Here's a screenshot of the new star map editor in MissionComputer 4 (note the zoom control and the new directional icon that marks one-way links):

(click to enlarge)

@guy, on Mar 10 2007, 05:00 PM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

It'd be nice for seeing a large overview of your system (complete with spob graphics) without having to study that tiny mini-map. The game not being able to do it is irrelevant.

All right, I’ll keep it in mind when I’m reworking the system editor.

@guy, on Mar 10 2007, 05:00 PM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

Ah. So was this what allowed you to add resource fork support back again in 3.3.3?

No, 3.3.3 is the last version of MissionComputer compiled in REALbasic 3.5.2. It can use ResourceFork thanks to some new safeguards, but it’s still imperfect; that’s why I left the option to use ResBundle instead. ResourceFork works flawlessly in Crusoe, which is compiled in REALbasic 2007, though it’s possible I’ll replace it with something new for other reasons.

Yay! I got Stuffit 5.1.3 to unstuff MC 3.3.2! After noticing that it's about 5 times slower than EVNEW I think I'll download MC 3.3.3 and see if things are sped up.

Oh and one question, what are the DTIL and DLOG resources for? I can't seem to figure them out.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 10 March 2007 - 06:03 PM

Yay, you added directional arrows for one-way hyperlinks.

This post has been edited by Coraxus : 10 March 2007 - 06:11 PM

@david-arthur, on Mar 11 2007, 11:29 AM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

Here's a screenshot of the new star map editor in MissionComputer 4 (note the zoom control and the new directional icon that marks one-way links):

(click to enlarge)
All right, I’ll keep it in mind when I’m reworking the system editor.
No, 3.3.3 is the last version of MissionComputer compiled in REALbasic 3.5.2. It can use ResourceFork thanks to some new safeguards, but it’s still imperfect; that’s why I left the option to use ResBundle instead. ResourceFork works flawlessly in Crusoe, which is compiled in REALbasic 2007, though it’s possible I’ll replace it with something new for other reasons.

This is all looking pretty sweet. What's the ETA on a beta?

@jacabyte, on Mar 11 2007, 12:02 PM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

Yay! I got Stuffit 5.1.3 to unstuff MC 3.3.2! After noticing that it's about 5 times slower than EVNEW I think I'll download MC 3.3.3 and see if things are sped up.

Oh and one question, what are the DTIL and DLOG resources for? I can't seem to figure them out.

Yup, be sure to switch to resource fork mode in 3.3.3. The ResBundle system is what's causing the long load/save times.
The DITL and DLOG resources control Nova's windows (dialogs). DLOG keeps track of the size of the window and DITL keeps track of the layout.

Ahhh. Got it. That's what they do.

I wish the author of EVNEW hadn't stopped with the program before he made it handle DLOG and DITL resources. The most we can change in dialogs with EVNEW is appearance of them. We can't change layout or anything like that. Most irritating.

That and it doesn't like some sounds

Some oddball sounds for some reason. I still think I ought to send you that 1 second silence wav I made with Adobe Audition for you to import into those resources. I'd bet money they wouldn't crash EVNEW, well, if I had any money to bet...

I suggested DITL/DLOG editors to Aprosenf once. His response?

"orca, that's easier said than done."

DA: As far as RB'07 goes, I was primarily referring to the interface. I'm not a big fan, but it is nice to be able to have more than one project open. Also, you may or may not know this, but 2007 is really just 2005, eight or nine upgrades later.

I really don't like how REAL is handling the updates; the idea of a 90-day period is nice, but having to pay for them all (essentially individually) and constantly changing the version number to reflect the year is annoying. Plus they're developing it with itself now. Blegh.

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 10 March 2007 - 09:51 PM

@captjosh, on Mar 11 2007, 02:53 PM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

Some oddball sounds for some reason. I still think I ought to send you that 1 second silence wav I made with Adobe Audition for you to import into those resources. I'd bet money they wouldn't crash EVNEW, well, if I had any money to bet...

Alright, just for you Josh I've tracked down exactly what EVNEW wants to see ;). New patch is uploaded once again, see the Bizzare topic for details.

'JacaByte' said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

Oh and one question, what are the DTIL and DLOG resources for? I can't seem to figure them out.

