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Check out the Polycon
EV fourm at EV-Nova.net
Well, every story has a beginning, and the Polycon EV plug
began in 1996. I had acquired a copy of Escape Velocity from
somewhere, and it fairly quickly was distributed through my friends.
It did not take long for me to try opening it up in Resedit to
see if there was some way to get a Kestrel without playing the
game for three months, and I quickly discovered that the EV scenario
could be edited with the templates in the EV data file. We quickly
figured out how the data files worked well enough to alter them
to cheat, as many people no doubt did at first. But it did not
take long for me to take on a more useful project. The previously
mentioned group of friends were also the group of people I played
role-playing games with. Our game of choice was not Dungeons
and Dragons or any other game you might have heard of however,
it was Polycon, a absurdly complex galactic domination game hacked
together from sources from at least a dozen other games. It was
brought up at some point how cool it would be to rewrite those
EV data files to make a Polycon game, I already had the half
finished attempts at making Polycon stuff for Doom and Marathon
on my hard drive. I decided to give it a try anyway, and a TC
was born.
Initial attempts to write the plugin were painfully slow.
The main reason for this was indirectly due to my general lack
of Internet access, I had no idea of the existence of the EV
bible or EV plugins, I had never even read the Escape Velocity
readme. At that point I was figuring out how to make the conversion
by reverse engineering the EV data files and making a lot of
educated guesses. In looking over the notes I made back then
now, it strikes me how much stuff I got wrong, for months I thought
the EV ship limit was 32 ships because of the size of the small
icon matrix, that the engine was only able to support one fleet
resource, and dozens of other things equally embarrassing. But
by sometime in 1997, I had a working prototype of the plugin
grafted into the data files. It replaced all of the original
EV systems and ships with Polycon equivalents, and more importantly,
it worked. Not long after that, I got a copy of EV Override from
somewhere, and cringed. I could harp on how horrible the EV Override
graphics were (What the hell is up with the dithering in the
startup screen??), but the real concern for me was that my conversion
would not work with it. Polycon EV got shelved for a year, while
I made Warcraft maps, Marathon Infinity levels, and other projects.
At some point in 1998 I got a new computer, a Powermac, and I
realized that I could finally make sprites bigger than 96 pixels
square for EV. The conversion got dusted off and worked on while
I added some, well, crappy ship graphics to it. Eventually it
got stuffed away somewhere again and I moved on to other things.
| In 2001 I finally took another look at
the Polycon EV plugin. By this time I had made hundreds of maps
and conversions for different games, and more importantly, some
of them had actually been released to the public. I had just
left the Myth 2 mapmaking community for reasons I would rather
not discuss, and I was looking for something to pass the time.
I came across the old 1997 Polycon EV plugin, and decided to
fix it up, with new graphics, and fix all the other old problems
that came from my lack of access to the EV bible. In a space
of four months, the plugin was completely rebuilt, and was up
and running in both EV and EV Override. The 2001 version of Polycon
EV was nearly ready for the next step. Originally I wrote a lengthy
paragraph here, explaining in detail why I was unable to put
the plugin into beta and why I had no way to release it, but
I removed it because it was not really relevant to the matter
at hand. All that matters is that I had reached a wall in the
plugin's release, one which I did not have the ability to circumvent. |
(Evoultion of graphics
between versions)
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The lack of hosting quickly took the wind out of the sails
of the project. The plugin went into cold storage for another
six months, while I did other things. Eventually I obtained a
copy of EV Nova from a friend, and the entire question of porting
the 2001 plugin to Nova was raised. At this point the Polycon
EV plug had been in development for six years, and it was starting
to seem like a real shame that it might never be released. So
once again, I found myself working on a Polycon EV plugin. The
following is the plugin's progress log.
March 26, 2002
Obtain copy of EV Nova from a friend. After looking it over,
think "Maybe I should port Polycon to this"
April 4, 2002
Begin testing of feasibility of porting Polycon EV to the Nova
engine. I am told that a porting utility called Port Authority
will be available "soon" After some testing, I figure
out that most of the resources contain the same data as before,
the new features have merely been appended to the end of the
resource files. Unfortunately there were a few resources, like
the system resource, that add new data right to the middle of
the old data files. I decide to go ahead and manually port the
plugin anyway, instead of waiting for the porting utility.
April 10 2002
All of the original ships and ship sprites have been imported.
Due to changes in the way the turn speed field in the ship resource
works, they do not work right, but they are in. The sprites look
like total crap next to the Nova sprites but they do work. The
core worlds "Polycon, Vecon, etc" have been ported.
