How it works

Could someone give me a quick description of which resources are used in generating the holonet news seen in spaceport bars?

I know crons are used for "special" news, but what about day-to-day, unremarkably stuff? Is that done by crons as well?

I can't remember if this is true for Nova, and I'm not at my computer to check it, but I believe the mundane everyday news is stored in some STR# resource -- it just has a bunch of news articles about random stuff.

The oops resource is used for news items- it can be used for economic news (e.g. 'a recent industrial accident on Ashworld has raised the price of medical goods'), mission-related news ('UE forces acting with the assistance of an independent captain razed Voinia earlier today), or just generic plain news.

oops resources can be controlled using crons or NCB expressions.

To make a randomly-occuring news item (such as an advertisment) , set Freq to the % chance each day the news item will occur, and don't worry about ActivateOn.

This post has been edited by UE_Research & Development: 07 December 2004 - 03:34 PM

I see. Somehow I thought a STR# resource was needed-----what case is that used for?

Also, is it possible to randomly choose one of several possible names within such a news item (as in missions), or not?

I doubt a STR# rsrc is needed- I could be wrong.

You can't directly do random names/NCB operators in the resource IIRC, but you can make a bunch of news events with the different names, set up a bunch of crons, and make them so that they display randomly, but not simultaneouly (i.e. you don't see the same news event referring to Paul and Peter at the same time).

All right, one more thing. The oops resource seems to be arranged such that the name of the resource is what's displayed, concatenated with a phrase about lowering/rasing the price of (something) on (somewhere).

How would one go about using an oops to display a non-location-specific news item (like an ad?)

I asked about the STR#s because, looking through the Nova datafiles, I found a bunch of them called "News: etc". Also, there's a few seemingly news-related fields in the cron resource---what role do they play?

I've looked in the bible for this stuff, but it's rather vauge.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 07 December 2004 - 10:47 PM

Set the stellar field of the oops resource to -2 to make it non-location specific.
If you use crons though you don't need to use oops as the crons can control the news themselves with those fields you mentioned. Just enter the ID of a STR# resource into the news fields. Read the bible for explanation about the govts and stuff.
I'm pretty sure there is a specific STR# resource for the random day-to-day unremarkable stuff, as EV/O didn't have crons yet still manages to pull it off.

^If there is such a STR#, it would be good to know the ID.

I'll continue trying to figure out crons, I guess. I could use oops for every news item, but that would result in some long resource names (and isn't there a limit on that?).

Should a random-news-displaying cron run forever, or what? I'm really not terribly clear on cron functionality.

Actually, I believe the oops controls the news about commodity price changes in the Trade Center/Commodity Exchange/whatever.

Indeed, there are some STR#s.

Ah, double post.

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 12 December 2004 - 10:21 AM

STR# 8100 contains 'commercials; #8101 contains 'Generic News'. For all intents and purposes these are construed as the same thing, as in the commercials actually have nothing to do with any actual sale items.

Gövt's can also affect news.

Ah, yes. That's helpful. Anyone know the specifics of how the engine handles those STR#s?

Lindley, on Dec 9 2004, 12:52 AM, said:

Ah, yes. That's helpful. Anyone know the specifics of how the engine handles those STR#s?
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No, but I'll take a guess. The news thing always displays two things at once. The first one is an ad of some sort, randomly picked from STR# 8100. The second one is the actual 'news' which is controlled by oops or cron resources. If there aren't any oopses or crons going on with valid news to display then it will instead randomly pick one from STR# 8101.

Seems reasonable. I don't suppose anyone knows if the number of entries in the STR# can be changed?

Just add another resource. In ResEdit, select the last number followed by asteriks ((while you already have the particular string# in question open) which will at that point be surrounded by a rectangle plain) and press Command-K. It will add an aditional field, which then may be filled with text: I do however think that the limit is 256 characters per field but don't quote me on that.

Edit: Clarification.

This post has been edited by rmx256 : 09 December 2004 - 04:50 PM

After trying this out, I can confirm that "Commercials" is indeed just that.

However, I'm not yet seeing any of the things I typed into the "Generic News" str. Could just be Nova's oops resources taking precedence.

EDIT: It was Nova's crons. Taking Nova Data 3 out of the equation solved the problem.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 09 December 2004 - 06:55 PM

STRs and STR#s are limited to 255 chars a string. STR# are limited to around 65000 strings per STR# resource.

Just out of curiosity, what is the difference between STRs and STR#s?

Oh, and the length limit for "Commercials" is shorter than 255 due to the amount of space available in the holovid screen. Unless that can be changed, of course.

One STR resource can contain one string. One STR# resource can contain many strings. It's more efficient (especially due to the resource file format limitations you now know about) to use a few STR# rather than a bunch of STR.

Lindley, on Dec 10 2004, 06:10 PM, said:

Oh, and the length limit for "Commercials" is shorter than 255 due to the amount of space available in the holovid screen. Unless that can be changed, of course.
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Unfortunately there aren't any objects in the "News" DITL resource for you to resize. You might try making the whole dialog box bigger though...and of course adjusting the holonews graphics accordingly.