On the mac version of Nova- 1.0.8 classic- the running lights will constantly be displayed with no transparency, overlayed on the base set in order, if they are set to pulse waveform with all other fields set to zero (for the lights). This can effectively overlay one sprite on another.

Does this function the same way in the windows version of Nova?

Which do you mean by pulse waveform? The 3 types are square, triangle, and random. I imagine if you just set them to be constantly on at max intensity then you'd achieve this effect no matter what platform.

I refered to square; in my old c=64 days that was called a pulse waveform.

Oh right, it's just the bible also mentions pulsing when referring to the other two. So it's lights on for 0 then delay for 0 with groups of 0 and delay between groups of 0. And you're implying that this looks different to just having the lights on all the time (ie, B&D=0; A&C>0)?

There seems to be no transparency to the light frames so you can overlay an entire ship graphic over another ship using the lights- so when the lights are set to not be on when the ship is disabled the underlaying real ship is visible.

So one could have a normal version of the ship set as the running, and a shot up and totalled version as the base sprite, so the ship looks like it got the crap kicked out of it when disabled?

Okay then, bad news: This doesn't happen on OS X - the lights never appear at all. You could use alt sprites to do the same thing though. Unless you're using those for something else.

Can you by any chance confirm if it works when they're always on, as opposed to zeroed out?

If I use square wave they don't stay on constantly but just flash really fast. If I use triangle wave with 32,1000,32,0 then they stay on (although the flash off for a moment when a trader has 'finished' at a planet) but are not completely opaque.

Well, scratch that idea then. Thanks for the help, Guy...

I assume that the Alternate frames won't work for what you want?

Edwards

It was justa quick idea that would of been simple to implement on my already-existing ships- battle damage revealed when it was disabled.

I believe I did mention this once before

That method would require me to totally rerender everything, as opposed to rendering an additional sprite layer and changing a few bits. Thanks anyway, Guy

Erm...may I inquire as to why you feel that necessary?

AltSprites can change only part of a ship - look at the Thunderforge for an example. This seems like exactly what you want. Are you thinking of animated ships made with multiple sprite sets in the base set (e.g. Leviathan)?

What about specifying a RLE for the lights but leaving the light mode set to -1? Any takers?

So currently you have a 'base' set which you've specified as the lights and a 'disabled' set which you've specified as the base, is that right? All you have to do specify the 'base' as the alt instead. That should work, no?

I've not done anything yet as far as the battle damage- I noticed that some of my varient ships which had lights specified in thier shan resources, yet had the lightimage blinkmode set to -1 (none) constantly displayed thier light sprite on top of the base set with no transparency- perfectly opaque running lights constantly displayed, just so I am clear. While it looked ugly as lights that way, I tried one accidentally with an alternate version of a sprite (one with cargo pods and one without, the lights had the cargo pods). When the ship was disabled the cargo pods suddenly dissapeared. This could in theory result in any possible effect as long as properly masked against the base inage.
My biggest question was if this worked this way across platforms so I'm not wasting my time working for something that only the other 9 or 10 other OS9 Nova 1.0.8 users on an oldworld Mac would see

...
Nope, that doesn't work on OS X. Overlaid constantly, but with transparency.
You still haven't explained why you can't use alt sprites to do the same thing?

Because it's more trouble than it is worth to rerender everything for altsprites- though I'm pretty sure that altsprites is not quite what I am looking for here.