Updated... usually

Welcome to the EV: Eon forum page!

So, recently, I had purchased EV Nova. I thoroughly enjoyed EV Nova, and, when I tested Polycon EV, I thought, "This is amazing. It's possible to do this? If it is, I'd make one!" Then I invited friends, and two of my friends have this game. All of the friends I had formed with me a group I called Manticore Studios, and we began this project to create a total conversion for EV Nova.

Our progress will be listed here, but so far, we're only in the early development stage. Another thing to tell you about, WE REQUIRE HELP!!!!! We need lots of ideas and you can also post them here.

We'd appreciate your ideas, which could include:

-Planets and systems
-Ships, and the progress would go much faster with pictures
-Weapons and outfits
-Governments/factions

Hope the team can prosper from your help.

(Edit) I almost forgot! If you want more info on the TC plug-in, you can check the Escape Velocity: Eon Homepage

This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 28 December 2007 - 11:59 PM

Screenshots, please.

(Welcome to the boards, KoM, and best of luck! We haven't seen a lot of face-to-face teams aside from ATMOS; that may prove to be your strength. But don't let ambition get the best of you!)

I'm making my 'Oh, a new tc! Good luck, do well, live long and prosper!' post to balance the inevitable criticisms.

So, good luck with the TC. Here's to hoping you can get an idea!

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 29 December 2007 - 12:59 PM

Thanks, Shlimazel. And Dr. Trowel, the pictures will not be up for a while. Besides, they're just drawings, and they are drafts, but I will get to some shots sometime.

I downloaded Mission Computer. Before I start programming, I will fool around with it a bit.:D Mission Computer is new to me, and I just want to see how every function works before my team and I get serious and do some work.

The pictures, Dr. Trowel, as I had said before, are drawings. I have a scanner, and I will try scanning them and putting it on the homepage. It will be soon.

(Edit) I stopped messing with MC and added transferred weapons data into it. The data only consists of names, and I have a long journey ahead of me.

Like I said, I will need ideas and some help would be appreciated.

This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 29 December 2007 - 03:01 PM

Playing with the Mission Computer, I found some things I really need to ask. And if I don't ask them, I will end up being confused.

Question 1: I found the weap resource and the outf resource. Do you have to place outfits in the outf area as well as weapons or can the weapons be separate from the outfits?
Question 2: How do you add existing planets to the systems?
Question 3: I want to add a landing sound to a planet but when I try to play the sound Mission Computer tells me I can't listen to the landing sound. Why would that be?

I will appreciate any help on this.

No offense, but are you sure you should be starting with a TC? You may wish to make a slew of much smaller, simpler plugs and gain experience. In fact, I strongly recommend it.

As per the questions...

1. If you want a weapon to appear in the outfitters, you'll need to make an outfit that points to the weapon resource in question. You can have weapons that are outfitless, but they'll be unbuyable and vanish when the player enters the shipyard.

2. Create a spob, find the system in question, add the spob ID to the spob list.

3. Probably the wrong format. Sounds need to be in system 7 format. I also believe they need to be mono 16-bit.

I poked around your site, KoM, and I have a few questions:

1. It notes that ships from Nova are going to make a comeback. Therefore, how many years will Eon take place after the events of Nova (assuming they're the same Universe)?

2. Do you need a spell-checker/grammar-checker? I am a spelling and grammar Nazi, if you do.

3. Would you give us some background about the events leading up to the current state of the Eon Universe?

And, as previously mentioned, Welcome to the Boards!

@joshtigerheart, on Dec 29 2007, 04:21 PM, said in Escape Velocity: Eon:

No offense, but are you sure you should be starting with a TC? You may wish to make a slew of much smaller, simpler plugs and gain experience. In fact, I strongly recommend it.

Hmmm.... Maybe the team and I should, Josh. In the meantime, we will stick to developing this for a while. We are inexperienced, so maybe we should work with smaller plugs first.

As for the sounds, I took them from Nova Sounds. That means Nova Sounds does not have the specific file needed for the landing sounds or anything else?

@warlord-mike, on Dec 29 2007, 05:39 PM, said in Escape Velocity: Eon:

I poked around your site, KoM, and I have a few questions:

1. It notes that ships from Nova are going to make a comeback. Therefore, how many years will Eon take place after the events of Nova (assuming they're the same Universe)?

2. Do you need a spell-checker/grammar-checker? I am a spelling and grammar Nazi, if you do.

3. Would you give us some background about the events leading up to the current state of the Eon Universe?

Here are the answers to your questions, Warlord Mike:

1. Eon means one thousand years. So EV Eon will be 1000 years into the future. However, I'm considering changing that name to EV Half -Eon because I think the events of this plug would probably take place in at least 500 years, give or take a few years.

