Orion Skies

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Showing posts from March, 2022

Depth, Ship Loadouts, and Tech Generators

- March 11, 2022

TL;DR: To maximize replayability of an EVx scenario, designing "layers" of ship loadout choices can help; this requires lots of outfits, which the Tech Generator can help create. Quick Progress Update This month, I've continued working on the Tech Generator , and relatedly on the spreadsheet listing of weapon & outfit stats in EV scenarios . The work has become grindier than anticipated, and life has been very busy, so progress is slower than I'd hoped– however, progress is happening, and the Tech Generator is getting very close to version 1.0! I also had a major conceptual breakthrough this month, related to using design concepts from Magic: the Gathering in an EVx context, and specifically for Orion Skies. I think a lot of these ideas could work for any TC, and wanted to write a blog post about them. "Depth" One trait that I always find really valuable in games is "depth" – the idea that someone can play that game repeatedly, many ...

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"