I would like to compile a list of undocumented (or poorly documented) feature differences between EVO and EVN for people converting plugins.

#1 For example, I have noticed that the overall ship speed is slower in EVN compared to the same figures in EVO.

I'm not sure if anyone has an actual value for this.

#2 Also, if you put EVO style spins with PICTs in in slots already occupied by EVN RLEs, they don't load - you have to make RLEs instead.

I would also like to catalogue all the changes you would have to make after say, using Port Authority, or the EVONE conversion.

#3 For example, that all visbit settings have to be changed since where EVO used 1xxx as a negator, EVN uses !xxx, and the converters don't seem to handle this.

Right now I'm not willing to say why I want this information - look on it as a question of general usefulness which could do with the answers being assembled in one place.

NB - Please do not post well documented EVN/EVO Bible differences - just the things that aren't in the manual or are completely confusing.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R

(Edited to add numbering)

(This message has been edited by Martin Turner (edited 08-30-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**For example, I have noticed that the overall ship speed is slower in EVN compared to the same figures in EVO.

I'm not sure if anyone has an actual value for this.**

There is no difference. In EVO, speed was adjustable via a slider because it didn't take the speed of different computers in account, whereas Nova does, so it had no sliders. Any perceived difference will be due to whatever computer and slider combination was used in EVO.

On the other hand, EVC weapons were at half the speed they should have been. I suspect the same is true of EVO ones.

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(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/jonathanboyd/evn/index.html")Classic4Nova plug-in(/url)

Sorry, perhaps I haven't been clear.

I'm not talking about Soviet Mikee's ports, which have been well discussed elsewhere, but about porting our own creations.
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum26/HTML/013165.html")http://www.AmbrosiaS...TML/013165.html(/url)
for a discussion of ship speeds.

Therefore, this topic is aimed at being a resource for plugin developers who may (or may not) wish to move to the new engine with their existing work.
What I think many of us would like to see is a set of figures for how to adjust speeds, plus all the other glitches that come back to bite.

For some, I think it would be helpful to know just how big a task porting to EVO will be, based on how many and what kind of undocumented features need sorting.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
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(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)

Another undocumented conversion issue. I shall number from here to aid later users.

#4 One way hyper links don't work.
In the old game engines you could creatively exploit the fact that failing to make links in both directions would cause a one way link.
Nova automatically corrects this and records the correction in the log.

I would be interested to see if anyone has a work around.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R

(Edited to renumber)

(This message has been edited by Martin Turner (edited 08-30-2003).)

#5 A xenophobic gövt dude will never attack the player first if its ship type attacks asteroids and there are asteroids in the system.

So to make it behave normally, you either have to make it a no asteroid system or create a variation of that ship which does not attack asteroids. If you don't, the ships will buzz around eating asteroids and ignoring the player.

Slightly bizarre this one and I can't see a creative application (yet) but definitely a tricky one to figure out.

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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)
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(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 Martin Turner:
**#5 A xenophobic gövt dude will never attack the player first if its ship type attacks asteroids and there are asteroids in the system.

So to make it behave normally, you either have to make it a no asteroid system or create a variation of that ship which does not attack asteroids. If you don't, the ships will buzz around eating asteroids and ignoring the player.

Slightly bizarre this one and I can't see a creative application (yet) but definitely a tricky one to figure out.

**

Yet EVO didnt have ships that attacked Roids, so I dont believe this is a problem.

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Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**Another undocumented conversion issue. I shall number from here to aid later users.

#4 One way hyper links don't work.
In the old game engines you could creatively exploit the fact that failing to make links in both directions would cause a one way link.
Nova automatically corrects this and records the correction in the log.

I would be interested to see if anyone has a work around.

**

Maybe you could create a dummy system near the destination of a one-way hyperlink with an invisible nebula. Then, you set the nebula's OnExplore field to automatically move the player to the real system. Of course, that wouldn't allow you to set up waypoints going through the system, so it's not a perfect workaround, and you're limited to 32 nebulae, I think.

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C:dos
C:dosrun
rundosrun

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**#3 For example, that all visbit settings have to be changed since where EVO used 1xxx as a negator, EVN uses !xxx, and the converters don't seem to handle this.
**

I believe I covered this in SpacePort, the EVONE convertor, but I may have easily missed one. Do you have any particular resource type that it did not work on?

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Eat blazing electric death!

#6 Auto-abort missions no longer trigger bits in the on-succeed field.

Use on-accept instead.

This is identical functionality, just a different implementation. However, can be confusing if you are coming from EVO.

RE: Space Port and negation- probably ok. This was an issue with Port Authority, but may subsequently have been solved.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
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(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)

#7: In EV and EVO, one needed to define a spob's location in both the syst and spob resource. In EVO, if you failed to correctly define things on the spob and the syst, a spob looking blob would appear on the radar, but wouldn't be able to be landed upon.

I was working on a large plugin that took advantage of this bug (cloaked worlds), and it's now prety much trash.

#8: Looping systems. In EV and EVO, the player would eventually reach a 'wall' in the syst, beyond which they couldn't move. This caused problems when an AI battle would move beyond the barrier, keeping the player from taking part. Again, I was incorporating this barrier into a plugin, but need to rethink things (repulsive force being reported by telemetry of our deep space probes).

