Guy, the erroneous Yandros - Avann jump route is still showing up -- and this is with a pilot who is still in a stock shuttle and has done no misns other than 5000cr & 15,000cr passenger runs.
Other than that, your EVO seems to be running smoothly -- I'm glad I'm finally getting around to giving it a go!
Alien5672, on Feb 3 2006, 06:19 PM, said:
Scratch that! I retried the installation, and everything seems to work fine now. Except I've noticed an unusual hyper-jump point. It leads from Yandros to Avann. Never saw that before.
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You know, that's what EV-Edit shows in the "system" editor: create a new plug-in, open the "Galaxy Map," and this (above) is there. Hope this helps a little.
Frontier Express missions seem to all be going to Outpost Alpha, never to Gamma or Theta.... My guess is that those two spobs are affected by Nova's new no-random-misns-to-potentially-vanishing-spobs "feature" -- perhaps this could be worked around by pointing misns specifically to those 2 stations? The situation as it is makes racking up $$ by doing those runs both easier and more monotonous.
(If you bother fixing that one, I'd also like to get a freight or passenger misn to New Calcutta once in a while again -- that diseased little hellhole was always one of my favorite ports of call.)
Dr. Trowel, on Feb 6 2006, 11:04 PM, said:
Frontier Express missions seem to all be going to Outpost Alpha, never to Gamma or Theta.... My guess is that those two spobs are affected by Nova's new no-random-misns-to-potentially-vanishing-spobs "feature" -- perhaps this could be worked around by pointing misns specifically to those 2 stations?...View Post
That's weird, the mission parameters has it set so that it goes to any spöbs that are under UE Frontier controlled, and not to any specific spöbs like Outpost Alpha or Gamma. What this means that even if one of the systems were to change, the mission would find the next available UE Frontier controlled system. Maybe I can only guess that the bug would involve have the missions themselves point directly to a specific spöb.
Well, I spotted a minor bug: The news items that should appear in the bar at certain points in the game (Miranu Treaty, Paaren Station, etc.) never show up. This is caused by Nova no longer supporting news-only disasters- news is now handled solely by cröns. So, it looks like you'll need to create a set of new cröns to handle news, and probably add a new set of ncbs to prevent the cröns from recurring. I would recommend using the last available crön RIDs, rather than the first, simply to maintain compatibility with any already-released plugs that use cröns (read: Ship Hanger).
Anyway, the new port looks quite good so far! Everything seems a little slow at first, but you get used to it fairly quickly, although I haven't yet tried flying a cruiser. I seem to recall doing most of my cruiser-flying in EVO with the speed adjusted to 250% (before adding caps lock), and that was on a fairly fast computer.
----------
@Coraxus:
The problem is the following often-aggravating feature of Nova:
...if you have multiple
systems that occupy the same coordinates at different times in the game
and not all of them contain stellar object X, no missions will use
stellar object X as their random destination.
Due to how EVO handled system-planet assignment (each planet can only appear in a single instance of a system), every planet in a system that could change will now be affected by this feature.
It will take a fair amount of work to find out which inhabited spobs are affected, but these are the systems that have multiple versions:
Aludra, Avann, Diudir, DSN-1003, DSN-114, DSN-1810, DSN-2131, DSN-3587, DSN-3620, DSN-4420, DSN-4743, DSN-7455, DSN-9338, Emalghion, Fridion, Gamur, Grenits, Huron, Isled, Kelmaon, Kirrim, Krraali, Novish, Obron, Pariah, Pust, Raigar, Romit, Stror, Terapin, Tollb, Valos, Verril, Yandros, Yelts, Zachit, Zator.
Most of the inhabited planets that are skipped over by random missions probably aren't important, but the Frontier Express missions sound like a serious game-play issue.
Edwards
Well, I also noticed something funky in the Override engine. When I did the post-FOTVE missions (which were probably boring shrugs) I did several in-trade missions for the Hinwar. The Hinwar government only controlled three systems, which on the galaxy map, where linked forming a backwards "L". If you selected a mission from the Hinavar system, all of them would point at any spöbs that were in the Gamur system, but never in the Obron system, and vice versa. So what would happen if you selected a mission in the Obron system? I think it pointed to itself rather than any random planets in either the Gamur or the Hinavar system.
Edwards, on Feb 10 2006, 04:07 PM, said:
Well, I spotted a minor bug: The news items that should appear in the bar at certain points in the game (Miranu Treaty, Paaren Station, etc.) never show up. This is caused by Nova no longer supporting news-only disasters- news is now handled solely by cröns. So, it looks like you'll need to create a set of new cröns to handle news, and probably add a new set of ncbs to prevent the cröns from recurring. I would recommend using the last available crön RIDs, rather than the first, simply to maintain compatibility with any already-released plugs that use cröns (read: Ship Hanger).
