Orion Skies

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Showing posts from July, 2023

All About rEV: Expanded

- July 28, 2023

TL;DR: I'm working on a major plug-in for EVC-on-Nova. rEV: Expanded Hi, all. I've done a lot of modding since my last blog post, and wanted to share a bit about what I've been doing. For those who haven't played it, rEV is a fantastic plug-in for EVC-on-Nova . In addition to wonderful updated graphics, it also adds a variety of neat outfits, ship variants, and gameplay features. It is very worth checking out! It was initiated by Kris Quistorff, who created the graphics, and features many innovative gameplay and technical updates from andrews05 . I am currently building a new plug-in that uses rEV as its basis. rEV: Expanded is intended to update many aspects of EVC, expanding on EVC's strengths (hence the name). rEV: Expanded has four main focus areas: Quality of Life Features The Combat Experience Strategic Balance and Depth Story I'll discuss each of those areas below, but first here's a quick video I recently recorded in rEV:E of a

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"