Help me >.<

Ok, so I am really new to coding editing rez files and all that. Uhm, I plan on getting the EV Bible, if that's not the title please inform me as to what it is. Any recomendations for someone new to this stuff! Thanks, I know this community is great, I just haven't had the time lately to join it. Can't wait to dig deeper into this concept!

The EV Bible should be in the documentation folder that you get when downloading Nova. I'm not entirely sure what it is you are asking for, but most of the answers to your questions can probably be found here. I know EVNEW is in there, which is the editor for Windows, and there's also Resedit and Nova Tools (for Mac). If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask.

P.S. This post was made on the assumption that you are wishing to develop files for EV: Nova. If you aren't, I'm sorry. You can still go here, because there is also editors for EV and EVO.

This post has been edited by Don_Quixote : 18 May 2005 - 02:48 PM

Ya, it was regarding ev nova. I looked in the bible and I'm still pretty confused, like I wanna make my own ship and there are all these values I'm not sure about. So... Ya, o and I'm using a pc for editing, just so ya know. Thanks for the help!

Welcome to the boards Death Knight.
We don't seem to have any ship guides yet so if you're confused about making a ship it's probably easiest just to post your specific questions here.

Hey!

The way how I learned was that I read the bible (nova one ) and the parts that confused me, I would go and try out, and just tinker a bit so that I could see what to do.

Worked for me!

I have a little bit of bad news for you. From what I (think I) have heard, it is either very difficult or impossible to make new ships (the graphics, at least) on a PC. If you're looking to make a new ship, graphics and all, then I think you may be out of luck if you're on a PC. Sorry. I could be wrong, though.

This post has been edited by Fnoigy : 19 May 2005 - 08:25 AM

Fnoigy, on May 19 2005, 09:24 AM, said:

I have a little bit of bad news for you. From what I (think I) have heard, it is either very difficult or impossible to make new ships (the graphics, at least) on a PC. If you're looking to make a new ship, graphics and all, then I think you may be out of luck if you're on a PC. Sorry. I could be wrong, though.
View Post

... completely wrong. EVNEW is more capable than MC. Its not nova tools, but it works fine. Theres plenty of documentation for everything, see especially ZPs guides and the bible. Should get you started... maybe.

Fnoigy, on May 19 2005, 01:24 PM, said:

I have a little bit of bad news for you. From what I (think I) have heard, it is either very difficult or impossible to make new ships (the graphics, at least) on a PC. If you're looking to make a new ship, graphics and all, then I think you may be out of luck if you're on a PC. Sorry. I could be wrong, though.
View Post

You said "the graphics, at least". If that means the actual rendering and creation in a 3D program I'd have to say that that is also wrong, there are plenty of 3D programs for the PC windows environment, I use Lightwave 8. If it means that you can't import into a plug, EVNEW does it just fine (but it takes a while to put all 108 pics in), in fact I put a new ship into my plug just yesterday.

Well, I figured it out! I just wanted to edit a ship to beef it up. I got most of my help in the mirc IRC channel, so its all good now. Thanks for all the help! Now I just gotta figure out how to edit weapons lol...

(It's IRC, not mirc! You don't say you're browsing the Internet Explorer do you? mIRC is the program, IRC is the system. --blackhole)

This post has been edited by blackhole : 20 May 2005 - 11:04 PM

Fnoigy, on May 20 2005, 01:24 AM, said:

I have a little bit of bad news for you. From what I (think I) have heard, it is either very difficult or impossible to make new ships (the graphics, at least) on a PC. If you're looking to make a new ship, graphics and all, then I think you may be out of luck if you're on a PC. Sorry. I could be wrong, though.
View Post

Fnoigy, I've seen you slag off Windows plugin making several times. You obviously don't have a clue about it, so please refrain from commenting about Windows-specific plugin making.

It's interesting to me how everyone has trouble with the Bible - back whenn I only had EV, and I didn't know crap about making plug-ins or even resources at all for that matter, it just made sense to me somehow. It was like someone had handed me a some handy-dandy guide to the Bible - it just made sense.

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 22 May 2005 - 10:48 PM

orcaloverbri9, on May 22 2005, 09:48 PM, said:

It's interesting to me how everyone has trouble with the Bible - back whenn I only had EV, and I didn't know crap about making plug-ins or even resources at all for that matter, it just made sense to me somehow. It was like someone had handed me a some handy-dandy guide to the Bible - it just made sense.View Post

Huh. Same with me.

And speaking of "guides to the Bible", I'm somewhat surprised that nobody has mentioned the EV Nova Bible Explained to Dummies, a very nice introduction to reading the Bible.

Edwards

(EDIT- blackhole, it's rather rude to do that to someone's post, and it is quite likely that they won't even notice. You're more likely to get positive results if you actually post.)

This post has been edited by Edwards : 23 May 2005 - 12:19 AM

I've had a sneaking suspicion for a while that EVNEW was better at making rled and rle8 files than EVONE. Can anyone confirm this, having used both?

