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Topic: Yoho! Cower ye mortals, for The Cookies Mod has returned! (Read 14874 times)
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
Zebranky food
 Offline
Posts: 24
Yarrrr!
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Avast, me hearties!
Aye, after many long months of hardship, after many grueling battles with the kraken of commitment, the vicious sharks of family, and the weird, squidgy sea-monsters of life in general, Crazy Pirates unIncorperated is once again open for business! Thank the whim of a mad-man for our return, for without that gift we have remained forever lost.
Unfortunately, due to a slight "mishap" involving a hard drive, a dinghy, the captain's mistress, and half a keg of grog, all previous work on the Cookies mod was lost. Arrr... it be a sad thing indeed. 'ow was I supposed to know delicate computer componants don't agree well with salt water?
However! We piratical types are never ones to let hardship stand in our way, and are eager to return full-force to the battle of modding UQM. We have already taken the first steps in reviving the Cookies Mod, and shall soon be sailing forth with a complete product in mere weeks, nay, days!
(Well, okay, it took an entire bloody evenin' just to get Subversion working right... 'parrently the bleedin' program does not appreciate trying to deal with 40,000 small .png files. Still, that be all in the past now. Amazin', the things you can solve with enough gunpowder...)
So aye, progress may not be swift nor certain, but we are back. And just to prove it, we present *da-da-da-DUN!* our first screenshots!
My reaction to this one was "Holy shit!":
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies1.png
Hang on... that's not what Jupiter looks like!
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies2.png
Technicolor solar system!
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies3.png
Ah-ha! We've done something actually worthwhile! Introducing, Charon!
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies4.png
Looting and pillaging once again,
Crazy Pirates unIncorperated
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Logged
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 24
Yarrrr!
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If we knew yet, we would tell you! 
Weeelll... we've got a few plans. The one that caused the entire solar system to freak the heck out was creating new planet types. Specifically, it was making large versions of all small planets and small versions of all large planets. It was an ugly kludge getting it together, and we certainly don't intend to leave it this way. That is, with the starbase looking just like another slaveshielded earth.
Our to-do list includes rebuilding our old random starmap generator as well as a few other more remote possibilities.
Gyarrr.
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« Last Edit: June 04, 2006, 04:02:55 pm by Crazy_Pirate_unInc »
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Logged
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 24
Yarrrr!
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Haha!
No, actually. About the VUX and Syreen at least. "Arr MATEY" might go in, though!  I just finished up adding Phobos, Deimos, Charon, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, Dione, Rhea, Iapetus, and 50000 Quaoar.
There needs to be a better way to say "50000 Quaoar", but there ISN'T. The distortion you see (jupiter, etc, not being gas giants, double slave shield planets) is pretty much accidental. HOPEfully we can clear it up.
The real goal is to 1) put a little more realism in things 2) add more variety in planet types and 4) rock on. We ate number 3), I think it was a cake. The randomized starmap thing we used to have was also kind of a kludge. What it did was add random locations, star types and distributions, etc to the starmap array and then paste in a few things we always HAD to have (for example, we always had to have Sol in a certain place, and at one point we had the entire original starmap plugged in there). What it ended up doing was giving random non-plot stars. Which was actually really freaking cool.
Our first task is to debug the new planet types (so the universe isn't filled with purple earths, blue venuses, and jupiter as a large selenic world). Then, we might start getting down to business on a few refinements to the random solar system generators and starmap generator.
For example, I've always noticed Sol was singular in its clear distinction between the inner planetary system (mercury, venus, earth, and mars) and the outer planetary system (all those other damn planets). I'm simultaneously terrified at the prospect of delving into the enormous block of code that is the random solar system creator intrinsic to SC2... and lured by the possibility of one, two, or three delineations between planet groups.
While I'm wishing, I might as well wish for a way to move plot systems, as well as a way to link the randomized coordinates of plot systems to dialogue. That way I could make the locations of plot specific places always differ. Then I'd like to be able to fly off the edges of the starmap.
So yeah. No clue what we're doing. 
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Logged
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 24
Yarrrr!
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However, we do occasionally tend to aquire clues, often by following innocent ships, boarding them, and looting all of their clues.
This tactic has proved successful, as we now have a fair handle on how planets happen; the Solar System is once again sane, and has more goodies in it. Saturn and Uranus have (more) moons, because why should any gas giant feel left out?
Anyway. We have lots of vague weird ideas, but not many actual plans. Some of the things we ARE sure of involves building a random starmap generator, doing some ship-tweaking (for instance, it'd be nice if ZoqFot didn't suck), and doing a wee bit of conversation hacking just for fun.
Then of course we get into more involved and less possible things, like giving ships 64 turn arcs instead of 16, random Chenjesu, more technology, and cool stuff in general. So we'll see how that goes.
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Logged
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 24
Yarrrr!
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Gyarr, Censored, it be not the graphical part of 64 sprites that gives us tha fear, it's coding UQM to look fer the 64 sprites.
(Pirate mode disengaged)
Actually, a huge pet peeve of mine is the illusion of bullets firing farther when your ship is turned... mostly because a friend of mine uses it to rain death upon my beautiful starships as I chase him. Evil man. If we do get started on making melee a little saner, 64 turn arcs might come along with velocity being imparted to bullets. The downside is that Mycon plasmoids are less likely to run over the Mycon. Which actually makes their ships a little less goofy.
