I have just found, to my dismay, that you can change these 'starting out help' strings, but cannot remove them altogether. Replacing them with blanks just results in wierd things. This is bad for me, who is attempting to make a TC plugin, for several reasons:
Firstly, anyone playing Catalyst is already going to know how to play Nova. Next:
"It would be a good idea to land on... (nearest planet)"
It doesn't necessarily make sense, in my plugin, for the player to want to land on the planet they start next to. This one is solvable, because I could just switch things around, but... here's the big problem.
Whenever you take off from a planet, until you have hyperjumped, you are given a compound message made up of several bits of a STR# resource, along the lines of "Now you should jump to another system." In Catalyst, however, you do not start with the capability to jump. This is not something that can be changed, as it's a fundamental part of the whole concept. I can't figure out any way to get rid of these 'helpful' messages; while I can change it to something more appropriate there appears to be no way to make it stop repeating.
Can someone out there with a better thinking organ than me figure out a way to do this? Unfortunately, I suspect the answer is "no"... if so, I suppose I'd have to finagle something like making the game start before the story, if that makes any sense.
Time to hope I am wrong, and pray for answers.

------------------
"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink

There are some possible solutions:

1. Instead of leaving the strings blank, replace them with a lot of underscores or something not very noticeable.

2. Change the string from 'Welcome to Nova - it would be a good idea to start by landing on Wherever and checking out the prices' to 'Welcome to Catalyst. You are currently holding high orbit over the planet Wherever'.

3. Live with it. People are used to ignoring those messages anyway, particularly if they are used to the EV series.

4. Provide a pilot file with the game that has already landed and made a hyperjump to remove the message.

------------------
(url="http://"http://www.mazca.com/")Mazca(/url) , Moderator, EV Developer's Corner.
What I lack in enthusiasm I make up for in laziness.
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=9&SUBMIT;=Go")EV Developer's Corner(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/show.pl?product=evn&category;=utilities&display;=date&file;=NovaTools.sit")NovaTools(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=29&SUBMIT;=Go")EV Development FAQs(/url)

Just change it into a sort of credits. "Catalyst made by..."

------------------
"What goes up must come down, unless it reaches Escape Velocity and flies off to Palshife to join the Rebellion."
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/TheChallenge101.sea.bin?path=evn/plugins&file;=TheChallenge101.sea.bin")The Challenge(/url): A deadly test of skill and power (new version 1.0.2 coming soon)
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/mrxak/Haikus/haikus.html")The Haiku Archive(/url): Collected Works of the Rabid Haiku Generator

Quote

Originally posted by Mazca:
**4. Provide a pilot file with the game that has already landed and made a hyperjump to remove the message.
**

I like this suggestion. You could provide two such pilot files - one for each gender, if you want the player to have the option of playing either male or female. Players can always change the pilot file name if they have a particular handle they're fond of. This does fall into the category of making the game start before the story, though.

------------------
"Your death will be the proof that Horus does not lie."
Roger Zelazny, Creatures of Light and Darkness

Unfortunately I seem to have been unclear about the nature of my complaint: the main problem is the fact that the messages keep repeating until you hyperjump, every time you take off, rather than going away, and the player's going to be taking off rather a lot I'm assuming. The pilot file idea is a good one, but I've considered and ruled it out because of various things (for example, I use chärs). Looks like it's back to doing it a silly way...

------------------
"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink

Quote

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
**Unfortunately I seem to have been unclear about the nature of my complaint: the main problem is the fact that the messages keep repeating until you hyperjump, every time you take off, rather than going away, and the player's going to be taking off rather a lot I'm assuming. The pilot file idea is a good one, but I've considered and ruled it out because of various things (for example, I use chärs). Looks like it's back to doing it a silly way...
**

Change each message to a ".".

That'd be much better; with the minor inconvenience of occasional beeps and Nova trying to get your attention.

Anatole.

------------------
There is a place, where these creatures of phenominal power exist. I went their once, and walked as they did, and studied them. Only then did I understand why we act as we do. - From the, "Guidebook to Humans", Antigan Military pamphlet

There are several messages, with key settings inserted between them. If you, for example, just delete all the strings, you get "MJ <beep>" every time the player takes off from a planet. This, I predict, could get annoying quickly to the player:|

------------------
"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink

There is one way to make the messages go away w/o hyperjumping: reload the pilot file. So the second message might be made into something along the lines of "due to game engine restrictions, this message won't go away until you re-load your pilot file".

------------------
(Insert Signature Here)

Ah! That's a more acceptable idea, thank you. I believe I'll use that.

------------------
"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink