did someone say alpha?

I've just put up the first draft of an EV Nova Resource ID Guide. Check it out, tell me what you think, errors etc. I discovered at least one interesting thing while making this and I'm sure a lot of the info will be of use to TC developers.

To do:
- Replace all occurrences of "unknown" with something more informative. A little help here would be great.
- STR s?

The following are some things that may be found in the Nova data files but that I've decided are actually unused. Again, correct me if I'm wrong:
- Last 5 or so groups of STR# 3000
- Entire STR# 3001
- All but the first 6 entries of STR# 4000
- Entire STR# 4005

This post has been edited by Guy : 05 May 2006 - 12:47 AM

Um, I'd love to help out, but you seem to have forgotten that web addresses are allergic to spaces, like the two in that file name. Could you try uploading it again?

Edwards

Whoops, the spaces killed the tag but the real problem was I missed a bit of the path.

Nice!

Now a few comments:
STR# 134:
I have no idea why you are calling entry 10 "unknown". In my data files, it contains the string "Public Enemy", which is listed in the Bible as being the rating for -4096. As for the first entry, I always assumed it was the negative/positive counter-part to the other "No Record"- it may have been simpler to code the positive and negative ratings seperately. It would be fairly easy to check this out.

For the ship, stellar, etc. STR#s, you probably won't be able to find out anything about most of the "unknown"s. Most of those strings are unchanged since EVC, when they were probably put in because of features Matt Burch thought would be cool, but didn't get around to implementing.

You need to put cicn 20000 in bold- it may not be required on your system, but it is on mine. On the other hand, you just trimmed 244 bytes off of my Truely Absolute Minimum file with cicns 15000 and 15001 (I could have sworn those were required a few months ago!).

Anyway, great file! Even I learned a few things browing through it.

Edwards

I'm pretty sure the "No Record" legal rating (0 evil points, according to the Nova Bible) is used when you use a fake ID or other rating-clearing thingy, or have managed to work your way up from being evil to being exactly zero.

mďsn IDs go from 128 to 1 1 27. You sure that përs 1151 can't be used (since there should be 1024 possible...), or is it some ghost of the Mighty Captain Hector that prevents it to be used (Captain Hector used to have the last përs ID, just after the bounty hunter, in EVC/O)? Perhaps you could expand on "miscellaneous strings" for STR# 2002 (all right, I know there is a LOT of stuff in there). The ID for the special advice is a 12-bit number (max 4096) added to 7500, so the theoretical range for Special Advice STR# is 7500-11595, which overlaps the next two and bites on the conventional range for mission special ship names.

Otherwise, a fine document. Especially if it allows to save 244 precious bytes off Truly Absolute Minimum (a few billionths of hard drive space! 40 ms of download time with a 56k modem! One sixteenth of a swap page! Imagine the savings! Use ed!)

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 30 April 2006 - 03:25 AM

Yay! An ed link!

@edwards, on Apr 30 2006, 05:07 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

Nice!

Thanks

@edwards, on Apr 30 2006, 05:07 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

I have no idea why you are calling entry 10 "unknown". In my data files, it contains the string "Public Enemy", which is listed in the Bible as being the rating for -4096. As for the first entry, I always assumed it was the negative/positive counter-part to the other "No Record"- it may have been simpler to code the positive and negative ratings seperately. It would be fairly easy to check this out.

Well I couldn't work out how to get that entry to show, despite setting my record way lower than that. I have seen it in-game so I know you can get it but I don't know what circumstances are required. I don't trust the bible's accuracy with regards to the legal status section.
I tried both of Belthazar's suggestions but neither showed the first string.

@edwards, on Apr 30 2006, 05:07 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

For the ship, stellar, etc. STR#s, you probably won't be able to find out anything about most of the "unknown"s. Most of those strings are unchanged since EVC, when they were probably put in because of features Matt Burch thought would be cool, but didn't get around to implementing.

I was hoping some people could browse through them and think "hey, I've seen that string in-game somewhere" and then we might figure out where. But yeah, most of them are probably unused.

@edwards, on Apr 30 2006, 05:07 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

You need to put cicn 20000 in bold- it may not be required on your system, but it is on mine.

Fixed (I knew that, just forgot :unsure:).

@zacha-pedro, on Apr 30 2006, 08:22 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

mďsn IDs go from 128 to 1 1 27.

Fixed.

@zacha-pedro, on Apr 30 2006, 08:22 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

You sure that përs 1151 can't be used (since there should be 1024 possible...), or is it some ghost of the Mighty Captain Hector that prevents it to be used (Captain Hector used to have the last përs ID, just after the bounty hunter, in EVC/O)?

As far as the developer is concerned this pers doesn't work. Edwards once used some sneaky unknown method to try to determine if this ID is indeed Hector but the result was inconclusive.

@zacha-pedro, on Apr 30 2006, 08:22 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

Perhaps you could expand on "miscellaneous strings" for STR# 2002 (all right, I know there is a LOT of stuff in there).

Added unhelpful message :rolleyes:

@zacha-pedro, on Apr 30 2006, 08:22 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

The ID for the special advice is a 12-bit number (max 4096) added to 7500, so the theoretical range for Special Advice STR# is 7500-11595, which overlaps the next two and bites on the conventional range for mission special ship names.

