Mugabi and Destiny help...

ChauSara

Ok, I've climbed my way up all the way where I now have to go to Mugabi Ra and land on it. Now my problem isn't landing, it's the time limit. For some reason, I was given 2 fricken days to do it. Is there anyway to bend the laws of physics and do this? Or am I screwed and have to start over again?

EDIT: And I have luckily not saved my defeat, I'm here on Octerreane (or whatever) on January 6, and have to be back by the 8th.

(This message has been edited by ChauSara (edited 12-22-2003).)

General Cade Smart

Yes. Edit the TimeLimit in ResEdit to what pleases you more- 50 for 50 days, -1 for no time limit. To make sure EV actually notices you changed the mission, abort the mission and get it again.

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I am eager to try to answer mission questions

ChauSara

That's a risk I don't wanna take. Will I get it again?

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Mazca

Yeah, if I recall correctly the mission is available from multiple planets, and IS possible if you get it from the planet closest to Mugabi Ra. You do get it again if you abort.

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(url="http://"http://www.mazca.com/")Mazca(/url) , Moderator, (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=9&SUBMIT;=Go&urgaylol;=yes")EV Developer's Corner(/url)
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Kaptain Karl

I just finished M&D; ... and noticed the same "Laws of Physics" problem. The first time I blew up just trying to land on Mugabi Ra. I returned to the Oct's main planet and was immediately assigned the mission again.

This second time I had the same time problem, but the Oct's physics must be different. I landed and returned.
Mission successfully completed.

Have fun....

- KK

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Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage." ... Plutarch

General Cade Smart

I stopped playing Mugabi and Destiny... because a weird bug spoiled it all. After doing the mission where you get to the Orcs homeworld, I got suddenly to be a Public Enemy in Octerranoe. Even if I hadnt blasted any Octs during the whole usage of the plug! I modified the dude resource of the adjacent Mugabi 2 system to have Orcs, and blasted Orcs Carriers there. But it refused to improve my status, no matter how many Orcs I blasted. I think there is some strange government bugs in the plug... Uninhabitated systems such as Mugabi Ra would be marked as Independent and have a legal status! I think it is because I didnt use a new pilot, just one that had completed the Alien missions? But because creating a new pilot is tedious, does somebody know if PFE works EV? It works for EVO. I need editing instructions too, because PFE looks slighty confusing.

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I am eager to try to answer mission questions

Zacha Pedro

No, PFE doesn't work with EV, neither PFE3 nor PFE2 wanted to open an EV pilot, and I tried to change the type of an EV pilot with ResEdit, but PFE3 can only load EVO ressources and 2 tells you the ressources are not correct. I pretty much knew PFE very well and I should still be able to help people use it (and I'm in its credits). PFE is not hard to use for a semi-pro editing program (make sure you use PFE 3, not the hard and slow PFE 2).

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(This message has been edited by Zacha Pedro (edited 12-31-2003).)

General Cade Smart

Sniff... there goes my hopes of being able to edit my pilot with PFE. All right then, I already have a new pilot created. As it is still a Scoutship though, I had hoped I didnt need to use it and collect a lot of money. Thats painful. But ill just get enough to get the Mugabi and Destiny version of the Executive Transport, and fit 4 Ultralight Proton Turrets on it. Yes, the Mugabi and Destiny version is actually worth it. It has 40 shields and 5 Missiles as standard. Ultralight Proton Turrets are almost as powerful as the real Proton Turrets. With it, ill quickly get enough combat rating to do the string, Above Average. Best of all, it doesnt even cost more than 110.000 credits!

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I am eager to try to answer mission questions

Gandalf

It has been so long since I made an appearance on this board... I am used to just fielding the questions that people ask me directly from the M&D; website, or from the support links.
I made M&D; to be anything but tedious... I very specifically wanted people to start with a new pilot... yaknow, leave the comfort zone of their almighty hacked blastaeverything Cruiser, and start new. As well, without a new pilot, things that are a close shave in the game get screwed over and delecate balances are upset, and things simply do not work the way they were designed. I manipulated virtually every element possible in the making of this game, and bent many rules to create mystery and visual effects not normally possible. So, when the instructions ask you to start with a new pilot it is really for the best of your own enjoyment. In fact, the plotline that occurs assures that you will lose your ship.

