I'm afraid I'm about to bother you all with a few basic plugin questions.. Sorry!

That said, I've run through all of the "TutorialsInS" tutorials from the addons page and found them very helpful. I wound up with a few questions, though, and they pertain less to the tutorial than to plugins in general, not to mention some general questions from the reading of the Nova Bible and some other resources, so I thought I'd ask them here.

-In the second part of the tutorial, a new system is created, with 2 spobs. The second one is a station, so I picked a random station graphic from the files. When I had made a spob before, the landscape pic (or whatever) that showed up in the main area after landing automatically appeared. With this one, though, none showed up. Does this vary from pic to pic? Did I forget to set some obscure value? (I looked, but kind of got lost and didn't see anything I thought would affect it.. Permission to hit me with something if I missed something obvious..)

-If two plugins are implemented that make use of the same ID, will EV crash or will one get overwritten? In the latter case, which is overwritten? How do you avoid conflicts like this- test with all the other plugins?

-This one is probably a rather dumb question. Reading about bits in the Nova Bible and the "Bits Bible" that I downloaded to look at, it seems like a goodly number of the bits are already in use with the main storylines- is it possible to use those bits in your own missions, providing you're careful it won't interfere with something else? And the other bits can be set or used by developers just like any unused resource?

-This question is a little more involved. I was reading in a discussion on the main web board that one of the main differences between EVN and EVO (I only registered EVN a week ago, although I've been playing it nearly nonstop since, and the only experience with EVO I have is, unfortunately, a version from a MacAddict CD that came with a cheat patch, so I was never involved in any of the storylines..) is that in EVO, stroylines interconnected and could be completed concurrently. Would it be possible to create a plug altering the main storylines and the bits required to be set/unset so that some storylines could be completed concurrently (only the ones that made sense, of course..)? Beyond being possible, I think the only problem would be that the storylines wouldn't intermix well.. I guess you could play Rebel and Polaris together, or Pirate and almost everything except Fed? I dunno. Just curious.

-To what ... oh blast, forgot my question. :redface:

Thanks for any/all help!

-K

------------------
--
Art History = Cool!
...and yes, I'm odd.
--

I think I can help with one or two of those:

Quote

Originally posted by Kate:
**-If two plugins are implemented that make use of the same ID, will EV crash or will one get overwritten? In the latter case, which is overwritten? How do you avoid conflicts like this- test with all the other plugins?
**

EV will not crash, but the plugin that is loaded first will have the bit overwritten. As far as I know, the plugins are loaded in alphabetical order, so ZZplug will load after plug.

Quote

**
-This one is probably a rather dumb question. Reading about bits in the Nova Bible and the "Bits Bible" that I downloaded to look at, it seems like a goodly number of the bits are already in use with the main storylines- is it possible to use those bits in your own missions, providing you're careful it won't interfere with something else? And the other bits can be set or used by developers just like any unused resource?
**

There are a large number of bits used in the default secenario, but there are also many others not used. If you search for something like "used ncbs", I know there was a topic listing those which are used (word of warning: it is pretty old and not current, compile your own list if in doubt, or ask here and someone may help you). If you don't know where it is, the search function is in the upper right corner of the screen. If you want to use a bit to do something like make a new outfit available after completing a default mission, that, I'm sure is fine. I would not suggest making your own missions that will set or remove bits that are used though.

Quote

**
-This question is a little more involved. I was reading in a discussion on the main web board that one of the main differences between EVN and EVO (I only registered EVN a week ago, although I've been playing it nearly nonstop since, and the only experience with EVO I have is, unfortunately, a version from a MacAddict CD that came with a cheat patch, so I was never involved in any of the storylines..) is that in EVO, stroylines interconnected and could be completed concurrently. Would it be possible to create a plug altering the main storylines and the bits required to be set/unset so that some storylines could be completed concurrently (only the ones that made sense, of course..)? Beyond being possible, I think the only problem would be that the storylines wouldn't intermix well.. I guess you could play Rebel and Polaris together, or Pirate and almost everything except Fed? I dunno. Just curious.**

Sure, go for it! Although, expect it to be a lot of work, probably at least as much as making a brand new total conversion for the game.

Quote

**
Thanks for any/all help!

-K
**

No problem, and welcome to the boards!!

MickyBIs

------------------
Who is John Galt?
"I've never heard maniacal laughter from a robot before. It's good to have brought something new and wonderful into the world"-(url="http://"http://freefall.purrsia.com/")Freefall(/url)

Believe it or not, but your questions are not dumb at all- among the smartest I've seen posted by new developers. Let me try and answer them for you.