2. Thanks, but no thanks. You see, I'm a spelling and grammar freak myself. I sometimes loathe it when someone can't spell something correct or they can't use correct grammar. Take for example Polycon EV's Border cruiser description. It says something like "The Vecon Industries Border is popular light cruiser..." instead of "The Vecon Industries Border is a popular light cruiser..."

Then there's the Vecon hiring text... shudder shudder

3. I believe that the "Backstory" link should take you to EV Eon's backstory.

This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 29 December 2007 - 11:29 PM

I had my friend over today, and we messed with the syst and spob resources... using TC data, we managed to create an awesome planet. (I messed with the dude resource and created an awesome defense fleet, so when we tried to demand tribute, those ships came out and gored us.) However, when we tried to make a spacedock, it appeared as a planet... very funny and strange.

I have now some experience, right? Oh well, our team still has to do those other small plugs to actually have some experience.

That's progress today. Dr. Trowel, one picture should be up there by tommorrow. As I said, it is a preliminary draft, and it isn't too good looking, so don't expect too much.

(Edit) AAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!

Stupid CS2. I was trying to scan my pictures and I found that the grace period had expired. So I couldn't scan my draft pictures. And I can't draw on the computer... crud.

So the pictures won't be up there for a loooooooooong time. Sorry.

This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 31 December 2007 - 03:02 PM

Checking the spacedock box does not actually change the picture that will be used for your spob. If you want to make it look like a spacedock, you'll need to change the graphic number (which identifies which graphic to use) to something that looks like a space station. I forget what checking the spacedock box actually does, but it's nothing to do with graphics.

Hope that helps.

Checking the box makes it so that you get the right message (cleared to land vs. cleared to dock) when you press 'L'.

@razzle-storm, on Dec 31 2007, 09:19 PM, said in Escape Velocity: Eon:

Checking the spacedock box does not actually change the picture that will be used for your spob. If you want to make it look like a spacedock, you'll need to change the graphic number (which identifies which graphic to use) to something that looks like a space station. I forget what checking the spacedock box actually does, but it's nothing to do with graphics.

Hope that helps.

Yes, I was playing with that same TC I was talking about, and I finally found the answer to that problem. Thanks for the help, though. And also, I found it is a little easy creating systems and planets, as long as I have the game's data. Now, I might start on trying to create ships from data.....

And good news: the screenshots will be up today, if not tommorrow. (Yeah, I'm kind of slacking out on that.:D) This computer has CS3 installed on it, so I can scan, save, and upload pictures. Unfortunately, if you were expecting something awesome, don't. THEY ARE SIMPLE PRELIMINARY SKETCHES.

An eon is a million years, a thousand years would be a millennium.

Still, looks nifty, good luck with it :).

@kyros, on Jan 1 2008, 11:48 AM, said in Escape Velocity: Eon:

An eon is a million years, a thousand years would be a millennium.

Still, looks nifty, good luck with it .

I looked up on Wiktionary, and I found an eon is one billion years. What the heck?! I had originally thought an eon to be a thousand years... Very funny. I must have confused that with millennium. So I guess that makes this EV: Half- Millenium? :huh:

Looking up on Wiktionary again, I did find a thousand years is a millennium.

D'oh. Well, maybe I'll change the TC's name at release. Heh.

Here's another news update: I remembered Josh's comment about creating smaller plugs before trying a TC. I thought and thought, and I decided the team should try some small plugs. I also remembered Archon's Anathema plug. (If I'm correct, that's an expansion type of plug.) So I wondered, "Why not try making expansions? How about turning the backstory into several expansions for every storyline?" I felt that would be a good idea.

So here's the news: we will start developing on the EV: Half-Millennium (:D) Preambles. More on that will be soon to follow... on another thread. And also, production on that will be started soon... provided we have a good deal of understanding MissionComputer and how it works.

@king_of_manticores, on Jan 1 2008, 07:46 PM, said in Escape Velocity: Eon:

EV: Half-Millennium

Semimillennium, quincentenary, or quincentennial.

@king_of_manticores, on Jan 1 2008, 06:46 PM, said in Escape Velocity: Eon:

Here's another news update: I remembered Josh's comment about creating smaller plugs before trying a TC. I thought and thought, and I decided the team should try some small plugs. I also remembered Archon's Anathema plug. (If I'm correct, that's an expansion type of plug.) So I wondered, "Why not try making expansions? How about turning the backstory into several expansions for every storyline?" I felt that would be a good idea.

