Ok, my wicked newbness is going to shine through on this one.

Alright I started messing around with nova tools to figure out missions that I was getting stuck on, and finding out what items are in the game. I started manipulating the nova files itself to get the game to do things I wanted it to do.

I think I'm ready, to start making elementary plug ins for EV Nova and work my way up to TC plugins. I always meant to do it when the original came out, just never had the time. had a bunch of designs and mission outlines and stuff on scratch paper whenever i had a nifty thought. But I need to get some of the technical aspects of the game down before the creative stuff can flow...

I started to mess with weapons and outfits first and here's a couple of questions I hope someone will answer:

1. I'm trying ot make the rebel viper light gunboat class fighter bay and the appropriate viper available at a higher price on the rebel planets along side the cheaper ones. Now the ID outfit number and corresponding weapon (and ship) ID number already exist in the data files. If I were to use their exact ID numbers but modifed stats (with nova tools) in a plug, does the nova engine acknowledge the ID number of the modified items in the plug instead of the ID numbers in the Nova data files? Or do I need to use a whole new set of ID numbers not used by any of the original nova outfits and weapons? Treat the bays and fighters like they were completely new items in the game. Or could both way work?

2. when I was changing the modifications around in Nova data files so that the good viper bay was being sold opposed to the original...(I sold my 2 bays 100 mass) in order to buy the new ones when I reloaded the game) I went to buy the new viper bays and my ship had 50 mass. Now I didn't touch any file related to my ship, and I sure didn't touch the mass of the bay. When I did buy the bay however it was the one I was expecting, and the vipers too. But when I recalled the vipers to the mother ship, they vanished, came in, but never registered back. I was left with 0 vipers. Is there any particular reason this was happening. The only thing I really changed was the ModVal of the weapon in the outfit resource to correspond to the viper bay I wanted instead of the original. I also changed the availablity bit from b9999 to b130 (to correspond with the rebel story line so it became available in the outfitter when the original bay became original)

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-The answer to most of life's quandaries: It's good for the exact same reason it's bad.
-Often wrong, never in doubt.

If anybody really knows what they are doing and could put a plug together that does what I'm talking about...(make the rebel viper light gunboat class bay and corresponding viper available in the outfitter along with the other viper bay) It would be probably most helpful so I can see how you created the plug. I'm figuring it would take most experts about 2 seconds to do what I'm tried to do most of the night....

Just to make it easier for you to find what I'm talking about here are the Res ID numbers in nova data 4:

outfit ID for the gunboat bay: 298
gunboat viper: 299

weapon ID for the gunboat bay: 195
Ship ID for the gunboat: 339

let me know what the experts think.

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-The answer to most of life's quandaries: It's good for the exact same reason it's bad.
-Often wrong, never in doubt.

1. You can use the exact same ID numbers; your modified resources will override the ones in the datafiles. If you were to use IDs not used in the game, your ships would show up - but the old ones would still be there, as well, meaning that it would be those old ones that were referenced by anything referring to that type of ship.

Fighter bays, however, I have not yet experimented with enough to know what's going on in 2)... anyone?

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

2. Not sure what that is about. My guess is that it is some sort of bug either with the engine or your resources.

Of course here's an elementary question back at you. Are you using any other plugs at the same time as the one you're modifying (such as all ships/items available)? If so, there'll be a conflict, and Nova won't know what the heck to do with two resources that try to replace one.

Otherwise, I haven't experimented enough with bays to be able to tell you.

Matrix.

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Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Someone set up us the bomb!
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What!

Quote

Originally posted by what_is_the_matrix:
**Of course here's an elementary question back at you. Are you using any other plugs at the same time as the one you're modifying (such as all ships/items available)? If so, there'll be a conflict, and Nova won't know what the heck to do with two resources that try to replace one.

Otherwise, I haven't experimented enough with bays to be able to tell you.

Matrix.

**

I'm 110% sure the plug-ins I'm using are not conflicting with the files I've been manipulating...however I read somewhere (I think the EV bible) that selling outfits of the same sort causes Nova's engine to do weird things. I hope my plug in isn't doomed from the start.

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-The answer to most of life's quandaries: It's good for the exact same reason it's bad.
-Often wrong, never in doubt.

Quote

Originally posted by Kuji:
**But when I recalled the vipers to the mother ship, they vanished, came in, but never registered back. I was left with 0 vipers.

**

Inspired by your post in the Nova forum I tried to make this work for the Pirate Vipers, and I run in exactly the same problem.

What I did was the following: I copied the upgraded bay/fighter outfs (IDs 294 to 297) to a plugin, changed their availability bits/buy random to the same as the standard Pirate Viper Bay (IDs 218/219), fired up Nova and equipped them on my Unrelenting. Then I launched 'em, was happy to have upgraded fighters orbiting me and called back to the saftey of their bays - vanished :-(.

When I checked my ship's stats I noticed that I hadn't lost 'em completely - they docked as standard Pirate Vipers (Outf-ID 219), and therefore couldn't be launched again by the upgraded bays. Anyone knows what caused this? Could it be a bug in the engine, or is it more likely to be a problem with the outfs?

