Ambrosia Garden Archive
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    • One more ship rlë question

       EV Developer's Corner
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      why?

      Okay so I've heard that when you import a sprite into EV Nova, it uses the same rlë ID for both the pict and the mask.

      If this is true, why do all the shäns have two seperate ID's for base, alt, glow, lights, and shields sprites and masks?

      Thanks,
      Just checking one last time before I do the "big" import.

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      Because it can work both ways. You can use the same IDs for the base/mask but using the BaseID + 1 results in a better looking mask. So, if your base RLE ID is, say, 1000, then you would use 1001 as your mask.

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      Highway of Life said:

      Okay so I've heard that when you import a sprite into EV Nova, it uses the same rlë ID for both the pict and the mask.

      If this is true, why do all the shäns have two seperate ID's for base, alt, glow, lights, and shields sprites and masks?

      If you are using RLE sprites, the mask field is ignored , since the RLE includes both the sprite and transparency data. It is only used for PICT sprites, which require a separate image for the mask.

      It is filled in for the default EV Nova scenario only as a leftover from when the game used PICTs, before RLE was supported; since it has no effect, it wasn't worth while to go back and change them all to -1.

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      Thank you DA,

      That helped a lot.

      Just one question... are there any PICT sprites currently in EV Nova?
      or are they ALL rle based now?

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      There's a couple of main screen items which are still picts. Some of the main screen items don't actually use masks at all (main animation, slidey animations) so there's no point RLEing these but everything else you should.

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      I Believe they have the +1 because in Resedit you cannot have two resources using the same value, and in order to get the Rlë file you need to have both the standard pict and the pict-based mask available. The numbers, therefore, refer to the source picts when everything is split back up (which you need to do to edit the rlë files).

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      Highway of Life, on Feb 19 2006, 03:51 PM, said:

      Just one question... are there any PICT sprites currently in EV Nova?
      or are they ALL rle based now?
      View Post

      As Guy said, I believe there are a few interface elements and the like that still use PICTs, but generally it is best to use RLEs wherever you can. They are not only smaller and faster, but also more reliable; since EV Nova 's original scenario uses RLEs, the code for supporting PICTs did not receive a great deal of testing.

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      I had done some testing and noted that the ship that were rle displayed better, the pict based ships did not display well.

      Thanks DA.

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      This is due to the format of the pict - if you make them right Nova will display them just fine. It's only a problem with Nova 1.0.9 - 1.0.8 and earlier didn't mind what format your picts were in and supposedly the next release will be okay as well. But that's all pretty irrelevant since they should all just be RLE anyway.

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      I'd like to note that the main screen uses drawing routines separate from those used in-game, and is much more friendly to PICT-based sprites.

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      orcaloverbri9, on Feb 26 2006, 07:27 PM, said:

      I'd like to note that the main screen uses drawing routines separate from those used in-game, and is much more friendly to PICT-based sprites.
      View Post

      Yes, the buttons and the animated NOVA logo are pict files, not rlëDs. Same with all interface buttons, like OK, Yes, No, ect. (Not-clicked, Clicked).

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