I don’t think this has been brought up before (at lest I couldn’t find it in two minutes, & a three word search).

My question: But how big in pixels is a system in Nova? (hence my the clever title to this thread)

More accurately, how many pixels from the center of a system is it to the “border“
You know, the place where the engine pulls that “circular universe” thing, and your ship ends up on the other side?

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Moof!
(url="http://"http://www.savefarscape.com")Save Farscape!(/url)

In lue (sp?) of an actual answer, I present you with yet another less than helpful post from yours truly. In case no one is able to provide a definite answer (which seems unlikely if part of the ATMOS crew pops in) a workaround would be to time yourself as you fly from the center to the hyperjump distance which without any modifiers should be equal to 1000 pixels. Divide your time by 1000 which will give you a rough idea of your speed. Then time yourself all the way to the edge and multiply that time by your previously recorded speed. It's dirty but it'd give you some idea if as long as you didn't have to be dead on specific.

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I used to jog but the ice kept falling out of my glass.
(url="http://"http://www.0three0.net/l-1551/")L-1551(/url) - The official site of RONIN and The Way and the ten thousand things

Probably 65535 pixels. It's a nice number when it comes to computers, the size of a 32bit integer. I wouldn't try to put anything out there though

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--sitharus
(url="http://"http://www.sitharus.com/")Me, online!(/url)
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Quote

Originally posted by blackhole:
Probably 65535 pixels. It's a nice number when it comes to computers, the size of a 32bit integer. I wouldn't try to put anything out there though:p

Mmmm, I don't mean to be rude, but 2 ^ 31 = 2147483648 = max positive value of signed int.
I think you meant 2 ^ 16 = 65536 = max value of unsigned short.

However, we know from the Resource Bible that speeds are in 1/100 pixels per frame. My personal guess is that positions in the system are stored as fixed-point numbers (like 50.00) with two decimal places. I suspect that Matt didn't use floating point numbers, 'cause those get innaccurate with large values. I would suspect the maximum possible width of the system the engine could support is somewhere around 21,474,836 pixels. However, that is just the maximum possible, not the implemented maximum. I have no idea what that is exactly. However, if you fly around and watch carefully, the stars dissappear when you wrap around the system. But when you fly past the wrap point and turn around, you actually have to fly for a while before you will hit the border again. I think this is so that the ship does not get riiiight on the edge and then flip backandforthandbackandforthandbackandforth and make the engine puke. In other words, it has historisis (sp?). Meaning that there is not one single width, but a maximum and a minimum.

-Vaumnou

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Did you know that 63.8% of quoted statistics are made up on the spot?
"He's too late. SEE?!? THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!!! Hurry up!"

(This message has been edited by Vaumnou (edited 04-26-2003).)

Yes, as Vaumnou noted, 65535 is an unsigned short. I of course cannot provide a definitive answer, but with my knowledge of SpriteWorld, and some deduction, an informed guess is possible.

First, SpriteWorld, in un-modified form, will hold the dimensions as signed shorts. So, if you start in the middle of the system, you will have 32767 pixels on either side of you. I am going to guess that mburch didn't change this.

This can be confirmed by looking in the spöb resource. The xPos and yPos fields are DWRDs, meaning they are shorts. So, even if the Nova engine was changed to use longs, you can only place a planet within the range of a signed short.

Furthermore, traveling 2.1 billion pixels (the width of one side if dimensions were signed longs), would take a huge amount of time. Since a lot of people have had the experience of being wrapped by the engine (and in my experience it doesn't take all that long to do so) it is highly unlikely they all spent the time traveling 2.1 billion pixels.

Edit: Vaumnou's guess of 21 million pixels is possible, but traveling that far would take a while as well.

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(url="http://"http://www.ariossoftware.com")Arios SoftWare(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.ariossoftware.com/programs/evone/")EVONE 1.0.0 - the plugin editor for EV/EVO/EVN(/url)

(This message has been edited by AriosSw (edited 04-26-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Trigger-Happy Slig:
**I don’t think this has been brought up before (at lest I couldn’t find it in two minutes, & a three word search).

My question: But how big in pixels is a system in Nova? (hence my the clever title to this thread)

More accurately, how many pixels from the center of a system is it to the “border“
You know, the place where the engine pulls that “circular universe” thing, and your ship ends up on the other side?

**

25 trillion-billion pixels.

_bomb

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I think that you don't see many love stories in EV simply because the engine isn't quite geared towards that. What are you going to do, keep meeting your significant other in a bar (or, with Nova, the Outfitter, Shipyard, or Trade Center) and have questions like "Will you go out on a date with me?" | Yes/No | "Great, pick me up on <DST> in a month and we'll have dinner."?
-EVula

I said 21 million pixels is probably the most the engine could handle, but I think that the actual size is a hard-coded constant smaller than that.

If the system really is 65536 pixels wide, then it is 65536 / 72 = 910 inches = 76 feet of screen-distance wide in practice. Hmm, that sounds about reasonable. I still believe that the positions are fixed-point, though, and I stand by my theory of historisis (sp? again). I guess we just don't know anything for sure :p. If someone not as lazy as I were to look up the speed of their ship in ResEdit, divide it by 100, multiply it by 30 to get pixels/second, and then clock a trip to the edge of the system in that ship, we could find out for sure.

(edit) lol, Bomb. That would be BIG. (/edit)

-Vaumnou

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Did you know that 63.8% of quoted statistics are made up on the spot?
"He's too late. SEE?!? THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!!! Hurry up!"

(This message has been edited by Vaumnou (edited 04-26-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Trigger-Happy Slig:
**My question: But how big in pixels is a system in Nova? (hence my the clever title to this thread)

More accurately, how many pixels from the center of a system is it to the “border“
You know, the place where the engine pulls that “circular universe” thing, and your ship ends up on the other side?
**

The usable system is ą15000 in both X and Y axes (ie. 30000 square).
System “wraparound” occurs at 15001 pixels and a hysteresis of 5000 pixels causes reappearance at the opposite 10000 pixel point.

This data was obtained by direct experimentation with the game-engine.

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"There are no bugs in my code, ... only undocumented features." - corollary #3
provided by bit-banger Arturo:
table: (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/ResourceInterdependence.hqx?path=evn/utilities&file;=ResourceInterdependence.hqx")ResourceInterdependence(/url) and plug-in: (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/ShieldBubbles1.0.hqx?path=evn/plugins&file;=ShieldBubbles1.0.hqx")ShieldBubbles1.0(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by Arturo:
**The usable system is ą15000 in both X and Y axes (ie. 30000 square).
System “wraparound” occurs at 15001 pixels and a hysteresis of 5000 pixels causes reappearance at the opposite 10000 pixel point.

This data was obtained by direct experimentation with the game-engine.

**

I figured about the same number (ą15000)

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Moof!
(url="http://"http://www.savefarscape.com")Save Farscape!(/url)