FYI #3:
Mish and Mash make is easier to handle a lot of desc texts...
DrR
Mish and Mash 1.0.0
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2002 Ralph & Rodger Sutherland. All rights reserved.
These two tools are used to extract and import Nova mission desc to and
from a TEXT based relatively free-style data suitable for editing in
Text editors such as BBEdit or even Word. The free-form format which
allows for unfiltered string data (cf ConText/ResStore) across multiple
lines, lets you perform spelling and grammar checking much more easily
than in the more rigid ConText/ResStore format.
Mish also attempts to follow mission story lines in a fairly simple way
(ie it can be easily fooled) that helps you to extract the missions in a
sensible order, other than the resource id order.
The format is simple enough (see the example below) that you could write
mission descs from scratch in a text editor and compile them straight in
with Mash.
At the moment Mish can only use misn resources to find descs, although
you can specify a range of misns or all of them. Mash doesn't really
care about misns and just generally compile desc resources. Mish will
eventually also be able to just extract descs generally.
Requirements:
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Mish and Mash require a PPC mac, running OS8.1 or newer.
Mish and Mash also work natively (carbon) in OSX, and memory issues
are not a problem there. They do not require carbon in OS8/9, but run
as PPC CFM native apps there.
MishMash Desc Format
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Each desc is bracketed by
- Begin desc and * End desc, lines outside
a marker pair are ignored.
tabs (char 09) separate 1st seven fields
'* Begin desc', 'resID', 'File', 'Description:' and '* End desc'
markers will be required;
'Type', 'Name', 'Graphic', 'Movie', and 'Flags' are optional and
replaced with defaults if not specified.
Text following '* Begin desc' or '* End desc' on the same line is
ignored, forming a comment.
Double quotes are required for Name string, File string and Movie string.
Description text between the Description: line and the * End desc
line is free form, anything except char 0x00 !
Example:
This is an ignored line. the following desc uses all the fields...
- Begin desc BriefText
Type desc
resID 6351
Name "Visit Homeworld"
File "Data 1"
Graphic 0
Movie "Lose.mov"
Flags 0x0001
Description:
"Thankyou," he responds sincerely after you give a nod of
aquiescance.
"It would mean a great deal to all of us if you could bring us news
about its final fate,"
With that he turns around and walks away leaving you wondering at the
odd encounter.
- End desc BriefText
This is a comment line where you could make notes. The following has
some optional fields missing:
- Begin desc QuickBrief
resID 6356
Name "Visit Homeworld"
File "Data 1"
Description:
Find the homeworld and return to Sol with news. - End desc QuickBrief
Useage:
Mish:
You can sort the descs that are found on:
- resID
- AvailBits
- resource Name (then resID if names are equal)
- resource Name Comments (ie after
(then resID if names are
equal)
Sorting on AvailBits involves sorting numerically on the first
mission bit found in the string, then on the string itself if
the bits are equal and then on resID if everything else is
equal. Sorting on just the AvailBits string didn't work very
well because of the non-numerical sort on bits without leading
zeros. The combined numerical/string sort works quite well for
the bX & !bY, then bY & !bZ etc type story lines, and leaves all
the anonymous zero bit string missions in resID order. Having
more complex AvailBits strings sorted numerically by the first
bit number is not a bad compromise, and I bow to Matt's superior
programming direction if he wants to try a more sophisticated
method of extracting storylines from general AvailBits Boolean
strings.
Mish does duplicate descs if they are referred to from multiple
misns, but Mash will cope and write the duplicates back over
each other as they are processed.
Mash: has no options, it just processes any TEXT file and recreates any
descs it finds.
Memory Issues
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I have found that 8MB is more than sufficient for Mish and Mash in
operating on Nova. You are of course free to increase/decrease this if
needed.
Disclaimer
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Use at your own risk, preferably on copies of your data files until you
understand how these tools work. These tools are free and are offered
'as is', while we like getting email feedback, and bug reports, we may
not always be able to provide technical support. This software is not
associated with Ambrosia Software Inc, and Ambrosia is not able to
provide technical support for it.
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