My Experimental Plug

We all have crazy ideas. I once had an idea for an interesting type of weapon. The difference between this idea and most of my others though is that today it got implemented. Unfortunately my implementation turned into something a bit different than the (relatively) simple weapon that I first imagined. I wouldn't say this is a particularly fun plug but it does show some interesting concepts.

Dodge That
Start a new pilot using the new char.

This has only been tested on Mac Nova 1.1.0 x86 with no other plug-ins. Compatibility with any other platforms or plug-ins is not guaranteed.

o_0

Wow, that's actually pretty cool. So far my best score is 40.

So I don't have nova installed right now. What is it?

Damn dude, that's a helluva game you made. I scored 44 btw.

58 is my best after 2 plays. If you let it get just behind you before it does it's magic, you can about face and get a headstart away from it.

Fun game, very novel use of the engine, I reckon. Good job.

Awesome work Guy!

My best so far is 113 on strict play. I especially like how the missiles get slightly faster each time they appear.

I will note that occasionally if I hit a key such as “return” or ‘o’ immediately upon landing, the game sometimes freezes.

LNSU: The pilot has a Manta and starts on top of a planet at (0, 0) in the system. At (0, 300) is a station. When the player lands and takes off, the station fires a missile that tracks the player. After a short time the missile disappears by submunitioning into something invisible, then reappears again nearby to chase the player again. The player gets a score based on how long they survived before being hit by a missile. After being hit, the player is put back over the planet and the missiles are gone. The outfitter on the planet shows the last score, the best score, the number of games played, and the average score. Taking off again causes another missile to be fired. It is very well done.

Strategies:

I’ve been going with my finger always on the accelerator.

Make sure to spin so the missile doesn’t clip your Manta’s tail. A hit is only registered if the masks overlap.

Since the missiles are slower at the beginning, dodge them without using afterburner as long as you can. Save your fuel for later when you will need it.

Tap the afterburner for as short a time as you can to save fuel.

When a missile is coming, aim somewhere between 60º and 90º away from directly toward it, and do a quick turn to let it go past you. When it is going by, you should be facing in exactly the opposite direction form the missile.

When the missile disappears, face somewhere between 60º and 90º away from the direction the missile was traveling when it disappeared. At first you can be reasonably close, but as the missiles get faster you’ll need more space for reaction time.

Guy: I seem to recall it used to be possible to browse your EV-related Dropbox files from the web. That no longer seems to be the case. You had some very nice and/or useful things up there. Are they still available?

116 on strict play. Also, I made a scorecard so if you hit ‘W’ it updates your current score. Great way to distract yourself from what you should be watching. /nod

Dodge_That_Scorecard.zip (567bytes)
Number of downloads: 3

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 18 2010, 01:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Guy: I seem to recall it used to be possible to browse your EV-related Dropbox files from the web. That no longer seems to be the case. You had some very nice and/or useful things up there. Are they still available?

The link on his Ambrosia account is broken. However, the one on his Arpia account is not. For those of you with no idea what I'm talking about, go here.

Thanks DarthKev, that’s exactly what I was looking for.

Regarding Dodge That, I haven’t improved my score, but I made a more difficult version. This, just like my previous Scorecard, is a plug-in to go along with Dodge That. Best I’ve done on this is 52 seconds on strict play. Dodge_That_Difficulty_2.zip (620bytes)
Number of downloads: 1

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 19 May 2010 - 01:18 PM

Here is a video of me flying the original version of the plug-in on strict play.

My best is 80 seconds, but that's on non-strict play. Great game, Guy!

This post has been edited by DarthKev : 19 May 2010 - 05:26 PM

Honestly, I find strict play easier. Less danger of overshooting at high speed, plus strict play only boosts speed not acceleration, so the relative nimbleness is higher on strict play. Also, check out the second video I posted. It shows the full EV Nova window, and is a better flight.

114 so far... This is fun, Guy!

I’m at 122 on Strict Play, video here.