1. The landing pictures are keyed to the ID of the spin resources used for the stellar object graphics USUALLY- this is how the default landing graphics are used- how they show up automatically. Apparently, the station graphic you chose does not have a default landing pic. What you get/have to do is use the CustomPic field in the spob resource. Go ahead and pic any landing pic you want, and type it's ID into the customPic field of your new station.

2. EVC and EVO would crash, Nova simply overwrites the duplicate resources. It loads the plugs/datafiles in alphabetical order, so like Mickey said, ZPlug is loaded after Plug, so ZPlug's resources are what are actually used. Really, there is no sure way to be sure your plug will be compatible with anyone else's. The best way is probably to pick a wierd spot to start numbering your resources.

3. Do a search for the Nova Bits Bible. It is invaluble for mission add-ons. I think it is in the add-ons page. Note, Nova uses 512 bits out of a possible 10000. You shouldn't worry about trying to re-use bits.

4. I wouldn't say that that is anywhere near a major difference between EVC/O and EVN, myself, but whatever. Again, if you want to try, use the Bits Bible as a starting point. It shouldn't be that hard, look at the first mission in all the strings- when one is started, it makes the others unstartable. Change that and Viola.

Hope that helps.

------------------
~Charlie

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
EVC and EVO would crash...

Are you sure about that? I was pretty sure EVC, EVO, and EVN all handled plugin overlaps the same way. As far as I know, they just use the Resource Manager functions to open each file in turn, so when they request a specific ID it gets that ID from the most recently opened file. I assumed that was all handled by the system. I don't think they crash.

-Vaumnou

------------------
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!"
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. .... Radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." - Albert Einstein

Quote

Originally posted by Kate:
Would it be possible to create a plug altering the main storylines and the bits required to be set/unset so that some storylines could be completed concurrently (only the ones that made sense, of course..)? Beyond being possible, I think the only problem would be that the storylines wouldn't intermix well.. I guess you could play Rebel and Polaris together, or Pirate and almost everything except Fed?

It's for artistic, not technical reasons that the storylines can't be played concurrently in EV Nova; ATMOS intended the six major storylines to be alternate sides of the same events, and so blocked off all but the version the player takes first. For some minor storylines, they didn't do this because there was no plot conflict.

If you think about it, though, it would be a bit much - even by Nova's standards - for the player to be the Director of the Bureau, a T0 Vell-os, Ory'hara, Ory-hara, the Thurokiir of House Heraan, and Morgan's son all at the same time.

Quote

Originally posted by Massume:
2. EVC and EVO would crash, Nova simply overwrites the duplicate resources. It loads the plugs/datafiles in alphabetical order, so like Mickey said, ZPlug is loaded after Plug, so ZPlug's resources are what are actually used. Really, there is no sure way to be sure your plug will be compatible with anyone else's. The best way is probably to pick a wierd spot to start numbering your resources.
Originally posted by Vaumnou:
Are you sure about that? I was pretty sure EVC, EVO, and EVN all handled plugin overlaps the same way. As far as I know, they just use the Resource Manager functions to open each file in turn, so when they request a specific ID it gets that ID from the most recently opened file. I assumed that was all handled by the system. I don't think they crash.

No, a duplicate resource isn't enough to make any of the games crash - most plug-ins rely on at least a few duplicate resources, in fact. The only way I can see a crash happening is if the duplicate resource referred to another resource in a way that didn't work within the context of the loaded scenario - ie. a spďn pointing to a non-existent PICT, etc.

------------------
David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.evula.com/survival_guide/")EV Nova Survival Guide(/url)
Truth! Justice! Freedom! And A Hard-Boiled Egg!

Thanks for all the help

Quote

Originally posted by David Arthur:
It's for artistic, not technical reasons that the storylines can't be played concurrently in EV Nova; ATMOS intended the six major storylines to be alternate sides of the same events, and so blocked off all but the version the player takes first. For some minor storylines, they didn't do this because there was no plot conflict.

If you think about it, though, it would be a bit much - even by Nova's standards - for the player to be the Director of the Bureau, a T0 Vell-os, Ory'hara, Ory-hara, the Thurokiir of House Heraan, and Morgan's son all at the same time.

Agreed, that would be -quite- unrealistic. But I do think there are some that could be played together.. -Wouldn't- Rebel and Polaris work together? You could set it up so that you'd get entrance into the rebel string at the section in Polaris when you become an envoy.. Unfortunately, since I haven't finished them all yet, I'm not sure if that would work.

Remembered some more questions

-From the tutorial it seems as though you -increase- Y-values to make things go down? Isn't that a little counter-intuitive? (Or am I just REALLY confused?)