View Post
The official port doesn't use crons, either.
Edwards, on Feb 10 2006, 05:07 PM, said:
Anyway, the new port looks quite good so far! Everything seems a little slow at first, but you get used to it fairly quickly, although I haven't yet tried flying a cruiser. I seem to recall doing most of my cruiser-flying in EVO with the speed adjusted to 250% (before adding caps lock), and that was on a fairly fast computer.
Heheh, yeah, I did that too, back in the EVO days, on my own "fairly fast" computer: a PowerMac 6500/225!
Quote
The problem is the following often-aggravating feature of Nova:
...if you have multiple
systems that occupy the same coordinates at different times in the game
and not all of them contain stellar object X, no missions will use
stellar object X as their random destination.
Due to how EVO handled system-planet assignment (each planet can only appear in a single instance of a system), every planet in a system that could change will now be affected by this feature.
It will take a fair amount of work to find out which inhabited spobs are affected, but these are the systems that have multiple versions:
Aludra, Avann, Diudir, DSN-1003, DSN-114, DSN-1810, DSN-2131, DSN-3587, DSN-3620, DSN-4420, DSN-4743, DSN-7455, DSN-9338, Emalghion, Fridion, Gamur, Grenits, Huron, Isled, Kelmaon, Kirrim, Krraali, Novish, Obron, Pariah, Pust, Raigar, Romit, Stror, Terapin, Tollb, Valos, Verril, Yandros, Yelts, Zachit, Zator.
Most of the inhabited planets that are skipped over by random missions probably aren't important, but the Frontier Express missions sound like a serious game-play issue.
Edwards
View Post
Is the only solution for this to make "duplicate" systems actually be offset by one pixel, so the Nova engine doesn't think in terms of implicit reciprocrap, and impossible random mission targets?
This post has been edited by Qaanol : 11 February 2006 - 11:25 AM
Qaanol, on Feb 11 2006, 07:25 AM, said:
Is the only solution for this to make "duplicate" systems actually be offset by one pixel, so the Nova engine doesn't think in terms of implicit reciprocrap, and impossible random mission targets?View Post
I haven't come up with anything else, although I haven't really thought about the problem much. If you do that, just be sure to use Xxxx at appropriate times to reveal the new version of the system, as your exploration won't be updated automatically. This may well be the best solution to the problem(s), as it wouldn't require adding any missions.
And the computer in question really was decently fast, even by current standards- a 2000 iBook G3. The Voinian Cruiser was still slow (ah, the questionable joy of being able to land without slowing down).
@Dr. Trowel: Yes. What bearing does the official port have on this new version, except for purposes of compatibility?
Edwards
Edwards, on Feb 11 2006, 04:15 PM, said:
@Dr. Trowel: Yes. What bearing does the official port have on this new version, except for purposes of compatibility?
View Post
I had thought Soviet mikee might have come up with a solution Guy didn't use. I checked the files, and he hadn't. That was all.
For the FE case, there are 3 misns, that differ only in CargoType, ShipCount (2 or 3), and TimeLimit (25, 19, or 22 days). I probably would have hard-wired each of those 3 misns to a different outpost, figuring players wouldn't notice that those variables weren't... um, varying... as they did before. For the misns to systs that vanish, orphaned cargos could be avoided by testing for a bit set in a misn leading up to the disappearance. Just nudging the syst locations is a clever approach, though -- less work, certainly.
I haven't experienced it in-game, but it looks to me like misn 279 gets majorly affected by this issue, too, though in its current state in the port it is tougher than it was. This misn is a 200,000cr smuggling trip for Stellar Corp. to Human Renegade worlds. The only Renegade syst that doesn't get swapped out is Riomor, which is the farthest from UE space.
Dr. Trowel, on Jan 31 2006, 06:40 PM, said:
Guy, the erroneous Yandros - Avann jump route is still showing up -- and this is with a pilot who is still in a stock shuttle and has done no misns other than 5000cr & 15,000cr passenger runs.
View Post
Ah, must be caused by Nova's "smart" linking to other systems with the same name/location. I'll fix that.
Coraxus, on Feb 4 2006, 04:10 PM, said:
I just realized something, in the EVO addons, there were additional extra escort voices that never got used in the game, perhaps now that Nova allows more escort voices, you might want to consider adding them to your updates.
View Post
Um, could you elaborate? Are you talking about a plug, or what? Nova only allows additional voices by having different sets for different govts. It actually has one less voice type than EV/O did (no "voice wait").