April 15 2002
Krellre space is in. Some of Miamier space has been added. The
heavy freighter, carryall, and most of the other generic cargo
ships have been re-rendered to take advantage of Novas better
graphics. The Kilingi warship kicks ass with the new Nova light
graphics.Unfortunately due to the strange lighting system I used
when I made the Dumpster model, I can not re-render the sprites
without retexturing the ship, so it will have to wait until I
have nothing better to do to be upgraded.
April 20 2002
Most of the eastern systems are in. Most of the Polycon ships
are in. The Tydirium was about a pain in the ass to make because
of the animated ESG on the front of it. I also added shield bubbles
for some of the ships, but after seeing how annoying it was going
to be to have shields flashing everywhere in a big fight, I removed
them from half of the ships to make them more scarce. Osiris
cruiser looks kinda silly with such a big ship having such puny
looking engine flashes. Maybe I will remodel it for the final
version.
April 26 2002
More systems added. Mostly Mier sector systems. Added the prison
ship and a few others. I animated the Personnel transport so
it would open its foils when landing, but it looked somewhat
silly, so that got cut out. Most of the normal weapons are in.
Folder and lighting gun get new explosion graphics, which vastly
improve the "cool factor" of the weapons. Discover
I can not dominate planets when I try to take over Davids world.
After spending two days trying to figure out a good way to get
around the Yahoo email address block on the Ambrosia forums,
I finally make a post to the developers board asking if anyone
knows a solution to this problem. Nobody does.
May 1, 2002
Added the Polycon stargates and many more systems from the old
plug. Made new graphics for some of the stellar objects. The
default interface sidebar has been changed. Considered changing
the name Erick Cheek's Vogons to lessen the risk of people screaming
"ripoff" Most of the Draconen weapons have been added.
May 8, 2002
All of the material from the 2001 EV Polycon plugin has been
ported to Nova, and the Port Authority program that everyone
told me to wait for has still not been released. If I had waited
for Port Authority, the plugin would still be locked in EV classic.
All of the ships from the original plugin are in and working,
and more than half have new graphics. Added Llisis "pirate"
fighter, that animates when firing. Azguard cruiser has been
remodeled.
May 15, 2002
I am seriously not looking forward to rerendering the Sorhal
cruiser because of the rotating midsection. The Tydirium was
bad enough. Most of the rest of the Sorhal ships have been remodeled,
and I added the Nymph, a Sorhal ship that was cut from the 2001
version of the plugin because of the 64 ship limit. Part of Robotic
plague space is in. The Robotic plague spores and most of the
Robotic Plague weapons have been added. The Vecon mission string
is finished. My original plan was to do ten groups of missions
for the player to play, one for each of the major goverments,
each being ten missions long. After being reminded of how much
I hate making missions by making the Vecon string, I think I
will have to scale back to a more manageable six missions if
I want to meet my August beta deadline.
May 24,2002
Well the Meta galaxy is nearly done. The Takari gate is in. Most
of the ships have been remodeled. Lots of new weapons that were
not in the 2001 plugin like neutron cannons and plasma torches
have been added. The Neutral zone is done fully. Also did the
black hole graphics (they suck), and did some of the Polycon
mission strings. Bad terrorist jokes from the 1997 plugin (well
before 911 changed from a phone number to a terrorist attack)
keep on popping up in the news window, which will have to go.
Added some crons to make Polycon and its enemies attack each
other periodically, but the crons keep posting news about the
attacks long after they happened. Again I resorted to posting
in the Ambrosia Developer board about this, but was told there
were only two things to do about it, make back to back crons
so there would be no generic news, or complain.
June 3, 2002
The worldship has been rendered. Most of the meta galaxy is done.
The Polycon mission string is done. About half of the interface
graphics are done. Also redid the logo and splash screen, and
conferred with people about having custom intro music written.
Discovered a major bug that caused the entire universe to hate
the pilot for no reason (it had never shown up before because
for my testing I was using a test pilot whose legal rating had
been inflated to make him a "Leading Citizen" at every
planet. |
(Plague worldship)
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June 10, 2002
The Polycon string is done. The Meta galaxy is done. All of the
ships, save the Sorhal Cruiser and a few others, have been re-rendered.
Also added the Horus fighter and a few other bits of technology
that are developed during the course of the game. Fixed the problem
with the players legal rating. I removed the most glaring of
the ripoffs from the planet descriptions, but for the rest of
it players are just going to have to live with it or go download
the Star Wars plugin.