Had another question too, but the next oldest topic (EVN Desc's) deals with it..

-K

------------------
--
Art History = Cool!
...and yes, I'm odd.
--

(This message has been edited by Kate (edited 05-25-2003).)

(This message has been edited by Kate (edited 05-25-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Kate:
Agreed, that would be -quite- unrealistic. But I do think there are some that could be played together.. -Wouldn't- Rebel and Polaris work together? You could set it up so that you'd get entrance into the rebel string at the section in Polaris when you become an envoy.. Unfortunately, since I haven't finished them all yet, I'm not sure if that would work.

The problem here is that the rebel and polaris strings bring about a different end to the game. By doing the polaris end, it wouldn't make sense that the rebel end takes place, as they do two different things. You could write an alternate complementary Rebel string that takes place at the same time as the Polaris string (made available by meeting the Rebels in the Polaris string) that lets you work with them to gain intel about the Beureau and help the Polaris bring down the Feds at the end, but to have the two strings run simultaniously wouldnt make much sense.

Have you played both strings through to the end?

It would be cool to have a complementary Rebel string though. If you were to make one, make sure to wait till 1.0.5 is out...

Quote

Originally posted by Kate:
-From the tutorial it seems as though you -increase- Y-values to make things go down? Isn't that a little counter-intuitive? (Or am I just REALLY confused?)

Whats this for? The map? Spob co-ordinates? Something else completely ? What?

ewan

------------------
(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/ewan/")Ewan's Lair(/url) | (url="http://"http://dreamwave.evula.net")Dreamwave(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.northernswamp.com")Northern Swamp(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.evula.com")EVula's Lair(/url)
"In this world gone mad, we won't spank the monkey - the monkey will spank us!"

Quote

Originally posted by Jules:
Have you played both strings through to the end?

No, I'm stuck in the Rebel string after getting placing informant missions- nothing happens except more and more missions from the BBS.

Quote

Originally posted by Jules:
It would be cool to have a complementary Rebel string though. If you were to make one, make sure to wait till 1.0.5 is out...

When I learn how, I might try this..

Quote

Originally posted by Jules:
Whats this for? The map? Spob co-ordinates? Something else completely ? What?

Map and spobs. I haven't really messed around with this on my own, but this is the way it seemed when I worked with coordinates in the tutorial.

--
Another question! I made a basic mission this morning, and it actually worked, except for the original description. I put in a desc for BriefText for the section of the mission where you accept/refuse, because I didn't see a place to put the original mission offer. But when I tested it, I wound up with a blank dialogue with "Yes" "No" at the bottom, and then the text that I wanted there as an extra mission briefing. Where am I supposed to put this text in the misn resource??

-K

------------------
--
Art History = Cool!
...and yes, I'm odd.
--

Quote

-From the tutorial it seems as though you -increase- Y-values to make things go down? Isn't that a little counter-intuitive? (Or am I just REALLY confused?)

You are not mistaken- increasing Y makes things move down. This is a computer science thing- most systems map the origin to the upper-left corner, and reverse the direction of the Y axis. Things are also confusing like this in a few 3D programs (POV-Ray, in my experience) that reverse the direction of the Z axis from standard. I have no idea why they do this. Something about left and right-hand coordinates. Go figure.

Oh, and I guess they don't crash- for some reason, that's the behavior I remember. I remember having lots of trouble with corrupt spins back then too, though (Damn EV-Edit).

------------------
~Charlie

Quote

Originally posted by Kate:
**Another question! I made a basic mission this morning, and it actually worked, except for the original description. I put in a desc for BriefText for the section of the mission where you accept/refuse, because I didn't see a place to put the original mission offer. But when I tested it, I wound up with a blank dialogue with "Yes" "No" at the bottom, and then the text that I wanted there as an extra mission briefing. Where am I supposed to put this text in the misn resource??

-K

**

The frist text box that shows up isn't assignable, it always comes from (I think) desc ID number (misnID-128+4000). So if your misn is Id 234, it's first desc would be 4106. This is what would be shown to offer the mission or in the mission computer section. So try that and see if it works then.
Good luck!

MickyBIs

------------------
Who is John Galt?
"I've never heard maniacal laughter from a robot before. It's good to have brought something new and wonderful into the world"-(url="http://"http://freefall.purrsia.com/")Freefall(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by MickyBIs:
The frist text box that shows up isn't assignable, it always comes from (I think) desc ID number (misnID-128+4000). So if your misn is Id 234, it's first desc would be 4106. This is what would be shown to offer the mission or in the mission computer section. So try that and see if it works then.
Good luck!

