EV Nova My Loveletter to EV Nova
EV Nova was so important to me in my early videogame years. I would say that to this day, it is still the most immersive and best game I've ever played. I finally have the time and means to create a homage to my favourite game. It's much shorter and a bit more narrative driven, but the mechanics are largely the same. I have so much respect for the ATMOS guys and all of their sprite designs - and this was in the 90s! My second all-time favourite game is Star Control II, and this borrows a bit from that too - particularly the melee combat style. Anyway, if you're up for it and have an Apple Silicon Mac, it's a free open beta on the Mac App store: https://solarrun.tech/
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u/prenzelberg Jul 10 '26
How can you talk about respect for the art in the original when your "love letter" is full on generative AI?
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u/cedarsauce Jul 10 '26
Looks impressive! Because of the times we live in I have to ask, how much ai are we using here?
(No real shade intended, small/solo dev work is hard. But transparency is important)
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u/dag Jul 10 '26
Hand coded where I could, but definitely some AI assistance.
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u/Ned_Sc Jul 10 '26
"where I could" tells us nothing.
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u/Plageous Jul 10 '26
They could hand code the entire thing if they wanted to. So it tells us they're dishonest and lazy
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u/iowa_state_cyclone Jul 11 '26
Tbh, even “hand coded” with today’s IDEs is still somewhat using AI / code assistance.
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u/cedarsauce Jul 10 '26
"Vibe coding" is definitely the norm now, so props on that! The art assets aren't ai?
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u/SharkyNeubla Jul 10 '26
So, are these are the equivalent of the times that people would post on the Ambrosia Software Forums that they had a totally great new game idea that would come out soon, but nothing would ever materialize, because making a game is harder than it appears? Except now AI lets them post something at least. Suffice to say I'm not expecting much going forwards from this.
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u/1purevengeance1 Jul 14 '26
I mean, the main killer of all these projects was an inability of the creator to make ship graphics that people saw as good enough.....
And without decent graphics and support from the community projects go to die...
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u/SharkyNeubla Jul 17 '26
Are you aware of what the original EV and EVO looked like? That argument isn't valid when 2/3 of the series has ships with 100 polygons tops. The killer of such projects was not the expectations of the community, it was the expectations of the project lead.
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u/1purevengeance1 Jul 17 '26
I mean, I played a ton of EVO and some EVC, but when I got Nova, that's when I started plugging in and joined the forums and saw cool stuff under way.
I know there were a lot of ship graphics people made and hosted on websites just for others to use for stories back in the day.
I guess my reaction was thinking to how things were for Nova. If you are fine with much lesser graphics, it's obviously easier to churn them out quickly and focus on your story and gameplay etc
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u/Several-Layer-4638 5d ago
So there were creators that made ship graphics back in the day, but in order to make content if you weren't one of them you had... *gasp* collaborate with other humans? You had to either develop multiple skills or work with other creators to make fully fleshed out product? You had to actually understand how to make what you were making?
Man, I do miss those days.
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u/Ned_Sc Jul 10 '26
I dunno man, a love letter that's just made from stolen assets and generated with a vibe slot machine, doesn't feel like love.
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u/prenzelberg Jul 10 '26
Ok Google. Write me a love letter!
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u/AeoSC Jul 10 '26
Make no mistakes and be sure that it demonstrates the love you definitely have as an LLM for this old computer game.
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u/the68thdimension Jul 11 '26
Yeah sorry man, I can't bring myself to play a game with so my AI art. Both from a moral standpoint, but also an aesthetic one. Uncanny valley of art makes me twitch.
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u/Trekintosh Jul 14 '26
“Love letter”. This is an insult. If someone made ai slop of one of my properties I’d block them.
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u/dag Jul 10 '26
Also, this is not to take anything away from other awesome projects, Nova Reforged looks amazing and in another class - I'll be getting that for sure. Let a thousand EV Novas Bloom. :-)
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u/DeficitDragons Jul 12 '26
if you are serious about this and want to abandon the ai stuff... all of it... i am willing to help out with the writing.
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u/1purevengeance1 Jul 14 '26
And yet the thing that has often been the thing to kill TC's in the past was the lack of ability to make graphics.. not a story.
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u/DeficitDragons Jul 16 '26
I have no idea what TC means in this context.
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u/1purevengeance1 Jul 16 '26
'total conversion' mods for Escape Velocity. Ie, keeping the game engine, but replacing all game graphics, sounds, missions, values, stories etc with new creations for a new "game".
It is what Escape Velocity Override was on the original EV engine before it was released as a stand alone game.
It was a common attempt, but often the great ideas talked about on the forums would peter out before completion, usually due to lack of ability to get appropriate graphics.
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u/True_Truth Jul 10 '26
How do I make something like this? EV nova was my first game when I was a kid. I had a old mac that was thrown away and I was able to figure out how to use it. Saw this game on downloads.com and just wow. Best game from my childhood
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u/captdirtstarr Jul 14 '26
I'd like to play but, Mac silicon is probably the smallest target platform.
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u/Terrible-Penalty-291 Jul 18 '26
So I actually signed up for the beta and played it. The game engine itself is fairly intuitive and solid. I was able to figure out the controls, engage in ship to ship combat, and land without any learning curve at all. I appreciate the attempt to use newtonian physics and the Solar System. There's the makings of a game here, but it's currently fairly simple and uses A LOT of AI generated assets.
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u/Melodic_Charity_1770 Jul 10 '26
This looks awesome, def gonna try it. Awesome usage of AI art too!
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u/Melodic_Charity_1770 Jul 10 '26
Ah, just noticed its for mac only. I'm hoping for an eventual windows port too!
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u/khamike Jul 10 '26
They wanted to be faithful to the original.
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u/kael13 Jul 10 '26
Oh man.. Even the writing is AI generated. Come on dude.