I was thinking the other day about production values for plugins - the same sort of values that make art-house movies visually and intellectually satisfying, without going down the path of bigger and bigger explosions, larger and larger sets and more and more highly paid stars.

Looking at the Nova Bible draft, it looks like it will now be possible to virtually anything. This means that we are likely to be indundated by plugins that try to use every feature, whether or not it is called for in the story line. I think we need production values if we aren't going to be Hollywood-ised.

So how about these as production values for an EVN plugin:

1. Every planet must be unique and scientifically credible, with its own history. Better a TC with just fifty systems where each is unique than one with a thousand worlds of which many are 'another uninhabited planet'.
   Note: not that this all has to be in the planet description - it can creep out in the mission strings, or in the outfits, or any way you like.

2. Every government must have the chance to tell its own story, to explain to the player why it is the best government, why its way of life is the right way — the planetary cultures must live in the imagination of the plugin maker if they are to capture the imagination of the player.

3. Every planetary landing picture must be intrinsically beautiful, even if it is the beautiful depiction of ugliness. They should be like opening shots from a film, not mass produced twiddles of the Bryce scenery controls. They should be pictures that the player will just want to sit and look at before moving on to explore the bar and the outfitters.

4. The plugin should be a mixture of high science and high art. No new chemical elements or metals - there isn't space on the periodic table for them. No new means of propulsion unless the author can explain how they work in reasonable terms. Planets should be influenced by the spectography of the suns they orbit, new scientific discoveries should influence the outfits, ships, missions and how they all work.

5. Pers should have actual personalities - not just the names of the beta team. There should be pictures of the pilots, mission strings attached that tell a story, something to give the player the impression that he is playing with many others in a universe which is rich with people.

6. New features should not be thrown away - they should be the beginning or end of varied mission strings, with explanations of how they came about and who they are important to.

7. Everything should mean something.

8. Every piece of text should be powerful, rhythmic, lucid prose that would stand up on its own, like something out of a Ray Bradbury novel.

9. The game should be an adventure into the imagination. After five hours playing, the player shouldn't come away with sore eyes, a twitchy finger and the feeling that he's wasted part of his life. Rather, he should come away with the feeling that his eyes have been opened to a wider world than he had dreamed of.

What do you think? For, against? More to add, some to violently reject?

Regards

Martin

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R

i agree with everything but number 8. and i even think number 8 is a great idea, but most people cannot write in powerful sentences. i do think that things should be cohesive, and be able to be understood, and actually stimulate the mind, but remember, not everyone can write like that.

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riot tonight, everybody lets go!

These are excellent guidelines.

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Apparently, common sense isn't so common...

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What do you think? For, against? More to add, some to violently reject?

I think that I'll just have to toss Nemesis out the window While I agree with everything you say, it's very hard to do even in EVO; especially when you're doing everything by yourself except graphics. 'Course Frozen Heart, etc... were very good, not everybody has the time, talent and software to create such works of art I hope that people do follow those ideas since they are good guides. But to everyone who isn't a developer out there and doesn't realize the amount of time and effort that such plugins entail; please remember that we're doing this out of our own time with no thoughts of payment, and we're doing our best.

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Phoenix
(url="http://"http://commonwealth.cjb.net")EVO : Nemesis(/url)

Definitely worthy goals to strive for... although I don't know how many plugs will ever live up to that standard. But sure, why not?

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i must respectfully disagree. although quality control is quite a good idea, i am opposed to the idea of rubber stamp "approvals" of anything based on invariable rules. to light:

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1. Every planet must be unique and scientifically credible, with its own history. Better a TC with just fifty systems where each is unique than one with a thousand worlds of which many are 'another uninhabited planet'.

i try to reflect reality in my fiction. if you look at the cities of earth, there are several which stand out as unique and wonderful, but there are many more which are "just another small town." as an added bonus, faceless worlds can help add to the idea of a faceless mass (i.e. the honor harrington series' republic of haven- hundreds of worlds to manticore's 3, but all equivalent and relatively useless), which brings me to

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2. Every government must have the chance to tell its own story, to explain to the player why it is the best government, why its way of life is the right way — the planetary cultures must live in the imagination of the plugin maker if they are to capture the imagination of the player.

while i don't disagree with the idea of bringing all the governments to life, this is no reason why a developer shouldn't downplay any government. there may not be any one true way, but theres often some ways which are obviously better (or worse) than others.

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3. Every planetary landing picture must be intrinsically beautiful, even if it is the beautiful depiction of ugliness. They should be like opening shots from a film, not mass produced twiddles of the Bryce scenery controls. They should be pictures that the player will just want to sit and look at before moving on to explore the bar and the outfitters.

wonderful goal to strive for, though i know i'll never reach it with my graphics skills. but yes, i do agree that people should at least try to make things look good (unless they're specifically trying to make them look bad, which can be useful at times)

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4. The plugin should be a mixture of high science and high art. No new chemical elements or metals - there isn't space on the periodic table for them. No new means of propulsion unless the author can explain how they work in reasonable terms. Planets should be influenced by the spectography of the suns they orbit, new scientific discoveries should influence the outfits, ships, missions and how they all work.

while i'm trying to do this for the first steps from earth, that is because it is set in 2050. ev is set over 200 years in the future, and i doubt anyone from 1800 would be able to explain every aspect of technology on this planet as of right now, let alone the technology developed by some species which evolved completely independently of our own. although it's nice to have good explanations and to stay away from "impossible" things, one should keep in mind that "impossible" almost always means "we can't do it right now."

5 and on are quite allright, though a developer should keep in mind that there's a lot to be said for leaving out backgrounds and explanations: too much explaining can be just as bad as too little

i don't want to dump on an idea born of good intentions, and i understand that a lot of crap can be made and posted as a great plug, but i am completely opposed to any form of limitation on creativity. to quote frank herbert, "rules build up fortifications behind which small minds create satrapies. a perilous state of affairs in the best of times, disastrous during crises." every rule has an exception, and by making rules we force ourselves to ignore those exceptions. maybe it would only discourage a few percent of the good attempts, but maybe those few percent are the best, we can't know beforehand. i'd rather wade through a little crap to get to the good stuff than create even the beginnings of a rut into which our creativity can fall

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if tin whistles are made of tin, what's a fog horn made of?

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Originally posted by Martin Turner:
4) The plugin should be a mixture of high science and high art. No new chemical elements or metals - there isn't space on the periodic table for them. No new means of propulsion unless the author can explain how they work in reasonable terms. Planets should be influenced by the spectography of the suns they orbit, new scientific discoveries should influence the outfits, ships, missions and how they all work.

This one I only vaguely agree with. Sometimes making up cool names for cool new materials and effects can be a lot of fun to do, and a lot of fun to see (they do it on star trek, and a lot of people like it). Having said that, use it for novelty, and make it reasonably pseudo-realistic, and don't make large stories based on techno-babble (as stories should be about people, because that is what the game is about - particularly the person called 'the player').

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5) Pers should have actual personalities - not just the names of the beta team. There should be pictures of the pilots, mission strings attached that tell a story, something to give the player the impression that he is playing with many others in a universe which is rich with people.

Of all the things in the Nova scenario, this is the one thing on your entire production list that is probably still a little wanting. I agree, but it would be an enormously hard slog to get done. Mind you, with the new subtitle system for ships and pers certainly can make the galaxy feel more 'lived in'. But if you can come up with 512 interesting individual pers, then it would certainly add greatly to the overall package that is the scenario.

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6) New features should not be thrown away - they should be the beginning or end of varied mission strings, with explanations of how they came about and who they are important to.

Hmmm, perhaps there should be another element in this production list: Do not use engine features just for the sake of using engine features. Use those features to make your scenario better, not just to say you implemented another feature.

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7) Everything should mean something.

This one is all-important. That's not to say you cannot include one pers with your name on it, nor that you cannot put in a few funny easter eggs around the place, but your scenario is all-important, and you cannot make a scenario out of easter eggs. Make an overall package where the graphics, missions, even the underlying shape of the links of your systems and the descs that you read in bars and on planets are all an enmeshed whole. Too often plugs just seem like they have been 'tacked together'. Some add missions that seem to have little to do with the overall atmosphere of the game, some add graphics, that while excellent, seem to be at odds with the overall atmosphere of the game. Hell, some tc's seem to have no coherent vision, where the graphics, the storyline, the underlying universe shape, etc, all seem to be slightly at odds with each other.

That's not to say that there aren't a lot of good plugs out there (there are), but quite a lot forget this point. Perhaps this point should read: "everything should mean something; and that meaning should somehow add to the overall scenario, and make it more 'whole'".

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9) The game should be an adventure into the imagination. After five hours playing, the player shouldn't come away with sore eyes, a twitchy finger and the feeling that he's wasted part of his life. Rather, he should come away with the feeling that his eyes have been opened to a wider world than he had dreamed of.

After five hours of playing, the player should come away not just having had his eyes opened, but wanting to go back there and continue playing.

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What do you think? For, against? More to add, some to violently reject?

I agree with all the other points without feeling a need to add to them - you said it well enough that I had nothing to add. I'd vote for you...

Cookie @ ATMOS

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(This message has been edited by Frandall (edited 06-26-2001).)

What we really need is a group of people to send plugins to, who then play and rate them. Bad plugs could go out the window, while good ones are posted on the website for everyone to download. This would save loads of time for people who want to play something good- they wouldn't have to wade through the "1 syst, 2 spobs, and a really awful story" plugs that will, no matter how hard we try to get rid of, always show up.
I have not played Nova, but the guidelines you set up seem very reasonable. In fact, I have been planning on making something that goes through the start, middle, and the end of a war. I envision using a small galaxy, so that it would be easier to make and shape as the player travels.
About the personalitis, is there more options with them? Making each one different and a real living person seems almost impossible when working with EV.

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Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**...deleted...
**

or in other words, only Martin Turner shall be allowed to make nova plug-ins...

actually, i found that the few TC's out there do manage to strive for these standards. my belief is that the amount of work required to complete one weeds out the designers with limited creativity (and stamina).

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Let me clarify something. These are suggested production values, not a list of criteria by which a plugin should be 'approved'. I'm not remotely suggesting that someone should be allowed to tell someone else what to do.

What I was trying to do was to get a debate going about the values that the developer should keep in his head while making.

Another production value which I respect hugely although I reluctantly had to ditch it myself was that plugins should be as small as possible. For an example of the ultimate in minimalist design look at the The Old Professor's TOPS mods, which are just a few k but fill the game up with challenging new missions.

I suppose the reason I got thinking about production values was the past experience of people announcing (or emailing me, and who knows who else) that their plugin would be the best ever because it would feature more ships, more planets and more outfits than any other plugin, or, worse still, because it would be more megabytes than any other plugin. I suppose we all agree that quality is more important than quantity, but the next question is: what is quality? When I worked in the arts, this was a question that was constantly asked and never answered, except with the banal 'fitness for purpose', which may be fine when considering the purchase of a pair of socks, but does nothing for art. What I did notice though was that when someone started off with production values - whatever they were - they ended up with something that was artistically better and more satisfying. The Dogma film school in Denmark began with the production value that everything had to be made on very cheap equipment. That production value sudenly hit the commercial world with the Blair Witch project. That's not saying that films made on cheap equipment are better, but that self-imposing a structure gets the creative juices going and ends up with better art.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R

1. We can create an EV Plugin Production Bible. In 100 points we can set beacons for good plug-in developement.
2. The idea to create a Comitee (say 10 judges that are elected by the boarders) that would review all plug-ins and post the reviews on this boards isn't bad. But...
3. I think that plug-ins that do not get a sufficient rating (if the rating is on 100, sufficient would be 60.) should be removed of the downloads section.
4. And I talk, and I talk but why don't do this now... All we need is :

-Someone (why not you, Turner) to write down the PP Bible
-Organize a vote
-Find a rating system
-Determine an online encounter point (IRC, Hotline, Web Chat, AIM...) for the judges to decide of the rating to be given
-We can then test if the whole thing works by rating an EVO plug-in we find in the add-ons section.

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Pesmo's Profile Refresh no. 8
-I didn't found anything more spiritual or intelligent to write here.-

I think that production values can (and should) differ from developer to developer. One developer might say 'I'm going to produce a plugin where there is only one government' and then push the envelope on all the possible scenarios that could create. That economy of governments would be one of his production values. Another might say 'I will create a plugin where there is only the human race' (actually, that was one of my production values for Frozen Heart - the only aliens were the ones discovered archaeologically). Somebody else might say 'I am only going to use real astronomical data for all my systems'. Somebody else might want to write a plugin in a supercluster where the stars are only a few light months apart, but where there is no Hyperjumping (in other words, every jump would take you not a few days but several months, and all the text would be about time dilation at light speed, not hyperspace), sort of like Ursula LeGuin's science fiction.

What I'm saying is that production values are a spur to creativity, but there isn't really a place for people to sit around saying 'this plugin isn't good enough' because of some dogmatic view about what the production values should be.

A case in point. One of the first Beta testers for Frozen Heart was Jos Delbar. He told me that the plugin wasn't going to work because I'd introduced too powerful a ship too early on in the game. That was what people thought back then - that the only time to give the player a high power ship was when he had completed most of the missions. If Jos and others had been assessing plugins to see if they were good enough, then they would have chucked out Frozen Heart.

I suppose - but this is a totally different topic - that there might be a case for saying that any plugin should have to satisfy some basic requirements to be uploaded to the board - for example:
that it had been beta tested by at least four people other than the author
that it had a proper read_me file
that the descriptions had been run through a spell checker

but these would be basic mechanical things. I am very against a politburo deciding on the basis of their own values how a plug-in designer should produce their own story.

Martin

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R

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Originally posted by Martin Turner:
I am very against a politburo deciding on the basis of their own values how a plug-in designer should produce their own story.

