Using EVNEW to match up picts with correct IDs

My name is Matt and I just began learning about plugins with EVNEW and wow pretty fun but also time consuming and mind boggling. I think I figured out most of the basics however I ran into a problem when trying out making a ship to show up correctly. I downloaded a simple plugin with a couple of ships for practice and this is what I did.

First I copied a ship rleD and rle8 resources from one rez program to new rez program and changed ID numbers.

Next I created a desc, shan, ship, and got some picts resources and ID-ed them.

Problem is under my ship resource the resource IDs are as follows

shan ID 10000 (correct)
Target Pict ID 232 (incorrect, should be 10000)
Shipyard Pict ID 233 (incorrect, should be 10002)
Shipyard desc ID 742 (incorrect, should be 10000)
Escort desc ID 800 (incorrect, should be 10001)

1. Is there a problem in my numbering so that it is not showing up? :blink:
2. Did I copy from another rez file and it is permanently ID-ed?
3. Am I just an confused and need some help? :huh:
4. Should I get another hobbie because I just don't have a clue? :blink:

Any help in this area would be useful. Thank you.
Matt suumakstuff@yahoo.com

I have no idea what that means, but welcome to the boards.

Welcome to the boards indeed. I'm going to move this on over to the Developer's Corner, as this forum focusses more on gameplay than the sort of advice you seem to be looking for. Good luck.

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I have no idea what that means, but welcome to the boards.

lol, I think you took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. You want the EV Developer's Corner. However, lucky for you, I am a plug designer that uses EVNEW. The shan controls the RleDs. As I've been told, Rle8s don't matter, so forget about them. The Base Mask ID in the shan resource is what directs it to the RleD. As for the pics/descs, the one's you're supposed to use are indicated in the bottom right corner of the ship resource, as well as the shan you should use (it is the same as the ship ID). If your shan ID is 10000, there's a problem.

Hope this helps, and welcome to the boards.

Edit: LOL cleindori moved it while I was posting! That's a new one...

Usually shans use the same IDs as their corresponding ship resources. If your shan ID is 10000 something peculiar is going on...

Heh, there's a limit of 768 ships - highest usable ID is 895.

@zapp, on May 2 2007, 01:39 PM, said in rez Graphic Programming question for windows?:

The Base Mask ID in the shan resource is what directs it to the RleD.

:huh: The rleD is the sprite. The Sprite ID is therefore what directs it to the rleD. The Mask ID may be ignored.

This post has been edited by Guy : 02 May 2007 - 12:01 AM

Really? I don't usually use shans, was just looking at the little thing I get when I moused over, and base mask ID was what sounded closest.

Anyway, speculation aside, you should post what you have so we can see the problem.

It appears to be the ID numbers you are using. Like Guy said, there is a limit on ships, so you might want to bring the ship and shan ID's down (try 415). The pict and desc ID's in the ship resource are preset and cannot be changed because they need to reference specific values.

Photo here

This post has been edited by Ant'Iglias II : 02 May 2007 - 04:40 PM

And to answer your other questions 2, 3, and 4:

2: The resources can not be permanently ID'ed, that would make hell for programmers. I believe on the desc's and the PICT's are predetermined by other resources.

3: Confused? Maybe Have you read the Nova Bible? It usually helps clear up a few things, although EVNEW has most of the Nova Bible already built in. lol

4: Nah, developing plugins are fun. Just very time consumming.... lol

Oh, and welcome to the boards.

@guy, on May 1 2007, 11:57 PM, said in rez Graphic Programming question for windows?:

Heh, there's a limit of 768 ships - highest usable ID is 895.

:huh: The rleD is the sprite. The Sprite ID is therefore what directs it to the rleD. The Mask ID may be ignored.

OK everyone has been great help. About those limits to number of ships. Do these ships include extra features such as engine glows and running lights (768) or is there 768 slots to put in ship information period eg. slot 1, 2 and 3 are for ship bitmap, engine glow, running lights?

A ship is just one shïp resource. You can use shïp IDs from 128-895. rleDs are limited only by the constraints of the file format that plug-ins use so in theory you could have 65 thousand of them.

This post has been edited by Guy : 20 October 2009 - 04:39 AM

lol yeah no kidden. i set some of my RleD IDs to like 36254. just for fun. Still worked though :laugh:

So the limit for RleD, Rle8 and PICT resources is 65,535? I thought it was 32,767.

No, its 65,535. Its an unsigned integer, meaning it frees up a bit to be used to calculate the number itself. If its a signed int, then that bit is used to denote negative or positive, which halves the maximum decimal representation of the byte. Of course, if we were to use long ints (2 bytes), then the maximum would be about 2 million or so. I'm not sure the exact number.

No, it is signed - highest is 32,767 (so no 36254, chrono) but you can have negative IDs too.

@guy, on May 4 2007, 03:09 PM, said in rez Graphic Programming question for windows?:

No, it is signed - highest is 32,767 (so no 36254, chrono) but you can have negative IDs too.

Yes, but that doesn't change the amount of ID's allowed, just the highest possible ID.

Quite, just showing that jaca was partially right in thinking 32767.

Yes, apparently my suspicions were correct.

Ah my bad, well...the number was somewhere up there, but it wasnt above the limit. I just sorta exagerated. Sorry.