Actually, Anathema is still a large plug. When I said small, I meant small. Try making plugs that do simple things, such as adding variants of ships to the game, modify weapon behavior, stuff like that. You don't have to release them, but you'll get a feel for a few of the resources, which will go a very long way in figuring everything else out. I've made, oh, about fifteen plugs or so before starting on Colosseum, which really, really, really helped. And most of them were pretty simple too. You can get an idea for most of them by just looking at the names.

In mostly chronological order...

Salvo Weapons
Spinning Weapons
Dodge This!
Hit This!
Longer Battles
Scatter Weapons
Leviathan Warship
EVN Boards' Variants
EVC Desc's
Super Defense Fleets
EVN Azdara
Classic Start
Awful Pilot Names
Colosseum Teaser
Warbird Ships (not released publicly)
The Best Plug
New ASW Logo
Colosseum (Hopefully by the end of the month)

Between Awful Pilot Names and the Teaser was when I started Colosseum.

@joshtigerheart, on Jan 1 2008, 07:22 PM, said in Escape Velocity: Eon:

Actually, Anathema is still a large plug. When I said small, I meant small. Try making plugs that do simple things, such as adding variants of ships to the game, modify weapon behavior, stuff like that. You don't have to release them, but you'll get a feel for a few of the resources, which will go a very long way in figuring everything else out. I've made, oh, about fifteen plugs or so before starting on Colosseum, which really, really, really helped. And most of them were pretty simple too. You can get an idea for most of them by just looking at the names.

Really... So like do something like modify Pegasi and Leviathans to be heavily armed to the teeth, or add armor outfits that greatly enhance armor, something like that? Ok... I guess we should try that. Right now I'm just playing with plug-ins to see what I can do with them... I currently am trying to make a variant of a Fed Carrier that can carry Rebel, Auroran, and Pirate fighters, but its for my personal use only. Heh.

My friend messed with EVNEW and made the Vell-os homeworld inhabitable, and I played with the TC and made a few systems.

However, I got a question. When I made a pers, and requested assistance from him to see his response, the pers replied to me like 'No way' or 'Not a chance'. Why is this?

As to Dr. Trowel... Ok... Maybe then semimillennium. This is getting rather confusing...

This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 02 January 2008 - 09:27 PM

Quote

Really... So like do something like modify Pegasi and Leviathans to be heavily armed to the teeth, or add armor outfits that greatly enhance armor, something like that? Ok... I guess we should try that. Right now I'm just playing with plug-ins to see what I can do with them... I currently am trying to make a variant of a Fed Carrier that can carry Rebel, Auroran, and Pirate fighters, but its for my personal use only. Heh.

My friend messed with EVNEW and made the Vell-os homeworld inhabitable, and I played with the TC and made a few systems.

Yeah, stuff like that. Also, try to make your Fed Carrier show up in existing dudes and fleets. Might as well learn that early since you'll become very good friends with the dude resource when making your TC.

Quote

However, I got a question. When I made a pers, and requested assistance from him to see his response, the pers replied to me like 'No way' or 'Not a chance'. Why is this?

Probably has something to do with it's government. Not all govts give assistance. Plus if someone was hostile to you, very few ships will help in the first place.

Quote

As to Dr. Trowel... Ok... Maybe then semimillennium. This is getting rather confusing...

How about just calling it 500?

@joshtigerheart, on Jan 2 2008, 06:36 PM, said in Escape Velocity: Eon:

How about just calling it 500?

I don't know, Josh...EV:500 sounds like it's the Daytona/Indy 500 of the 40th century.

EDIT:

Say, KoM, I have an alternate name idea: Escape Velocity: Revolution

I don't know if it's already taken or not, but, heh, it'd work.

This post has been edited by Warlord Mike : 02 January 2008 - 11:00 PM

@joshtigerheart, on Jan 2 2008, 06:36 PM, said in Escape Velocity: Eon:

How about just calling it 500?

I can't believe I'm reading that lack of creativity on the developers board no less.

How about something like either EV: D (that would be D the roman numeral for 500, or if you want to make it more spiffy you could have more than that...just take the current date of the EV universe and add 500 to it...all in roman numerals).

or

Lets call it EV: 3k5...I know bring back memories of a football video game or a basketball video game...but I think it goes well with the EV theme. It might be 2k5 or whatever. Just pick the closest millenia to the the start of EV: Nova and add k5 to it.

Come on of all the things a good TC needs...a good name should be paramount!