Water Based TC
Hostile Waters is a TC that's not set in space. It's set in the middle of the Atlantic. A small cluster of islands that have no knowledge of the outside world. The head developer is Expeditious Execution (not sure if he's a member here or not). Right now, he's really busy and I'm sure he'd be happy to assign tasks to people.
We have forums at freebb.com and our progress log is at ev-nova.net.
Any help would be highly appreciated.
This idea has come up a number of times, although never, to my knowledge, satisfyingly implemented. EVN's inertialess ships and customizable background colors certainly help, but the lack of collision detection and inability to specify complicated background images or animations has remained an obstacle.
In any case, some forum links you might be interested in perusing:
EVO Era:
3 August 2000: Is THIS possible? - the Necromicon wonders about using large ship sprites as background images. ShadeOfBlue and Kwanzar suggest using large star sprites.
15 December 2000: Current tech plug?
EVN Era:
13 August 2002: Tell me watcha think! Mantaray proposes his plug-in, "Caribbean".
23 August 2002: Unknown TC plug - Ssi-Ruuk7 inquires after the status of Mantaray's project.
1 September 2002: Submarine TC
12 September 2002: Nova: High Seas
31 May 2003: Pirate ship names - Mantaray solicits more input for his project.
Similar projects (links go to archive.org)
Overflow: 1942
Caribbean
-reg
Good luck to you mate.
But I am going to say that I always feel it is a mistake to call a plug a TC before it reaches that size. Just for vaporware reasons.
And I apologise on behalf of the forum if people post cynical replies. People are all too keen to rubbish ideas, but don't have the balls to do it themselves. And when it's done and everyone's raving, they will be one of the people who download it and pretend they always thought it was a great idea. Funny that.
Once again, good luck.
And make the background easy on the eye!
Theoretically Mantaray is still working on Caribbean.
The inability to have decent waves or a decent sea poses a threat to the future of this plug-in. I think you'll find you're going to have extreme difficulty in getting this to work.
What I'd like to know is how you're going to explain hyperspace. I can understand you'll probably be making systems into ports, and planets into islands (Although Nova wasn't build for sprites large enough to support islands that you're going to need to make it even remotely realistic, so good luck) but how are you going to explain hyperspace?
Steelix, on Apr 19 2005, 12:08 AM, said:
The inability to have decent waves or a decent sea poses a threat to the future of this plug-in. I think you'll find you're going to have extreme difficulty in getting this to work.
What I'd like to know is how you're going to explain hyperspace. I can understand you'll probably be making systems into ports, and planets into islands (Although Nova wasn't build for sprites large enough to support islands that you're going to need to make it even remotely realistic, so good luck) but how are you going to explain hyperspace?
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Couldn't the same technique used to make the starfield be used for waves?
Also, I would imagine that the systems would be atolls or clusters, and the planets would be islands, with or without ports (depending on whether you can land or not). Hyperspace could be long range voyages as it is in Nova. You could use the explanation that on wide open sees you wouldn't really come across too many other ships, where as closer to port you would. And since when were any of the scales used in Nova realistic? A lightning as big as a space station? I think not.
Nova leaves room for scale imagination. It could be feasible that the ships are flying in high orbit over the planets, and the planets are so far away that they appear smaller than they really are. The same goes for the Viper to Auroran Carrier comparison. They're way off scale. So are a lot of other ships. But once again, not everything has to be level. In the open sea, this isn't possible.
While I go for your long voyages thing, what I meant was, is it possible to have the ships slowed down? Otherwise it's going to be one hell of a tsunami that carries them at that speed.
Steelix, on Apr 19 2005, 06:19 AM, said:
Nova leaves room for scale imagination. It could be feasible that the ships are flying in high orbit over the planets, and the planets are so far away that they appear smaller than they really are. The same goes for the Viper to Auroran Carrier comparison. They're way off scale. So are a lot of other ships. But once again, not everything has to be level. In the open sea, this isn't possible.
While I go for your long voyages thing, what I meant was, is it possible to have the ships slowed down? Otherwise it's going to be one hell of a tsunami that carries them at that speed.
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You could always make the hyperspace sound 0 seconds long. That would make the jump instant so you probably wouldn't see the ship moving anywhere.
Steelix, on Apr 19 2005, 01:19 AM, said:
Nova leaves room for scale imagination. It could be feasible that the ships are flying in high orbit over the planets, and the planets are so far away that they appear smaller than they really are. The same goes for the Viper to Auroran Carrier comparison. They're way off scale. So are a lot of other ships. But once again, not everything has to be level. In the open sea, this isn't possible.
While I go for your long voyages thing, what I meant was, is it possible to have the ships slowed down? Otherwise it's going to be one hell of a tsunami that carries them at that speed.
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Sometimes you have to let go of reality and immerse yourself in the game, whether it is scalar or not. If you would prefer, they could be mooring points as in a marina, with the actual island not depicted in the system. Besides EV is a flattening of a 3D universe, so proportions, perspectives and so on will be messed up.
You could excuse the hyperspace speed as a result of fast forwarding for the sake of realtime.
Also, it was proposed a while back in a topic I started on the same subject that a PD beam with 0 damage that repels the other ships could be used to eliminate most of the run-ins, though it wouldn't effect ships of the same side.
On the issue of fighters, it would be neat to have little airplanes flying around attacking other ships, but they would be repelled by said beam, which would prevent them from strafing, unless you said they couldn't be targetted by PD, which would make AAA non-existant, so perhaps the beam idea is not the best way to go, unless you leave out airplanes.
erikthered, on Apr 19 2005, 02:12 PM, said:
Sometimes you have to let go of reality and immerse yourself in the game,
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Too true - I mean, hyperspeed isn't even actually possible, as it is impossible to move at a relative speed faster than the speed of light, but that hasn't stopped anyone!
Most of what's been said has been solved. The waves look surprising good. The water color's perfect. We've decided to mostly use hypergates that look like entrances to ports for travel between systems. And the islands will be deadly so you can't sail over them. There will be a second, invisible planet next to the island that will be called a harbor. That will be the one that you land on.
We also have the possibility of making islands out of nebulas. But that would make the land/water situation in systems very confusing.
Anyway, I have to get off now. I'll try to get Expeditious Execution to join. He'll be able to answer more of your questions.
Sounds like you are on top of your game. Any screen shots?
It would be neat if there were several versions of this, perhaps a WWII-era game, and a seventeenth or eighteenth century game. It would be cool to colonize and run into pirates like Blackbeard, or what-have-you. ARRRGH!
erikthered, on Apr 19 2005, 08:39 PM, said:
Sounds like you are on top of your game. Any screen shots?
It would be neat if there were several versions of this, perhaps a WWII-era game, and a seventeenth or eighteenth century game. It would be cool to colonize and run into pirates like Blackbeard, or what-have-you. ARRRGH!
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Sorry, but there are only two screen shots right now. They're at the ev-nova.net upcoming plugins page (it's the second one on the list).
And I think we're planning on going from the colonial times to now and maybe a bit into the future. But it all depends on how much help we get. Right now, there's eight members. It's probably not enough. So, if anyone wants to help, they're perfectly welcome to.
nuku, on Apr 20 2005, 02:07 AM, said:
Sorry, but there are only two screen shots right now. They're at the ev-nova.net upcoming plugins page (it's the second one on the list).
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Are you using Weepul's / Edwards' rotating turret hack?
-reg
