A rather strange idea I thought I'd share.

[Stormhawk]

I usually play a modded game, but when I installed a fresh copy on my PC I had an idea. Basically I decided to award myself a modded ship depending on how many points I made in an original ship. So if I get around 500 points I'll award myself with a hornet battle-pod, over 1000 and I get a Ronin B and so forth.

I know this is pretty random but I wanted to share this.

[Betelgeuse]

I do like the idea of earning stuff over games. If we had file i/o it would be trivial to put in. Of course what kind of stuff is earned would be up for debate but would be great in adding variety and goals to the game over time.

[digdug]

an achievements system!
this sounds cool!

[alterecco]

If we had file i/o it would be trivial to put in.

How about "honor based", manual file i/o
Provide the data to save to the player in-game, and expect him/her to feed it into a designated file.
I know it's not perfect, but it would allow the storing of simple state over several games. Might be fun too

.]

[Darth Saber]

The achievment system sounds good, and I have an idea for a reward:

Take an original Trans ship, say the Luminous Drone, make it playable, and copy its code into a trans - data rom mod. Since the graphics for this ship are already in Transcendence, you would not have to worry about them. The point being something like this:

"You have discovered secret Luminous plans for a warship of great power. Fortunately you can decrypt the code:"

[the Luminous Drone mod]

Now then, to use the mod, you would have to copy the code into an xml format; OR you could a program similar to the "ALT" one listed with one of the large freighter mods on Xelerus. When you hit the "ALT" key, it could transfer the code into an xml for you, inside the extensions folder for you to use the nex time you start the game. Unless someone could make the game load it immediately and transfer your weapons and cargo to it; then you would be piloting the Drone.

What do you think about this?

"Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility." - Book of the Talecrie

[Darth Saber]

The achievment system sounds good, and I have an idea for a reward:

Take an original Trans ship, say the Luminous Drone, make it playable, and copy its code into a trans - data rom mod. Since the graphics for this ship are already in Transcendence, you would not have to worry about them. The point being something like this:

"You have discovered secret Luminous plans for a warship of great power. Fortunately you can decrypt the code:"

"Luminous Drone" (Code)

Now then, to use the mod, you would have to copy the code into an xml format; OR you could a program similar to the "ALT" one listed with one of the large freighter mods on Xelerus. When you hit the "ALT" key, it could transfer the code into an xml for you, inside the extensions folder for you to use the nex time you start the game. Unless someone could make the game load it immediately and transfer your weapons and cargo to it; then you would be piloting the Drone.

What do you think about this?

[alterecco]

Double Post!!

Unless someone could make the game load it immediately and transfer your weapons and cargo to it; then you would be piloting the Drone.

That is unfortunately in no way possible.

OR you could a program similar to the "ALT" one listed with one of the large freighter mods on Xelerus. When you hit the "ALT" key, it could transfer the code into an xml for you, inside the extensions folder for you to use the nex time you start the game.

Although i'm not sure of what you mean by your reference to "ALT", i can tell you that the only place we can write data to is the Debug.log file. So... we could print an entire ship xml to the debug file, and then a player would manually have to clean up the data, place it as an extension, etc... The debug log prefixes every line with a timestamp, so there is definitely place for some confusion.

All in all, it is doable, but it is certainly not plug and play. One of the big wishlist items for the next versions of Trans, is file i/o from script. Lets hope we can get that!!

.]

[alterecco]

To continue a bit on this topic, what i was originally thinking, would go a bit like this:

Say you are building a mod that would allow the player to amass starting equipment based on how he did in previous T games (just a random idea). At the top of your mod (or somewhere easily accessible by the player), you would place a variable, lets call it amassedStartingEquipment. On the first play, it will be empty. Now the player starts the game, and during the progress of this, completes a quest related to this mod. In a dockscreen he is then presented with the following text...

Code: Select all

You have gained new starting equipment. Please add the following snippet to your equipement mod:
(setq amassedStartingEquipment (list 1245124))

(the text can of course differ in the degree of explanation of what to do and how to do it, etc...)

As the game progresses and the player completes quests, the amount of data in this variable can increase. When the player starts a new game, this variable will be read in, and the game modified accordingly. That is why i call it a 'honor based' i/o, because it relies on the players honor to not cheat, to stay sane...

