If I find time, I'm going to split up the seed into individual files (DU Data, DU Graphics, DU Essentials, etc) and put them into their own folder on the box. There's an option there to download an entire folder as a .zip file, so all you'd have to do, if you're working from a web browser, is download the .zip file and unpack it. Since we're using .rez files this shouldn't cause any problems and it'll make things nice and neat. It should give us some more headway between hitting the invisible resource limits imposed by the Mac resource fork, and it'll be a bit cleaner.

You might also get some placeholder graphics from me, if you're nice.

I vote for a 3-way war with human factions, and if we want to make it really epic, at some point an alien menace comes in and the three have to band together to fight it.

And I will produce some actual material at some point, but not until we've decided on the scenario.

This post has been edited by Jalisurr : 26 October 2008 - 12:56 PM

I've split the seed into three files for ease of use; DU Data 1, DU Essentials, and DU Graphics 1. I don't know why DU Essentials is 8.4 MB in size; surely they'd be a bit smaller than that?

I gave Earth an outfitter and a shipyard, but there isn't anything going on in there yet, and also added a char which appeared to be non-existent. Might fix troubles that may have popped up on WinNova, since MacNova made new pilots without complaint.

You might also see some static graphics from me, in the way of a working loading screen image and a logo to reflect the EVDC's sole involvement in this project up to this point.

Edit: Oh! I'll have to add the weapons in with DU Data 1 sometime. I forgot about them.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 26 October 2008 - 07:25 PM

So far, it looks like the favor is for a three-way war with human governments and Earth being important but not immediately controlled by either side due to being either contested or lost. Unless anyone wants to vote for a different scenario, it appears we'll be going with this.

I'd like to see 3-way with humans and aliens of a couple races, but also have some other aliens allied/able to be allied w/humans.

In this case, Earth pretty much is under Human Control.

Some thoughts on a three-way warring universe

Fighting over Earth might be a good "official" reason for warring governments. I'm imagining two of the three governments actually caring about who gets to rule it, to the point of periodically sending forth fleets to dispute the other's fleets. I don't know what the lifestyle would be like on those people who actually live on Earth, if any, but I imagine they'd probably be tired of constantly having to dodge reentering ship debris from the daily orbital battles taking place. Maybe the Earth was made uninhabitable a while ago, and ruling it is just a formality between two prideful governments. However, maybe Earth was made inhabitable by some superweapon and these warring governments are trying to gain control of the Earth's blighted remains in order to find the superweapon.

Unofficial reasons for fighting between these two governments might be differences in modes of governance, economic systems, religion, or other ideological differences. For example, gov't 1 relies on exploitative, corporate slavery to develop economically-narrow planets heavily producing a few ores or crops. Gov't 2 is a confederation of independent states with an emphasis on personal freedoms, even at the expense of production. Consequently, they really can't assimilate each other and uneasy tolerance is even too difficult for long periods of time.

I mentioned that just two of the three governments fighting over the Earth. I'd like to think that at least one of the three major powers has the sense to not waste lives and resources duking it out over a single system. This third government might be more adapted to life in space and have few, if any, planets to their name, hence the reason for their apathy towards Earth. However, for reasons unknown at this point, they still have a bone to pick with the first two governments. Perhaps it is because the first two governments see this third government as sub-human pests who don't live on proper planets and fly strange ships, deserving of opportunistic genocide. I imagine this third government a geographically diverse people, with clusters of systems united together in deep space, spread out from each other, always on the fringes of the other two governments. While they may yearn for self-sufficiency out in the hard vacuum, they are forced to rely on periodic raiding to supplement their own unique technologies. Perhaps, and this may be a big perhaps, they are able to act as a unified government in offense and defense by reliance on wormholes connecting their clusters of fringe systems to each other. If we want, we can make travel through the wormholes only possible once the PC has obtained a certain outfit. Of course, said outfit would only be available upon reaching a certain level of familiarity with the third government.

I haven't said much on the first two governments. I believe we could almost just pick two from the list of faction ideas that has been created, flesh them out, and develop backgrounds. There'd be two 'normal' governments and this other other wildcard government that in some ways doesn't count as a superpower in the universe, but still seems to be a major thorn in the sides of the first two. I know that 'gray' governments were mentioned earlier in the post as desirable from a few people, and I like the idea too. Here are my quick goods and evils for the three governments:

Gov't 1
-Exploitative, corporate slavery, expansionist
-Good thing: Has a history of being savior of mankind by developing cure to a pandemic plague. Maybe?
-Bad thing: Well, has declined into using slavery to make even more money for the wealthy ruling class

Gov't 2
-Confederation of independent states, personal freedoms, low production but high tech. Formed perhaps in reaction to what happened on Earth, perhaps?
-Good thing: Citizens enjoy a high quality of life
-Bad thing: Well, they've done something bad, I'm sure. I'll let somebody else finish this example

Gov't 3
-Fringe government, spread about the galaxy
-Good thing: Cares for escaped people from Gov't 1
-Bad thing: sometimes kills innocents in its periodic raids on Gov'ts 1+2

Just some thoughts and examples. I'd like to get the ball rolling on specific government ideologies and backstories so maps, ships, and missions can start getting worked up.