Too bad one couldn't toggle the barrier and one-way hyper links on and off for a syst (I know: no new features).

-STH

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Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**Another undocumented conversion issue. I shall number from here to aid later users.

#4 One way hyper links don't work.
In the old game engines you could creatively exploit the fact that failing to make links in both directions would cause a one way link.
Nova automatically corrects this and records the correction in the log.

I would be interested to see if anyone has a work around.

**

I was just messing around in Krypt space in Nova, and I found that, on the map, no hyperlink is shown between the Allia and Pontoll systems. However, when in Allia, the link is shown on the map and I can jump to Pontoll. I cannot jump straight back; no link is shown on the map.

So there is, apparently, a workaround - whether intentional or not - already used in the default scenario. I'm using Nova 1.0.6 for Windows.

This is true. I have seen the same before, while exploring northern Krypt space.

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Quote

Originally posted by seant:
**#7: In EV and EVO, one needed to define a spob's location in both the syst and spob resource. In EVO, if you failed to correctly define things on the spob and the syst, a spob looking blob would appear on the radar, but wouldn't be able to be landed upon.

I was working on a large plugin that took advantage of this bug (cloaked worlds), and it's now prety much trash.
**

You can set planets to be invisible without a certain bit active, and you can control that bit with an item. 'cloaked planet detector' for instance. Polycon does this.

Another implimentation I've seen is a planet in the same spot as another planet so its under it and cannot be seen. Anytime you land you will always select the larger overtop planet, but if you press '2' or whetever the other planets number key you can select it and land there. A plug called new horizons for EV used this. You could even do both.

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Cheat in almost any mac game. Even Nova... Even UPLINK.

Quote

Originally posted by Rick_Hardslab:
**
Another implimentation I've seen is a planet in the same spot as another planet so its under it and cannot be seen. Anytime you land you will always select the larger overtop planet, but if you press '2' or whetever the other planets number key you can select it and land there. A plug called new horizons for EV used this.
**

And F-25 too. Bomb used this for the Imperius system. You always select Imperius, you have to press the number keys to get Imperius StarPort.

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I am eager to try to answer mission questions

Without wishing to seem precious, neither of those two plugs was the original for that particular trick. However, it still works fine in EVN.

Nonetheless:
#9 Music now requires an MP3 file rather than a res.
This is fairly well known, but is not in the EVN Bible.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
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(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)

#10 Beam weapons tractor beam effect now linked to mass not acceleration

This is noted in the documentation but is worth mentioning here because it makes the gameplay so thoroughly different.

I suppose the rationale is that a small ship should not be able to tractor a big ship. However, in reality, it would be a combination of a ship's mass and existing velocity (momentum) with its own acceleration — a little guy with a good foothold can still drag along a big guy who is sliding.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
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(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)

#11 No bounty hunters on domination

EVN does not have built in bounty hunters for dominated planets. You can however create them as an invisible mission which only goes away once the bounty hunters have been destroyed.

#12 Port Authority / EVONE create random garbage in the outfit field of ships
Most of the time the numbers are so high that they are meaningless. However, they may assign something unwanted and unexpected, and therefore need to be checked.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
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(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)

#14 Skill level quite different - make sure you set it for realistic dudes
The skill variable in EVN is based on speed rather than on whatever it was in EVO. By default the variable is 0 in EVN, although both Port Authority and EVONE seem to fill this field with random garbage. However, this results in carried fighters which are released at the same time remaining more or less on top of each other while the player blows them to bits. The problem is the same for dudes which start over a particular navigation default.

Setting a skill var of 10 in the ship resource means that some will go just a bit faster and others a bit slower. This works for fighters. Slow ships need to have a larger value, otherwise they will seem to be just piled up.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
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(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)

#15 Flares feature omitted - difficult to obtain same effect with point defence

The decoy flares feature in EV and EVO is not present in EVN. Point defence offers a more sophisticated approach to this, but has a very different look and feel. For example, in original EV, the flares were very much a low tech alternative to missile jamming. In EVN, this low tech option is not available. Conversion therefore fails.

I would be interested to know if anyone has a work around.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
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Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**#15 Flares feature omitted - difficult to obtain same effect with point defence

The decoy flares feature in EV and EVO is not present in EVN. Point defence offers a more sophisticated approach to this, but has a very different look and feel. For example, in original EV, the flares were very much a low tech alternative to missile jamming. In EVN, this low tech option is not available. Conversion therefore fails.

I would be interested to know if anyone has a work around.

**

I was thinking about this problem just the other day. If I recall correctly. didn't the flares work by causing homing missles to lock onto them? It's been a while, so I forget exactly how they work. Anyway, I think one could simulate the decoy flares by making carried 'ships' and a launcher bay. If the ships had 0 speed and lacked jamming abilities, I'd think homing weapons would go toward them (kinda like how astroids screw them up).

Just a thought. I haven't actually tried it.

-STH

EDIT:I just realized that doing this would mean the 'flares' could be controlled in the same way as escorts. Not really a good solution, I guess.

(This message has been edited by seant (edited 10-16-2003).)