To add more to the obfuscation, the values that are placed in the variables could be encrypted, using some simple scheme. It would not make it impossible to decrypt the meaning of course, but it would make it less obvious. (eg, the difference between 'laserBlaster' and 'lbalsaesrter')

All of this is just pure speculation. I have no intention of making a mod using this technique, but it could be done... real i/o would be much preferrable.

.]

[Prophet]

This is a very intriguing idea!
If there were a custom station in the first few systems, when you dock you're asked to enter a password. The pass words would be distrubuted to the player for 'Achievements', finishing a quest, etc. It could be printed on a Rom or in a Dockscreen. The player would have to write it down. Then, next time through, or if they went way back to the station, type in their password, and the scripts install weapons, shields, creds, whatever.
As for changing ship graphics, unfortunately not possible in game.
There could be a number of available ship graphics included with the mod, all with the same equipment though, so the password system could load appropriate equipment onto the ship.
Of course, if you input the wrong password, nasty things could happen! And a password from 6-7 games ago would always be valid so there is the problem that it would still have to be 'honour based'.

[Darth Saber]

Greetings alterecco and prophet:

The Alt program to which I referred to earlier can be found in the Esel mod of Xelerus. The program was called "AltSpecial," and allowed the Esel to fire a special cannon similar to the one the Dwarg Masters use to paralyze their prey. The AltSpecial is an actual application, which was linked to the mod. I spent quite a bit of time using the old DOS programming language "QBasic." My thought was to use it, or a similar programming language to create a program similar to the AltSpecial. When you hit the "ALT" key, it could transfer the code into an xml for you, inside the extensions folder. Now a program can create a file, so if written correctly, mabey someone could write a program that would create a xml file. As for the mod code, if one includes the code as part of the description, or the comments of a Mod Rom's xml, then it would show up; (thnk of Arco Vahn's data rom). Anyhow let me know what you think. As to the password ideas you have suggested: Remember the random password for Europa's weapon's vault? Perhaps this could help with the idea. Go to a small, station at Eridani, have it give you a random code based upon the score which you made earlier in the game. that is kept on file in the Trans folder. 8)

[alterecco]

Hello Darth,

I just looked through xelerus, and the only mod i could find with Esel in it is this, so i suppose that is the one you are talking about.

Now, the mod in itself contains no program that is linked to it, and that would surprise me alot, since it's not possible. Now, if i'm wrong, i'm sorry. Well, it would actually make me happy...

So, please supply the code you were talking about, if you have it.

As far as i know, the only mod on xelerus which is actually a program, is the AutoHotkey mod for changing the accelerate key. It can in no way interact with the data inside a Trascendence game.

I say again, ufortunately, at the moment, what you want is not possible.

.]

[Bobby]

altSpecial is a hotkey changer that replaces the alt key press with a string of presses(s c s or something like that) that activates a menu in the ship mod that works the cannon. it is not connected with the game in any way, it is an AutoHotkey program.

here's an idea. the player could unlock a data rom by achievement, the rom would display a password, the player could open the mod in notepad, select a variable at the top, and replace it with the password. An AutoHotkey program can be used to detect a certain string of characters(such as btw) and replace it something else.(such as "by the way", or "itPlasmaBlaster", as in the case of a mod) the password could be completely cryptic, and be replaced with something that makes sense, or vice versa, and the program's inner workings are secret too. that new variable could change something in the mod.

[Iocrym Destroyer]

One thing you could do is when you finish a certain quest, you unlock a certain ship, weapon, shield, etc. Then when they start a new game, a little box pops up in the ship selection screen. Then they enter in all the codes from the previous game, but only the codes from the most recent game would work, unless specified diferently.

[Darth Saber]

This brings to mind the relationship of password randomization and implementation between Point Juno and the wreck of the CSC Europa.

[josh19967]

Now then, to use the mod, you would have to copy the code into an xml format; OR you could a program similar to the "ALT" one listed with one of the large freighter mods on Xelerus. When you hit the "ALT" key, it could transfer the code into an xml for you, inside the extensions folder for you to use the nex time you start the game. Unless someone could make the game load it immediately and transfer your weapons and cargo to it; then you would be piloting the Drone.

Or it could bring up a DockScreen with a TextBox that you could put your code into, then have it assigned to the appropriate box. This would do the same thing except the player would not have to quit his game- especially if he/she forgets to save it.