Warts and All was a really awful name. I've renamed the project "Mercenaries", after EV's original title.

That aside, I havn't made much progress tonight. The new build (same (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/suluger/FileSharing.html")location(/url) as before) features a partially functional laser canon.

Issues:

• I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make the sound effect use my plugin's pointer. If someone wants to help, I could use it.

• I also can't get rid of the small oragen hit particles, even though no bööm resource is set. What's going on?

• I have no idea how fast missiles and torps in the original EV turn. My guess, based on anecdotal evidence from EVO, is 30°/sec, but if someone wants to demosntrate otherwise, feel free. Idea: set up a missile with the same top speed as your ship and see how much turning power you need to give yourself before you can lead it into a tailchase.

• MassDmg and EnergyDmg keep landing on fractions when I convert them from EV units to EVO units, and since they're so small (10.5 rounds to 11) this make a big difference. I'm considering multiplying all shields, recharge and damage stats through by 10. This will look slightly different in the shipyard, but should preserve gameplay.

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

(This message has been edited by Regulus (edited 04-10-2002).)

While I am not able to solve all the problems you listed. I can at least solve the problem of the sound. When I create sound fx for plug-ins, I use SoundEdit 16 to open up plug-ins by opening up files with resources, it is here that I am able to upload the soundfx and assign it with an ID.

If you don't have SoundEdit, I might put in the sound for you. Just send me your plug-in, soundfx file, and the ID number you want to assign, and I can put it all together.

My email is: prefectural@yahoo.com

After a brief hiatus, development on Mercenaries has resumed. Download the 3/31/02 build from my iDisk at your leisure.

Progress

• Fixed irritating particle and sound bugs (bad wëap ID. Stupid mistake)

• Implemented the rest of the weapons, including the forklift, excluding decoy flares (which I have slightly more complicated plans for). Game is becoming almost playable.

• The default chär might actually be working now.

• I have a hunch on how to do old style haiku for the "x" screen, but it involves cannibalizing the ability to use pictures in missions.

Quirks

• The game plays like it's on tranquilizers right now. While we were working on Project Epsilon, Skyhawk noted that EV's definition of a "tick" is somewhat different than most other developer's - it was was either twice or half what it was supposed to be. It's conceivable that this has been fixed in Nova. Doubling everything might compensate, but I'm going to save this for later.

• I know how to give player ships the 50% speed bump that EV and EVO conjecturally provided, but I'm going to hold off until I have real time to test.

• I've re-implemented EV style homing as best I could. Missiles and Seeker Drones are 50% succeptible to type I jamming right now. We'll see if this is sufficient.

• Based on EVO's ability to increase missile turn rates by 30°/sec, 60°/sec or 90°/sec from an unspecified base agility, I'm assuming 30°/sec was the standard in EV. I'm not sure, though, and this will require observation.

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

(This message has been edited by Regulus (edited 04-01-2002).)

I'd be very interested to know how you got the default chär working, I've been having the same problem of not being able to override chär 128...

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"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink

Progress for 4/1/02 uploaded. I was wrong; the chär does not work. I'd like other's to weigh in on this problem if they're interested. If I can get a third confirmation, I'll send a bug report to help@ambrosiasw.com

Progress for April 1:

• Implemented spöbs for Levo, Rigel, Centauri and Sol systems, (with commodity exchanges! w00t. I probably got half of them wrong)

• Implemented defense düdes 155 and 157

• Implemented all spöb graphics and landing pics. Amazingly, the spďn resource's format has not changed since EV 1.0.0, all the way back in May 1996. That certainly made my day a little less tedious, although I had to increment each resource ID from 3xx to 10xx

• Fixed display bug on Confed/Rebel/Bootleg Kestrel ships.

• Implemented sans-ATMOS ambrosia Logo and EV Splash Screen, with correctly colored and positioned progress bar.

• Implemented Haiku. can't click to close currently, use "esc". I have an idea of a completely different implementation, but it's a little beyond my abilities currently.

Nifty Discovery: "Show if Require bits met" and "Show if Availability True" in NovaTools are mislabeled, and mean the opposite of what they say.

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

(This message has been edited by Regulus (edited 04-02-2002).)

April 2: No new build today. My idea for a more elegant haiku implementation seems to be meeting with failure, but I will continue to press on. In the meantime, I have a mostly working main interface screen up and running. This was not easy.

Interesting things: spins 600-605 (Menu buttons) barf without masks while spins 608-610 (Menu button sliding animations) don't know how to use them.

Current projects: Implement down states for main menu buttons, Implement rollovers for main menu buttons, Complain about inability to reposition main menu pilot info text, Implement more spobs.

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
**Progress for 4/1/02 uploaded. I was wrong; the chär does not work. I'd like other's to weigh in on this problem if they're interested. If I can get a third confirmation, I'll send a bug report to help@ambrosiasw.com
**

I think that two people is probably sufficient to report it as a possible bug. Don't wait until they've already put out an update to report it. (I'd try it but I'm not registered yet) Or ask the people on delta_v and see if they might try it.