Edwards, on Feb 10 2006, 11:07 AM, said:
Well, I spotted a minor bug: The news items that should appear in the bar at certain points in the game (Miranu Treaty, Paaren Station, etc.) never show up. This is caused by Nova no longer supporting news-only disasters- news is now handled solely by cröns. So, it looks like you'll need to create a set of new cröns to handle news, and probably add a new set of ncbs to prevent the cröns from recurring. I would recommend using the last available crön RIDs, rather than the first, simply to maintain compatibility with any already-released plugs that use cröns (read: Ship Hanger).
View Post
Hm, I don't really know much about the way news works. Does EV/O oops news just appear at every planet in the universe, or what? The Nova bible still lists -2 as valid in the oops resource.
Edwards, on Feb 10 2006, 11:07 AM, said:
Anyway, the new port looks quite good so far! Everything seems a little slow at first, but you get used to it fairly quickly, although I haven't yet tried flying a cruiser. I seem to recall doing most of my cruiser-flying in EVO with the speed adjusted to 250% (before adding caps lock), and that was on a fairly fast computer.
View Post
Heh. Do you think it's slow relative to Nova or just relative to how you're used to playing it? I thought it was reasonable enough. (It was also much easier this way - just leave the values the same and Nova runs it half as fast as EV/O. Halving and doubling gets a bit messy, especially considering all the values that need to be changed)
Dr. Trowel, on Feb 11 2006, 05:43 PM, said:
For the FE case, there are 3 misns, that differ only in CargoType, ShipCount (2 or 3), and TimeLimit (25, 19, or 22 days). I probably would have hard-wired each of those 3 misns to a different outpost, figuring players wouldn't notice that those variables weren't... um, varying... as they did before. For the misns to systs that vanish, orphaned cargos could be avoided by testing for a bit set in a misn leading up to the disappearance. Just nudging the syst locations is a clever approach, though -- less work, certainly.
I haven't experienced it in-game, but it looks to me like misn 279 gets majorly affected by this issue, too, though in its current state in the port it is tougher than it was. This misn is a 200,000cr smuggling trip for Stellar Corp. to Human Renegade worlds. The only Renegade syst that doesn't get swapped out is Riomor, which is the farthest from UE space.
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I'll check these out - seems like hard-wiring the FEs to different outposts is the best way to go though. I probably won't bother with the test bit - EVO never had any safeguards against it.
This post has been edited by Guy : 17 February 2006 - 03:34 AM
Well, the extra escort voices had additional voices for other parts, but it was available in the EVO addons page, I just forgot what the name of the file was, I think it was EVO escort voices or something, maybe it's in the EV addons page, I don't know.
BTW, I did take a try of your facelift plugins, though they're very interesting, I kind of have difference of opinion in terms of government colors though. Like the UE should be red, the Voinians grey, human independant governments should be sky blue, etc. I've taken the liberty to change the colors myself, but if you're curious to see what colors I've assigned to other governments, PM me.
Guy, on Feb 16 2006, 11:28 PM, said:
Hm, I don't really know much about the way news works. Does EV/O oops news just appear at every planet in the universe, or what? The Nova bible still lists -2 as valid in the oops resource.View Post
The news simply never shows up anywhere. The Nova Bible is wrong in its statement that that feature is still supported.
Guy, on Feb 16 2006, 11:28 PM, said:
Heh. Do you think it's slow relative to Nova or just relative to how you're used to playing it? I thought it was reasonable enough. (It was also much easier this way - just leave the values the same and Nova runs it half as fast as EV/O. Halving and doubling gets a bit messy, especially considering all the values that need to be changed)
I thinks it's mostly that it's slower than Nova, and probably also that it's much slower than my standard test ships. However, I've played the original EVO fairly recently, and I think your port is a bit slower. On the other hand, I was playing on what is a fairly high-end machine for EVO, so my view is probably skewed. On the other other hand, Nova doesn't have a global speed adjustment, so the question is how your port's speed compares to the speed at which most people played EVO, which I cannot answer.
Guy, on Feb 16 2006, 11:28 PM, said:
I'll check these out - seems like hard-wiring the FEs to different outposts is the best way to go though. I probably won't bother with the test bit - EVO never had any safeguards against it.
I wouldn't bother with the safeguard bits- it would be impossible to prevent orphaned cargoes without severely impacting gameplay. You may want to try the system location offset, though. In fact, I have all the tools to set up the offsets and exploration bits fairly painlessly, so I might give it a shot myself.
Edwards
This post has been edited by Edwards : 17 February 2006 - 07:51 PM
Coraxus, on Feb 17 2006, 02:40 AM, said:
Well, the extra escort voices had additional voices for other parts, but it was available in the EVO addons page, I just forgot what the name of the file was, I think it was EVO escort voices or something, maybe it's in the EV addons page, I don't know.
