Using PC how do I detect free bits that are not used by EV Nova. Currently I have EVNEW but it doesn't tell me which bits are free to use and won't affect the default game.

Yho2002, on Dec 17 2004, 06:51 PM, said:

Using PC how do I detect free bits that are not used by EV Nova. Currently I have EVNEW but it doesn't tell me which bits are free to use and won't affect the default game.
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Everything between 900 and 994 is free. That should be enough.

If not, download the bits bible from the Nova Add ons page. It will tell you all used bits.

If no one's beaten me to this, I might add the link.

A lot of NCBs between 900 and 994 are used by Arpia, so no-go on that, I'm afraid.

This post has been edited by Agent_Vast : 17 December 2004 - 04:46 PM

When I made my plugin, I just picked a random bit out of my head, and then did a search of the mďsn resources using Excel to make sure it hadn't been used already. By doing a similar search now, I've discovered that the entire 3000-series is free, except for b3000-b3015, b3050, b3721 and b3789. Also, the entire 5000-series is free, except for some of the ones in the range b5757 to b5789. And the entire 500-series is free, after b518. That gives you over two thousand mission bits to work with, and that's not even considering the one, two, four, six, seven, eight and nine thousand-series bits.

My Horse of Many Colours plugin uses b5260 to b5280, so don't use those if you want to be compatible.

The EVN Bits Bible is here, but it may not be correct/complete even as far as 1.0.6 is concerned. It's missing b518, for example.

Agent_Vast, on Dec 17 2004, 10:45 PM, said:

A lot of NCBs between 900 and 994 are used by Arpia, so no-go on that, I'm afraid.
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What do you mean no go?

I'm sure every bit possible is used by a plug somewhere. Just don't play Arpia at the same time!

That was just a ridiculous thing to say. I'm actually shaking my head in disbelief.

pp0u20e8, on Dec 18 2004, 09:56 AM, said:

What do you mean no go?

I'm sure every bit possible is used by a plug somewhere. Just don't play Arpia at the same time!

That was just a ridiculous thing to say. I'm actually shaking my head in disbelief.
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That I believe was just a compatability issue. If you use his plugin don't use another one with those bits.

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When I made my plugin, I just picked a random bit out of my head, and then did a search of the mďsn resources using Excel to make sure it hadn't been used already.

Can you explain how you found out the free bits using Excel?

Also off topic but how do you post several quotes at the same time? As you may have noticed the last quote I used doesn't have a name.

Much appreciated BTW

Yho2002, on Dec 19 2004, 12:37 PM, said:

Can you explain how you found out the free bits using Excel?
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Belthazar, on Dec 17 2004, 11:07 PM, said:

The EVN Bits Bible is here,
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Yho2002, on Dec 19 2004, 12:37 PM, said:

Also off topic but how do you post several quotes at the same time? As you may have noticed the last quote I used doesn't have a name.

Much appreciated BTW
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You just need to click reply to one of the messages, press copy, go back, open the reply thing for another message, paste the one you're copied into that window, then copy the whole thing, and then just repeat until you have all the quotes.

Yho2002, on Dec 19 2004, 10:37 PM, said:

Can you explain how you found out the free bits using Excel?

It's not actually possible to find the bits that are free - only to find the ones that are taken, and hence infer that the rest are free. Basically, it's a two-step process. In EVNEW, open the Nova Data file of choice, then select File>Save As, then set the "Save as Type" menu to "Text file (*.txt)". (If the data file contains any pict, rle8, etc resources, it will ask if you want to export the images as well and in what form. You don't need to export the images if you don't want to.) This will save the data file as a tab-delimited list in a text file, which can in turn be imported into Excel using the following process: open Excel, and under the Data menu, select Import External Data>Import Data...

Navigate to the text file which you just made, and select it. A dialogue box thingy will pop up. The default settings pretty much work fine, so just hit Next, Next, Finish, then OK. Done. Then by using Excel's Find command (ctrl-F) you can search for anything you like - for example, all mission bits starting with b3. It could result in quite a bit of looking through search results sometimes, though, so be careful what you look for. The Freeze Panes option in the Window menu can help you with lining up data fields with their column and row headers. A lot of the columns may need resizing in order to see things easily, especially if the original data file contains dësc or str# resources.

And while we're on the subject, except for b4444, all of the 4000-series bits are free. That's three thousand mission bits to play with. Should be more than enough.

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Also off topic but how do you post several quotes at the same time? As you may have noticed the last quote I used doesn't have a name.

Just type the name by hand. The syntax is {quote=namehere}blah blah{/quote}, just with the { and } replaced by ( and ). The above code will produce the following:

namehere said:

blah blah

Edit:
pp0, as I said above, the Bits Bible is incomplete and cannot be completely trusted. You'll need to search the data files anyway to make sure the bit isn't taken. For that matter, my own searchings are possibly incomplete, so always do a search yourself, just in case.

And what a complicated multiple-quote idea you have there...

This post has been edited by Belthazar : 19 December 2004 - 07:21 AM

Belthazar, on Dec 19 2004, 01:17 PM, said:

And what a complicated multiple-quote idea you have there...
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Nah, it's actually quite easy. Plus I can include all the posters and posting times effortlessly

God, on Dec 19 2004, 03:11 PM, said:

He's right Belthazar - don't doubt him.
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See!

Yho2002, on Dec 19 2004, 11:37 AM, said:

Also off topic but how do you post several quotes at the same time? As you may have noticed the last quote I used doesn't have a name.

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Or for simplicity, you could just press the quote button (next to the reply button, bottom right hand corner of each post) for each post and then press add reply....

Now that's nifty!

