Hello everyone,

Here's the deal. Pale's creator, Soul (aka Ben Singley) left our community quite a while ago after creating IMHO the best plug so far for EV. He does not maintain the plug-in's site any more and actually, after releasing the full v1.9 hasn't had time to update the links to files which are stored on my ISP's machine.

Down to business. Most people have had no problems downloading and using the files. However, some people have reported the Stuffit Expander's inability to decode and decompress the file. I'm yet to find the cause for this. I have, on several occasions, downloaded the file myself, tested it, found that it's OK, recompressed, decoded and uploaded it again. Some people had luck with it afterwards. Some didn't.

So I did it again. I dug out the files (the data files only - the music and the splash screens, IMO, are working OK on everyone's machines) and compressed/binhexed them. They're available at this URL:
(url="http://"http://www.saunalahti.fi/over/Pale/Palev19.sit.hqx")http://www.saunalaht...Palev19.sit.hqx(/url)

Due to the nature of the encoding process the file is now 4 Mb. It was stuffed and compressed using DropStuff 5.5 and uploaded using Fetch 3.0.3. If clicking the link starts listing text on your screen, option-click it.

I also think you should check your browser's "File Helpers" section and check out what the program does to the files it downloads. Make "*.hqx" Expander documents and make your browser save the file to disk.

TerraNov out.

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Hey, can you upload onto the Starlight Hotline server for those with poor connections?

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"His Strangelove All-Purpose Do-It-Yourself Defensive First Second or Third Strike Indestructible Fantastic State-of-the-Art B-Ware Offensive Attack Bomber can't compare with our M & M E & A Sub-Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second-Strike Offensive Attack Bomber."
- from Closing Time , by Joseph Heller.

Umm, StarLight Hotline ? Never heard of that server. What's the IP ?

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24.12.145.134

A bunch of the EV oldies hang out here; it's run by Kevin M. Boots.

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"His Strangelove All-Purpose Do-It-Yourself Defensive First Second or Third Strike Indestructible Fantastic State-of-the-Art B-Ware Offensive Attack Bomber can't compare with our M & M E & A Sub-Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second-Strike Offensive Attack Bomber."
- from Closing Time , by Joseph Heller.

Nice to see Pale is still generating interest.

I went to Aladdin's website and read a little something about stuffit expander 5.5.

They said that v5.5 has a 'glitch' (not to be confused as a bug ). They said that when decompressing small files to your desktop when using a fast machine, the program occasionally doesn't work. They suggested decompressing the file to a location within your hard drive other than your desktop.

Pale's obviously a big file and 'shouldn't' be affected. But you know how those 'glitches' can be.

Hey, I'm having a baby. The little one's due in July. Woo-hoo!!

Take it easy,

Ben
Humble developer of Pale

Quote

Originally posted by Soul:
Nice to see Pale is still generating interest.

I know this plug isn't one of the newest but I just got it yesterday.
Well, after a few houres I can say: GREAT!
The missions are very well written but I'm not sure if I mixed them up.

Is it normal to be involved in three or four missionstring simultaneously? I run some missions for Pale, smuggled some stuff, made the Confederation and the Rebellion to hate me...
Is this a "normal" way to play Pale or should I better stick to one plot? Until now I didn't run into problems, I'm just a bit confused.

Quote

**
Hey, I'm having a baby. The little one's due in July. Woo-hoo!!
Ben
Humble developer of Pale**

Wow, congratulation and all the best for your family!
Enjoy the silent, unhurried days as long as you can

- Marko

Pale is a plug where the character best proceeds slowly. I tried to work it so that a character who starts as a trader has the best experience with the game. basically, it means to trade and go for the transport/commodities route. If you buy a small combatant and rush up the combat ratings, you'll get alot of missions at once and might have a hard time following the story.

Now to answer your question: you can get multiple mission strings at once. The major ones don't start until you're hired by Pale to find a transport called the 'lovejoy', which has some terrorists aboard. That's where the combat heavy missions take off. There's also a pretty good mission set involving pirates flying corvettes that are sacking merchant shipping. The first mission in that string starts very early, but the fourth or fifth mission in the string doesn't occur until the character has a combat rating of about 8000. They're spaced - and have to be, as the difficulty level of each mission increases geometrically. But even that string ends before the 'lovejoy' mission.