Uh, yeah, I thought this was really not worth mentioning.

This post has been edited by Guy : 30 April 2006 - 03:59 AM

the link still does not work. it redircects me to a "buy this domain name" site.

Works fine for me; you might need to copy the link to the clipboard and manually add the %20 s instead of the spaces.

The menu button slide-in spďns are required, at least in OS 9. Are there no conventions for mission refuse and fail dësc IDs?

More when I have time.

There is no convention that I know of for failure descs. For refusal, it seems they are all in 20000-20999 (yeah, 20000 is also conventionally used by the ports for the intro dësc...), among other supplementary ranges for various mission dëscs in Nova Data 5.

By the way, resources are not formally required or not, it just so happens that if some resources are not present, the game doesn't crash and is (more or less) usable.

@qaanol, on May 1 2006, 01:20 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

The menu button slide-in spďns are required, at least in OS 9. Are there no conventions for mission refuse and fail dësc IDs?

More when I have time.

Could you double check that? When I run it in classic environment it doesn't require them.
Maybe I could make up some conventions for those...

@guy, on May 1 2006, 12:34 AM, said in Resource ID Guide:

Could you double check that? When I run it in classic environment it doesn't require them.

I've tested it on a MacOS 9 computer, as has Qaanol, just after the release of TCTC. Nova definitely requires those spďns on pre-OSX systems. There may be some minor difference between Classic and a real pre-OSX computer, or it might be as simple as 9.2 being more lenient than 9.1 (Classic tends to come with 9.2, while I have 9.1, and I'm pretty sure Qaanol has something older).

Edwards

Guy: Good news. What you said to me in a PM is correct.

Edwards: Good news. What Guy said to me in a PM is correct. Only the third slide-in spďn, ID 610, is required. You can shave 24 bytes off TC ^2 by removing the other two. Also, in my copy of your TC, string resources 4000, 4001, 4003, 4004, and 10000 appear in both your "Base" and "Data" files. The ones in the 4k range are the same, but the 10k ones are different.

As far as the slide-in goes, it seems to me that the third button entrance, spďn 610, is the last thing Nova does when loading, and I would guess that when it finishes sliding in the game engine runs a subroutine giving the user control. If it doesn't slide in, that routine never runs, and the game still thinks it's loading.

Excellent, change made.

You can always click to skip the sliders though...

@qaanol, on May 3 2006, 06:40 AM, said in Resource ID Guide:

Only the third slide-in spďn, ID 610, is required. You can shave 24 bytes off TC ^2 by removing the other two.

Well, shaving off 24 bytes is more important in True Absolute Minimum, but yes, that is a good thing (down to 4860 bytes!).

@qaanol, on May 3 2006, 06:40 AM, said in Resource ID Guide:

Also, in my copy of your TC, string resources 4000, 4001, 4003, 4004, and 10000 appear in both your "Base" and "Data" files. The ones in the 4k range are the same, but the 10k ones are different.

Thank you for pointing that out. I had been intending "TCTC Base" as a general-purpose miniature base for TCs (like AbMin), and I must have made a mistake in splitting it off from the rest of the TC at one point.

@Guy:
You may want to add to "bööm 128" that it will always appear when a weapon expires if the weapon uses explosion 129 or higher.
"(PICT) 7600-7608: Dialog button masks. ... No masks for middle sections. "
Is that "no masks allowed", or "no masks required"?

And a couple items that may or may not be appropriate for this guide (neither is in the data files, but back in EV/O some TCs changed these):
PICT 133: Keyboard preferences background, Mac.
PICT 139: Keyboard preferences background, Windows.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 04 May 2006 - 01:32 AM

@edwards, on May 4 2006, 06:29 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

You may want to add to "bööm 128" that it will always appear when a weapon expires if the weapon uses explosion 129 or higher.

Thanks, done.

@edwards, on May 4 2006, 06:29 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

"(PICT) 7600-7608: Dialog button masks. ... No masks for middle sections. "
Is that "no masks allowed", or "no masks required"?

Well I don't think even the end pieces actually require a mask. I'm pretty sure I checked this and found middle masks weren't used.

@edwards, on May 4 2006, 06:29 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

And a couple items that may or may not be appropriate for this guide (neither is in the data files, but back in EV/O some TCs changed these):
PICT 133: Keyboard preferences background, Mac.
PICT 139: Keyboard preferences background, Windows.

Is it the same size and layout for both?

Added STR# 130.

This post has been edited by Guy : 05 May 2006 - 12:48 AM

@guy, on May 4 2006, 09:40 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

Well I don't think even the end pieces actually require a mask. I'm pretty sure I checked this and found middle masks weren't used.

Well, if you haven't done so already, you may want to clarify that in the guide.

@guy, on May 4 2006, 09:40 PM, said in Resource ID Guide:

Is it the same size and layout for both?

Yes- 582x307. The only diifference is that all of the modifier key labels have been changed to "alt" in the Windows version.

Edwards

Okay, what about the little Nova icon in the new pilot dialog? Is that the same in both?