Building a plug for myself, may as well share it

Well, I think the thread title says it all. I've been building a plug for myself just for fun. And by a plug I mean, using every outfit, every weapon, every ship slot, every fleet, every pers, and every mission, to keep it as exciting as possible (I didn't change the galaxy much, though).

Thing thing is that I've done a number of unusual things in the plug that I imagine some people wouldn't be used to, and I'm wondering how extensive a read-me I should include with the plug if I post it on the site. Possibly what I think others will consider weird won't be weird to them at all. I'm merely opening myself up to the possibility that I might have some explaining to do.

One way or another, I'm sure excited for the day when it'll be finished...

Well, I don't play my copy of the EVC port often these days, but that wouldn't stop me from going back to it to try out a plug-in for it. Though, if you're talking about making a plug-in for the original EVC, there's little chance I'll try it unless someone ports it to EVC for EVN.

What kinds of things have you done in it? It's kinda hard to tell what exactly you or anyone else would consider unorthodox or normal, so I can't really make a guess at how extensive your ReadMe should be. Though, if you explain some of the things you've done in it, that would help.

Alternatively, if you don't want to just give it all up and would rather players discover it piece by piece as they go along, here's a general rule off thumb I go by: if it takes more than 300 characters to explain a feature, then it should be mentioned. If it's around 300 characters, you might want to think about putting it in the ReadMe. If it's considerably less, don't bother mentioning it (with the exception of bug fixes).

I'm playing through EVC for Nova right now actually. I'd be willing to try out a plug as soon as im done with this playthrough as long as its EVC for Nova compatible.

Unfortunately, when I say EVC, I mean the real EVC, not the Nova port.

Whether to make the plug in EVC, EVO, or Nova was a big question I considered before I started it. EVC ended up winning out. Nova, though very cool and having features I love (like good escort control and being able to sell escorts), simply doesn't have some of the things that made EVC great (comps having longer ranger on their weapons, additional ammo), and though Nova's AI is much better, it came down to it not being worth the trouble. It's also sad there's no equivalent to Decoy Flares in Nova. The only true EVC is the original EVC, and unless Nova can do whatever it does, Nova's out.

As for porting this to Nova, I neither know how to do that, nor would it work well if I did do it. Everything's specifically balanced according to the peculiarities of EVC's engine, and would be completely out of whack if ported to Nova. I can't even begin to imagine how much I'd need to restructure the plug-in for it to work in Nova.

Some examples of things people might find unusual are the ships with negative weapons space available, the total lack of missions in the mission computer, and the number of missions accessed only through pers ships. Also the fact that credits are rarely awarded for missions; I use outfits instead. I can definitely imagine some people becoming frustrated with this if they don't know why I'm doing it. Just a thought.

Anyways, take care!

While those are unusual, they aren't that unimaginable and, frankly, anyone who would need a long description of how it all works from a gameplay perspective really doesn't have the imagination needed to play the game in the first place, IMO. Also, what you've described sounds worthwhile. I do still maintain an OS9 computer specifically for playing old games once in a while. Moving stuff over to it can be a hassle sometimes, though. But, for this plug-in, I'd be willing to risk that hassle in order to try it out.

Any idea on a release date?

there's a plug for ev classic that gives it the nova ai or at least closer to the nova ai. it's somewhere in the cluster###### of the classics plug in page. dunno if it really works or not, but it was a simple plug that worked with everything.

alright, it was for the ai from override. but still, helps make the ai tougher.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/assets/modules/a...d.php?addon=837

This post has been edited by antihero : 07 November 2010 - 12:23 AM

Yes, I have that Override plug for some time now, but thanks for mentioning it. It would be quite cool if there was a Nova AI for Classic, though.

Still, I don't think it'll be too big a worry. This is where the negative weapons' space comes in. I don't know what others do to get around the Monty Python manuver, but my solution is simply to make comp ships much beefier than the player ship, and to have so much ammo that waiting for them to run out would be hopelessly impractical. One needs to learn to fly.

As for a release date, I'm speculating that it'll be after the Christmas break. My to-do list at the moment is to finish the text for about 45 more missions, assign appropriate defense fleets to all the planets, set outfit tech levels, create about 150 more pers and assign them all the appropriate missions, and when that's done I have a little more graphics work to do. (you will encounter EVC ships that don't quite look normal...while the original ships look cool, I'm totally recoloring everything to make the universe look unique)

Finally, a last note, is that the storylines are insane, for the most part. They're not perfect in any way, but the idea I started this whole thing with was to have characters who are perpetually illogical or irrational and sometimes unusually sadistic throughout the whole storyline. If you think the storyline is weird, that's because it is.

Way2go! Nice to see plugs still being made for EV

Is there anyway of playing the original EVC on windows then?

(Not the port. the original)

No. EVC was never ported to Windows, at least not officially. That said, I don't know of any ports at all, official or unofficial.

Just so you know, the plug's coming along, but it might take longer than I originally anticipated (had lots of work and stuff to do). But, the missions are almost finished now. (minus edits that need to be done in testing, of course, but that'll be easy)

most of us don't play it much anymore unless we have a real hankering to. but if someone actually finishes a plug in, we might fire it up real quick.

it gets kind of difficult though now days without classic support in 10.5. i still haven't set up sheepsaver, and i can't run classic itself on this. i think i'd rather just install 10.4 on the partition, and boot into that and have that load up classic.

but yeah, if you finish it, might give it a shot.

Testing phase has begun!

Alright! Still looking forward to trying this on my iMac!

Allright, for the sake of everyone here, I think I should be testing without Strict Play on, because my plug keeps accomplishing what I wanted it to.

I keep getting killed...

Getting close to finished! Things are turning out well. I need to write up a couple read-mes and put in some failtexts as Word documents (since fail texts never display in-game), and finally, decide on a name for the plug-in, and I'm basically done! (minus future version changes, of course)

Fail text never showed up in original EVC? I don't remember that. Glad to hear you're almost finished, though

if you're that close to done, you've done more than most who have attempted. while it doesn't mean much, it is an accomplishment very few here have every achieved.

Anyways, I'm virtually done with this and ready to post, but have one question if someone can answer it. How do I add new sounds to the game from outside ResEdit? (that is, I've added sounds from other plugs easily, but I have no idea how to take a new sound and bring it in) I'd like to make new EV Music from one of my MP3's, but nothing seems to work.

It isn't easy - you need something that can produce a 'System 7 Sound', which is a format supported by very few current sound programmes. Once you've found that, it also needs to comply to certain parameters regarding to bit rate and compression, which I believe are to be found somewhere in the EV Developer's Corner.