Before you start reading this it is long, so don't start unless you intend to finish. I know that this may be too late for input into EV3 but I have a few suggestions, which i think would make the game better (By the way if there are any typos in here I'm sorry, after all I am only human).

• Using sprites for spöbs, to make stations/planets animated.

• The use of drawing a line for weapons, instead of using reference to a pict resource. LIke one of the weapons in Ares. So that devolpers would need to state the colour, length and perhaps the thickness of it, kinda the use of a beam weapon.

• Making the convergence into cloak gradual so that you don't cloak as soon as you hit the button , but gradually cloak. Like in Star Trek when a ship cloaks it doesn't just go "ping!" and disapear it gradually fades away.

• The ability for AI's to cloak would also bring better effect into the game. So that that they too could have the advantage of cloaking, thus adding more challenge into the game for the better players.

• This one may sound a bit stupid but one of my friends told me to put it in...
  Having wormholes. So that if you fly into one, or land on it it can take you to a different part of the galaxy or something.

• The abilty to perhaps build/buy stations or set up base on a planet for mining/manufacturing, make a center for your "trading empire" or perhaps allowing some other means of income. News stories like "Ganymede sold to stellar corp for 15000 credits" doesn't really mean anything unless you had the chance to buy it yourself. This would also mean that you could have a chance to defend your own planet from renegades, send out patrols or even have your own private miltia force. (Doubtful)

• A radar interface that is easier to read. With little triangles showing where ships are, what alliance they're with etc.

• The abilty to zoom in and out showing where ships are in relation to your own instead of guessing by firing turrets. A larger playing area would be nice either that or something to stop the AI's from going off of the playing area leaving you stuck and not being able to go any further to catch an enemy.

• Larger variables on MaxShipsInSystem, MaxShipClasses, MaxWeaponTypes, MaxOutfitItemTypes, MaxMissions, MaxShotsOnScreen and MaxNebulae. These won't really make any difference for the player but a whole lot of difference for developers like myself. Allowing us to create larger more expansive plug-ins.

• Other little things like OnMouseOver actions on buttons, maybe a more animated interface. In fact i'd better stop your eyes will be getting sore. If anybody else has anymore suggestions (Which I doubt, I think I've covered almost everything) please reply.

If you've got this far then well done.

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Originally posted by Bungalow Boy:
*** The abilty to zoom in and out showing where ships are in relation to your own instead of guessing by firing turrets.**

Select a target and use the autopilot button....

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-Shade
AIM: Shade3742

<---- The information went data way ---->

"It's your asphalt."

(url="http://"http://www.theonion.com")The Onion, America's finest news source(/url)

You COULD just buy a copy of ARES, it has all those features you requested except the radar.

I like your ideas. You should try to inform whoever is working on EV3 about your ideas.

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Originally posted by Bungalow Boy:

• Using sprites for spöbs, to make stations/planets animated.

Cool.

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• The use of drawing a line for weapons, instead of using reference to a pict resource. LIke one of the weapons in Ares. So that devolpers would need to state the colour, length and perhaps the thickness of it, kinda the use of a beam weapon.

Could you elaborate on this?

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• Making the convergence into cloak gradual so that you don't cloak as soon as you hit the button , but gradually cloak. Like in Star Trek when a ship cloaks it doesn't just go "ping!" and disapear it gradually fades away.

I think they could probably do it somehow probably by adding another field or something, giving it a certain amount of time to go to full cloak, if you wanted a normal cloak like in EV just set the field to 0.

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• The ability for AI's to cloak would also bring better effect into the game. So that that they too could have the advantage of cloaking, thus adding more challenge into the game for the better players.

Very good idea, but you're not the first to suggest this, everyone wanted this for 1.02.

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• This one may sound a bit stupid but one of my friends told me to put it in...
  Having wormholes. So that if you fly into one, or land on it it can take you to a different part of the galaxy or something.

Not really EV/O style.