As am I. Everyone has their own ideas about what constitutes a good plug-in, and I don't think any one person or group of people can judge plug-ins on a way that will satisfy everybody. By the same token, I disagree with the idea expressed earlier about removing plugins that are rated low by players. There is no reason to prevent people from accessing something that they might enjoy just because others have not. The choice to use or not use a plugin should always remain in the hands of the player.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://members.aol.com/darthur1/talon-ev/")Talon Plugin for Classic EV(/url)

we've forgotton one point: what about the people who make plug-ins but do not come to the board. i did that for 2 years, then i stumbled onto the webboard. how would their plugs get rated? they would submit them, and skip the whole rating system some of you have dreamed up.

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riot tonight, everybody lets go!

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Originally posted by David Arthur:
**As am I. Everyone has their own ideas about what constitutes a good plug-in, and I don't think any one person or group of people can judge plug-ins on a way that will satisfy everybody. By the same token, I disagree with the idea expressed earlier about removing plugins that are rated low by players. There is no reason to prevent people from accessing something that they might enjoy just because others have not. The choice to use or not use a plugin should always remain in the hands of the player.

**

The thing is, there are good and bad plug-ins. With Nova, how many scrap plug-ins adding a new planet or two and "LOTS of NEW OUTFITS" that are in fact only modified pics ripped from another plug are there going to be ? With NovaTools, everyone can make his own plug in a few hours (or a few minutes depending) so maybe I was stupid with the judges thing but I still think someone should make a bible.

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Pesmo's Profile Refresh no. 8
-I didn't found anything more spiritual or intelligent to write here.-

I think most of these ideas are WONDERFUL

the discussion of an approval committe came up here several months ago, and i still feel the same way about it: the minute you introduce a set of standards a plug has to reach before it is published (btw, doesn't that sound curiously like censorship?), you also introduce paranoia into the minds of developers. on top of everything else someone designing a plug has to think of, now they also have to think "will this pass inspection?" people stop trying new things when they think that anything too far from the norm will get their work censored out of production. and aside from the creativity which goes out the window at that point, think of the developers who ignore the rules and continue making works of their own; how many rejected plugs, each taking anywhere from days to years to make, would it take to discourage them from ever making another plug? nazi germany chased off all its filmmakers by censoring films, and it took them 50+ years to start catching up again (and do any of you who aren't from germany watch german films even now? they still haven't caught up completely and it's been almost 60 years). so yes, censorship of plugs will eliminate all the crap (or at least, everything that's crap in the minds of the censors, regardless of what that means in the eyes of anyone else), but it will also eliminate a lot of talent

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if tin whistles are made of tin, what's a fog horn made of?

if the judges are picked, i would hope many plug-in developers would stop releasing their work on the ambrosia boards. i would refuse to do so, and find a way to release it somewhere else.

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riot tonight, everybody lets go!

I have no objection to the systems of plugin monitoring that exist now, such as the user-based ratings and the "word-of-mouth" factor on these web boards. Allowing the community to give people tips about which plugins are good is fine; however, I don't think it's acceptable to start either banning plugins or giving them an official "Seal of Disapproval."

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://members.aol.com/darthur1/talon-ev/")Talon Plugin for Classic EV(/url)

What about gameplay (maybe someone already mentioned this)...

Whenever I play EV, I usually end up in a rut, just because it's all "EV", and it doesn't really matter if the descs are good or the sprites well done, I just fly around in my ship firing whatever weapons I have and running from one system to another. I know EV plugins can't change as much as a Quake, Half-Life, or UT mod can, but something like Arena, that pilot school (either from Frozen Heart or the stand-alone plugin), or Foundation's colonization missions do alleviate the boredom somewhat (however, if you just treat them like any other missions, they don't).

The other thing I think you have to worry about is the size of a galaxy: if you want to be realistic, they have to be really huge, but you also have to worry about the player traversing them and you filling them with content, you might want them to be small (EV small, but even EVO isn't all that big). I have an alternate solution: filler. Make lots and lots of near-empty systems with pirates, traders, mercenaries, police patrols, etc. and have a few with inhabited asteroids and fuel stations. Now, make the missions local (maybe only as far as the next inhabited system or a waypoint) so that the player is still jumping as much, but not going very far galaxy-wise. This can workaround how, say, the humans never really got past the voinian front, or how there are only a couple destroyers around earth even though the voinians could get there in a couple jumps. You also might want to limit the number of jumps that ships can make, because I usually just hold the jump button down to do my routes, and when I'm supposed to be dodging the people chasing me it doesn't make a long trip that much harder. The last part of this is to make it somewhat more realistic as far as the number of ships: use more of the system's slots for the normal traffic, so make a few fighter wings and trader fleets for the trade routes, have some big guns patrol planets and military posts/warzones, and try and fit some pirates or other governments in there to heat it up, hopefully EVN won't have pirates almost always attack the player (you know those kraits that follow your Igazra around... that's a bad and annoying ai, which makes for some bad gameplay).