The life and times of an idiot.

In general I consider myself to be an intelligent rational person, but its times like this one that make me wonder. I'm making small plug-ins for my personal use at the moment, and up till now I was content making outfits and weapons with EVNEW. Today though? Today I wanted something new, I want to make a ship.

The guides are straight forward enough. The Bible, while informative, is quite vague, explaining what things do and not really how to do them. Upon entering these boards however I've come across MUCH more detailed instructions, Kudos to Andrew in the EV developers corner. The problem is this does not seem to be enough for me, following these clear instructions I've still stumbled blindly into failure, with no idea as to why.

I'll lay out what I've done, and maybe someone can fill in the blanks ( or at least tell me where the blanks (b)are )

1 - I've created a ship resource filling in the fields the way I wish my ship to be, setting the ID number of an existing ship ( 173 - the Vell-os Dart ) because I wish mine to look exactly like it. I've also set contribute and require both to 0000000000000001.

2 - I've created a corresponding shan resource for the ship, using the same ID and filling every field in the exact way it is filled for the Dart.

3 - I've created a spin with the same ID:
Sprite - 1090
Mask - -1091
Xs - 32
Ys - 32
Xt - 6
Yt - 6

4. I've created a desc with ID 13045 ( 13000 + 173 - 128 ), giving the name of my new ship and a brief description.

Finally - I place the plug-in in the EVN plug-in folder, start EVN, and see that my new ship is not there.

I had absolutely no problem with the weapons and outfits I've "made" but this ship seems beyond my modest understanding.

Is there anyone who can help?

This would be better suited for the EV Developer's Corner forum.

Moving...

Welcome to the boards, Ragnar0k

You can start by removing the require bit. That may or may not be the problem but you shouldn't really have it there (unless you're absolutely sure this is what you want). You can also delete the spin since ships use shans instead of spins.
Other things which control a ships' availability are the Availability ncb string, the Tech Level and the BuyRandom, so check all of those to make sure they aren't causing the problem. Also make sure there aren't any other plug-ins which are overriding your ship and if you still can't get it to show up then you can attach the plug to a post so we can take a better look.

(Andrew is the Ambrosia el Presidente and doesn't visit the Dev Corner much - are you referring to someone else?)

This post has been edited by Guy : 07 June 2006 - 01:58 AM

@guy, on Jun 7 2006, 08:57 AM, said in "Help" or The chronicles of Rythan Blaze:

are you referring to someone else?

Does he/she by any chance know you?

Otherwise, it could be andcarne But he hasn't been very active lately At all

This place might help a lot.
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php...opic=60350&st;=0

Thank you guys very much for your warm welcome, with a big thanks to Guy for the input.

Last night just after posting I downloaded a ship plug-in so that I might examine why that one worked and mine didn't. After pouring over all the info in the desc, shan, and ship, it was then that I realized the single difference, the Plug-in I downloaded had a ship ID that I could not actually relate to his ship in any logical terms.

That ship was modelled after a Vell-os Javelin, but had a ship ID of 453. The Javelin's ID is 175 .

Noting this I changed the ID I was using for my Dart model from 173 to 451. Now the Plug-in works.

But I still have a problem... Why does it work? Why do I add 278 to the ID? It's such an odd number and I don't recall it referenced anywhere. Could anyone explain?

@pace, on Jun 7 2006, 07:35 PM, said in "Help" or The chronicles of Rythan Blaze:

Does he/she by any chance know you?

Otherwise, it could be andcarne But he hasn't been very active lately At all

Well with only one post (or two now) it's a bit difficult to say

@ragnar0k, on Jun 8 2006, 05:29 AM, said in "Help" or The chronicles of Rythan Blaze:

Thank you guys very much for your warm welcome, with a big thanks to Guy for the input.

Last night just after posting I downloaded a ship plug-in so that I might examine why that one worked and mine didn't. After pouring over all the info in the desc, shan, and ship, it was then that I realized the single difference, the Plug-in I downloaded had a ship ID that I could not actually relate to his ship in any logical terms.

That ship was modelled after a Vell-os Javelin, but had a ship ID of 453. The Javelin's ID is 175 .

Noting this I changed the ID I was using for my Dart model from 173 to 451. Now the Plug-in works.

But I still have a problem... Why does it work? Why do I add 278 to the ID? It's such an odd number and I don't recall it referenced anywhere. Could anyone explain?

Strange, you shouldn't need to do that at all. Plug-ins are loaded in alphabetical order and resources loaded later will override previous resources with the same ID. This means your ship would have been overriding the Dart but that wouldn't cause it to not show up. The other plug-in you're looking at uses ID 453 simply because it's otherwise unused so won't override any existing ships (which is a good idea but if you're just learning to create ships then it's okay if you temporarily use existing IDs).

Contribute bits. I know little of them but I do believe that they can make a ship not showup.

Thanks again Guy. Knowing that should be very helpful in the future, especially when I move up to larger plug-ins that I may want to share.

Any pointers on how to progress in that area, creating missions, stellars, systems, etc.?

In regards to Andrew, I did infact have the right name but I was reffering to the wrong board. Andrew's Threads were pinned in the EV Developer board, which I got confused with developers corner.

Read the EVN Bible, deconstruct plugs that have already been made, and start messing around. Thats what I did, and it worked pretty well.

Oh yeah, he refers to the plug dever FAQ; it's techically andrew who posted this but the FAQ existed before (dunno who wrote it in the first place, old AT issues might help, perhaps "Cajun" David Richards or David Dunham?), even before the UBB. Anyway it's somewhat outdated, I'd advise browsing this place as well (after having set all topics to show up, not just the ones from the last thirty days, of course...)