General Cade Smart,
I'm glad you are using the exec transport, and lining it with the aftermarket upgrades that can be fitted... it takes no time in that ship to accumulate the experience necesary, and it was dang fun too, even for me who played my own game countless times. It somehow reminds me of a Nissan Skyline, if you know what I mean...

Kaptain Karl,
Landing on Mugabi Ra is simply hard. It is possible to do it without resediting anything. Even then, I designed the radiation damage that the sun dishes out to be very tough... but I was able to land on it once out of every two attepts... about a 50% success rate. So you are right on the money.

ChauSara,
What may have occurred is that you msy have spent an extra day or two somewhere and then saved. I know that if no time was lost because of the urgency of the mission, it definately was possible. I do not remember making that mission available at more than one planet. In fact, I do not believe that I made ANY mission available at more than one location throughout the entire plugin, because the design limitations of the game were used up completely in order to make everything happen in quick succession.

A good idea is to actually open up your pilot folder, and make copies of your current pilot at different stages of a plugin, just so that if you screw up, you can revert to the previous step.
Regardless, I also made the plugin so that if you did screw up, you could abort or fail the mission, and it would be offerred again and at the same location. The IARS (I AM REALLY STUCK) file that I provided with the support to the game explains many such questions or problems.
Anyways, I hope it was enjoyable.

Cheers!
-Gandalf

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(This message has been edited by Gandalf (edited 07-16-2004).)

General Cade Smart

This is the biggest surprise possible! I see a thread so old I forgot it existed, and the developer of Mugabi posted! OK, now I tell what I would have wished there to be in the plug.

Perhaps you quickly get the combat rating required (after all, I got to fair with just 1 Corvette and Clipper) with the tweaked version of the exec transport in a new pilot. But can I just start the Mugabi story then, or do I need to complete one of the major strings since it takes place after the Alien storyline in EV? If it does, I am NOT going to do a main string just to get the mission. Thats pain. OK, I am, just to get the 2 last missions, but I would rather avoid it if possible.

I liked the plug. It had beatiful planets, and I liked the inhabitated ones. I liked the special effects. I liked the story. The Twin Fighter was good too. The planets were so huge that they looked like Nova ones. I still wonder how you did the cloaked adrift Alien Fighter trick, with you being able to see only the target brackets. The Fuel Harvester that adds acceleration was done with a outfit, I think. The story was fun, when it wasnt too hard. Now for what I think was bad or should have been added:

The new galaxy was pitifully small. I would have liked much more inhabitated worlds to explore. Even uninhabiated ones would have been OK, if there had been more than just Garit. And hey, it doesnt need to get more confusing for users. Just include a little note in the readme that all missions are avaible on Octerranoe or Wunta. And you can keep the systems away from the ones where time-limited story missions occur (Mugabi 2 And Mugabi Ra), so it doesnt mess up time limits.

Add a way to make money inside the new alien galaxy. You need money for the Twin Fighter, Seeker Drones, constant replacing of Anemones, and other outfits like Ramfuel. If you dont have enough money when enter the Octs galaxy, youre stuck until you do the next mission. Add a Commodity Exchange on Octerranoe and Wunta with a extremely profitable commodity a la Bio- Weapons run in Nova. Bio- Weapons give you 2000 credits per ton. Or make Mission Computer cargo missions to Wunta with atleast 100.000 pay each.

I couldnt fly the Twin Fighter first because I didnt know where its front was and because it was so fast. I could never land on planets and braking was difficult. I had to to reduce game speed to 50% to master the craft. Only later did I figure out that its eyes (the blue dots) and its tooth were the front.