June 25 2002
A large percentage of the Takari tech has been added. Also added
the Horus prototype and numerous other bits of "fringe"
technology for the player to find. Finally, after a month of
fiddling, figured out a way to fix the problem with the crons
not turning off. Added the "Mac Plus" an easter egg
ship for the pers's from the 68K Mac Liberation Army. Started
work on the Meridians, which will no doubt be accused of being
ripped off from the Aurorans. Still need to rerender that Sorhal
Cruiser...
July 9 2002.
Rerendered the Genocide Cruiser. Added most of the rest of the
Meridian tech. Meridian space is nearly complete. Fixed numerous
spelling errors and other small bugs that slipped in from the
1997 plugin. Must go play Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds.
July 27 2002
All of the Meridian stuff is in. Part of Naglafar space is in.
The core missions are done. Still have not found someone to host
the beta, which should be ready any day now. Rendered the Naglafar
colony carrier.
August 11 2002
Plugin is ready for beta, which is a moot point because I have
no place to host the beta. Added the Byspa and Valores new fighter,
and fixed numerous bugs. Time to play the waiting game.
August 18 2002
Burned a copy of the Polycon beta onto a CD and left it in a
geocache. I have no life.
August 26 2002
Still have no way to put the plugin into beta. Mailing CDs to
the people who end up beta testing it is looking more and more
likely. Finally got around to getting permission to use the title
screen music from the artist who made it, and acquired information
about encoding it from the Ambrosia forums. Added a few more
missions.
September 15 2002
Reports from the beta testers are coming in. Minor bugs are
being fixed. Ended up mailing the beta out on CD's. A large bug
caused by the new version of EV Nova was sucessfully patched.
October14 2002
Polycon EV 1.0 is out. Go
get it.
October 23 2002
The Polycon EV 1.1 uptdate is available from the EV
Addons page. It fixes the following bugs.
-Reactors no longer have wild recharge values
-Meson cannon outfits now correctly called "Meson"
cannon instead of "Mason cannon"
-Harkonen no longer shows up when you have a lens
-Cloaking device flags now set correctly
-Scimitar Fighter now correctly spelled
-Dicensphere changed to Dyson Sphere
-Capacitor now correctly spelled
-PSPs no longer have foolishly low price
-Llisis bays no longer called "Hawk Adv bays"
-Meridians now have a "Blow stuff up" mission at the
end of their mission set.
-Translators no longer show up when they have not been invented
yet
-Pneumatic now correctly spelled
-Take over Sxxix mission now displays a message onscreen when
the enemy forces have been destroyed
-Pirate traps no longer display a picture of a coretap in the
dialog box.
-Machine fighter now has dual missle launchers instead of duel
missle launchers
-Get Archammer and Get Mining Drill missions are now harder
-Tre'var fighter no longer shows up when it has not been invented
yet
-Sorhali Shipyards will now let you land after you have moved
it to the Dead Zone
-Pirate Traps no longer give the player Alien Artifacts
-Omegacon fighter voices now set correctly
-Strength values for ships changed to lower combat requirements.
-Draconen Neutrino Charges no longer called Draconen Bombs in
the shipyard.
Febuary 1 2003
The Polycon EV 1.2 uptdate is available from the EV
Addons page. It fixes the following bugs.
-Approximately 100 spelling and grammatical errors fixed.
-Added a Soyuz space capsule to the Sol system.
-Added FAQ to the readme.
-TTP Shogun no longer mounts nonexistent weapon.
-IRS planets no longer have Takari cruisers in their defense
fleets.
-Draconen fighter bay no longer costs 0 credits.
-Microtorpedoes now priced more reasonably.
-New Veneria no longer launches "null" ships in its
defense fleet.
Disrupter no longer misspelled "disruptor" in 20 different
places.
-Galvenx Missiles no longer use Plaguehammer ammunition.
-Coarse language related to some of the pers resources cleaned
up.
-Robotic Plague spores now act "dead" after destruction
of the Worldship.
-The bomber variant of the Machine fighter no longer has the
targeting picture of a Tydirium.
-Icara Shipyards now has a valid defense fleet.
-Missile no longer misspelled "missle" in 20 different
places.
-The M-03 and M-04 systems now have a starfield.
-Meridian "Invade DMZ" mission now has completion text.
-Added an autotyper utility to the download to fix Stuffit 7
corruption.
-The completion text for the final Robotic Plague mission now
displays the correct picture.
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