:frown: I tried it and didn't think it worked at first, because the mission didn't show up with Avail. random set at 100.... this being, it turns out, because I was already in the mission. It works now, tho.. thank you very much!

...but of course, there's a problem with another part of the stupid thing. I made a new junk for the mission, History Books (If you're curious what on earth the misn is, I'll put in a link to it on my homepage when it works.. it's not worthy of the addons page :p), and was using the CargoType field to put it in. The EVN Bible says to use 0-255 for a specific cargo type, and since the number of my junk was 150, I subtracted 128 to get 22, and entered that. Now when I look up what cargo I'm carrying, it says "Eamon Flannigan".

Since I did not intend to kidnap a Wild Goose, I tried looking up the numbers of the cargoes in Nova Data files, but I don't know what resource to look in. Help! :eek:

Also, I was looking at the char resource, and it has a choice to check whether or not the char is the default- if it's a bad idea to modify Nova data (which makes sense to me :p), how do you make a new default char? If there is no default, how do you select a char when you start the game?

-K

------------------
--
Art History = Cool!
...and yes, I'm odd.
--

(This message has been edited by Kate (edited 05-25-2003).)

(This message has been edited by Kate (edited 05-25-2003).)

One more question about the stupid thing.. Is it impossible to use a load cargo desc if you grab the cargo from the same place you accept the mission? I had a load cargo text when the misn offer text wasn't working, but now it seems to be gone.

-K

------------------
--
Art History = Cool!
...and yes, I'm odd.
--

Kate,
To use a new Junk cargo type, you actually don't use the Junk resource. There are a bunch of STR# resources in there somewhere- a few of them have Cargo**** in the name. These are the actual strings used. The cargoType field is an index into these STR# resources, not into the junks, as you would smartly assume. Check it out- it's not too confusing if you know where to look. If you don't want to copy the whole STR#, look at the section in the bible about patching STR# resources.

------------------
~Charlie

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
To use a new Junk cargo type, you actually don't use the Junk resource. There are a bunch of STR# resources in there somewhere- a few of them have Cargo**** in the name. These are the actual strings used. The cargoType field is an index into these STR# resources, not into the junks, as you would smartly assume. Check it out- it's not too confusing if you know where to look. If you don't want to copy the whole STR#, look at the section in the bible about patching STR# resources.

Okay, I think I understand what you mean, but I'm not sure how to do it. I looked it up in the bible, and I didn't see cargo types- base prices and commodity abbrevs only. So I looked it up in the Nova data, and found the cargo strings, (whose numbers correspond to me carrying Eamon around ) but I don't see how far up the numbers go- the limit on strings isn't in the bible or list of constants.. do I have to replace one? That doesn't seem like a good idea :frown: And I do not understand how STR patching differs from a new string, or whatever.. sigh.. can you maybe explain a little more detailed-ly?

Thanks!
-K

------------------
--
Art History = Cool!
...and yes, I'm odd.
--

Quote

Originally posted by Kate:
< snip>

If I remember correctly, you open the STR# resource that has the cargo types you want to edit, scroll down to the very bottom, click on the last line of text (not the last edit field, there is a line of text with a bunch of "***"s, click on that and it will draw a box around it) and press command-k. It should add a line for you to type into. The Resource Bible doesn't seem to say how to patch that particular STR# resource, so just copy the whole thing into your plugin and add a line as described above.

-Vaumnou

------------------
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!"
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. .... Radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." - Albert Einstein

Quote

Originally posted by Kate:
Wouldn't- Rebel and Polaris work together? You could set it up so that you'd get entrance into the rebel string at the section in Polaris when you become an envoy.. Unfortunately, since I haven't finished them all yet, I'm not sure if that would work.

Sure, there could be a string which bound those two governments together - and the same is probably true of others - but it wouldn't work with the ones ATMOS did. If you want to write your own new storyline for the existing governments, though, this sounds like a great plug-in possibility.

Quote

From the tutorial it seems as though you -increase- Y-values to make things go down? Isn't that a little counter-intuitive? (Or am I just REALLY confused?)

It's computer geometry. Unlike the Cartesian plane, the y-coordinate increases as you move farther down the screen. The reason for this is that often (although the EV Nova map is an exception), (0,0) is the top-left corner of the screen, so if they did it the Cartesian way, the y-coordinate would always be negative, which would be rather a waste.

Quote

The EVN Bible says to use 0-255 for a specific cargo type, and since the number of my junk was 150, I subtracted 128 to get 22, and entered that.

You can't use jünk resources as mission cargo, I'm afraid - they refer to special mission cargo types, which are derived solely from a set of STR# and STR resources. I don't have the IDs handy, but I'm sure someone can give them to you. (Actually, I see you've already found them yourself.)

