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haven't upgraded to 9.2 yet, i have the latest osX though. How do i get rid of the error message so i can get res-edit up and running with the novatools installed?
ResEdit doesn't work on OS X. You should use Classic, somehow or other.
As for installing NovaTools and getting all the other tools, you should download my (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/cafall/FileSharing2.html")plug-in development guide(/url), which, if nothing else, will give you links to nearly all the EVN development tools that are available. It is unfinished, and only goes up to weapons.
As for making a ship, you will first need a 3D modeler. Strata 3D is good for it's price (free), if you can find the old version the Base version isn't as good as the old 3D version. Mechanisto is also free, if you like it; and as for the proffesional modelers, Cinema 4D (about $1,000, or $300 on a student discount), Lightwave, and Maya are the best. Meshworks works entirely with vertices, so it's simple and not a great renderer, and takes a lot of patience, but you can make anything with it. (I'd recommend something else used in conjunction with Meshworks, say, Strata 3D, so you can use Meshworks for modeling and something else for texturing and rendering.)
Once you have a modeler, you need to mdel your ship and animate it spinning around (The full animation should be 36 frames per spin, although it can be whatever you want). It should spin around once, and, if you want it to have banking sprites, i should spin around twice again (one spin per banking anim), banking the last two times. The rest, such as engine glow or running lights, should spin around as many times as the base ship does, but should only include the glow or light, not the ship. Once you're done with the animations, make a Quicktime movie for each animation, then open each movie in the m2s droplet (included in w00tware's "Sprites" tool) to make mask and ship sprite PICT files.You should then run the PICT files through theEnRLE droplet (also by w00tware) to make rleD and rle8 resources. You now have your sprites.
From here, it gets easier; make a new shan resource with an ID of 406 or higher and enter in the correct information (see the Nova Bible for details). Then make a ship resource and enter in its information.
Last of all, you'll need a description and some pictures for the ship. Go back to your ship's model and take three pictures of it: a shipyard pic (200x200), a target pic (128x64; use Nova Target Generator to make your graphic look like Nova's scanline-style graphics) and a ship info pic (600x400; just take a picture of the ship doing something cool). Put them in your resource file as PICT resources.
Next, make a desc with the appropriate ID and type in a description for your ship. In the "Graphic" field, type in the ID number of your ship info pic. Save your resource file, make it into a plug-in file, and you're done.
This is a quick overview, and some details have been left out.
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The only sovereign we can allow to rule us is reason Wizard's Sixth Rule, Faith of the Fallen.
Cafall