Change Mugabi 2 system so Octs Fighters dont appear inside it. It makes the mission where you have to board The Orgata impossible. I can smash hordes of Orcs Fighters. The Moonbeams make that easy, in fact. I can take the ships escorting it. Just fire Moonbeams at them from long range. I can even disable the Orgata. Just fire some Anemones on it, 90 was it... but I cant board if Octs fighters buzz it all the time! It annoyed so much I changed the dude for system to Wreckage.

There was very little weapons, but I think its enough. Atleast there wasnt any confusion which weapon was best. Keep it as it is.

One last entry... not a complaint, but just a comment Once when I pushed my skills to the max, I got on top of Mugabi Ra with a Rebel Cruiser! If it hadnt been unlandable, I would have landed. And Rebel Cruisers are enormously slow compared to Twin Fighter, even if speed upgraded (which mine was)

P.S. Gandalf, I hope I didnt scare you away with the longest post I ever have written yet. I just got afraid you would disappear from the web boards again, and not answer all I had in mind if I had made a smaller post, so I decided to take advantage.

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I am eager to try to answer mission questions
"There is nothing certain but and taxes"- Benjamin Franklin

Gandalf

Hello,
Thank you for your well thought-out post. Many good points.
I'll try and answer all of your comments....

You do not need to complete any strings or missions in EV before the plugin story begins, just have the necessary experience.

I'll start by explaining what I wanted to accomplish with this plug. What I wanted was a departure from other plugs. I wanted it to be very fast paced once it began. The emphasis is skewed towards adveture and storyline and fighting, with "shopping", "site-seeing", "making money", "trading", "merchant work" all taking a back seat, because there is NO TIME. In real life if you were faced with the dire straits thrown at you in this game there is time only to do what is pertanent in order to save lives, millions of lives. There is no waiting for missions, the story unfolds in a matter of a few weeks in "game-time" which is unheard of for a large plug. In order to tightly control the time line so that the story unfolds more like an interactive movie, going from one mission directly to the next, I had to eliminate many variables.

The pay from the missions is more than adequate to buy ammo, etc. no? Also, I honestly don't recall making ANY mission available at more than one location only, because I needed to control exactly when the sun Mugabi was "aging", and countless other "changes" occurring to the game with every mission that was completed. In fact I don't think I had any spare spots to "set bits" (which is what is done to make things "happen" in the game with every mission start/complete).

As far as the size of the new "alien galaxy" goes, I believe in quality not quantity in terms of artwork, planets, sights etc for this plug beacuse I wanted it to hit hard and fast, and not take long to play. I would have loved to throw in a bunch of places to explore, but the size of the game is akready huge because of the artwork. Hence I only changed select planets back in the earth systems as well. If I had changed all planets and doubled the size of the alien galaxy, the game would have been approx 120 MB not 12 MB.

I used many tricks throughout this plug to manipulate the limitations that I wanted to get around. The planets/bases are the biggest in any EV plug. In fact, four times bigger, exactly, than in any other plug. I used four planets and placed them perfectly to the very pixel together so they appear as one.

It does take quick skills to pilot that fighter. Landing takes a combination of the quick 180-degree turnaround plus a quick thrust in that 180-degree position to leave you at a stand-still. I laughed myself silly hearing that you did not know which way was the front... thanks for that. The ship was based on a manta ray... "eyes/mouth" provide for twin mini bridges for pilot/co-pilot gunner...

The weapons you were getting were all prototype... the aliens do not operate on a "buy the weapons you need" or "weapons available to the public" society. The military had control of all weapons until the split in power.

Yes, landings throughout this plug are tough... part of the challenge...

Mugabi Ra is landable only after you are sent on the mission to gather data and fly through its corona ("landing" on it). Only a properly equipped ship can attempt it, and even then your chances of survcival are 50%.

Thanks again for your post, I hoped I cleared a few things up.

Cheers,
Gandalf

Quote

Originally posted by General Cade Smart:
**This is the biggest surprise possible! I see a thread so old I forgot it existed, and the developer of Mugabi posted! OK, now I tell what I would have wished there to be in the plug.