Werhner

I think it would be better to avoid the "Govt 2>Govt 1" thing, morally speaking.

Edit: you know, at this point maybe I should throw out an idea that has been sitting around in my head for a while.

Player starts on Earth, and has some kind of experience fighting corrupt/evil government.
Aliens (re)discover and conquer Earth. Player steals a fighter (before the conquering?) and has a really difficult first few seconds in the game.
Player manages to set a hyperspace route, then his engines stop working in a system owned by Government A, giving him no choice but to land. For some reason they don't (kill him because of his ship); is it possible in Nova's engine to have all ships become hostile for a moment and then cease? Story option: being unprepared for hyperspace travel, player is unconscious.
Player wakes up in a hospital to find a person who has pulled his language from his head. (In this scene, player is confused enough to not later recognize this person (plot)). Player is given a basic cargo ship of Government A.
Government A is an empire, with some sort of (feuding) aristocratic families, as such are inevitable in such an empire. Think somewhat like the Aurorans, except the common people don't identify with the houses. Obviously, Government A is corrupted by power, etc.
Government A is passively at war with Government B, which I have not defined well in my mind, save that they are not such imperials. Obviously they don't suffer from the same faults as Govt A, but they're not perfect by a long shot. It is true that they are as efficient as Govt A, and Govt A could probably conquer them easily, but they'd be tough to keep down while a single one lived.
Government C is unknown, at least to Government A (leaders/populace). Perhaps the player, while secretly colonizing a planet (plot), discovers Govt C on their few planets. Since Govt B was not well defined in my mind, I'm not sure whether B knows about C. Perhaps, since B seems more decentralized, a few fragments could know.

And in the end, after what seems to be the climax between the three governments, they all find and go back to Earth, and chase the evil aliens - the ones who conquered it - away, perhaps with assistance from good aliens. My idea from long ago was to have player's original companions, who didn't get a chance at stealing the fighter, meet up with the player again at the end.

This post has been edited by Nonconventionally Creative : 27 October 2008 - 04:30 PM

I'd like to suggest a situation like EVC where the player is thrown into the universe without any prior, role changing history, unless we want to give this TC a linear plot, which we do not.

I say we come up with the basic governments first and then decide who at war with who based upon their tendencies as either a militaristic, isolationist or diplomatic government. I don't think any one government should be more "moral" than the others because, as we all know, none of them will be entirely spotless.

Werhner has something with his idea if we are going with 3 static governments in the TC; now if there are going to be playable subfactions and side stories from independant corps/gov's not directly tied into the main story (for example the Lethe-Cydonian Feud in EV classic) that would be a nice twist on it, and the events could impact the player in certain ways and their standings with certain groups.

Maybe I missed it, but have any of you guys spoken with team23?

No, don't know who that is.

Anyways, I'd like emulate the other EVs, EVC and EVO in particular, by dropping the player in a starting ship somewhere, preferably a neutral world not really affected by the conflict, with some cash and no immediate offers for a storyline. Rather than make it clear what the player has to do to get into a major string, instead have it to where they have to stumble upon it. Have some low-to-none requirement side-strings akin to U.N. Shipping, Starbound Shipping, etc. that they can find while exploring (I'd like the player to feel compelled to explore our galaxy, otherwise we'd be wasting time adding all those other worlds). Once the player's combat and legal ratings are high enough, have an innocent entrance to a major string show up that initially can't be told apart from a side string until you're a little ways into it.

By the way, it looks like three-way war it is. If you have any factions idea, please add them to the related text file.

I have been working on a small universe (30 systems aprox) it might be a good starting point.

I will try to add a bunch of minor storylines.

Don't start just throwing a bunch of empty systems on a map and plan to add to them later. I've seen lots of TCs try to develop that way, and I haven't heard from any of those in a year or so, assuming they didn't publicly abandon the project. It doesn't work like that. If you make a system, flesh it out. This way we don't end up with excessive systems we don't need and feel compelled to fill, have to go back and rearrange them, and can create as we need to, letting things expand more naturally.

For the moment, if you want to start on systems, I'd do neutral ones, probably independent and only do a few right now (less than ten perhaps) until we get the main governments figured out.

It may not be the direction you're going in, but I know he (team23) has made some progress on his project Infinite Ascension.

This post has been edited by lobf : 28 October 2008 - 03:11 PM

I've added a .txt file describing some ideas for side string missions.

I'm hesitant to start seeing a galaxy get made as well. I know getting one started is important, but I think there still needs to be some discussion on physical layout of this universe. For example, I enjoyed Acheron's layout, but also enjoyed EVC's more web-like layout. I really dislike hyperlinks that cross one another, making the universe map 2-D. In the 3-way war scenario I've imagined and posted, Earth would be somewhere in the fronts between the two main governments, and I expect the governments' territories would be geographically near to each other.