Thanks for the comments guys, great to hear people like it. Qaanol's achievements are impressive, as usual, and krugeruwsp too (was that on Strict or Normal?).

There are a total of 40 shots in the game after the initial one and there are a number of attributes which change with each new shot: The torpedo gets faster, with tighter turn radius; the time between shots decreases; the distance away from you that it will reappear at decreases and the direction becomes more random; the hue of the particle trail shifts from blue to red (though Nova does funny things with the colours). I wouldn't have done it this way at all except Nova can't handle recursion over multiple weapon types.

I'd like to keep tweaking it a little to improve the balance. I don't really want it to be possible to 'beat' the game but getting past 30 shots should definitely be achievable (Qaanol is up to 31 in that last video!). I'd also prefer it if Strict Play was actually harder than normal, so I'd like to hear what other people think about this situation currently. Perhaps the player's speed should be reduced. Any suggestions are welcome.

Regarding freezing, I don't think I'll be able to resolve anything but it won't hurt to try sending me a debug log. Note the log may be many megabytes in size so just send the first part of it up until it starts repeating itself.

The most interesting thing for me while making the plug was the average score. I only implemented this to see if it could be done. Yes, apparently Nova can do division.

Lastly, the correct link to my site is always in my sig. It hasn't changed since I started using Dropbox.

This post has been edited by Guy : 04 August 2011 - 04:40 AM

Weird, your sig link didn't work from here last time I tried it...

Still, this is an awesome game, Guy! What gave you the idea?

This post has been edited by DarthKev : 20 May 2010 - 09:27 PM

I updated the addons I made to v1.1 in order to fix a couple bugs. They are in my previous post. Personally, I really like the Pick Your Difficulty. The other one, Super Difficulty, is just too much. But PYD is a lot of fun, and Level 2 can be done for a while without afterburner.

Now if someone can tell me why when there are multiple missiles, they don’t all explode at the same time , and why in PYD the stock Dodge That chär is still available even though it is overwritten by Dodge That Level 1, I’d be much obliged.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 20 May 2010 - 09:32 PM

QUOTE (Qaanol @ May 20 2010, 10:22 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Now if someone can tell me why when there are multiple missiles, they don’t all explode at the same time ,

Scatter and Return phases may take different amounts of time for the same missiles, depending upon how the missile is oriented in relation to the ship. Different copies of the same missile will have different orientations, and take different amounts of time to reacquire the player's ship.

As an example, look at how long the a missile takes to reappear when the it is flying in the same direction as the player, as opposed to when it is flying in the opposite direction. If you have two missiles, and one is flying directly behind the player, and the other flying in the opposite direction, the one directly behind the player will return/reacquire faster.

QUOTE

and why in PYD the stock Dodge That chär is still available even though it is overwritten by Dodge That Level 1, I’d be much obliged.

... And Nova does something stranger than I thought it could do.

By duplicating PYD, and placing the copy in the plug-ins folder, nothing happened.

By renaming the chärs in the copy to 'Dodge That Level A', 'Dodge That Level B' etc...
... the renamed chärs do appear. Alongside 'Dodge That Level 1,' etc.

As long as the Chärs have differing names from same-RID chärs in other files, Nova appears to be treating them as a set instead of a list , and adding to that set with each new file it scans.

(EDIT) Further testing on Mac Nova 1.1 reveals that same-named chär's in the same file with different RID's only results in one of them appearing. You can observe this by renaming the chärs in PYD to all 'Dodge That Level S.'

Nova's treating chär's as a set and identifying them by name instead of RID as it does with everything else.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 21 May 2010 - 12:15 AM

The 114 was on strict play, after several attempts. I think I just got lucky on that one, since I've had trouble cracking 100 since. I should have really graded the 14 AP English essays sitting on my desk for the last two days, but this is quite fun.

I've only just now seeing the freezing problems Qaanol described earlier. However, they only occur when I try going into the outfitter, nothing else seems to cause it. Odd that it happens at all...

On the topic of score comparison, we all know each other's high scores, but what about average scores? My average score is 37 after 49 games.