player and the AI. This way we won't have to wait as much, and plugin designers won't have to re-calibrate to the different system. ("why is this fighter so slow? 500 used to be zippy!")

Also, andrew, since Matt Burch seems to be reading this thread, do you still want reports emailed?

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