I want to hear from YOU.
Attention, Nova developers who are using Windows as a development environment! If you're working on a major scenario or plug-in for Nova, I want to hear from you.
Send me a PM here on the forums with details about your project, and your history as a Nova developer.
Thanks,
Dave @ ATMOS
This post is shrouded in mystery.
Thanks to all who sent me a PM. It's helped my data gathering.
Basically, there seem to be no major projects underway (currently) that are being developed on PC. One gentleman has some plans, but hasn't progressed far due to the usual reason -- graphics.
Most Nova development work still appears to take place on Mac, which is not surprising -- EVNEW just isn't there yet.
Dave @ ATMOS
Who made EVNEW, anyway? Do they have any affilliation with ATMOS? Will EVNEW ever be "There?"
Find out all these questions and more on the next episode of Questions From an Ignorant Werepengucoon . 
EVNEW was made by Aprosenf. I remember when he randomly made a topic asking for beta testers. He'd managed to write the whole thing in complete secrecy. Awesome.
He has no affiliation to ATMOS.
aprosenf@aol.com according to the EVNEW home (http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/
<snip post to protect privacy of person>
This post has been edited by shady tradesman : 05 January 2006 - 08:25 PM
Hamster, on Jan 5 2006, 05:16 PM, said:
If I were you, I'd copy that information, send it via PM to pipeline, and then edit your post.
Personal info + public forum = bad.
View Post
Everyone can find that stuff with 5 mintues of looking. =P
ok.
pipeline, on Jan 3 2006, 08:35 PM, said:
EVNEW just isn't there yet.View Post
In my own, it's really quite a wonderful program.
From the ability to import and export from both .rez files and .txt files, to the check boxes for flags and the contribute/require bits, it works quite wonderfully at making most types of plugins. I would even go so far as to say that the fact that no other Windows editors seem to exist is a great complement.
The dearth of Windows created TCs and the like I would blame primarily on the dearth of such things from the Mac side. Add in the fact that many of the larger plugins that were released for Nova, such as Polycon (and dare I say, Nova itself?), got their starts in EV:O days (which were Mac only). I would then follow this with the fact that Escape Velocity already had a Mac legacy. With Nova, the game wasn't ported to Windows for some time after the initial release, followed by the fact that most Windows users, not having access to a Mac, had no way of creating plugs at first. Then EVNEW was released, but with most of its publicity (to the best of my knowledge) reserved for the Nova Webboard (and no mention, even in new downloads of Nova, of its existence). Of course, not everyone who downloaded Windows Nova would know of the Webboards, and many of those that have gone there probably only do so sporadically, and it's likely that there is a great, untapped "pool of potential" out there that was missed entirely.
I will, of course, grant that anyone looking to create plugins will almost invariably be drawn to search online for more information and from there end up coming to these webboards, but the popularity for Nova will almost definately never increase, especially as Nova is aging (albeit quite well, I imagine). Still, that aging means that when current developers lose interest, they may not see a great demand for their product, and go from lost interest to abandonment. As more and more Mac developers lose interest, potential new developers lose sources of information and assistance. This is a wonderful community, and I love it dearly, but people do move on. It happens.
Then, the manual gives us links to Stuffit 7.5 (which I haven't tried and probably don't work), and links to this page:
http://www.ambrosias...n/winplugs.html
The above page laments on the difficulty of creating Windows plugs and lists only three. While it does say that you can submit your own plug, I have to admit that this is the first that I've ever even heard of this page (buried as it is deep in the manual, in the Documentation folder). Either the submissions don't work, the page is never updated, or I'm not the only one visiting this page for the first time.
Sorry if it seems like I've rambled, but I felt like defending EVNEW. 
Also, I would ask the questions:
Would it be worth discussing an update of the manual (and possibly also the Bible)?
Would it be worth discussing including a new document with >all< Nova downloads, a "quick and dirty" guide to plugin creation, linking Mac Editors, EVNEW, the Dev Corner, etc. with general tips and whatnot for making your first plug (and possibly including Zacha Pedro's templates, among other things)?
I believe that if these questions are addressed, we might still see a large TC created from EVNEW (or at least created using mostly it). Or we might not, it's always difficult to tell, especially at this stage of Nova's life. This is, obviously, just all my own opinion. And, as an aside, this is what happens when I get hooked on a train of thought trying to make a simple post examining why Windows hasn't been more strongly represented.
EVNEW isn't really the problem.
For me, I was working on a TC for a while, then stopped because of frustration with the EV system in general. Yeah, EV is a great platform to make a TC, but the engine is aging, and so is the plug-in system. I used to mess with plugins in EV (classic) on my Mac LCII back in the day... I skipped over EV:O mostly and when EV:N came out for windows I was happy. Then I realized that, while many things have been upgraded, it's still the same game underneath. Between EV:C and EV:N I was messing with Warcraft3. You can modify that so much that basically anything is possible. An RTS has been turned into a racing game, a full blown RPG and things that be right at home as a Final Fantasy mini-game. With EV... it's a lot easier to get most things done, but it's also very limiting. It's like using a WYSIWYG program to make a webpage vs hand coding it.
The only problem with EVNEW would be the inability to modify the ingame GUIs like mission computer can (I used Edwards to modify the GUI for me for my TC and converted it from mac to pc, but again I stopped work on it). But that's not too much of a problem really, EVNEW is a great tool. EVNEW wasn't the problem for me, it was the entire engine. (Don't start flaming me here... Burch did a great job with EV:N, especially with his resources.)
The reason why you see less PC developed plugs/TCs is because there are less PC players of EV:N. Face it, it's a Mac game. Hell, the PC options interface looks like a Mac GUI. Yes, the port was successful, but it's still a Mac game at heart. Ambrosia is basically all Mac stuff. All previous EV games were in the exclusive domain of Macs, so the PC community has almost no exposure to it. Hardly anyone knows what the EV series is... if you want more PC players, you need to advertise by getting reviews in PC gaming magazines and such. If you get PC players, you get more people experienced in making mods, then you get more TCs/plugs being made.
This post has been edited by Koshinn : 11 January 2006 - 12:26 AM
I think you may have aided his point...it got a 71%...read the description it is hardly anything noteworthy.
Swithich, on Jan 11 2006, 12:24 AM, said:
I think you may have aided his point...it got a 71%...read the description it is hardly anything noteworthy.
"...then braving this epic trekker will put the warp back in your hard drive." Sounds pretty good to me. The reviewer spends quite some time detailing the better attributes and devotes a small segment to its flaws. If he thought the game was bad, it would be the reverse - I have seen this done in PC Gamer. Be grateful that it got a 71% from PC Gamer. I would not have been surprised if it was given something in the 40-50% range.