Armin

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oütfs - probably an incorrect shďp id in a field somewhere.

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

Quote

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
**oütfs - probably an incorrect shďp id in a field somewhere.

**

Nope, it's the engine. I experimented on various things this afternoon and finally got it working. The breaktrough happend when I assinged the Fed Viper's sprite to the upgraded Pirate Viper. After recalling them I had 4 Fed Vipers in my bays.

It seems to me that the engine determines to which bay a recalled fighter is assigned to based on its sprite. So, because there's only one sprite for a whole series of fighters, it gets always assigned to the first, lowest ranking bay.

To get it working I did the following:
- I copied the shän, rled and rle8 resources for the standard Pirate Viper (all found in Ships 2) as well as the shans for the upgraded Pirate Vipers to my plugin.
- I changed the rle?'s IDs to 1132 respectively 1134 (seemed to e the first unused) and entered these IDs in the upgraded Vipers' shäns (BaseImageID and BaseMaskID (= BaseMaskID + 1)).
- I copied the Target and Comms images from Ships 7 and changed their ID according to the bible (3000 + Ship ID -128).
- I'm happy having 8 upgraded Pirate Vipers orbiting/docking at my Unrelenting at will :-).

I tried uploading it to the addon archive, but it didn't work - finally have to get another provider :-(. I'll try it again toorrow at work...

Armin

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Quote

Originally posted by scar0017:
**Nope, it's the engine. I experimented on various things this afternoon and finally got it working. The breaktrough happend when I assinged the Fed Viper's sprite to the upgraded Pirate Viper. After recalling them I had 4 Fed Vipers in my bays.

It seems to me that the engine determines to which bay a recalled fighter is assigned to based on its sprite. So, because there's only one sprite for a whole series of fighters, it gets always assigned to the first, lowest ranking bay.

To get it working I did the following:
- I copied the shän, rled and rle8 resources for the standard Pirate Viper (all found in Ships 2) as well as the shans for the upgraded Pirate Vipers to my plugin.
- I changed the rle?'s IDs to 1132 respectively 1134 (seemed to e the first unused) and entered these IDs in the upgraded Vipers' shäns (BaseImageID and BaseMaskID (= BaseMaskID + 1)).
- I copied the Target and Comms images from Ships 7 and changed their ID according to the bible (3000 + Ship ID -128).
- I'm happy having 8 upgraded Pirate Vipers orbiting/docking at my Unrelenting at will :-).

I tried uploading it to the addon archive, but it didn't work - finally have to get another provider :-(. I'll try it again toorrow at work...

Armin

**

wow, alright that is really helpful, didn't think I was going to figure out what the problem was....I starting to get the feel for how all these files relate to each other finally. Hopefully when your plug ends up on the add on page I can see exactly what you did.

Thanks again.

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-The answer to most of life's quandaries: It's good for the exact same reason it's bad.
-Often wrong, never in doubt.

It figures it out by the sprite? How bizzarre. I can only assume that not-player ships are handled in a fundamentally different way to player ones, and so the engine can't just use the shďp id. Pity, it would make more sense.

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

Quote

Originally posted by Kuji:
**wow, alright that is really helpful, didn't think I was going to figure out what the problem was....I starting to get the feel for how all these files relate to each other finally. Hopefully when your plug ends up on the add on page I can see exactly what you did.
**

Well, every now and then I take pleasure in puzzling on problems like that - and the satisfaction when I've finally beaten it :-).

I took me a bit longer than planed, but now it's up on Ambrosia's ftp server. It should show up soon. Look for PirateViperBays... Unfortunately it's kinda memory intensive for what it does, but that's because I had to include all the sprites and pictures.

I've also started working on the other bays, but it can take some time till it's finished. Problem is not making the plug but testing it. I haven't finished nor even started some of the mayor strings, so I first have to create the "test environment" aka pilot :-).

Quote

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
**It figures it out by the sprite? How bizzarre.
**

Yes, it's kinda weird. But there's even a little hint in the bible. In the section about target/comm pictures is metioned that the engine is smart enough to use the same target picture for ships with identical sprites. That's were I got the idea...

Well, so much for now.

cu Armin

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Okay, this time the bay works great! I have a snazzy rebel thunderhead bay, and a I created lightning racks for the fed lightning in design right now. The Thunderheads (best rebel upgrade class) come and go with out a hitch thanks to Armin....however when I added the modifications for the rebel thunderhead bay to my plug that has the resources needed to add a 3 new spobs in existing systems....the engine does funky things...when I land on the spob and quit nova,after reboot.....I ended up in the middle of the galactic northwest with my spob completely invisible in a random system. But my spobs still existed in the original system intended. Both plugs (rebel thunderhead and the plug with new spobs) work fine by themselves but when added together, mass hysteria! This is going to really hinder the entire plug if I want to not only add bays, but misn, pers, dude, cron, and new ships. (actually the new ship works fine with the spobs....just not the bays..why did they make them such a pain to deal with?)

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-The answer to most of life's quandaries: It's good for the exact same reason it's bad.
-Often wrong, never in doubt.