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• The abilty to perhaps build/buy stations or set up base on a planet for mining/manufacturing, make a center for your "trading empire" or perhaps allowing some other means of income. News stories like "Ganymede sold to stellar corp for 15000 credits" doesn't really mean anything unless you had the chance to buy it yourself. This would also mean that you could have a chance to defend your own planet from renegades, send out patrols or even have your own private miltia force. (Doubtful)

Not really EV/O style either.

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• A radar interface that is easier to read. With little triangles showing where ships are, what alliance they're with etc.

That would be cool, if each government had a defined color, also triangles would make ships bigger on the radar though, making it harder to read, but then again you could see what direction they were moving in. Maybe an option to zoom and expand the radar detection. With greater detection range more interference becomes a problem.

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• The abilty to zoom in and out showing where ships are in relation to your own instead of guessing by firing turrets. A larger playing area would be nice either that or something to stop the AI's from going off of the playing area leaving you stuck and not being able to go any further to catch an enemy.

Zooming in and out should be for radar only, not the screen itself, otherwise this is just an ares clone that came before ares.
A bigger playing area would be nice, but that would probably use more ram, and 99% of the time you don't run into the wall anyway, but having AI ships follow this wall would be nice too.

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• Larger variables on MaxShipsInSystem, MaxShipClasses, MaxWeaponTypes, MaxOutfitItemTypes, MaxMissions, MaxShotsOnScreen and MaxNebulae. These won't really make any difference for the player but a whole lot of difference for developers like myself. Allowing us to create larger more expansive plug-ins.

Thats the most major thing that EV3 needs. Maxships in system, maxshots on screen, and max escorts are my favorite to be upped.

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• Other little things like OnMouseOver actions on buttons, maybe a more animated interface. In fact i'd better stop your eyes will be getting sore.

Cool idea. But do we really need that?

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If anybody else has anymore suggestions (Which I doubt, I think I've covered almost everything) please reply.

More suggestions, I have many more, too numerous to list, I don't think you've scratched the surface on new things that would be cool and fun to add.

People feel free to suggest things, I'm sure if your ideas aren't too wacky, and are reasonable, they just might appear in EV3, try to keep things in this post though.

Here's one thing I'm thinking would be nice, better controls of where weapons are on each ship. Such as an X-Y for each weapon, for each ship size or something.

Chamrin

(This message has been edited by Chamrin (edited 06-28-2000).)

Right DD - You know who this is...

Who suggested the wormhole idea? Wouldn't really work as wormholes do move (appear and disappear) so they would have to be classed as a kinda ship that appears in the system that has no speed, acceleration, etc. The other thing I would like to see is very simple and easy to implement - the a kinda star trek hail picture, instead of the boring outside view of the ship, a picture of the captain instead. I know that that is flawed in that not all people (captains) look the same, but that could be easilly fixed by a random string - kinda like a dude resource for certain classes of vessels. Let me know what you think...

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Watch out DD's about...
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Originally posted by Bungalow Boy:
**

• The abilty to perhaps build/buy stations or set up base on a planet for mining/manufacturing, make a center for your "trading empire" or perhaps allowing some other means of income. News stories like "Ganymede sold to stellar corp for 15000 credits" doesn't really mean anything unless you had the chance to buy it yourself. This would also mean that you could have a chance to defend your own planet from renegades, send out patrols or even have your own private miltia force. (Doubtful)

**

I still don't see the point of this...Sounds exactly like something that wraith idiot requested over and over...even begging for it by calling Matt Gaming god. Kinda funny, I think... Cool ideas however, in exception to this one. PEACE YO!