Thanks Ephialtes, you've just saved me hours of my life

:wub:

pp0u20e8, on Dec 20 2004, 01:13 AM, said:

Nah, it's actually quite easy. Plus I can include all the posters and posting times effortlessly

Yeah, but you don't really need to include the posting times.

Ephialtes, on Dec 20 2004, 06:46 AM, said:

Or for simplicity, you could just press the quote button <snip> for each post and then press add reply....

Hey wow, that is nifty. So that's what the Quote button is for.

pp0u20e8, on Dec 20 2004, 06:52 AM, said:

Thanks Ephialtes, you've just saved me hours of my life

He only saved me a couple of seconds, so :p. But hey, I'm still impressed.

Anyway, getting back on topic, then...

Belthazar, on Dec 19 2004, 07:17 AM, said:

It's not actually possible to find the bits that are free - only to find the ones that are taken, and hence infer that the rest are free. Basically, it's a two-step process. In EVNEW, open the Nova Data file of choice, then select File>Save As, then set the "Save as Type" menu to "Text file (*.txt)". (If the data file contains any pict, rle8, etc resources, it will ask if you want to export the images as well and in what form. You don't need to export the images if you don't want to.) This will save the data file as a tab-delimited list in a text file, which can in turn be imported into Excel using the following process: open Excel, and under the Data menu, select Import External Data>Import Data...
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pp0u20e8, on Dec 19 2004, 02:52 PM, said:

Now that's nifty!

Thanks Ephialtes, you've just saved me hours of my life

:wub:
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Belthazar, on Dec 19 2004, 03:58 PM, said:

Yeah, but you don't really need to include the posting times.
Hey wow, that is nifty. So that's what the Quote button is for.
He only saved me a couple of seconds, so :p. But hey, I'm still impressed.

Anyway, getting back on topic, then...
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Sweet. Thanks for all that everyone. Not belittling what Belthazar said but I already knew how to work Excel's import.

Yho2002, on Dec 21 2004, 01:24 AM, said:

Not belittling what Belthazar said but I already knew how to work Excel's import.

Never said you didn't. It's just better posting the whole instructions just in case, to save you having to ask "and how do I do that?" if I truncate any of it.

Is this whole bit issue related to the fact that we're using the Mac resourcing system (and simulating it on PC), or is this entirely a EVN internal data struggle? It seems to me that the game should be able to virtually address bits such that every plugin has its own space to define bits. That is, b900 on one plugin is locally referenced as b900, but actually points to another location which is ultimately different than every other plugin. Now plugins are made to override the original game and sometimes plugins are made to override other plugins, so in the header for a given plugin it can be specified how precedence is maintained compared to other plugins.

I'm not at all suggesting this can/should be done; I'd just like to point out that if this option were available, it would have been a better choice. I'm pumping out a bunch of small plugins and I already trip over myself. It's not that I'd necessarily want to use all the plugins at the same time, there's just no logical reason that I shouldn't be able to, or should have to spend excessive time making two plugins compatible.

As a little sticker add-on, does anyone know in the PC version which order EVN decides to load plugins? I suppose I could check the debug output.

This post has been edited by Epistax : 23 December 2004 - 10:14 PM

Epistax, on Dec 24 2004, 02:13 PM, said:

It seems to me that the game should be able to virtually address bits such that every plugin has its own space to define bits. That is, b900 on one plugin is locally referenced as b900, but actually points to another location which is ultimately different than every other plugin. <snip>

That wouldn't work, I don't think. The game regards plugins as being functionally identical to its own data files - that's why the plugins actually work. Thus öutf 128 in the plugin is exactly the same resource number as öutf 128 for the default scenario, to give an example. It's the same with the NCBs. If, say, my plugin contained a b900 which was different from the b900 of the default scenario, how would you tell the game that? How do you tell the game "I'm writing b900, but what I really mean to say is b8546"?

But as an aside, a thought which sprang to my mind is are b900 and b0900 regarded as different bits, or would the leading zero just be ignored?

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As a little sticker add-on, does anyone know in the PC version which order EVN decides to load plugins?

Alphabetical, same as the mac version.

Belthazar has a point on the bits, but there's also another issue that needs to be covered: what if you wanted to set one of the the data files' (or another plug-in's) bit? What if I wanted to integrate a plug-in with Arpia, and wanted to set the bit that meant you joined Arpia? Or what if I wanted to make it think I had done half the Polaris string? Perhaps global bits, but there is no way to know what bits someone will or will not use. There are ways of going about this, but they would be excessively complicated as far as programming them in goes.

Has there been any attempt at standardization? For instance all the missions demand an intro text in the 4000 range or so, however mission 601 will demand an intro text exactly 1 above the intro text of 600, making it impossiible to have syncronous texts for the same mission. I found myself doing 5001..5009 for each mission, increasing the 10 spot from one mission to the next, but I'm not sure if I'm running over anything anyone is doing which should be compatible with my plugin. While I can change it, it's a bother.

Alternatively I'll happily write a program which will take a directory of plugins which renders them all compatible (however things that are supposed to overwrite eachother will not be stopped and will be up to the users descretion as to which order to load them). However if I make a mission and call it 680 (not replacing a game mission) and someone else makes one on 680 and both the plugins are in at once, both missions by all right should exist, it's just an unfortunate case of numbers.

As I can I'd make such a program, however I'm a PC user so I'm afraid most people wouldn't find it useful. If it already exists for Mac and not for PC, then I'll just go ahead and make it.

The problem is in referencing the resources. One way or another, the engine must keep track of each individual resource and know how to tell them apart. This is what the IDs are for. If you have two weapons in two different plugs both with ID 128 and you then have a ship carrying weapon 128, how will the engine know which one you are referring to? You don't want to have to tell the engine which file you want it to look in every time you reference another resource.