As explained in FF, hyperatomic engines create gravity wells which attract other bodies of low mass, such as asteroids.
Or, put another way, there are limitations in the game engine.
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M A R T I N T U R N E R
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First things we need to consider:
A) Races, what kinds, how many, how many independents, there locations, etc.
Weapons, what kinds and how powerful/fast/damaging, etc.?First off Id like to note that if we go with beam weapons in EVO there will only be a max of 4(!) beams allowed on the screen at one time. This is the reason I went with graphics vs. beams. I dont like the idea of the Borg Cube firing away at you with its cutting beam (1 beam) using its tractor beam on you (2 beams) and you firing (3 beams) and only 1(!) other ship capable of helping you out. Those odds wouldnt look good for you indeed >=p
C) How many ships are we going to have for all the races?
Organizational tasks include:
Organizing ships from weakest to strongest by government
Special traits of ships (i.e. lots of shields/armor, powerful, but slow vs. low shields, fast recharge, fast ship, no armor, etc.)Special Weapons for ships??? (Im strongly against this till after Nova comes out and we work on a Nova port, Override simply lacks the number of special weapons you can make)
D) Dude/Fleet Resources
Personally, I think my STEVO plugin is a good template for how to do a good düde/flët resource. Start off with the first race (in my plugin it is ALWAYS the Federation, shďp resource starts with Federation, dude, govt, flet, etc.) And organize 3 types of dudes:
A) Merchants (sissy traders AI)
Big Ships (brave traders AI)
C) Attack Ships (Warship AI)One right after the other, etc. by respective government in order of weakest to most powerful.
If it looks neat, youll be a big help to the mďsn/spöb/s˙st/flët/düde developer(s).
E) System resources/Mission/Space Object Resources
Sometimes its better to do the system and spob resources together. I personally believe that the mďsn developer needs to do all 3 (mďsn/spöb/s˙st) at once for >>3<< reasons. They are:
- the Mission developer can preplan background stories to some of the planets, ie:
(the systems look like this: (See Dominion Space, STEVO))
Yu Hiri is a planet that is used as a jump of point from the "Ring of Warp". Legend is there used to be a habitable system in the center of the ring of warp but it disappeared eons ago. No one can even speculate why as you cannot even get close enough to scan as the hole is pure black matter.
**adds a level of intrigue to whats inside/happened
And on a planet adjacent to Yu Hiri:
Bour Aten is a planet whose people suffered greatly during a day they call "Treesa Ha Mak". Apparently during that day a violent explosion erupted in the stars and heaven raged its fury down upon the planet.**Notes creation/destruction of the center of the ring
And on a research station adjacent to Bour Aten:
A automated research station with advanced scanning devices and probes that have attempted to peer into the bubble of black matter. Although this station is extremly sophisiticated and has been in use for years, there is nothing stored in the computer banks. Apparently there hasn't been any luck lately.**adds a level of intrigue to whats inside/happened
And on the crown jewel research station:
Station Prima Don is a advanced communications and research station. It has been the crowning research center in the Gamma quadrant since its inceptions eons ago. There is a division attempting to see through black matter, unfortunatly even these brillant minds fail at this task.**adds a level of intrigue to whats inside/happened
Does anyone else see the connection? It could lead to a great little sub-story, but it needs to be preplanned ahead of time. The best way to do that is with >>1<< Mission; system; space object developer (at least doing one government that is, obviously there is room to split governments amoung individuals, but then we need to organize who gets what resources, the best way to fill them all, etc.)
- Fluidity
Jumping between 1 mission developer and system/spaceobject developer with differing writing styles (one uses lots of implied text, the other talks like your 5, etc.) could confuse the audience and generally leads to a bad overall feel for the plugin.
- 1 Writer is able to keep in ties with what happens to the other parts of the story better then 2 writers always summarizing what happens then trieing to incorporate with innuedenos and the like. The single writer will know exactly what he has written and can (most likely) do a much better job. As well after all the base fleet and dudes are made the mission developer can feel free to add ON TOP of those exsisting. This ensures that resources will NOT overlap.
F) Miscellanous.
Yes, the junk resource, adding various little spit and polish here and there, bug testing, proof reading, etc.
Anyone care to add anything?
