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- Space Empires: IV & V (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20)

- - SFTC (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=32240)

I havent had much time recently...I'm also hoping Devnull will put out a new editor that works with current SEV patch. I ran it to look at some of the data files for SFTC and Standard SEV, and it actually said there were some errors on some of the entries for formulas and what not...which I dont know if that is right or not...I guess it will come up a bugs while playing...

I couldn't use DevNulls Editor either. I tried it back early in the release and noticed that some of the formulas for weapons were causing errors. The example that comes to mind is the laser. I think it is because the weapon damage curve is outside the predictable gradient that the editor wants. What I am sure of is that it is not errors in my formulas, don't mean to so arrogant but that is the fact. I am sure my formulas are correct and it is his editor that doesn't agree with what amounts to SF canon. So SFTC; I kind of like that but are you referring to this or your SFB project? If you don't mind I think I will borrow that for this TC. I am still looking to change the name and open to ideas. I would like to keep the SF portion though. Maybe Star-Fire, or Stars on Fire, Stars of Fire. Maybe something altogether new? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

The editor doesn't work with rather complex formulas because they'd be a pain for Devnull to parse in the same way SE5 does. You can just input them manually then save, ignoring errors.

Quote:

Phoenix-D said:
The editor doesn't work with rather complex formulas because they'd be a pain for Devnull to parse in the same way SE5 does. You can just input them manually then save, ignoring errors.

There you go Kana, I knew my formulas were right! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

So P-D what do you think of the story line so far? I had thought about starting a discussion thread for it here in this forum. Then I figured nah, I can't tell how much it is getting read or how much the readers are getting into it. Starting a thread for discussing the story seemed rather vain after giving some actual thought. Still I would appreciate any comments... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Do you have a pre-made map or is it a random generated one? Because One way warps were pretty rare, not to mention hard to find. You could add them in and make them invisible to regular sensors so that you wouldn't find them until later in the game once you get the right tech. And the further along the path the less the component costs and room it takes. Eventually you would just need the component on every ship, so the final version of the component would cost very little and take up no space at all but be limited to one per ship. As for losing your whole fleet, that would just be a part of the game, after all, you wouldn't lose it (unless you stumble into a enemy sector) but would still have control of it, and could even start to colonize the hidden sectors. Of course you wouldn't be able to send reinforcements back to your original sectors (until you find another wp back)but then, these sectors are just starting out and wouldn't have a major industrial base yet and you shouldn't be sending your biggest fleet through a wp that you don't know whats on the other side. I seem to recall a mod for SEIV that had nebulas all around the edge of the map of the sector that obscured the views (plus you can't just look to find it) and you had to explore the entire edge of the map to find the sectors. I had a idea of once a B5, ST, BSG and other mods come out to make a map basically dividing the map into sectors, each sector is like a map on its own. Think of 4 quadrants, Alpha Quadrant has all the ST races, Beta Q has B5, Gamma has BSG and so on. Now in certain sectors there would be a wp to a middle sector, sorta like a neutral zone, with nothing in (except maybe a black hole) So once you take over your entire quadrant, you still have to fight all the other mods. Of course this was and still is all just a idea and hypothetical but I would think the closed wp could be done.

Creating a wp that is cloaked would be no problem really. The problem is in the path finding. The closed wp would only work in an all human game and then only if all the humans agreed to not cheat. Even then it would be no problem to find the closed wp and claim that you didn't cheat. "Me? I didn't cheat! How was I supposed to know there was a closed wp there? I told my ship to go back to the home system and it plotted its own path through the wp I swear!" In games with an AI forget about it. There is absolutely no way to tell SE5 "this wp is closed and you can't use it until you have gone through from the open side". It is simply not possible unless Aaron changes the hard code. As for the one way wp they are doable and the frequency is easily changed. However, there are no one way wp in SF so I will leave that one for another mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Wasn't there a WP opens and closes feature in SEIV that could potentially mimick it?

SFTC=StarFireTotalConversion

As for the editor and the formulas, the only way for that to get better I guess is to provide the formulas that do work to Devnull and maybe he can somehow put them in...Of course I'm no programmer, so I don't know what is really involved in the error checking. It just would be nice if we had a tool that confirmed if it was a good or bad formula...some of them can be a bit complex...

Quote:

Spectarofdeath said:
Wasn't there a WP opens and closes feature in SEIV that could potentially mimick it?

There is; however, it is an ability for a component. Therefore if a ship mounts the component they can use it in any system wherever they are at the time. Closed wp are like the current wp in SE5 except they are only visible from one side. The other side is not visible but in all other ways is a normal wp. Now that I think of it mimicking a SF closed wp is no more difficult than changing the wp pic to no pic at all. Pic or no pic the path finding code doesn't care.

Quote:

Kana said:
As for the editor and the formulas, the only way for that to get better I guess is to provide the formulas that do work to Devnull and maybe he can somehow put them in...

If he asks I will be more than happy to give him a copy. The only reason I am keeping the SFTC (I really like that) as a closed Beta is because I know there are problems and I have to wait for Aaron to patch SE5 first. Also as I mentioned in the PM there are experimental components that I am not sure SE5 will implement the way I want. Theoretically it should, but fact is; sometimes theory doesn't hold true. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif