Alla smĺ djur slĺr rosett pĺ sin svans

Hello, everyone -

To celebrate the Midsummer solstice, I've just posted alpha 8 of MissionComputer 4.0 'Crusoe'. This version adds and fixes several things:

• A new version of the Target Generator utility supports custom colours and has a more intuitive workflow. Comments are welcome.

• The contents of the Open Special menu are now available from the Resource Selector.

• The document window's toolbar can now be turned on and off, both from Preferences and with the toolbar button.

• The wëap editor supports the undocumented use of the Falloff field to make a sprite fade in/out. (Those of you who know about such things will have to check that this is working as expected.)

• The wëap editor no longer resets the sound field to ID 400 when saving (thanks, Geek), and its help tags are more informative.

• The shďp editor's NCB set-expression fields now display the correct help.

• Added error-checking while creating the Open Special menu, and all missing files are automatically removed.

MissionComputer 4.0a8 is a 12.8 MB download for Mac OS X on both Intel and PowerPC.

The link doesn't work.

EDIT:

Wait, 'Alla smĺ djur slĺr rosett pĺ sin svans' = 'All small animals hit pink one on their tail'? I don't think that you were going for that meaning.

@timmytiptoe, on Jun 21 2008, 03:03 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

The link doesn't work.

Ick - no wonder there weren't any responses. It works now. Have I ever mentioned that I hate FTP?

@timmytiptoe, on Jun 21 2008, 03:03 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

Wait, 'Alla smĺ djur slĺr rosett pĺ sin svans' = 'All small animals hit pink one on their tail'?

The usual English translation is ‘All small beasts should have bows in their tails’, which is a quite proper song to sing at Midsummer.

@david-arthur, on Jun 21 2008, 12:21 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

Ick - no wonder there weren't any responses. It works now. Have I ever mentioned that I hate FTP?

Alright, that's better. And what language is 'Alla smĺ djur slĺr rosett pĺ sin svans' in?

@king_of_manticores, on Jun 21 2008, 03:28 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

And what language is 'Alla smĺ djur slĺr rosett pĺ sin svans' in?

Swedish.

@king_of_manticores, on Jun 21 2008, 10:28 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

And what language is 'Alla smĺ djur slĺr rosett pĺ sin svans' in?

Swedish. Its amazing you didnt know that- Swedish is one of the most common languages (at least here in finland :p). And swedish isnt even difficult (except that I am mother tongue- level fluent in it. :laugh: ).

My translation- because I speak it natively instead of just translation is- All small animals make bows in their tails. Beasts usually means wild animals, not animals in general is. "Should" is absolutely unnecessary in a direct translation. Where did this swedish blurb come from anyway? I didnt see it anywhere in the thread. Oh well, here I am anyways, writing about a thing I have no idea where it came from.

Edit- just to clarify, and using my l33t Swedish skill that come from a inhabitant level fluency, slĺr rusett means quite literally (even if its difficult to translate because I dont know the words in english) is that they make their tails be in that shape which usually humans have as a decoration. You know, men have in their necks when they really want to look official. And also, what Donald Duck has. Is that clear enough?

@general-cade-smart, on Jun 21 2008, 04:01 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

My translation- because I speak it natively instead of just translation is- All small animals make bows in their tails. Beasts usually means wild animals, not animals in general is. "Should" is absolutely unnecessary in a direct translation. Where did this swedish blurb come from anyway?

It's a song sung, particularly at Midsummer, in Tove Jansson's Mumin books. The translation I gave is the one used in the English editions, and its wording is influenced by the need for it to scan poetically.

Anyone have comments about the new MissionComputer alpha?

@david-arthur, on Jun 21 2008, 11:56 AM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

Hello, everyone -

To celebrate the Midsummer solstice, I've just posted alpha 8 of MissionComputer 4.0 'Crusoe'. This version adds and fixes several things:

• A new version of the Target Generator utility supports custom colours and has a more intuitive workflow. Comments are welcome.

• The contents of the Open Special menu are now available from the Resource Selector.

• The document window's toolbar can now be turned on and off, both from Preferences and with the toolbar button.

• The wëap editor supports the undocumented use of the Falloff field to make a sprite fade in/out. (Those of you who know about such things will have to check that this is working as expected.)

• The wëap editor no longer resets the sound field to ID 400 when saving (thanks, Geek), and its help tags are more informative.

• The shďp editor's NCB set-expression fields now display the correct help.

• Added error-checking while creating the Open Special menu, and all missing files are automatically removed.

MissionComputer 4.0a8 is a 12.8 MB download for Mac OS X on both Intel and PowerPC.

1. Target generator works like a dream!! Fantastic!!
2. I love the open specials menu. Simplifies my life that much more! Thanks!
3. Like the toolbar even though I got used to using the hot keys. Now my hand need not leave the mouse.
4-7 I have yet to use that or never noticed it was being done. haha

THANKS!

I'm downloading it... Glad to try every new version of MC.

@geek, on Jun 21 2008, 05:18 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

I'm downloading it... Glad to try every new version of MC.

As do I! I'm always pleasantly surprised!

The fading looks good, though I haven't tested it. Just a couple of suggestions:
- Make it default to 30 rather than 1 *
- I just read the cool hacks topic and Edwards mentioned that translucent shots overrides the fading. You could make it so that whenever you check translucent or fading, the other one is automatically unchecked.

You still have 'closest to target' in the exit point menu. It needs to be a separate flag.

(edit) Getting info on a resource looks a little odd. There's a small delay and then the sheet suddenly appears. When you dismiss it it slides away normally.

@david-arthur, the scrolling list doesn't take up much more space than the box that contains it, but if it weren't scrolling, it would need significantly more space, both horizontally and vertically; separate controls have to be farther apart than the cells in table.

Oh, you were talking about making them individual controls rather than a list? I see - I was just suggesting that you keep the list but make it taller so it doesn't need scroll bars.

@david-arthur, on Jun 22 2008, 08:25 AM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a7 introduces the wëap editor:

It's a song sung, particularly at Midsummer, in Tove Jansson's Mumin books.

I read one of those. It was scary :unsure:

• The way the feature works seems a little strange to me. It would make more sense if the fading equalled 30-falloff or even just falloff (so you can have anything between 1 and 30 rather than that small set of values). Plus it always starts at count-30 which means any falloff higher than 1 will leave the shot near-invisible for at least half a second. The only sensible values are -1, 0 and 1.

This post has been edited by Guy : 21 June 2008 - 05:49 PM

After using the "Import from file" button to import a Tiff file into a Pict resource, that file is not deletable or overwritable because the system thinks it is "in use". Usually this means you've forgotten an fclose() somewhere.....

Also, what's the deal with the pink nebu boxes on the star map? I was under the impression that actual graphics would be displayed if the proper resources were in the same file, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 21 June 2008 - 06:08 PM

Downloading now.

This post has been edited by IT 000 : 21 June 2008 - 06:41 PM

@general-cade-smart, on Jun 21 2008, 01:01 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

Swedish. Its amazing you didnt know that- Swedish is one of the most common languages (at least here in finland ).

I'm not Swedish, and I've never seen that language before, so therefore, I had no clue about it. Since you're Finnish, of course you know, but for me, that's not the case. Oh well. :mellow:

@eirikr, on Jun 21 2008, 03:02 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

1. Target generator works like a dream!! Fantastic!!

The window is a little bigger, and the large numbers have no real point, but the target generator is much better. When I used the older Target Generator, I sometimes forgot to click "Keep original colors", and that led to something I didn't really like, but this newer version is much better.

@guy, on Jun 21 2008, 06:46 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

You still have 'closest to target' in the exit point menu. It needs to be a separate flag.

So what exactly does that flag do, and what happens if it's left blank? If it that the flag makes it always use the closest exit point rather than alternating between them?

@guy, on Jun 21 2008, 06:46 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

Oh, you were talking about making them individual controls rather than a list? I see - I was just suggesting that you keep the list but make it taller so it doesn't need scroll bars.

I'll take a look at the organisation - but the confusions Archon and others have reported are unavoidable as long as it's a list, and I don't think there's space to do any of the alternatives.

@lindley, on Jun 21 2008, 07:05 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

After using the "Import from file" button to import a Tiff file into a Pict resource, that file is not deletable or overwritable because the system thinks it is "in use". Usually this means you've forgotten an fclose() somewhere.....

I have a feeling this may be beyond my control (MissionComputer is written at a very high level), but I'll look into it.

@lindley, on Jun 21 2008, 07:05 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

Also, what's the deal with the pink nebu boxes on the star map? I was under the impression that actual graphics would be displayed if the proper resources were in the same file, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

They will be. Note that MissionComputer will only use the 100% version of the nebula graphic; if you don't have that size, it won't load one of the other versions and scale.

@king_of_manticores, on Jun 21 2008, 08:31 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

The window is a little bigger, and the large numbers have no real point, but the target generator is much better.

The numbers are my response to comments that the order in which the operations are applied was unclear in older versions: each number represents a distinct stage in the process.

@guy, on Jun 21 2008, 06:46 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

I read one of those. It was scary :unsure:

They are a bit otherworldy, aren't they.

@king_of_manticores, on Jun 21 2008, 08:31 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

I'm not Swedish, and I've never seen that language before, so therefore, I had no clue about it.

It's actually an interesting language to learn, even if you aren't planning to go anywhere that it's spoken. You can learn a lot about English by comparing it with Swedish. And it's fun to read Pippi Lĺngstrump in the original.

@david-arthur, on Jun 22 2008, 12:43 AM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

I have a feeling this may be beyond my control (MissionComputer is written at a very high level), but I'll look into it.

There should be a file close method of some type, even if it's just an object destructor. It wouldn't make sense not to. Unless you're using an image class which hides IO details completely, in which case check for an update of it; that kind of bug really shouldn't stick around long.

Quote

They will be. Note that MissionComputer will only use the 100% version of the nebula graphic; if you don't have that size, it won't load one of the other versions and scale.

Really. So in theory, nebu resource 129 should show a picture in the star map if Pict resource 9510 is present and that resource has the same size as the nebu? Because that's the case, and nothing's showing up.

@david-arthur, on Jun 22 2008, 12:43 PM, said in MissionComputer 4.0a8 now available:

So what exactly does that flag do, and what happens if it's left blank? Is it that the flag makes it always use the closest exit point rather than alternating between them?

Yes, the closest exit point available from the specified set. If the flag is not set it will alternate between the points in the specified set with no regard for which is closer.

I managed to make nebula 128 show up in the star map by assigning the pict ID 9502. As the third ID in the first set of 7, this corresponds to the 75% image, not the 100% image. Unless the Nova Bible is wrong.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 21 June 2008 - 09:03 PM

Nova doesn't exactly work like that anyway. It's a bit weird - it looks for an image that matches or is smaller than the dimensions for the nebu at the current zoom level. If it doesn't find one (ie, they're all larger) it'll try using the first ID for that set and if that doesn't exist then you won't see anything. The IDs don't directly correspond to zoom levels, so you can include however many you like at whatever IDs as long as they're ordered by size.

This post has been edited by Guy : 21 June 2008 - 10:06 PM

Huh. Well, that is counterintuitive. Still, if I make the images directly correspond to the stated zooms in the bible with respect to the nebu size, that should be fine, right?