EVONE's rled file maker blows vectored thrust. :mad:

EDIT: Edwards, I think blackhole knows what he's talking about- see 'moderator' and 'joined 00' Oh, and Edwards, are you going to be working on Noir? You signed up on the boards, but haven't posted an intro. Just wondering

This post has been edited by Hamster : 23 May 2005 - 12:53 AM

Hamster, on May 22 2005, 11:50 PM, said:

I've had a sneaking suspicion for a while that EVNEW was better at making rled and rle8 files than EVONE. Can anyone confirm this, having used both?View Post

I have no idea about EVONE's rlë maker, but EVNEW's documentation explicitly states that rlë8s don't work properly- they come out in greyscale. I have no idea about rlëDs, though.

Hamster, on May 22 2005, 11:50 PM, said:

EDIT: Edwards, I think blackhole knows what he's talking about- see 'moderator' and 'joined 00'View Post

My point was that it is just plain rude to edit someone else's post, even if the editor is a moderator, one of the oldest members of the board, and an EV:Nova beta tester. The second half of my point was that very few people go back to look at their old posts, especially if they use the "go to newest post" button.

Hamster, on May 22 2005, 11:50 PM, said:

Oh, and Edwards, are you going to be working on Noir? You signed up on the boards, but haven't posted an intro. Just wondering View Post

I think I will. Posting now...

Edwards

Ohh, he edited Fnoigy's post. Sorry, didn't catch that, and yes, I hate it when mods do that. The lesson is not taught, and they get angrier if they find out.

No, I edited Death Knight's post, because I really CANNOT STAND IT when people call IRC mIRC. It's like calling email Outlook or Eudora, and it's not as if mIRC hides what the system's called. It's the only time I edit people's posts, other than when there's something inappropriate in an otherwise useful post, and I always leave a message behind.

To expound upon Edward's post, this is an excerpt from the EVNEW Readme.txt (with added returns to make it easier to read):

Quote

ii. rle8 / rleD

rleD resources store multi-frame animations in a 16-bit (actually 15-bit with one unused bit) direct RGB format, and rle8 resources store
them in an 8-bit pallettized format. Unfortunately, the pallette data is not store in the images, so EVNEW cannot display the images
properly.

On Windows, EVN only uses the rleD resources, regardless of the user's monitor's color mode. If the user is in an 8-bit mode,
EVN converts the 16-bit data into 8-bit data at runtime and completely disregards any rle8 data, if it exists at all.

On Macs, though, it
is different. The resources used depend on the user's color depth. In high-color modes (16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit), the rleDs are used
as expected, but in 8-bit modes, the rle8s are used. If the rle8s don't exist, EVN will not run and spit out an error message saying it
couldn't find the required resources, or something like that. Thus, a plugin created using only rleDs will work perfectly for all Windows
users and for the vast majority of Mac users, since very few people nowadays can't use color depths higher than 8-bit. If you want your
plugin to work for all users, you, or a friend with a Mac, must convert your plugin into the Mac format and use the program EnRLE created
by w00tWare.

EVNEW is not capable of displaying rle8's properly: the pallette indices are converted to grayscale, and any images imported
into an rle8 will be grayscaled, with the resulting grayscale converted into pallette indices. The result is that, although you can view,
import, and export rle8s using EVNEW, they will look completely messed up if you try to use them on a Mac in 8-bit color.

The moral of
the story is that if you're creating ship, weapon, or planet graphics for a Windows plugins, don't worry about creating rle8s and make
only rleDs.

And, since it isn't entirely clear from Asmodean's post and sounds like he did it this way...you don't have to import each individual frame separately. You can actually layout the images in a gridded format and import them all at once. It should cut down your total time spent on the plug drastically. (you just have to make sure that you lay them out properly and set the grid size accordingly, but this way you don't have to go through the process of selecting each image, making sure they're in the right order, and changing the values each time)

Since I have the time, here are some example pictures (from a plug I threw together for some practice, I actually used .bmp, not .jpg, but I'm trying to get the boards to show the images in the post itself...):

Individual frames:

(attachment=675:attachment)

(attachment=674:attachment)

(attachment=673:attachment)

One gridded image:

(attachment=676:attachment)

This post has been edited by GutlessWonder : 29 May 2005 - 02:55 PM

I'll add to aprosenf's EVNEW ReadMe that some plugs, done on Mac, have completely no rlë8, notably rEV: only rlëDs can be found (fortunately, in a way, or you'd have to add 50% to its size). It does not seem to me I heard people complaining, most people Mac people have a monitor capable of more than 256 colors. The only problem would be, if ever they already are in 256 colors mode (say, they just played an old game that requires 256 colors AND that doesn't restore the previous screen depth AND they still run OS9, as Aqua is unbearable in 256 colors), then they would have a problem, though they would quickly realise in runs better in thousands of colors.