In traditional Mac OS programming, DLOG (dialogue) resources are dialogue boxes, and DITL (dialogue item list) resources supply the controls contained within. There are also ALRT (alert) resources, which are alert boxes, but MissionComputer doesn’t currently support them (you can edit the contents of their DITLs, though), and then there are dctbs and actbs (dialogue colour table and alert colour table), which allow you to change the colours of the boxes, but they aren’t very common, nor are they used in EV Nova.

'Coraxus' said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

Yay, you added directional arrows for one-way hyperlinks.

Yes, it’s the first time I’ve ever found a practical use for my Grade 13 trigonometry.

@guy, on Mar 10 2007, 06:22 PM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

This is all looking pretty sweet. What's the ETA on a beta?

Some time yet — Crusoe isn’t really at the stage where it’s reliably useable; some builds work, but others are lacking features or have other problems. I’m nearly finished D3 (which is focused around the new editor framework), though, so I’m now planning what I’ll work on for D4.

@orcaloverbri9, on Mar 10 2007, 09:50 PM, said:

"orca, that's easier said than done."

Most things are, except perhaps Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.

To be fair, DITL and DLOG resources don’t follow a paradigm that would be familiar to Windows developers, and since they’re standard resources, they aren’t documented in the Nova Bible ; it’s not like Aprosenf would have had a working knowledge of them the way any Macintosh developer would.

@orcaloverbri9, on Mar 10 2007, 09:50 PM, said:

Plus they're developing it with itself now. Blegh.

I understand the objections to this (and when I first looked at REALbasic 2005, I found it nearly unusable), but I think it was in fact a quite clever and forward-thinking decision to start developing the REALbasic IDE in REALbasic, for this reason: it’s forced them to improve REALbasic to the point where you can use it do develop highly-complex applications like REALbasic.

@david-arthur, on Mar 12 2007, 03:35 AM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

To be fair, DITL and DLOG resources don’t follow a paradigm that would be familiar to Windows developers, and since they’re standard resources, they aren’t documented in the Nova Bible ; it’s not like Aprosenf would have had a working knowledge of them the way any Macintosh developer would.

This is true, but its current behaviour of deleting DLOG resources is pretty bad. Surely it wouldn't have been too hard to just list the DITLs and DLOGs so you can at least know they are there and copy/paste/delete them if you wish.

@david-arthur, on Mar 10 2007, 11:05 AM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

I’m now using REALbasic 2007

Wait, does this mean MC 4 will be... Universal?

@guy, on Mar 19 2007, 07:47 PM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

Wait, does this mean MC 4 will be... Universal?

Yes; getting it properly tested on Intel Macs might be a little bit tricky, but I've already addressed all the endian issues that I could see, so I don't anticipate any significant problems beyond the file size.

Based on the download reports for 3.3.3, and my recent poll, I've reached the following conclusions:

I'll be designing MissionComputer 4 for Mac OS 10.3 and above. 9.1 and 9.2 will be supported only if the work I do for other platforms fixes the problems that are currently occurring; this is a distinct possibility, since at the moment they're demonstrating problems very similar to ones that are occurring on Windows. Neither 10.0 through 10.2 nor 9.0 and below will be supported.

The Windows version of MissionComputer, which is still significantly farther from being useable, will be designed for Windows XP, but will probably be able to run on earlier versions, perhaps as far back as Windows 98 and NT 4.

Bug report for the RLE maker: For some reason it omitted one column of pixels down the right with this encoding...

@guy, on Apr 5 2007, 09:32 PM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

Bug report for the RLE maker: For some reason it omitted one column of pixels down the right with this encoding...

Does this happen to you for all sprites, or is it specific to this one? Can I see the original PICTs?

What programme is showing it in that screenshot?

Well that's the only sprite that extends to the edges of the frame that I've yet tried in RLE Maker. EnRLE II (or whatever you want to call it) worked fine on that one. The screenshot is from Rezilla.

@guy, on Apr 6 2007, 05:48 PM, said in [ANN] MissionComputer 3.3.3 Now Released:

Well that's the only sprite that extends to the edges of the frame that I've yet tried in RLE Maker. EnRLE II (or whatever you want to call it) worked fine on that one. The screenshot is from Rezilla.

Fixed, thanks.

More accurately, the screenshot is from Rezilla 1.1 (probably custom 1), using the newest RLEPlugin release at the time of this writing. Or is it a screenshot from RLEPlugin 1.0.0, hosted by Rezilla? Guess that depends on your point of view.

(btw, is "programme" a Canadianism?)