Orion Skies

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Showing posts from January, 2022

Procedurally Generating Nova Weapons

- January 17, 2022

TL;DR: The Tech Generator is now capable of generating Nova -style weapons, and I am in the process of adding specifications for them. Nova Features Complete! At the time of last month's post, I was setting up the Tech Generator to produce weapons in the style of different EVx games, and adding the features necessary for each game as I went. At that time I was adding features to support submunitions, as several Ares weapons require them. As I write, the submunitions system is working, the Tech Generator is correctly producing Ares -style weapons, and I've also added all features necessary to produce Nova -style weapons! Nova requires a number of features not seen in previous EVx games, so it's been a lot of work, but everything seems to be working smoothly and correctly so far. :) Now that the features are in place, I'm in the process of adding definitions to actually generate Nova weapons . It's currently producing Blasters, Fusion Pulse wea

Welcome!

Hi! My name is Chris, though my EV-community Discord handle is "Mag Steelglass". I created this site to share information about my Cosmic Frontier plug-in projects with the community, and also to share tools & resources for other plug-in developers.

My goal is to develop three interconnected plug-ins:

1) The Expanded Suite, a collection of game-feature mods aiming to expand on Cosmic Frontier’s strengths.

2) Ares Forever, adapting the excellent 2D space game Ares, and its innovative features, to the Cosmic Frontier engine.

3) Orion Skies, a Total Conversion plug-in that takes place entirely within a nebula. As such, ships are able to hide in the nebula fog and use submarine-like tactics, etc – and there is also space weather such as electrical storms and turbulence, and different regions of the nebula have different physical properties. Orion Skies will be using all of the game features developed for The Expanded Suite and the Ares adaptation.

Given that Cosmic Frontier is not yet available for building plug-ins, I’m currently focused on preparatory work – developing tools, learning about 3D graphics, doing design and worldbuilding work, etc. When Cosmic Frontier comes out, my focus will shift to building these plug-ins, aiming for small initial releases early on followed by periodic updates until they are complete.

I previously created a large-scale plug-in for EVO-on-Nova called EVO: Expanded, to which The Expanded Suite is a successor. Before that, I created several plug-ins for Ares. I've also created a few themed "cubes" for Magic: the Gathering.

In any case, I hope visitors to this site will enjoy hearing about these projects, and of course to also enjoy playing them when they’re ready. :)

-- Chris Paff, a.k.a. "Mag Steelglass"