(This message has been edited by SD (edited 04-03-2002).)

Update for the evening of 4/3/02: I am fighting valiantly to keep EV's mouseover orbs, but I've been stymied at every turn. I have one last resort; if it doesn't pan out, I'll let you all know why.

Also: Loading progress bar has been repositioned to be friendly to 800x600 screens.

I can't upload a build for tonight because the archive has somehow climbed to 19.2 megs. I'll fix this.

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

The 4/4/02 build has been uploaded for your viewing pleasure.

To elaborate on my difficulty with rollovers: If the rollover graphic overlaps with any of the three slider animations, when you mouse down on any button the entire area under the rollover reverts to the last frame of the slider animation. The behavior is strange, and means that I could implement rollovers for the left set or orbs or the right ones, but I can't have the bounding box of the rollovers stretch over the regions that change on mouse-down.

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

(This message has been edited by Regulus (edited 04-05-2002).)

A quick question, if I may. What are you planning to add above and beyond the original EV stuff?

Quote

Originally posted by Q:
A quick question, if I may. What are you planning to add above and beyond the original EV stuff?

Right now, nothing. The primary goal is a pixel-perfect port. After that if finished, enhancements can be made under a different project name.

Progress for 4/7/02

• Implemented intro music!

• Fixed corrupted pilot bug with a clever and useful workaround

• Fixed incredibly annoying self-destructing light fighters bug

• Shaved off approx. 2MB of bloat; more to come

• Buttons, spaceport and commodity exchange implemented pixel perfect

• All spobs fully implemented, including commodity exchange, except for tribute ammounts.

Questions

• How does EVN handle bounty hunter pers that appear when you've dominated more than one planet?

• How does EVN handle pirate flets that appear when you have more than a certain number of freighter escorts?

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
**MassDmg and EnergyDmg keep landing on fractions when I convert them from EV units to EVO units, and since they're so small (10.5 rounds to 11) this make a big difference. I'm considering multiplying all shields, recharge and damage stats through by 10. This will look slightly different in the shipyard, but should preserve gameplay.

**

This would probably be a good idea for your pixel-perfect port, but this risks screwing up things when people try to port plug-ins over. It might be interesting to see how the gameplay works out when the true damage formula (what I think you're saying, about /2 and /4) is used in the EV scenario. I wonder if the Lightnings will still be disabled in three missiles...

On a tangential note, has anyone noticed that the Rapier description says it has missiles?

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

If you're talking about the desc, I haven't patched those yet. If you mean what you see in the info screen, I will look into it.

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
**If you're talking about the desc, I haven't patched those yet. If you mean what you see in the info screen, I will look into it.

-reg

**

The desc. Though to keep it genuine you might want to keep it there...

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

Quote

Originally posted by Firebird:
The desc. Though to keep it genuine you might want to keep it there...

The desc is leaking through from the Nova data files because I don't have anything to put in it's place yet (porting descs is a PITA). How would preserving a bug "keep it genuine"?

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

4-7-02 build is stuffed and uploaded. Has the changes I talked about yesterday. Still on the immediate agenda:

*Replace RLE sprites with PICT sprites to save space, maybe using onxy's technique
*Get those damned dësc resources in there
*Minor revision on main menu wouldn't be a bad idea

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
**4-7-02 build is stuffed and uploaded. Has the changes I talked about yesterday. Still on the immediate agenda:

*Replace RLE sprites with PICT sprites to save space, maybe using onxy's technique
*Get those damned dësc resources in there
*Minor revision on main menu wouldn't be a bad idea

-reg

**

I thought the authorities said that RLE type sprites were faster-- that is, large RLE sprites won't cause as great a speed drop as large Pict sprites would. Not that this is an issue with EV's small sprites. There's got to be some advantage to them, becuase they are sure as heck bigger.

Quote

Originally posted by SD:
I thought the authorities said that RLE type sprites were faster-- that is, large RLE sprites won't cause as great a speed drop as large Pict sprites would. Not that this is an issue with EV's small sprites. There's got to be some advantage to them, becuase they are sure as heck bigger.

RLE sprites take less space in memory than uncompressed PICT resources. The size on disk is unimportant - PICT resources have their own compression to make them smaller on disk, but they end up using much more RAM when loaded in the game.
.
If you give Nova a PICT sprite to work with, it will convert it to RLE internally, so you can use this for testing. However, there is a substantial speed penalty associated with this, so it's best to eventually convert them yourself.
.
mcb

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"If it's not on fire, it's a software problem."

When I use RLE sprites, I have to patch both 8 bit and 16 bit resources, because Nova will choke if I give it only the rle8 without an rleD. As a result, the combined 8 and 16 bit resources take up about 3x as much space as the original PICT and mask. This is relevant because the original EV didn't even use 16-bit graphics, so the disc space wasted on rleD resources costs a megabyte or two, and nets us nothing in the way of improved graphics quality.

Being a modem user, I am very sensitive to these sorts of things...

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

RleDs work without Rle8s, if that helps at all...

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"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink