Doesn't work properly, like everything else in my life

So I'm working on a port of an old EV plugin to the EV Nova engine.

Everything else has gone smoothly so far; the ship speeds and regenerations were set, based off of Guyesque formula that should integrate them properly into his version of the EV port. The weapons have all been fixed. The standard cargo/destruction missions go smoothly, and while I haven't had the chance to test them yet, I suspect the mission strings will work out fine as well. Their bits certainly seem to fit. All the picts have been converted to Nova's rl-graphic setup.

Now, behold the only significant present problem.

STR#s are a field I've never much walked, but I figured that the government communications couldn't be a significant problem. Sadly, I was wrong.

While I had great difficulties getting them to work at all, I finally was able to resolve that problem.

Now, however, while the dude resources (most of them are set to generic government, which are warships; the only trade dude I'm aware of to a specific STR#) do recognize the appropriate comm messages, they only use two of them. They usually repeat those; when they don't, it's just to say "Greetings" or some other thing that isn't even in the STR# resource I outlined for them.

How can this be resolved?

Any information that is required can hopefully be granted.

- C. Bob

Sounds pretty odd, can't imagine why they would use only two. Are they the first two entries? Can you post the whole STR# resource?

Say, did I actually tell you the formula for shield regen? I remember you asking me about it but seem to think I didn't give you an exact answer.

The STR#s are laid out in this fashion:
7105 (Warship quotes, and what I designated as the standard gov hail)
1. Now where did that Paraphenalia Wagon get to?
2. Are there Whos stowing away on your ship?
3. All the Whos still a-snooze when he packed up his sled....
4. You need a thnead!
5. Can you believe I found this ship at a garage sale?!
6. I wouldn't touch you with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole!
7. Pick up a Grinch Beam. It's the Grinch Weapon of Choice™.

7505 (Trader quotes; the trader fleet uses it specifically)
1. I'm holding the Paraphenalia Wagon for ransom.
2. Seen any humming fish around?
3. Merry Christmas!
4. Plant a Truffula tree!
5. Pick up a Grinch Beam. It's Max's Weapon of Choice™.

(P.S. If you can recognize what plugin it is from those, kudos!)

The warship dudes use only the last two of its STR# resource, choosing to resort to generic classics like "Hi there" the rest of the time. The trade dude uses only the first two of its STR# resource, with similar generics thrown in for good measure.

...at least, it seemed that way until a few moments ago, where one ship (a Grinchmobile, actually) that entered the system, apparently a combat ship, decided to display the full range of warship comms.

This occurance was unique, and hasn't appeared since on any other ships I've contacted.

As for the regens, I used Martin Turner's EV-to-EVN formula (ship shields/100/EV ship regen x 1000 = EVN regen), which seemed to be consistent with your EVO port; to be sure I ran it on the UE Fighter, from my recollection, which matched up.

Thanks for responding!

Ah, okay. Well I can't explain why the trade dude uses only the first two but I can explain why the warships only use the last two and also offer a solution for everything. From my Resource ID Guide:

6999-7255	Government-specific ship greetings (6999 for independent). Entries 1-5 are for traders, 6-10 are for warships/interceptors. Blank or "*" entries will instead use the generic greetings from STR# 3000. Beware the overlap with the next two STR#s.

So if your warships and traders are the same govt you can in fact just use STR# 7105 for both of them, the first 5 entries for the traders and the last 5 for the warships. Of course this will mean you have to cut two of the warship quotes but I don't think there's anything that can be done about that.

The regen formula turned out to be slightly more complicated than that:
ShieldRegen = (floor(Shield/(Shield<0?-20:100))1000SpeedFactor)/Regen
ArmorRegen = (floor((Shield+99)/100)1000SpeedFactor)/Regen (note armor regen is set to 0 in the EV/O ports so you don't have to bother about this)
SpeedFactor = 1.5 for the EV/O ports
Hope you can make sense of that

This post has been edited by Guy : 20 October 2009 - 04:31 AM