'Cuz you need practice

Okay, I've got an idea that may have been done before, but I don't care. My idea is to have a monthly EV Nova developer's challenge. First, we would decide what would be a good plug, and then the challenge would be to make it. Also, the person that does it best would submit it to the plugs page, and you would have gotten practice and recognition at the same time.

SO... Out of these, which do you think would be a good idea?
1. New pirate govt, ships, and outfits.
2. Two words: Forklift bay
3. A total conversion making the game into a naval (old times) game. You'd be navigating ships, firing cannons... All the govts would have to change, same with missions, dudes and outfits. I'm not sure how you'd fit in the hyperjump.. Maybe you could call it a fast forward.
4. Ability to warp back to the 20th century and get the Apollo 11 or a Modern Shuttle (think discovery) and some outfits. You might also incude being able to Warp foward into the future. (I suggest wormholes for both)
It's not limited to these, suggest one!

This post has been edited by Gorgatun : 20 October 2004 - 04:31 PM

These all seem rather straightforward... praps a bit of graphics work. But the forklift bay for example is just a page or two of checkboxes and numbers to fill in.

The weekly (more realistically monthly) dev challenge sounds like a neat idea, though. I remeber something like that from before i knew how to do this stuff...

One system Total Conversion. Make me happy.

Thats so terribly pointless...

possibly have a bunch of people pack as much as they can into a single system, then vote on em or soemthing. Though, still seems rather silly.

NebuchadnezzaR, on Oct 19 2004, 07:39 PM, said:

These all seem rather straightforward... praps a bit of graphics work. But the forklift bay for example is just a page or two of checkboxes and numbers to fill in.

The weekly (more realistically monthly) dev challenge sounds like a neat idea, though. I remeber something like that from before i knew how to do this stuff...
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Are you going to try it? I'm thinking the apollo 11 or shuttle idea is pretty cool... You could even make or find a model of a satellite and make them missiles! (They'd have to be standard with the shuttle)

Those are all terribly easy. Plus, this idea has been done before. Check out the mrxak challenge: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php...16&#

Masamune, is the player landing or just going through the system?

The player wouldn't need to land. The mďsn could count for you.

Masamune, on Oct 21 2004, 10:45 PM, said:

All the bit fields are 256 character strings.
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Actually, being C strings, I think there are actually 255 chars available and the 256th is the terminating null.

Masamune, on Oct 21 2004, 01:06 PM, said:

Actually, I was forgetting about having to mod the system, but you only need 1 system- no swapping necessary. You're forgetting about the AppearOn bits in the Pers- if you set the system to make the pers always appear but correctly set it's AppearOn bits, you don't need to swap the system.
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Oy, I really have to do something about my foot-in-mouth problem.

slouch, on Oct 22 2004, 06:49 AM, said:

Oy, I really have to do something about my foot-in-mouth problem.
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Don't worry, I can forgive that.

Everyone else: there's no planet to land on- the challenge is to count just the number of times the player enters the system, not how many times they land on a spob. The latter is considerably easier.

I will give you one freebie, though: you can have a mission activated previously, say by a char, and not worry about it.

EDIT: I just thought of a way to do it with only 1 outfit and 1 mission, plus possibly either 1 more cron or 1 more mission. So, extra freebie: you can Gxxx some stuff to the player in the char too. Or, just make it easy and say you need 1 char/cron/mission/whatever to do setup...;)

This post has been edited by Masamune : 22 October 2004 - 11:11 AM

i already had the outf idea

Im going to try do do it without any outf or extra misns. Looks like i need 2 crons and a misn, total. I think i might get a good version working tonight, if not itl not be till sunday.

Ahh, but I like the outf idea... In any case, more power to you! If you can do it with what you say you can, you've got me stumped!

Given the knowledge of how to manipulate the pers, the best I can do is: 1 char, 1 cron, 1 misn, 1 outf, 1 pers, 1 syst, and 1 NCB.

The plug is attached below if you're interested. (In REZ format, Mac users will need to convert it). The system is Naka, one jump SE of Arcturus in the standard Nova scenario. (The char will start you in Arcturus). The pers you'll see on the ninth entrance is Matt Burch's Kestral.

Masamune, on Oct 22 2004, 09:32 PM, said:

Ahh, but I like the outf idea... In any case, more power to you! If you can do it with what you say you can, you've got me stumped!
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I know i can do the adding with that few crons... i still have to figure out the misn handling, as i have done none of that. But i think a cron and a misn is plenty.

Iff i cant get the other parts working properly, ill just tell you how i did the cron part.

Hmm...a cron and a misn? How? The best I can think of is a cron, a misn, and an outf. I assume that you're using ncb's to do it, but I can't understand how you're doing it with just a cron and a misn.

As to UE's: Haha, you amuse me. That is impossible to do.

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 23 October 2004 - 02:10 PM

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As to UE's: Haha, you amuse me. That is impossible to do.

sob...but you get a pers ship AND a junk! Are you sure it's impossible?

Yes. It is literally impossible to do with the current engine. The mission limit is 1000.

That's definitely not stopping some certain people :p.

orcaloverbri9, on Oct 23 2004, 07:07 PM, said:

Hmm...a cron and a misn? How? The best I can think of is a cron, a misn, and an outf. I assume that you're using ncb's to do it, but I can't understand how you're doing it with just a cron and a misn.

As to UE's: Haha, you amuse me. That is impossible to do.
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Sorry, i spoke ambiguously. I meant a cron and a mission to do the bit manipulation for entering the system, though i might only need the misn for that, using the onshipdone field. Im still not sure how all of that works. Two more crons to do all of the binary adding (4 bits)... why couldnt you have chosen 7?.

I dont feel like explaining how right now, but i will say iterative cron entry + R() in the onStart. (keep in mind its technically theoretical at the moment, but i see no reason it shouldnt work).

Very, very messy and clumsy. My favorite kind of hack. My ActivateOn field is 198 charachters long.

Actually, i could do all of the counting with one cron... Maybe. If you have iterative entry and iterative exit, will it run the onend field at least once, then check, or would it never run the onend field (since the activateOn would be unsatisfied because it already left the onstart loop)?