Every now and then, I read up on people who do interesting tricks when it comes to developing interesting result during the making of a plug-in. I decided that maybe it was about time to consolidate any interesting tricks here. When I mean tricks I mean stuff like making spobs invisible when your map registers that it's here or that you have 2 locations on the same planet. These are but few examples. If there is a subject posted about this, let me know and maybe this topic should be closed up or something, but if not, then if anyone of you have any tricks you want to share, you can post them up here.

As for me, when I shared my tricks it was scattered throughout this webboard so it may take me awhile to find them.

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Nosumus Fortiolis Quad Volimus

same here. It'd be pretty hard to compile ALL the tricks that people have come up with. Besides, if someone wants to learn something (that they can't figure out how to do), they should post their individual question on the board. If someone has a creative solution to their problem, they'd bring it up if they want to.

Matrix

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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."

See Frozen Heart for an example, but if you place two spöbs on the same coordinates, you have two "locations" on "one" planet.

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"What goes up must come down, unless it reaches Escape Velocity and flies off to Palshife to join the Rebellion."
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(This message has been edited by mrxak (edited 05-03-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
**See Frozen Heart for an example, but if you place two spöbs on the same coordinates, you have two "locations" on "one" planet.

**

Yeah I remembered that one, where Earth had 2 locations for you to land on. ROTUE was another example by UE Patriot, 2 systems had multiple location on each planet. Speaking of which, did any of you remember the Svass mission, where he had another station rearmed with weapons from Svass station that you had to destroy? I think there was a better trick he could of done, if any of you care hear my suggestion.

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Nosumus Fortiolis Quad Volimus

BTW, is it possible to have non-square spöb graphics in any EV?
It would be neat to have a planet made up of two or more pieces, stuck together to make up a whole planet, with different landing zones. The above is not neccessary to have (just make your masks go only halfway from both sides for both spöbs), but it could save some pixels.

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"What goes up must come down, unless it reaches Escape Velocity and flies off to Palshife to join the Rebellion."
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take a look at these ideas too:
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum9/HTML/001110.html#")http://www.ambrosias...ML/001110.html#(/url) (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum9/HTML/001181.html#")http://www.ambrosias...ML/001181.html#(/url) (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum9/HTML/000919.html#")http://www.ambrosias...ML/000919.html#(/url)

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Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
**BTW, is it possible to have non-square spöb graphics in any EV?
It would be neat to have a planet made up of two or more pieces, stuck together to make up a whole planet, with different landing zones. The above is not neccessary to have (just make your masks go only halfway from both sides for both spöbs), but it could save some pixels.

**

I think that "Mugabi" (or something like that), did a trick like that. I can't remember tho, because it's been a while. It was a plug for EV.

Matrix

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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."

Yes, you can have rectangular ones (but the mask allows you to make it any shape you want), as long as it's within the size limit that EV can handle (don't remember what it is, but you really don't want to go over 400 pixels in any dimension).

There should be numerous examples of this, like that alien installation in Frozen Heart, various plug-ins with wormholes (I think Mugabi and Destiny), etc.

As far as ideas go, I came up with the idea of making the "Buy a Drink" picture into a picture you can see in every spaceport bar, then edit the DITL for the bar, drag that hidden button into view, and then have that picture in your bars.

I had a few others, but I'll have to dig them up. This is the only interesting one though.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
**BTW, is it possible to have non-square spöb graphics in any EV?
It would be neat to have a planet made up of two or more pieces, stuck together to make up a whole planet, with different landing zones. The above is not neccessary to have (just make your masks go only halfway from both sides for both spöbs), but it could save some pixels.

**

The easier way would be to create the graphic you wanted, then open it up in photoshop or something and divide it into the two parts. Put the two different spobs right next to each other and line them back up, to make them look like one planet. You could place two spaceport bars on one planet. Neat.

Tricks I've done?

Apart from a few ones like getting the AI to use mine type weapons (as a guided and unguided projectile in EVO), I've done such things as making stations you land on fire at you (you make a station at 0,0 in a system, then copy the station spin, rename it as a ship spin, create a matching ship with a velocity of 0, and the weapons you want, and use the ship in a mission where the player is sent to destroy the station (even more impressive, you can use VisBits to change the system before the player warps in, say on the last preceeding mission, and remove the station. This way the player actually CAN destroy the station and leave nothing standing).

Oh, and of course weapons that destroy the player's ship when fired are always plenty of fun

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Quote

Originally posted by Gage_Stryker:
I've done such things as making stations you land on fire at you (you make a station at 0,0 in a system, then copy the station spin, rename it as a ship spin, create a matching ship with a velocity of 0, and the weapons you want, and use the ship in a mission where the player is sent to destroy the station (even more impressive, you can use VisBits to change the system before the player warps in, say on the last preceeding mission, and remove the station. This way the player actually CAN destroy the station and leave nothing standing).

Of course, now in EV Nova, stations CAN have weapons and CAN be destroyed. No tricks involved.

Matrix

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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."

Quote

Originally posted by Gage_Stryker:
**
I've done such things as making stations you land on fire at you (you make a station at 0,0 in a system, then copy the station spin, rename it as a ship spin, create a matching ship with a velocity of 0, and the weapons you want, and use the ship in a mission where the player is sent to destroy the station (even more impressive, you can use VisBits to change the system before the player warps in, say on the last preceeding mission, and remove the station. This way the player actually CAN destroy the station and leave nothing standing).

Oh, and of course weapons that destroy the player's ship when fired are always plenty of fun

**

If only UE Patriot could of done that for ROTUE (maybe that's what he wanted to do but had to resort to having another station be rearmed from the weapons from Svass Station)

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Nosumus Fortiolis Quad Volimus

Quote

Originally posted by Gage_Stryker:
**
The easier way would be to create the graphic you wanted, then open it up in photoshop or something and divide it into the two parts. Put the two different spobs right next to each other and line them back up, to make them look like one planet. You could place two spaceport bars on one planet. Neat.**

Yup, that's what I was thinking.

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"What goes up must come down, unless it reaches Escape Velocity and flies off to Palshife to join the Rebellion."
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Woah, that's an awesome idea. It's kind of unrealistic that planets would only have one port; now you can have "slices" of planets.

Now do the coordinates for planets correspond to the center or upper-left corner of the planet?

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

Speaking of slicing planets, the only good thing of having 4 complete full planets overlapping eachother instead of sliced planets is that when you hail them, the comm wouldn't display fragments of a planet, that would look too weird.

Now it would make sense if you were to do it on a station that happened to be huge and large and so you can have segments of that station look at least good enough that it doesn't look awkward when you hail parts of a station, it would let's say hail one corner of a station if it was a cube or something like that

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Nosumus Fortiolis Quad Volimus