Basically, through my eyes I see the following spots:
- Government creator (very simple job)
- Weapons developer*
- Ship developer*
- Fleet/Dude Developer**
- System resources/Mission/Space Object Resources Developer
Now, we can organize this all down based on governments and sort them that way. ie:
Federation Developers needed, 4 spots:
- Government creator (very simple job)
- Weapons developer *****
- Ship developer *****
- Fleet/Dude Developer ******
- System resources/Mission/Space Object Resources Developer *******
Romulan Developers needed, 4 spots:
- Government creator (very simple job)
- Weapons developer *****
- Ship developer *****
- Fleet/Dude Developer ******
- System resources/Mission/Space Object Resources Developer *******
etc.
***** denotes these two people must colloborate quite heavily
****** debotes he must wait until ship/weap developers are done to avoid going over work youve already accomplished and editing it again (a VERY DISCOURAGING THING TO DO)
******* denotes he must wait until the previous developers are done to avoid going over work youve already accomplished and editing it again (a VERY DISCOURAGING THING TO DO)This can share the workload, but then we must organize who gets how many resources per person, etc. That itself seems like a daunting task, but Im sure with enough collaboration we can pull that together rather easily.
Anyways, Id say were looking till I get back from my vacation before we start, unless Ben understands the gibberish Im talking about and gets a spreadsheet together with all the resources listed and designations as to who gets to do what and with how much resources.
Isnt work fun? =p
=DAbout my plugin is that if you edit it in ResEdit everything is neat and orderly. I STRONGLY reccomend you all stick to this type of template. It is far easier to reedit the plugin if you had left it be for a while. Organization is key to a good plugin. As noted, my wëap resource and planet picts are very, very unorganized, hence the crappiness of that part of my plugin. I found though, that real life pictures of places look waaaay better then bryce generated ones. I'm sure it won't be too hard to find pictures of some nice looking places (like Sydney) and use them as planet landing pictures.
A good source of Star Trek images for outfits, etc. is the web site for the collectible card game (ccg). I found that the quality on the web site was quite low though, and my older brother is quite the fond collector of the game (read: has every card I think) so if we need a higher quality picture scanned, I'm sure I could do it.
The website is here:
(url="http://"http://www.decipher.com/startrek/cardlists/index.html")http://www.decipher....ists/index.html(/url)
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"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone."
-Bill Cosby
Star Trek Escape Velocity
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/startrekev/")http://homepage.mac.com/startrekev/(/url)(This message has been edited by Metzen (edited 07-17-2001).)
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Quote
Originally posted by Metzen:
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First off Id like to note that if we go with beam weapons in EVO there will only be a max of 4(!) beams allowed on the screen at one time. This is the reason I went with graphics vs. beams. I dont like the idea of the Borg Cube firing away at you with its cutting beam (1 beam) using its tractor beam on you (2 beams) and you firing (3 beams) and only 1(!) other ship capable of helping you out. Those odds wouldnt look good for you indeed >=p
**First of all, the maximum is eight beams. That's quite a bit more.
In any case, I think I found a pretty good solution in Galaxy's Edge. Give the beam a count of 1 and a reload of 4. It doesn't look very different, and this allows 32 beams at a time on screen.------------------
Download Galaxy's Edge for EVO at (url="http://"http://www.galaxys-edge.f2s.com")http://www.galaxys-edge.f2s.com(/url) -
When I make a TC, I go out and buy a bunch of big posterboards. I then get a marker and start drawing and writing out sequences. When I finish that I start writing down how I can accomplish these sequences. I then start writing things out in whatever order I feel like. For just and add-on, I do just about the same thing as David Arthur.
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"The heathens are upon us. Arm yourselves and go with God." Paul Benden, Commander of the Purple Sector Fleet, prior to the Battle of Cygni.
(url="http://"http://pub70.ezboard.com/bevtechsoftware")EVTech Software Webboard(/url) -
Quote
Originally posted by Giule:
**First of all, the maximum is eight beams. That's quite a bit more.
In any case, I think I found a pretty good solution in Galaxy's Edge. Give the beam a count of 1 and a reload of 4. It doesn't look very different, and this allows 32 beams at a time on screen.**
Neat Trick!
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"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone."
-Bill Cosby
Star Trek Escape Velocity
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/startrekev/")http://homepage.mac.com/startrekev/(/url)