Quote

Also, I was looking at the char resource, and it has a choice to check whether or not the char is the default- if it's a bad idea to modify Nova data (which makes sense to me:p ), how do you make a new default char? If there is no default, how do you select a char when you start the game?

If there's more than one chär, then Nova will display a popup menu in the 'New Pilot' dialog asking you which one you want to play. Also, as a general rule, if you want to modify a resource from the original data files, you can just copy it into your new plug-in, and just modify that copy. In most cases your modified copy should override the original whenever your plug-in is loaded.

------------------
David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.evula.com/survival_guide/")EV Nova Survival Guide(/url)
Truth! Justice! Freedom! And A Hard-Boiled Egg!

Okay, here's what I tried:
I went into Nova Data 5 and copied and pasted STR#s 4000, 4001, 4002 into a STR# resource in my plugin file. These are "All Cargo", "LC Cargo", and "Cargo Abbreviations". I clicked on the last one (#80) and entered command-K, which gave me a new empty string. Into it, I typed "History Books", "history books" and "books", respectively. Since it was #80, and cargo goes 0-255, and when I typed in 22 I got string 23 (Eamon Flannigan), I gave my misn resource cargo type 79. I then saved and started up Nova, and now I'm carrying a Rebel Assault Team. Huh? So I looked in the STR# resource, went through the entire thing, and there is no Rebel Assault Team! So I'm obviously modifying the wrong resource, but I have no clue where to find the correct one. mutter :mad:

No clue what to do with this. :frown:

-K

------------------
--
Art History = Cool!
...and yes, I'm odd.
--

Quote

Originally posted by Kate:
**No clue what to do with this.:frown:

-K

**

Try sending the plug to my e-mail adress, I'll see what I can do.

max@evula.org

Entarus,

------------------
-Nothing lasts forever-
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=9&SUBMIT;=Go&urgaylol;=yes")EV Developer's Corner(/url)
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Quote

Originally posted by Kate:
**mutter:mad:

-K

**

Okay. Let me get this straight. You created a new STR# entry, and it's corresponding number (the one directly above the editfield) was number 80. You put this in for STR# ID's 4000 - 4002. Assuming the number of your resource is 80, I would go into (url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")MissionComputer(/url) or NovaTools and for the cargo type, type in 79, or one minus the STR# entry ID.

(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")MissionComputer(/url) makes this incredibly simple, as it has a nice pop-up menu that has not only the numbers, but what you entered into the STR# for your plugin.

So, to recap, if the you had just created this string from scratch, entering 0 in the mďsn CargoType field will point to the first entry in the string. Similarly, if you had maxed out the STR# resource, and gotten up to 256 string entries, the CargoType index will be 255.

Hope this helps!
SpacePirate

BTW, there used to be a way to not have to copy the whole STR#, but merely add a single 'STR ' resource to replace the STR# entry. However, I do not recall exactly how to do this, perhaps someone else recalls.

------------------
Eat blazing electric death!
(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/infernostudios/ept/")Unofficial EV and EVO Ports(/url): FC1 and Beta 2

(edit: gah! sytax error!)

(This message has been edited by SpacePirate (edited 05-26-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by SpacePirate:
BTW, there used to be a way to not have to copy the whole STR#, but merely add a single 'STR ' resource to replace the STR# entry. However, I do not recall exactly how to do this, perhaps someone else recalls.

Resource Bible:

Appendix III - Patching STR# Resources


The STR# resource format used to store many of the strings in Nova may seem to
be incompatible with the flexible nature of plugin files. For example, a plugin
for a new ship would have to replace several of the built-in STR# resources to
incorporate its new name into the game. The problem arises when you want to use
two plugins that try to modify the same STR# resource.

The solution is not to change the STR# resources at all, but to use Nova’s handy
string patching functionality by updating only select strings in a STR# resource
by providing Nova with a properly-numbered 'STR ' resource. For example, to
change the first cargo type from food to something else, you’d simply create a
'STR ' resource with the ID 9000 and type in the name of your new commodity. A
chart of 'STR ' resource numbers is provided below:

String Type:                                        Replacement 'STR ' ID range:
Message buoys                                       1000-2500
Hail quotes                                         5000-5511
Stellar types                                       7000-7063
Base prices of commodities                          9300-9305
Commodity abbreviations for status display          9400-9405
Govt-specific greetings for comm dialog           10000-12559 (first 10 for
                                                    govt -1, second 10 for
                                                    govt 0, third 10 for govt
                                                    1, etc.)
përs-resource CommQuotes                          15000-15511

-Vaumnou

------------------
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!"
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. .... Radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." - Albert Einstein