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Ah, found it (EV addons). Yeah I remember this plug, but why exactly do you think it should be included here?
Edwards, on Feb 17 2006, 01:50 PM, said:
The news simply never shows up anywhere. The Nova Bible is wrong in its statement that that feature is still supported.
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Okay, but where would it show up originally in EV/O?
Edwards, on Feb 17 2006, 01:50 PM, said:
I thinks it's mostly that it's slower than Nova, and probably also that it's much slower than my standard test ships. However, I've played the original EVO fairly recently, and I think your port is a bit slower. On the other hand, I was playing on what is a fairly high-end machine for EVO, so my view is probably skewed. On the other other hand, Nova doesn't have a global speed adjustment, so the question is how your port's speed compares to the speed at which most people played EVO, which I cannot answer.
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Hm, well it seems fast enough for me with caps on. Or maybe I'm just slow :rolleyes:. Either way, it ain't gonna change.
Edwards, on Feb 17 2006, 01:50 PM, said:
I wouldn't bother with the safeguard bits- it would be impossible to prevent orphaned cargoes without severely impacting gameplay. You may want to try the system location offset, though. In fact, I have all the tools to set up the offsets and exploration bits fairly painlessly, so I might give it a shot myself.
Edwards
View Post
Well I realised that if I hard-wire the FE missions then they're still going to end up all going to alpha once you complete the UE string. I don't quite see how offsetting will help though - the systems are still controlled by bits so might not be there when you get there and Nova knows this and won't send you there, right?
Guy, on Feb 17 2006, 07:33 PM, said:
Well I realised that if I hard-wire the FE missions then they're still going to end up all going to alpha once you complete the UE string.View Post
My opinion is that it's more important that the missions function properly earlier in the game, when the player is likely more strapped for cash and in a more vulnerable ship -- that's when the resupply missions really matter.
By the way, since there is all this talk about game speed.... Way back in 2003 there was discussion about the port making weapons too slow, and by how much. (Guy, you may have even been involved -- I don't remember.) Using ConText and quick Excel calculations, I made a never-released plug that multiplied all weapon speeds by 1.5 and all "count" fields by 0.67. Here it is:
Override_weapons_re_do2.zip (2.05K)
Number of downloads: 55
Whether this should be official or not, I dunno. Figuring out what best brings original EVO game balance to the Nova engine is now more complicated, since, if I'm reading things correctly, it appears Guy went back to the ship speed numbers used in the original EVO game instead of the doubled ones in vers. 1.0.0 of the port. Do weapon speeds need to be halved to make them correct relative to the new ship speeds? Should that be on top of the X1.5 adjustment in my plug, or not?
This post has been edited by Dr. Trowel : 18 February 2006 - 01:17 PM
Guy, on Feb 17 2006, 04:33 PM, said:
Okay, but where would (the news) show up originally in EV/O?View Post
In all bars for thirty days, I believe. Anyone here played EVO recently, and can confirm this?
Guy, on Feb 17 2006, 04:33 PM, said:
Well I realised that if I hard-wire the FE missions then they're still going to end up all going to alpha once you complete the UE string.
Huh? Hard-wired destinations (spob RID: xxx) are unaffected by considerations about transient spobs, so there should at least still be a mission to Outpost Omicron. What other "hard-wiring" were you considering?
Guy, on Feb 17 2006, 04:33 PM, said:
I don't quite see how offsetting will help though - the systems are still controlled by bits so might not be there when you get there and Nova knows this and won't send you there, right?
Incorrect. I came up with a fairly long-winded explaination of just how Nova handles "transient spobs", and the upshot of it was that it only knows that the spob is transient if another system at the same x/y coordinates doesn't contain the spob - it doesn't care whether the spob's system's visibility can change. Therefore, offsetting works.
Unfortunately, I have once again remembered the problem with using Xxxx to handle visibility problems with the position-offset workaround: You may not be able to guarantee that the systems have already been explored, and you don't want to give the player a free map.
Fortunately, almost all the systems that are changed in EVO are guaranteed to have been explored before-hand, so that is mostly not a problem. The bad news is that Outposts Theta and Omicron are among the four systems that I cannot guarantee that the player has been to before that affect random missions- I have included a nebula-based fix for these four systems. (If you don't like using nebulae, I've come up with two or three other methods. Nebulae are just the most convenient.)
Anyway, attached to this post is a set of three plugs that demonstrate my fix for this bug. Only two of the three plugs are actually meant to be used with the port, so read the readme before trying them.
Oh and I haven't done extensive testing with these, so downloader beware.
Edwards
SystChanges.zip (7.17K)