Alright, I got Nova for Christmas, and I love it, best EV game yet. Now that I've played it for a while, I want to go further; I want to create plugins. I downloaded EVONE (I have a Mac, OS 10.2.8), and read the documentation. I quickly ran across a problem, though; I have never programmed anything in my life, and it certainly shows. I have no clue at all what I'm doing. Can some kind person (or several kind persons) please explain to me in language an idiot newbie (such as myself) can understand, how to make a simple plugin? I think once I know approximately what I'm doing, I can figure it out, but until that point I'm just pushing buttons. I also have a specific question about EVONE below:

1: when I open EVONE up, and click on the option to make a Nova plugin, it presents me with a box containing "The Galaxy" and a TMPL folder. Why is the Galaxy thing totally empty? In the documentation, it says you can edit systems within the game, but if I don't have the map of the game to work with, how can I do that...?

Thanks for any, and all, help!

The "Galaxy" being presented to you by EVONE is the galaxy as according to your plug-in; all of the systems which you have added, changed or moved.

Since your plug-in is currently blank, it hasn't made any changes to the galaxy, so nothing shows up.

For more detailed answers on plug-in making, give us some idea what you want to change. e.g. Do you want to add a weapon? You'll need an outfit to go with it.

Or, look through some of the guides available on this forum.

Ok, I thought it was something like that... is there a way to get the Nova universe to show up, so I could edit a system?

Ok, more details... lets start with something as simple as possible, and preferably no graphics (I don't know how to do that either, and don't want to bite off too much at the start). Say just a simple cheat plug-in (my least favorite type, but probably the simplest) that gives you 200,000 credits for a simple delivery mission?

You may want to start with Zacha Pedro's NovaTools and MissionComputer tutorials. They won't be quite right for EVONE, but just reading through them should help to give you an idea of what's going on.

The ultimate plugin-design reference is the Nova Bible, which you can find in the Documentation folder. However, it is rather dense, so you should probably look at the Nova Bible Explained to Dummies, a nice introduction to the Nove Bible.

Once you have some idea what you're doing, you should look at Zacha Pedro's Annnotated Templates, a very good set of guides to several resource types:
dësc | düde | gövt | oütf | shďp | spöb | s˙st | wëap

My final suggestion would be to just look at the data files, create a few plugins modifying some aspects of the game (such as weapons or outfits), and in general just play around.

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Now, to answer your specific questions:

Quote

Ok, I thought it was something like that... is there a way to get the Nova universe to show up, so I could edit a system?

I suspect that you will have to tell EVONE where your data files are. The readme should have instructions.
Also, if you haven't paid for EvONE yet, you may want to check out MissionComputer. It is an excellent editor for beginners (the mission editor in particular is much better than EVONE).

About the cheat delivery mission, I would not recommend starting with that. Missions are the most complicated resource, so I'd suggest playing around with other resources first, such as weapons or outfits.

I hope some of this is useful to you.
Edwards

You know your guides are worthy when you're beaten to promoting them.

People who wish to help me can check here and tell me what they think about it (just remember it a bit like a beta: it's currently being built).

Alright, I'll spend the next couple days reading the Dummy's Guide, thanks. After that, I'll check out those Templates, and I'll post any more questions in this thread :).

One question about the Mission Computer; it looks like it's just designed to work with ResEdit and Nova Tools (neither of which I have). I haven't registered EVONE yet, and before I do I'd like to make sure I shouldn't get something else...

Thanks again for the help :).

Mission Computer is a stand-alone editor, completely independant of ResEdit. You probably saw some statements that it is best used in conjuction with ResEdit, but that is just referring to some less-than-perfect resource editor windows. It works just fine on its own.

Now, if you have Classic installed on your computer (or are running OS 9), ResEdit with NovaTools is an excellent editor, although it might not have enough information included in the editor windows for a beginner.

I do have OS 9 running, but prefer OS 10 native programs. I'll get Mission Tools (the fact that it appears to be free helps ), and report back with questions (no doubt soon, too ).

Ok, I got Mission Computer, and started working on a simple Weapon plug-in, called the Torpedo. The outf (Torpedo Launcher) seems to be working (I can't get the graphic to work, but that's no big tragedy, as I at least have something up there with a price, availability, description, etc.), but I can't get the weap (Torpedo) to appear. Does anyone have any idea why this might be? It looks to me like I've got all the proper fields filled out, but...

Another question: how do I get my graphics to work? I don't have any graphics software, so I just made some hideously simple colored boxes using Appleworks Paint, and pasted them into the pict resource (I made one for the Torpedo and one for the Launcher). But the Launcher shows up in my game with the Light Blaster icon instead (while the Torpedo doesn't show up at all). I thought it might have something to do with the ID numbers, but really don't know...

Also, while I'm at it, I don't understand the example given in the weap section of the Bible; it says "usually, if your Hector Cannon was of ID 131, you'd set the AmmoType to 3 so it'd use Hector Birdseed Pellets or whatever." I assume the "Hector Cannon" is the object made in the outf, and the "Birdseed Pellets" would be the weap, but how does 3 relate to ID 131? I think that might be why my Torpedos aren't showing up, because I didn't relate them correctly to the Launcher...

3 is 131 minus 128. Indeed, the resource IDs begin at 128 (because 127 and below are reserved), but for some purposes you have to put an index number, which begin at 0, therefore you have to remove 128 from the resource ID to obtain the index.