Another question is what do spobs represent? In all three EV's, spobs have been limited to one per planet, if that makes sense. However, like in Frozen Heart and others, we can have multiple spobs per planet, representing different ports. The only problem I have with this is that the creative load increases whenever players could presumably get used to seeing 4+ landing sites in a given system. Suddenly, it doesn't look good to have just one spob in a system when others have 4 or more. My opinion is to have just one spob per planet, though multiple planets in a syst are perfectly fine (like New Scotland and New Ireland in EVC). I've been assuming up to this point that we'll be going with the standard structure of systs and spobs. An alternative I'll throw out there would be to have geographical clumps of systems, with a star system in the center and various planet systems orbiting it. Make these clumps relatively distant from each other, geographically and jump-wise by having some empty systems on the paths in-between.

This post has been edited by Werhner : 28 October 2008 - 03:47 PM

I am starting on a minor mission string called Galactic Grocers. it's meant to be kind of stupid. It will be an equivalent of UN shipping if it gets approved.

so far it needs one mission bit. I will write up a mission line when I get the chance.

As I noted in my progress log, I edited the Vital Statistics file to update the resources used according to the Open Source TC Seed. A few values were removed from the list since they are currently not in that file. This is merely temporary, once they are added to the file (which I'll do when we start actual resource work, I'd prefer to do bulk updates to it), they will be added to the list once more. Also note, most, if not all, of the currently "taken" resources are placeholders. Feel free to replace them. You can see a copy of the updated Vital Statistics in the first post of the thread. Also, if you're not in the "Active Developers" section, please add yourself.

Additionally, I'd like to ask everyone not to do any work directly with the Open Source TC Seed.rez file (in other words, don't edit it!). I'm intending it to be used as a version control file so we know what's where. Instead, please either submit new content in either smaller plugs (like Bob's Submissions.rez) or edit one of the existing other ones. Jaca set up a trio of files that should good for working with (DU Data, Du Graphics, DU Essentials). You can also save a copy of the Seed to your computer for local usage, but please don't update it. Depending on how things go, I'll probably select a couple of other people to help manage version control in the future once resource work actually begins.

This post has been edited by JoshTigerheart : 28 October 2008 - 03:42 PM

The cicns and snds in the seed file seem to be corrupt. They won't open up with MC or convert. In order to fix them I had to copy over them with resources from my copy of Nova.

To clarify and standardize, it sounds like the ways I, as an normal active developer, can make progress on the TC is one of the following ways:

-create a new .rez, titled appropriately (Werhner Ships 3.rez, for example), and place it in "Open Source TC Files" folder
-modify a previously existing .rez, logging the changes made in my log file

JTH or somebody else with version control "privilege" will then periodically update the master "Open Source TC Seed.rez", pulling resources from the submission .rez files. Correct?

With these assumptions, I'm confused about what the DU Data 1.rez and the other two "DU" files are supposed to represent, and how we are supposed to use them. Are they to be treated as if they were just any other submitted .rez, meaning that anybody can build on them and save their work to the dropbox?

edit: I see now in Vital Statistics.rtf the role the DU files are to play. My big question now is how I go about reliably using the resources other people have created. How do I know that if I make a system with dude 128 in it that it will have JTH's Small Merchant dude and not Bob's Death Gang dude? I think that we will need to be anal on posting in Vital Stats what resources we use as soon as we use them, or else start running into confusion with overlapping resources.

This post has been edited by Werhner : 28 October 2008 - 05:31 PM

Quote

To clarify and standardize, it sounds like the ways I, as an normal active developer, can make progress on the TC is one of the following ways:

-create a new .rez, titled appropriately (Werhner Ships 3.rez, for example), and place it in "Open Source TC Files" folder
-modify a previously existing .rez, logging the changes made in my log file

JTH or somebody else with version control "privilege" will then periodically update the master "Open Source TC Seed.rez", pulling resources from the submission .rez files. Correct?

Yes, though it'd be nice if you logged the resources in your new files as well. Those two seem like the best way to me to do this without everything getting disorganized and confusing. Moving the resources into a master file will help if resource conflicts arise, as whoever is making the update to the master can simply reassign the resources to new IDs and everyone will get those same IDs.

Quote

With these assumptions, I'm confused about what the DU Data 1.rez and the other two "DU" files are supposed to represent, and how we are supposed to use them. Are they to be treated as if they were just any other submitted .rez, meaning that anybody can build on them and save their work to the dropbox?

Ask Jaca about the intentions there, he uploaded them on his own accord. My best guess, which may be wrong, is they are meant for some sort of pre-sorted organization of all files. Granted, since we're not near 15 megs on the Seed, file splitting isn't necessary yet. I personally find it easier to have as few splits as possible. But again, that's just a guess.