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Logged
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 24
Yarrrr!
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And who doesn't, matey?
Byarr, we be havin' some luck with tha Newtonian physics by gerrymandering... nar, errr... keelhauling? Jury-rigging! tha blasted Pkunk's code. Unfortunately, they were... unwilling ta part with it willingly.
So we parted tha Pkunk, y'see, with cannonballs. 'Twas an excellent skarrrmash, arrr.
Screenshots be forthcoming on a bugfree hackjob. Tha firrst vessel we be fittin' with accurate physics be the Chenjesu, gyarr.
Buckle up, me hearties, arrr!
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Logged
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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DrunkenWolf
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 1
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rather than making 64 different sprites why not program the thing so that it can rotate a single one? I've never done any graphics programming but I assume that direct-x and gl both have some way to rotate a static image. I suppose that would be a bugger with collision detection, but that would need to be revamped either way.
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 24
Yarrrr!
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DrunkenWolf: Aye, we be knowin' that. 'Owever, that be takin' time, an' as th' UQM program already knows 'ow ta use diff'rent sprites, makin' it rotate tha same sprite woul' be e'en more'f a hack-job.
Now! We've bein' havin' some success the last week or two, an' return 'ere amidst much grog 'n' tacos ta revel in our triumph. Be'old!
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies1.png
Five moons, baby. Count 'em, FIVE. An one jus' so 'appens to be a gas-giant. I keep tellin' me first mate that that thar's utter insanity, but ye gotta admit 'tis cool.
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies3.png
Aha! Fear the comin' of our bran' spankin' new starmap randomizer program! Now, our trained monke... erm, programmers may've gotten jus' a weeee bit o'erzealous on certain bits, but e'ery star there is real, and the original SC2 starmap is bein' in thar somewhere if ye look reeeeeal close.
An' now, just for kicks, we be givin' ye the starmap randomizer isself! We'll be tweakin' an' changin' things with't 'till it be givin' us the right results, but 'ere's the prototype we 'ave now. 'Tis GPL, since UQM is, and we be includin' the UQM starmap info in it, so 'tis technically usin' th' same code methinks.
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/random-starmap.py
Yers with FIRE AND DOOM,
Crazy Pirate unIncorperated
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« Last Edit: June 15, 2006, 01:55:13 am by Crazy_Pirate_unInc »
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Logged
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 24
Yarrrr!
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BYARRRR!!!
What be tha point of our mod? Why d'we keep on postin' 'ere?
Because we care. We care, in fact, enough ta do this.
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies4.png
"What in tha name of Davey Jones' vacsuit be wrong with those thar planets?! And WHUT THA SWEET DEVIL IS WITH THE MENUS?!" We hear yer plaintive cries.
As to tha first part, well, the First Mate noticed that tha surface temperature of Venus was significantly lower than tha meltin' point of cannonballs. He also figured that tha idea of a Greenhouse World from tha old SC2 PC manual was a pretty durn decent one and reasoned that thar ought ter be a way ta make sure such an "increase o' surface temper-churr based on at-mo-sfeer-ick den-city" (errr... or summat like dat) wurr possible. And ARR! Before ye ye see tha proof! GARR!
And, err, to tha other bit... Mind now - tha strangeness with tha menus is temporary, or so tha Captain assures me. (In fact, with the rather incredibly prompt and generous assistance of Meep-Eep in solving our newbish problems we've already fixed MOST of the problems, arr)
O' course, should we be unable to fix tha leak our vessel of a mod has sprung, there shall be a MUTINNNNY!!
Other projects in progress:
Starmap randomizer: We've refined it to have weights of dwarfs, giants, and supergiants, as well as star classes. Currently we've adopted a model that slightly more realistically portrays the real universe, with something like 33% of stars being red and 6% being blue or something. We may even do away with blue dwarves, seeing as I don't think they actually exist. I know blue white stars exist in dwarf class, but hell. Green stars probably shouldn't be quite that green, either, even if it is kinda pretty.
Next up we're going to tackle plot item randomization in the starmap randomizer. This is only scary because we'd like to ensure that the plot items are spaced sanely, so you don't end up with Sol chilling out in the middle of Ilwrath space or worse, the Ur-Quan / Kohr-Ah battlefield. Also, my personal pipe dream is to integrate it into the game itself, as an option in the Game Options (including a "no random stars", "<x> additional random stars", and "completely random including plot point stars". The reason this is a pipe dream is that it's easier to tell a python program to change the coordinates for all the plot points in the dialogues than it is to tell Starcon's code to do the same thing.
Devices: We need to work out how devices work, both in your device list and on planets. We haven't even looked at this stuff yet, but considering how much of SC2's plot works around devices, it seems the next logical step.
64 turn arcs: This is back burner'd but not forgotten. This project is also hampered by SC2's... peculiar math system.
PIRATE REQUEST: If anybody has any cool ideas for extra planets, shoot them at us like cannonballs. Cause I'm thinking new planets are cool.
Cheers!
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« Last Edit: June 23, 2006, 10:19:29 am by Crazy_Pirate_unInc »
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Logged
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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Pages: [1] 2 3 4
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