If you're proceeding correctly, you should get these strings early in the game:

deliver medicine to Pale Station - that's your first.

smuggle wood to I forget the name of the planet/system - you get that at Pale IV. - this leads to 3 or 4 early missions involving a lumber smuggler

Find a derelict light freighter (I think it's a light freighter) whose crew was killed by a virus/bacteria and d/l the ship's logs. - this leads to establishing trade relations with the rebellion for Pale after around 5 missions.

Investigate a pirate attack on a cruiser ship (the first in that 'corvette' string I mentioned).

If you're getting these 4 groups first, then you're doing fine. If you're doing some HEAVY combat missions or have a deadly combat rating while you're doing these, then you're going too quickly.

Ben

PS: Don't try to take out the confed heavy cruiser with a scout very early in the game and you should do fine.

I added Pale to the EV Add On Files archives, for your downloading convenience:

(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/ev/addons.html")http://www.AmbrosiaS.../ev/addons.html(/url)

Enjoy!

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Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

To Soul:
Thanks for the detailed reply.
After this morning, things has calmed down somewhat. Now there are just two different missionstrings (besides the cargo runs). I usually explore most of the universe while accepting the first missions and I start fighting Pirates as soon as I own anything bigger than a shuttle. So maybe that's why I got so many mission in the beginning.
I just accepted the lovejoy-mission but I still get these "Steal-Rebel-Carrier-Outfits". Oh, and what do you mean by "HEAVY combat"? I had to use massive firepower and defeating these 8 Kestrels with my (almost) standard Corvette was a bit tricky but I guess that's not what you meant by "HEAVY"

Well ok, maybe I'll keep this lovejoy thingy for some time and look around if there's something other to do...

- Marko

HEAVY combat:

Well, very late in the game (some say too late), you get nuclear missiles. neutron missiles, actually. The Pale Defense force designed them to knock out planetary shields. But they also engineered a modular guidance package that could be switched out and replaced with an anti-ship guidance package. They're really nasty against shields, but it takes a few hits with them once shields go down to destroy or disable a combatant (like the confed frigate).

I guess that kestrel mission you did counts as heavy combat--especially with a corvette.

here's a trick/legal cheat: If you do that 'get rebel carrier outfit' (or whatever it's called) and deliver it to the pirate world, the Pirates will give you access to their tech. One of them's a tiny little super rapid fire turret with about 1/2 of the range of laser turrets and good shield attenuating abilities (12 percent better against shields than the proton quads the rebs and confeds have). They're just 7 tons each. They're lousy against armor, but great against swarming fighters. You'll save alot of space in your hull for ranged armaments if you like to go that way.

Well, gotta go.

ben

Soul, one little question, if you're still reading these boards. Would it be OK with you for a version of Pale to be released for the EVO game engine? No changes, except possibly some x-offsets for weapons and minor moving around of some resources.

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"His Strangelove All-Purpose Do-It-Yourself Defensive First Second or Third Strike Indestructible Fantastic State-of-the-Art B-Ware Offensive Attack Bomber can't compare with our M & M E & A Sub-Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second-Strike Offensive Attack Bomber."
- from Closing Time , by Joseph Heller.

Aw, man, I would love that. Hellhunter and I talked about it around a year ago and he was going to implement it.

I did a little work on jump speeds and made some mods to ships across the board for EVO WAAAYYY before 1.02 came out.

If you want to do it, HECK YEAH!!!!

There was a lightning storm last week that fried my modem in my iMac and damaged my PC's screen a tiny bit. My screen fixed itself (I must have turned off power and put it back on or something and that fixed it). Don't know if the modem in the i Mac fixed itself yet, but if it is fixed, I can send that resedit file to you (I think I've still got it somewhere.)

Hey, if you're serious, SURE!! Let me know what your ideas are with respect to the new functionalities of 1.02. I would think those plasma weapons, especially the plasma-fusion gun, would do less and less damage as the range increases. And we could also toy with the alien torpedo to have it do less damage as the range increases. Who knows. Well, let me know what your ideas are. Thanks.

All I ask is you keep me in the loop on the project, especially where weapons are concerned.

Ben

Well, those are nice ideas. Decreasing the damage...
It would be a lot of work though.

But for now, I'm stuck in the EV-Version

Did anyone have a problem with this mission where you have to defend Pale the first time ("Pale Visage", I think)? This mission does not end properly.
I've destroyed all these Cruisers (yeah, nice fireworks!) but I don't get the completion-text at Thanos(?).

