getting rid of the date system

I'm thinking of having a plot line that goes along these lines:

You're looking for treasure, and in the second half of the plot you get to play the part of the guy who burried it in the first place. It just sounds like a cool idea, but the date gets displayed at the bottom of the screen every time you warp into a system, so that kind of throws off the subtle balance.

I recall someone saying cröns don't work backwards, so is there some way I could scrap that string? Perhaps deleting the string altogether?

I suppose you could just add a custom message buoy to every single system. That replaces the date string. But you can still see the date in the mission info dialog and other places.

Not sure if it works, but you could try adding a mission with a negative datepostinc.

Reverse datepostinc doesn't work.

You could have the main guy who discovers it be in the past, and have the guy bury it in the future.

TIME WARPING PIRATES!.

UE_Research & Development, on Nov 21 2004, 01:21 AM, said:

Reverse datepostinc doesn't work.
View Post

Personally, I think it's things like this which illustrate the reason why programmers should never put too many "safeguards" into their programs. Just enough safeguards to keep the program from crashing, but not so many that it restricts future functionality.

Theres an string that has all the dates in it. Just swap everything around and that would sumulate you going back in time everytime you jump/take off.

There was some discussion about time-traveling. Sufficient to say that not Uncle Twitchy will try one. I can't remember to be honest.

TC, that might work, but that would make it go reverse, not back once. Don't think that's what he's looking for.

UE, there might be a way. Is the DatePostInc an 8-bit unsigned integer field? 16-bit unsigned?

Lindley, on Nov 21 2004, 07:22 PM, said:

Personally, I think it's things like this which illustrate the reason why programmers should never put too many "safeguards" into their programs. Just enough safeguards to keep the program from crashing, but not so many that it restricts future functionality.
View Post

You should have seen Masamune's rant complaining about implied reciprocal links and the fact that missions can't choose mutable spobs for random destinations. That was some heavy-duty stuff.

UE_Research & Development, on Nov 21 2004, 07:30 PM, said:

You should have seen Masamune's rant complaining about implied reciprocal links and the fact that missions can't choose mutable spobs for random destinations. That was some heavy-duty stuff.
View Post

Yeah, for those of us who are casual Nova players and developers (as in, don't know much about resources and bits except that they can be confusing and would be completely lost without GUI plugin developers) that was one of the most confusing threads ever.

UE_Research & Development, on Nov 21 2004, 11:30 PM, said:

You should have seen Masamune's rant complaining about implied reciprocal links and the fact that missions can't choose mutable spobs for random destinations. That was some heavy-duty stuff.
View Post

Theres a workaround for the links thing

So thats not as big of a prob.

Anyway, about this, you could maybe make it two separate plugs? Or use the char rescource (for the mac version -.-)

Do char resources not work on Windows?

Quote

UE, there might be a way. Is the DatePostInc an 8-bit unsigned integer field? 16-bit unsigned?

Good thinking. Sending the date out-of-bounds might work, providing (a) the program doesn't prevent it and ( the size of the field is consistent between all versions of EVN.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 22 November 2004 - 11:12 AM

Char resources do not work on Windows.

If you could get the field to overflow, that might be an option.

UE_Research & Development, on Nov 22 2004, 04:52 PM, said:

Char resources do not work on Windows.

Is there a workaround? What's the method for setting the date, intro screens, intro text, etc on Windows?

Seems like an odd oversight.....

Actually, to clarify, I should say that the default char resource is the only one that will be recognized on Windows. The little drop-down menu doesn't work, and if someone wants multiple chars to work on Windows, they should make a separate plug containing each char and tell the player to drop the plug corresponding to the character they want to play into the folder before starting the game.

Ah. So chär 128 should be fine?

Yep. Or any other char, so long as there aren't multiple. For things to not be buggy, you can only have one char resource in your plug-in/files folder.

Lindley, on Nov 22 2004, 05:11 PM, said:

Do char resources not work on Windows?
Good thinking. Sending the date out-of-bounds might work, providing (a) the program doesn't prevent it and ( the size of the field is consistent between all versions of EVN.
View Post

As I determined in my guides, practically all number fields are signed 16-bit (though it is possible they are interpreted as unsigned 16-bit). However, I'm not sure the date is internally stored as such and that you can make it overflow, since a 16-bit signed integer would limit the time to less that 100 Nova years. Not that I think anyone reached this amount of game time, but that would then mean the chär resource in question is looked up for the starting date, then the number of days is added, which I find unlikely.

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 23 November 2004 - 08:43 AM

No, that couldn't be - or else Nova would have serious issues. Obviously, the full date is stored in the pilot file.

So if I set it to 2^17, it may go back a day? Must try.

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 23 November 2004 - 06:40 PM

What if the date post inc is 16 bit but the date is 32 or something...