I've got a few minor questions related to switching systems that I've finally remembered long enough to post.
For context, (almost) every system in SS is made up of 4 (sometimes more depending on the storyline) systems that are switched to simulate planet rotation. Each system is named differently. There is the primary set (say Earth) which is linked to all the other Earths. The other 3+ sets use the same connection data, and the same locations, so Nova switches them just fine, for the most part. Here's the issues:

1. The map display is correct- all the names, ports, etc info is correct. But when you select a hyperjump destination via the keyboard, all the locations come up as 'Earth' when it should be something like 'Alpha Sector' or 'Gamma Sector'. Also, jumping into a system displays the incorrect info. Instead of "Jumping into the Alpha Sector system, Date", it wrongly reads "Jumping into the Earth system, date". The player info reads correctly, however. Is this a bug, or is this the proper behavior?

2. Closely related, I can only use one message buoy string, and it is applied to all the variant systems. I suppose this is the same bit of code.

I tried, with a small orbit, changing all the connections on each system to connect to the systems that it would be connected to (does that make sense?), but that didn't fix the issue.

Fortunately, this is a minor issue and does not hurt playability. It's still annoying, however. Can anybody tell me if this is the correct behavior, wrong behavior that isn't going to be fixed, or (best for me) wrong behavior that IS going to be fixed?

Thanks.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

Overlapping systs exhibiting wierd behavior is a well-known issue. You can fix it by offseting each syst by a pixel so that they aren't RIGHT on top of each other. I.E., Alpha Sector is (-1,-1) from its current location, Beta is (0,-1), Gamma is (-1,0), Delta is (0,0).

-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!"
"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

Yeah, I know about the one-pixel offset trick, and the strange behavior of switching systems. In this case, I want to take advantage of the fact that EV links systems in a 'pile'-as they really are supposed to be the same system. In fact, come to think of it, I can't use it at all- when the systems switch, the player would be left totally stranded, because what I would have to create would be 4 to 16 separate systems, each rotated by a few degrees- they wouldn't necessarily have any connection to each other. I'll give it a shot, though, just to prove it to myself. Thanks though.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

Another idea is to have a syst for the sun (with a "Sol" spob in it) and then have 5-10 systs placed in a circle around it that have Earth and Luna. Each Earth has a hyperlink to Sol, and a cron swaps their visibility so that Earth "orbits" the sun. The cron would set a bit which would cause an invisible misn to activate (if you happen to be in the Earth system when it "moves") which moves you to the correct "new" system. That way the map itself would change to reflect the Earth's journey around the sun, and the player would be moved with it.

-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

(This message has been edited by Vaumnou (edited 06-26-2003).)

Another great idea, but it doesn't work with our universe's layout. There are hypergate-like constructions that take you between orbits, and you use normal jumps to move around the orbit.

Also, how would I activate a mission to move the player correctly? There is no way of offering a mission to the player in space other than through a pers that I know of, and there is no way of checking what system a player just happens to be IN, so I'm not sure how that would work. This is, of course, another small bug with the way it is currently set up- if you happen to take off from a planet on the day it moves, you end up one jump behind it all of a sudden. This is a minor annoyance more than anything else.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

Well, you could theoretically use the Mxxx command to move the player through a crön activation, but again that wouldn't happen until you jump or land on a spöb. Hmmm...

(edit) Whoops -- had the wrong command to move a player listed... (/edit)
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(This message has been edited by UncleTwitchy (edited 06-26-2003).)

The method I was suggesting is that you have a misn only available on spobs in a given system (via AvailFrom) which also has an AvailBit that the cron sets. In the OnAccept it would "Mxxx Axxx" to move the player and then abort the misn.

-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

Oh, I see what you had in mind, Vamnou. Yeah, that would work, but it would require a separate mission for each system to move the player correctly, which adds up to alot of missions (100+ in my case). And just as a note, using an auto-aborting mission would probably be the simplest way to do it. Still doesn't solve my quirk, though, unfortunately. Oh well. Maybe Pipeline knows something...?

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)