Wargaming_nut, on Mar 25 2005, 01:54 PM, said:

Another question: how do I get my graphics to work? I don't have any graphics software, so I just made some hideously simple colored boxes using Appleworks Paint, and pasted them into the pict resource (I made one for the Torpedo and one for the Launcher). But the Launcher shows up in my game with the Light Blaster icon instead (while the Torpedo doesn't show up at all). I thought it might have something to do with the ID numbers, but really don't know...
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The way that an outfit's graphics are related to the outfit is by the Resource ID (RID) of the picture.

Get a calculator (If a pocket calculator isn't forthcoming, there's one in the applications folder on most OSX machines), take the RID of the outfit for the Torpedo Launcher, and add 5872. The result will be the RID of the image that appears at the outfitter's. e.g. The Light Blaster is outfit RID 128. Add 5872 to get 6000.

Wargaming_nut, on Mar 25 2005, 01:54 PM, said:

Also, while I'm at it, I don't understand the example given in the weap section of the Bible; it says "usually, if your Hector Cannon was of ID 131, you'd set the AmmoType to 3 so it'd use Hector Birdseed Pellets or whatever." I assume the "Hector Cannon" is the object made in the outf, and the "Birdseed Pellets" would be the weap, but how does 3 relate to ID 131? I think that might be why my Torpedos aren't showing up, because I didn't relate them correctly to the Launcher...

You need an outfit for both the launcher and the ammunition. You'd have to buy both Torpedoes and a Torpedo Launcher before being able to fire Torpedoes.

In the example above, the "Hector Cannon" would be the launcher, and the "Birdseed Pellet" would be the ammunition. Both point to the weapon.

There is another concern about outfits to be redressed; the ability to purchase a particular outfit can be blocked by several factors:

1. Tech Level: For now, set this to zero; you can adjust it to your needs later, once everything else is working. An outfit's Tech Level is compared to that of a world you're visiting. Basically, if the planet has a higher Tech Level you can buy the outfit there. There is another aspect to the Tech Level for planets that have a Special Tech selected, but then the numbers have to match.

2. Availability (Logic Test): For now, just leave this blank. Later on, you might want to write a mission string for a story, which would make certain special outfits appear after completing a service; but that's deep into one of the most complex aspects of the Nova Engine.

3. Require Field Bits: For now, just leave this blank, or all zeroes, or however Mission Computer's interface displays it to you. In the stock Nova scenario, these manifest first as the Licensees you have to purchase before you can buy some outfits.

4. Random: For now, set this to 100. This is the percentage of the time that a particular outfit will be available. A zero here means the outfit is never for sale, while 100 means it is always available.

While there are other things that might interfere, these are the usual suspects.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 25 March 2005 - 09:51 AM

I figured out that I had to have an outf for both Torpedo and Launcher right after I made this post, so that was fixed. The way it stands now, I can buy both the Launcher and the Torpedo, and both have the descriptions I want, and the prices. Slowly but surely, I'm getting it :).

Problems still remaining; the graphics are still those for the Light Blaster and its ammo, but I intend to try to fix that with the info Chin just gave me. Also, and this is a really weird one, if I land on a planet, and visit the Outfitter, and then leave the planet, the game quits itself. Some kind of bug, obviously, and I'll look for the obvious problems, but any hints would be helpful...

Also, one more issue (not technically a problem, but weird); when I opened the character I'm using to test my plug-in, it already had Torpedos and the Torpedo Launcher!! Again, I'll check the obvious routes, but this one is curious :p.

Oh, and just so you don't think I'm leaving all the work to y'all, I am reading the Bible, and all the text I can ;).

Thanks for the help!

Update: got the graphics in the outfitter to work!! Woohoo!!

On top of that, it no longer quits after I visit an outfitter... still don't know what was wrong, but it's gone now :p.

I'm still wondering why the character already had torpedos, but...

Ok, now a question about the spin resource; I want my Torpedos in flight to look like the ones I buy. I thought I could do this by telling the spin resource to access the pict for Torpedos, but it doesn't seem to want to do that...

Otherwise, I'm starting to get it!

Wargaming_nut, on Mar 26 2005, 12:17 AM, said:

I want my Torpedos in flight to look

Otherwise, I'm starting to get it!
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You need to create the full spin picts for your torps... this is a composite picture showing (often) 36 or so pictures of the ammo each turned slightly so it makes a full curcle. I think you also might need a mask for it, which is like the same thing without color. look at the nova graphics files under the RLE and RLE8 sections for examples.

Yes, you will need a mask (unfortunately, there are no examples in the Nova data files, as the rle format includes the mask in the main sprite).

A mask is a black & white PICT that tells the game which parts of a sprite are transparent. When you lay the mask on top of the main sprite (the part with colors), the game will only draw the parts of the main sprite the line up with the white sections of the mask (if you have EVC/O (the games, not the Nova plugs), both of them have good examples of what I'm talking about in their graphics data files).

The easiest way to make a mask is to copy/load your main sprite image into your graphics editor of choice, and use the "Magic Wand" tool to select only the black background of the sprite. Then, copy the now-selected black section, and paste it into a new image. Select all, copy, and paste into your plug. Poof! You have a mask.

Be warned, however, that the game will use rle format sprites instead of PICTs, if the two resources have the same RID. To solve this, you have two choices:

1. Make sure that your PICTs do not have the same ID as any existing rles, or
2. Convert your sprites (not the outfit images, though) into rle format, using En/DeRle (available here).

Edwards