The intricacies of missions available on ships is evading me. In EVO, there is no setting to have a mission available OFF a spöb, meaning that even though you can designate a mission to be offered from a ship you can't tell EVO which syst to have the ship show up in. What I'm trying to do is have players land on a station at the end of one mission and then be notified that a ship has jumped in and is trying to hail them, at which point they'd head back into space, contact the ship and continue on the next mission.

The problem is I can't get the ship to show up on cue or offer anything. I don't even know where it is! Anyone else worked with ship missions and have some words of wisdom to share?

Chris

ps. My legal issues from the last post have been worked out temporarily by a large jolly man dispatching Zidagar warships across the galaxy. It's very odd.

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The only people who get anywhere interesting are the ones who get lost.

Well, the trick to having the pers whom the mission shows up from appear when you want him to depends on the type of mission it is. For ths case you want another mission to set that pers to be in that system. Thus, when you get the one mission (call it contact shipname or something and make it abbort when you land at the destination system for the mission that is given by the pers) it causes the pers to appear in the system that you want it to. When you hail them, it gives you the mission, an voila, you did it. To get the same effect you cna have the pers appear a certain percentage of the time in certain systems (best for missions that are not always supposed to happen, where you need chance to factor into the mission being offered.
Joe

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"Life is tough, but it's even tougher when you're stupid."
-John Wayne

I'll try to be lucid:

1.) Set up a përs X to offer the mission.

2.) Set up a s˙st Y the mission takes place in ahead of time with an AlwaysPers ID X and percentage 100 (ie, cause Personality X to appear in system Y all the time)

3.) Add an ncb test string to përs X's "AppearOn" field so you can control its appearance. I would suggest something to the effect of "bZ" (ie, do not allow Personality X to appear unless Bit Z is set). Also, add another string "!bW" (ie, do not allow Personality X to appear unless Bit W is clear).

4.) Have your ground mission trigger Bit Z when it concludes. This will cause your ship to show up in system Y. When the mission offered by përs X is accepted (OnAccept) trigger Bit W, to disable the personality in the future.

If that wasn't really easy to understand, let me know and I'll try again.

-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

I think he is working with EVO here man. If this is the case, the mission that aborts when you land summoning the pers should do just fine, no need to play with pers presence probabilities, and forcing the pers to show in that system.
Joe

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"Life is tough, but it's even tougher when you're stupid."
-John Wayne

So the key is the përs resource! Got it. I've set up a përs to show up in the correct system, turned off the mission bit for now (just to be safe), and created a mission linked to it based on one of the escort missions already built into EVO. The ship still doesn't show up!
Below is, or ought to be, a screen shot of the ResEdit window for my AWOL përs showing what flags I have set as well as everything else.

What concerns me is the introduction from the EVO Bible that says the odds of a specific përs showing up in a system are 5% (calculated with the rest of the ships). Does this mean that there is no way of forcing a përs to appear on call in EVO? Regulus mentioned an AlwaysPers ID, but I gather this is a EVN feature. <expletive deleted> Any work arounds?

Chris

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The only people who get anywhere interesting are the ones who get lost.

Yeah, it's a Nova feature, via the s˙st resource. I don't think you can work around it for EVO, unless you just make many copies of the same përs and hope they don't show up more than one at a time in the system.

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I was sure that you could have a mission that makes one pers appear, and then trigger a mission from that (at least in EVC you could).
Joe

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"Life is tough, but it's even tougher when you're stupid."
-John Wayne

I went on a search for a post by Martin Turner who, as I remember, was able to make a specific përs show up in his FH and FF plugs. Here's the devious workaround!

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner
Only by including lots of copies of the Pers, and setting them only to appear in certain mission conditions. Tie them into a mission so that they don't appear again after they're needed.

That explains a lot. Jdh545 was right about having missions that trigger a përs to show up. The trick is to load the percentages so as to force the përs into the system on call. I haven't yet tried it but it's a good idea in theory. I'll practice this one for a while.

Chris

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The only people who get anywhere interesting are the ones who get lost.

Quote

Originally posted by Chris Zappe:
**I went on a search for a post by Martin Turner who, as I remember, was able to make a specific përs show up in his FH and FF plugs. Here's the devious workaround!

That explains a lot. Jdh545 was right about having missions that trigger a përs to show up. The trick is to load the percentages so as to force the përs into the system on call. I haven't yet tried it but it's a good idea in theory. I'll practice this one for a while.

Chris

**

If I recall, while playing FH I had to jump out once and jump back to find the ship. I think your best bet would be to write the mission so such incongruities are explained ("He's in the system now. If you take off right now you might be able to catch him. If you miss him, though, he should be back later this week...")

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"I know the stranger's name."
Turandot

Incorrect. AlwaysPers was implemented in EVO 1.0.2.

Quote

From the EV Override Bible:
Want to make a ‘pers’ type ship always appear? Put its ID into one of the AlwaysPers fields that appear at the end of the syst resource.

-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:
Incorrect. AlwaysPers was implemented in EVO 1.0.2.