I took a look at the ressources but didn't find anything suspicious, so I created a small "set-bit226-mission-plug". I didn't try it because I wanted to ask here first.
So, is there anything wrong, should I try to set the bit manually?

- Marko

Problem with this one is I think I went beyond the capabilities of the engine. Actually, in debugging it to the point it was beginning in v1.7, I severely wimped out battlegroup 20. The battlegroup was originally 20 veteran Rebel warships. The EV version of the 'Plumber' in that american version of the french movie, 'La Femme Nikita'. Pale was defended by Battlegroup Echo, a four element squadron the character had previously worked with (if you think I had a hard time with this one, wait til you get to the alien mission set when you 'purify the aerospace around the alien base of operations to allow assault ships to drop marines there'. That one had a multitude of ships on it, and in the end is the reason why the mod-rebel cruiser has not fighters on it).

Okay, back to your question....

GO the the pale website and download the 'Pale Visage MIssion Fix'. IT's about 1K in size. Drop it into your plug-ins folder, abort the mission, and take it again. Scan the inbound rebel warships and then land at thanos. That'll end the
mission.

Ben

PS: Pale Visage is considered, 'Heavy Combat'.

Sheesh.

I should have read the preceding message before I hit the send button.

One of the sentences should read, "Pale was originally defended by Battlegroup Echo, A four element squadron of which the character had previously worked with (lousy grammer, Soul apologizes)." And then it should have continued to read, "Battlegroup Echo was there defending Pale in the original version, and the player's kestrel or whatever was there to assist."

Okay, I'm outta here...

Later, Pal(e)!

Well...I'll be damned. If it isn't Soul...how's it going? I'm back...again...

-mCd

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Quote

Originally posted by Soul:
**
GO the the pale website and download the 'Pale Visage MIssion Fix'.

PS: Pale Visage is considered, 'Heavy Combat'. =)**

Yeah. Especially with this lame duck I'm currently flying. Once I was lucky to capture a rebel Cruiser but it's quite annoying to dodge all these torpedos. I 'd prefer the good old Kestrel which is fast enough to confuse the enemies so they don't shoot torps
On the other side, it's a really cool ship for close combat, hehehe.

But the reason for my reply: Where can I find the pale webpage?
And somewhat related: What happened to the old ev-links-page? Once there where dozends of pages available and now there are only a few left.
sigh
Why did the old... no, I'll not start whining again.

- Marko

http:www.fortunecity.comroswellastrology90

That's the webpage address, Marko. Yeah. A maneuverable ship is helpul in that mission.

Speaking of which, too bad that hunter battleship isn't more maneuverable (sounds like a nice cheat plug).

Hey, mCd. what's up? Let's see.... I'm 34 next month :eek: and I've got a baby on the way (within days). Not too much, really, I guess. What's up with you?

Wow, I can finally learn the answer to the question that's been bugging me ever since I got Pale.

What Pale plug-ins should I have in my plug-ins folder? I've got Pale intro, Pale v1.8 Data 1, paletitles, ZPalev1.8 Data 2, and ZPalev1.9b Data 2. I don't know if those are the files that the latest version consists of either. I'm also wondering if "Mission Patch 1.0" is compatible with Pale. (Its a little plug-in that weeds out the bugs in the Confed and Rebel missions and adds switch sides missions.)

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- Lone "Darn, its not in the spellchecker!" Igadzra

Quote

Originally posted by Marko:
**
But the reason for my reply: Where can I find the pale webpage?
And somewhat related: What happened to the old ev-links-page? Once there where dozends of pages available and now there are only a few left.
sigh
- Marko**

There is a web links page --

EV: (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/ev/weblinks.html")http://www.AmbrosiaS...v/weblinks.html(/url)
EVO: (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/evo/weblinks.html")http://www.AmbrosiaS...o/weblinks.html(/url)

At last count, there are 48 links on the EV web links page -- that is more than were on the old web site. Moreover, people can easily add their own links to the site, such as the Pale plugins web site.

I encourage anyone who's written a plugin and has an official web site for it to add it to the weblinks pages -- lots of people look there.

In any event, I added the Pale plugin web site to the list of web links myself, so you can get to it from here:

(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/ev/weblinks.html")http://www.AmbrosiaS...v/weblinks.html(/url)

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Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.