Orion Skies

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 recen...

TL;DR: Lots of accomplishments this year, with many more planned for the future. :) Progress in 2022    This year, a number of major milestones were hit, and a lot of technical progress was accomplished "behind the scenes" to enable Orion Skies to live up to my vision of its ideal form. Full Design    In 2022 I was able to finish a complete design of Orion Skies’s world & history , and an outline of the major story elements that will unfold in-game.    I also finished the technical/gameplay design, and even created a specific plan to release Orion Skies in parts (first a small-but-meaningful initial release, and then adding expansions to fill it out). Tech Generator    The Tech Generator implements user-guided procedural techniques to produce data for weapons and outfits for an EV scenario, while ensuring they all fit specific balance targets.    This year, the Tech Generator reached Version 1.0, giving the user control over all o...

TL;DR: An explanation of Orion Skies's world, and an animated "world vision gallery".    In last month's blog post, I had been working on "visual worldbuilding" – similar to creating a "vision board", I'd been collecting artwork online that gives a strong impression of Orion Skies's universe. The goal was to create an animated image gallery that dynamically shows what the world of Orion Skies looks like & feels like. I find this sort of thing incredibly helpful to visualize the world and, as I build the plug-in, bring that world to life in-game.    I have now completed that world vision gallery! For this month's blog post, I wanted to share a video recording I made of the gallery, and to describe some key elements of what it shows. WORLD VISION GALLERY Here's a link to the world vision gallery video . Please note that most of the artwork in this gallery is not mine– though some of it is photos I took while I was living in Tanza...

  TL;DR: A rundown of spacecraft types in Orion Skies, and incredible found artwork to help imagine them.    Over the past couple of weeks I've been taking a break from Tech Generator work do some "visual worldbuilding"– I'm a very visual thinker, but simultaneously am not very good at picturing things clearly in my head! So, I've been scouring the internet for sci-fi artwork that looks like it could fit into my imagined vision for Orion Skies's universe, and then using that imagery to strengthen my imagined vision, and to conceptually explore design details that I hadn't considered before.    Based on this work, I feel like I have a much more solid plan now of what types of spacecraft will be featured in Orion Skies and how they all fit in to that universe. So I wanted to make a blog post about them, featuring some of the artwork I've found. Please note that none of this art is mine and none of it was created for Orion Skies; when I get to the phase...

  TL;DR: Major features are improving the Tech Generator 's workflow in significant ways.      This will be a relatively short post, as life is crazy busy these days and I'd like to maximize what little free time I have for working on the Tech Generator , rather than writing about it. (I'm a teacher, and it's the start of the school year -- exciting, but a lot of work!)    Since last month's blog post, the work I've done on the Tech Generator has been focused on two main areas: Randomness, and Manual Adjustments. Randomness Control    The random number generator functions in Google Sheets work well for producing random numbers, but they re-generate their numbers constantly. Any time you re-open a spreadsheet, or make any change to any value anywhere in the sheet, all of the random number fields reroll and come up with new numbers.    This was causing problems for the Generator's usefulness, as it was difficult to keep a certain outfit y...

TL;DR: Exciting progress is happening on the "expanded outfits" plug-ins! The upcoming "modifiers" feature will open up a lot of great options. "Expanded Outfits" Plug-Ins    Now that the Tech Generator is producing output that can be directly imported into ResForge or EVNEW, the process of using it to create plug-ins feels very different than the "traditional" plug-in development approach. It is a repeating process of defining what the Generator should produce, having it generate a plug-in based on those definitions, testing that plug-in, and then going back to revise the definitions for the next generation of the plug-in.    In the time since last month's blog post, I've been working on three outfit expansion plug-ins– one each for EVC, EVO, and EVN. These plug-ins are currently on their 26th generation, with each generation incorporating new updates and improvements.    These plug-ins have the same goals as the outfit changes I made ...

TL;DR : I'm stress-testing the Tech Generator by making a generated weapons plug-in pack for use with EVC, rEV, EVO, EVOE, EVN, and/or BNV. Also, the auto-import features are working!   Auto-Import Is Working!   The Tech Generator is now successfully producing output that can be loaded directly into a plug-in via ResForge or EVNEW! This makes it vastly more efficient to use than before!    This is a highly complex feature, which means that a great deal of testing is required to prove that it's working perfectly – so it'll be a while before I'll give it the official stamp of approval and "release" the Tech Generator v. 1.1... However, in the meantime, feel free to try this feature in the current Tech Generator, v. 1.0+ ! ResForge is a great new plug-in editor, and its spreadsheet import/export capability is extremely powerful. Generated Weapons Plug-Ins    The whole point of the Tech Generator is to facilitate the process of creating large numbers of we...

TL;DR : The Tech Generator has reached version 1.0 and is ready for public use! By default it generates weaps and outfs for EVN, EVO, EVC, and Ares, but can be configured to create entirely new types for Total Conversion plug-ins.    The Tech Generator is finally ready for general use (if anyone out there currently has a use for it)! This is a big milestone, as with Orion Skies I'm hoping to (eventually) have a very large number of weapons and outfits, and a procedural generator like this should considerably facilitate the process of creating them all.    Based on detailed user specifications, the Tech Generator procedurally creates the stats for weapons and outfits in bulk. It doesn't create output specifically for ResForge or EVNEW 's spreadsheet-import functions yet; that is my next goal and will be the core feature of version 1.1.    Here is a link to the Tech Generator: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iRvFzGBanZFGzsS57eQLN7AbkGLyw-0-8EKmv...

TL;DR :  Orion Skies's design is as complete as it can be without actually getting my hands on the CFO engine. Now I'll work on  the procedural generators and 3D graphics systems, to lay the foundation for building Orion Skies.     Life has continued to be quite busy this month. You may recall that my wife and I bought a home in April, and getting it all set up is taking up a lot of our time. We also have a puppy who needs a lot of attention, and meanwhile work has been particularly heavy. On top of that we've gone through a mix of home emergencies and family emergencies, so it's been an exhausting whirlwind.    However, I've continued to think about Orion Skies's design during my commutes, and have actually made tremendous progress on that front. Work should ease off soon, at which point I'll resume regular progress on the foundational projects that will build into Orion Skies itself. I'll explain all of this below.   Full Design  ...

TL;DR : Many pieces of the design have fallen into place – in particular, an overall design framework and an outline of Orion Skies's world, both of which leave lots of design room for the details.     Life continues to be extra busy lately! You may recall that my wife and I bought a home recently, and getting it all set up is taking a lot of time. Additionally, work has really ramped up, and in the midst of all this we decided to adopt a puppy? (He is adorable but also is a handful!)    I haven't had a lot of time to sit down at a computer and work on Orion Skies, so instead my work has been happening mostly during my commutes, during which I often think about Orion Skies and come up with new ideas etc...   Massive Breakthrough    Building on last month's worldbuilding breakthrough with creating a complete history of OS's setting , as well as game-design breakthroughs based on my work on the Tech Generator, I've finally gotten a "complete" fra...