And just to clarify, it is different from the EV Nova feature; in EV Override, your only choice is to force a specific përs ship to always appear in the system, whereas EV Nova allows you to set the probabilities just like you can for düde ships.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in
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Regulus,

I checked back in my EVO Bible and, sure enough, there's the AlwaysPers provision at the end of the s˙st section. This brings up another sore spot for me.

I don't know if there are any ResEdit templates or editors that are recent enough to take advantage of this. The templates that I'm using (which were downloaded within the last two months) don't seem to have all the fields used in EVO 1.0.2. Oftentimes I'll open an EVO data file for reference and ResEdit will tell me:
"The resource contains more data than will fit in the template"
Will I have to swap over to Resourcer to perform this function? Any cutting edge editors that can hanlde 'AlwaysPers'? EVO Developer's Map 1.02b doesn't as far as I can tell.

Chris

ps. sorry to be dredging up old technology. I promise I'll get with the program and develop for EVN as soon as I get this monkey off my shoulder!

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The only people who get anywhere interesting are the ones who get lost.

Quote

Originally posted by Chris Zappe:
I don't know if there are any ResEdit templates or editors that are recent enough to take advantage of this. The templates that I'm using (which were downloaded within the last two months) don't seem to have all the fields used in EVO 1.0.2. Oftentimes I'll open an EVO data file for reference and ResEdit will tell me:
"The resource contains more data than will fit in the template"

Try using the TMPLs that can be found in the :Documentation:Plugin Developers ƒ subfolder of the EV Override 1.0.2 folder along with the new EV Override Bible.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in
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(This message has been edited by David Arthur (edited 07-12-2002).)

Specifically, you are having a conflict between two different versions of the TMPLs. If you have two copies of a certain TMPL open (in this case, the shďp template) ResEdit will always try to use the one in the same file as the resource you are editing before it attempts to use the other. The problem is, the TMPLs in the plugin you are editing are outdated.

To fix this, delete the TMPLs from your plugin and replace them with the newest ones. When you next open your resources, ResEdit will ask you if you want to add zeros to the end of the resource. Just say "yes" - EVO deals with zero'ed fields fairly gracefully, and in any case, you'll probably be filing them with something anyway.

-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 David Arthur:
**Try using the TMPLs that can be found in the:D ocumentation:Plugin Developers ƒ subfolder of the EV Override 1.0.2 folder along with the new EV Override Bible.

**

I've brought this up several times before. There are no properly updated templates ready for download. Each time this question is asked, some "helpful" person points the packet of Resourcer-only templates. Do you have $259 burning a hole in your pocket? I don't.

What I did was simple; I copied the best templates I had into duplicates of the EVO data files. I then added fields until I could open a resource from the EVO data files themselve without getting the dreaded "the selected resource is larger than the..."

I then went through the bible, carefully, labeled the new fields, then tested results. I discovered two things in this; 1) most plug-ins were based on the old templates and do not have some of the new EVO 1.0.2 functions; 2) the EVO data files have up to five fields worth of blank data at the end of most of the resources. These could be deleted without harming the game.

P.S. The only templates that seemed to need changing were sys, spob, and ship.

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"I know the stranger's name."
Turandot

I just downloaded the new TMPLs and they're working great! To be perfectly honest though, I haven't yet applied the new features toward my ship mission dilemma. I actually sidestepped that problem with creative mission writing but it WILL come up again later in the plug. Maybe I ought to upload the new TMPL file to the EVO add-on page. From what I've heard on this thread, it would save a lot of headaches for those of us still working with EVO.

Chris

ps. my last postscript was inaccurate. I actually have several monkies on my shoulder right now. pinch OW!

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The only people who get anywhere interesting are the ones who get lost.

Quote

Originally posted by Commander Arashi:
I've brought this up several times before. There are no properly updated templates ready for download. Each time this question is asked, some "helpful" person points the packet of Resourcer-only templates. Do you have $259 burning a hole in your pocket? I don't.

My copy of EV Override 1.0.2 included a copy of the most recent version of the ResEdit templates right in the Documentation folder, which is what I was referring to. Has this stopped being the case with new copies?

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in
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Quote

Originally posted by David Arthur:
**My copy of EV Override 1.0.2 included a copy of the most recent version of the ResEdit templates right in the Documentation folder, which is what I was referring to. Has this stopped being the case with new copies?

**

1. go into EVO 1.0.2 folder (just DL'd from the Ambrosia site)

2. open the templates in the plug-in folder

3. open the EVO Data 2 file with ResEdit

4. paste templates

5. open a random ship

6. "The selected resource has more fields than will fit the template. Truncate to fit?"

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"I know the stranger's name."
Turandot

Do you by any chance have an older version of the templates in your ResEdit Preferences file?

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in
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Quote

Originally posted by David Arthur:
**Do you by any chance have an older version of the templates in your ResEdit Preferences file?

**

I'd be surprised, considering I trashed the preferences after trying out Nova Tools. But I will take a look at that.

Problem is already solved, as far as I am concerned. I have templates, they work fine. I just had to go tweak them myself.

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"I know the stranger's name."
Turandot