Hmm, right now, no, sorry. Basically the exit points X and Y values are the coordinates (I think in pixels, I've not designed ships, sorry, so I'm not sure) from the center as if the sprite was rendered from the top, with Up&Down Y Compression % being the cosine of the rendering angle to account for it (Up&Down X Compression % should remain around 100). As for the Z value it is just a constant offset to move the exit point up by (or down if negative) in case the exit point is actually "up" in the 3D model and the rendering angle causes this to be apparent in the rendered image.

Here's a post I made once before about exit points

@guy, on Apr 30 2006, 03:21 PM, said in Ship Weapon Exit Points:

For a given angle Nova first calculates the x,y co-ordinates of the exit point using the x,y-offsets. Eg, if your ship is at 45° and your y-offset is 20 then the co-ordiantes of the point will be roughly 14,14. Next the compression values are used. The point is currently above the center (y-co-ordinate is positive) so the Up compressions are used. These values are the percentage to compress the co-ordinates by. Eg, if your y-compression is 50 then the co-ordinate will now be 14,7. Finally the z-offsets are added. Eg, if your z-offset is 8 the final co-ordinate will be 14,15.

Here's a simple method I do to set exit-points:

1. Point ship at 0°. At this angle you can line up your X-Offsets, though perspective may screw this up slightly.
2. Point ship at 90°. At this angle you can easily line up your Y-Offsets.
3. Point ship back to 0°. Your Y-Offsets will be too far above where you want them to be so use UpCompressY to bring them down to the right points.
4. Point ship at 180°. Now the Y-Offsets will be too far below so use DnCompressY to bring them up to the right points.
   If your point is only offset in two dimensions then it's a relatively simple process. If 3 then it gets tricky and involves a bit of trial and error.
   If your ship is not in perspective then your UpCompressY and DnCompressY will both be the same (and the same values would be used for all your ships) and X Compression will not be necessary. Otherwise you'll have to fiddle around a bit but now that you know how they work it should be easier.

Aye, saw that, but I don't quite understand

For example, for the Sylvatha, these are my exit points:

top:
gun: y: -7 x: -20/20
beam: y: 37 x: 0
turret: y: 20 x: 0
guided: y: 1 x: 12/-12

bottom:
gun: y: -2 x: -20/20
beam: y: 65 x: 0
turret: y: 37 x: 0
guided: y: 8 x: 12/-12

left:
gun: x: -8 y: -18/9
beam: x: 69 y: -5
turret: x: 41 y: -5
guided: x: -8 y: -12/5

right:
gun: x: -8 y: -18/9
beam: x: 69 y: -5
turret: x: 41 y: -5
guided: x: 8 y: 5/-12

But try as I might, I can't find something that works (and I'm experimenting first and foremost with the beam, because it's so far out front).

What do top, bottom, left and right have to do with it, besides being the labels of the fields in a resource editor since the ResEdit templates technically describe these fields as a RECT just as a convenient way to have for numbers?

I don't have ResEdit

Anyway, I've managed to get a near-perfect match. Near-perfect. Dang all-too-perfect-sprites Dafydd sent me

Just get it close, release the plug, and then fix it in a patch a few days later!

@pace, on Dec 22 2006, 11:55 AM, said in Rezilla 1.1 released:

Anyway, I've managed to get a near-perfect match. Near-perfect. Dang all-too-perfect-sprites Dafydd sent me

Good to hear. Since they're rendered in perspective it's impossible to have them perfect so near-perfect is as good as it gets

Here's some bug reports/wishes for a future version of Rezilla. Not expecting you to do any of this, ZP, just so you can pass it on...
- Inspector Window doesn't work. I'm expecting it to be a floating palette and update the info displayed as I change what resource I have selected but it is just a normal window that only ever shows the info of the last resource I specifically 'Got Info' on. Ie, it's less functional than Get Info.
- No way (that I could work out) to stop snd s playing once they've started. In ResEdit you could use cmd+.
- DITL editor would be nice
- And get rid of those weird tabs in the preferences - is it difficult to use normal aqua ones?

This post has been edited by Guy : 28 December 2006 - 04:37 AM

@guy, on Dec 28 2006, 10:37 AM, said in Rezilla 1.1 released:

- No way (that I could work out) to stop snd s playing once they've started. In ResEdit you could use cmd+.

I get the impression we both had the same problem listening to the same snd resources

Most likely ;). I've been messing around with the various options available for exporting AIFF in QT (I'm assuming they're the same that can be used in snd resources). QDesign Music 2 gives the smallest files with surprisingly good quality, though I can't be sure if it'll work in Nova or not. I'd choose IMA 4:1 at 44kHz for best quality (but still great compression) and 22kHz for in-between. I reckon if you managed to use IMA 4:1 at 22kHz you would improve the quality of all the music pieces and still save space such that they would all fit in one file!

I'll try to see what I can do about these...

In the "random news that could potentially have consequences you won't see soon" department, I have implemented the two missing features (field stuffing and key value changing) into the Rezilla 1.1 code and sent that to Bernard for putting in the next update (depending on how soon that comes, I may or may not do a Custom release of that code), and I've heard from Dr. Ralph about the NovaTools source code.

Couple more things. Probably mentioned this before but in case not, scroll wheel support would be real nice :). And the weapon template could use one of those special popup fields for ammo type (RSID, is it?).

One little update: I've had the opportunity to sit on a 10.3 computer to investigate the issue with RLEPlugin, and it turns out that a flag that was introduced with Intel Macs to specify a big-endian image to Quartz, causes problems for 10.3 (and, supposedly, below) Quartz which refuses to create the CGImage with this flag it doesn't know about. Sigh. Since Edwards has since upgraded to 10.4, I won't release an updated version just now, instead I'll incorporate other suggested features and make it more acceptable for a release (right now, this is a beta) before releaing an actual 1.0.0.