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~Kwanza~

"Quoted the Kwanza Man...nevermore"

Kwanzasoft Graphics
www.crosswinds.net/~kwanza

a few of my suggestions:

(1) when a ship is destroyed, onboard weaponry should react appropriatley (onboard bombs should explode, onboard fighters attempt to escape)

(2) each sector should have its own news cluster, and that of others when contact is made with the bearer of that news

(3) i saw this in another post reguarding ev3, but it was such a good idea, i had to repeat it: have the game's ships be 3dmf. this is, imo, a great idea, beacause of the following:
(3a) i've heard about beams and other weapons giving off a glow, and by simply attaching a 3dmf light tag, you could have a laser cast an eerie green light or a rocket cast an industrialized red glow onto your ship
(3b) transitions between systems could cause a change in the direction, color, and brightness of the 'suns' light

(4) the addition of damage zones, or more accuratley, critical hits (if attacking a freighter in evo, there should be a 20% chance of hitting a solar panel, and causing power shortages, which could result in decreased thrust, etc)

oh well, just my 2 cents

3dmf means EV3d, which is NOT going to happen as stated many times over. Exobattle was a very simple game using 3dmf's and it required hardware acceleration, you don't want EV3 to be runnable on just g3's and above do you? I wouldn't mind as my G4 can handle it but others won't I know.

Chamrin

for all of my wunderful ideas and more, check out the other EV3 post by some guy whos name starts with a G and ends in _04...my poor memory has gone blank again...sigh

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This is a must I think. Just 'cause. I think when you hail someone, they say something more than "Join us against the evil Voinians" or "Greetings". Something almost unique for each ship. I like the funny ones like M.Burch's ship and stuff. Also, make more ships with their own names (Like the S.S. Surprise or whatever).

One more thing. You guys should make your own plugs. You got some good ideas.

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Feel the Jive
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I'm not as think
as you stupid I am.
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i didn't imply that the entire game by 3d, just the ships. if not that, at least give up the half assed 8x8 grid thing with increments

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Originally posted by Jive 320:
(B)This is a must I think. Just 'cause. I think when you hail someone, they say something more than "Join us against the evil Voinians" or "Greetings". Something almost unique for each ship. I like the funny ones like M.Burch's ship and stuff. Also, make more ships with their own names (Like the S.S. Surprise or whatever).

Agreed

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One more thing. You guys should make your own plugs. You got some good ideas.

Who says we're not? Some of us don't go bragging on the board that are plug is going to be 1000 systems use up every available resource and such.

Chamrin

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Originally posted by Rapier:
i saw this in another post reguarding ev3, but it was such a good idea, i had to repeat it: have the game's ships be 3dmf. this is, imo, a great idea

True...but some 3DMF files, mainly the very complex ships and such are much larger files than the picts themselves...I mean, a 2 meg ship textured and all (in that case the textures would have to be stored else where, as pict files or something of that nature) would make the game super slow, not mention if you're an excellent graphic designer like Weepul or Onyx, your ships almost have to be more than that. Well, think about it. PEACE YO!

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~Kwanza~

"Quoted the Kwanza Man...nevermore"

Kwanzasoft Graphics
(url="http://"http://www.crosswinds.net/~kwanza")www.crosswinds.net/~kwanza(/url)

(This message has been edited by Kwanzar (edited 06-28-2000).)

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Originally posted by Chamrin:
**Who says we're not? Some of us don't go bragging on the board that are plug is going to be 1000 systems use up every available resource and such.;)

Chamrin**

What good is it if it doesn't use up all the resources?

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-Shade
AIM: Shade3742

<---- The information went data way ---->

"It's your asphalt."

(url="http://"http://www.theonion.com")The Onion, America's finest news source(/url)

cant...wait...for...ev3...::drools::

they need a drooling smiley!

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Any idea of what the plot's are going to be in EV3 or has that not started yet?

Also:

Matt Burch - If you read this, please could you take some of these ideas into account, not just mine but others that are suggested here also. By the way good job on EV, EVO and other projects.

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The plot is a big secret. I don't think we're going to find out for a while. The closest thing you can get is the preambles in the EV Chronicles.

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"All will bow before the Icelandic Emperor."

"Join the Icelandic Coalition -- or be killed!" Someone should understand that.

I got Matt to promise he'd put a waitnextevent() into EV3 meaning that you can listen to mp3s while playing EV... is it just me that thinks this is a good idea. Noone else has suggested it but it's one of my main problems with EV and EVO.

pring

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I think that is actually a good idea (The one one about MP3's). I'm glad it's getting put in.

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