What are they?

This may sound like a stupid question to some of you pro-plug-in-developers, but for the life of me, I can't seem to figure out what they do! Are they more complex mask files for differing levels of transparency? Anyway, they always look kinda wire frame-y... This confuses me.
So what do they do?
How do I make them?
And do is they anyway of anti-aliasing ship graphics?

Thank you all in advance.
Pete.

They're actually very boring and insignificant. They're the 8-bit versions of the RLEs used only by Mac Nova when the screen is set to 8-bit. Don't bother making any.

@tracco, on Feb 11 2007, 12:28 AM, said in RLE8s...:

Anyway, they always look kinda wire frame-y...

Are you looking at them in EVNEW? I believe it doesn’t display them properly; correctly decoded, they should look about the same as the rlëDs, except in only 256 colours rather than 65,536.

@tracco, on Feb 11 2007, 12:28 AM, said in RLE8s...:

And do is they anyway of anti-aliasing ship graphics?

The mask is always black and white, so you always have to have rough edges. EV Nova doesn’t do 8-bit masking.

@david-arthur, on Feb 11 2007, 09:50 AM, said in RLE8s...:

The mask is always black and white, so you always have to have rough edges. EV Nova doesn’t do 8-bit masking.

Though it sure would be sweet if it did, eh?

(Shameless plug)SketchFighter 4000 Alpha does have full alpha channel sprites... Design maps and stuff for it... you know you want to...(/Shameless plug)

Though unfortunately, the engine is less flexible in ways of plug-ins than EVs...

And yes, rle8 are just 8-bit (256 color) versions of the animated sprites, only use by Macs when in 256-color mode, and I doubt many people are playing Nova in this setup nowadays, and pretty sure none has to do so.