Hello, everyone!

I've posted today the first public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0 'Crusoe' for your examination and testing. This is the first version of MissionComputer to be a universal binary for Intel- and PowerPC-based Macintoshes; it's also significantly more stable in handling files and various other operations, and adds a shďp editor and numerous smaller features.

This is still a pre-release version of MissionComputer, so it is incomplete, and you should be sure to keep backups when using it. In particular, when editing a system, you should be careful not to separately edit any of the spöbs included in it, or your changes may be overwritten; the help content is also largely incomplete.

Please report any bugs or usability issues you find so that I can fix them for the release version. I haven't been able to test this extensively on Intel-based computers, so though I believe I've dealt with all the potential problems that could occur because of their little-endian number system, I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who meets with trouble (or success) running it on current Macintoshes.

MissionComputer 4.0.0a1 is an 11.4 MB (universal binaries are large) disk image available from <davidarthur.evula.net/beta/crusoe/MissionComputer400a1.dmg>. It requires Mac OS X 10.3 or greater.

Ooh, I'll definitely be testing this out

Okay, first freeze: I opened Nova Data 1 and opened a random ship (145). I clicked on the edit availability button which dropped down the dialog and I was surprised to see I huge empty area at the bottom with a scroll bar. I dragged the scroll bar up and down a bit and shortly it just froze.

What's the word on Windows availability? Is it just too hard to do?

I love the new ship editor. There is now no reason for me to use resedit.
Can you make something similar for weapons?

It seems to be slower than the last one.
It crashed when I tried to use the new system-linking tool.

@guy, on Jun 9 2007, 05:17 PM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

I clicked on the edit availability button which dropped down the dialog and I was surprised to see I huge empty area at the bottom with a scroll bar. I dragged the scroll bar up and down a bit and shortly it just froze.

The area at the bottom is where the bible excerpt should be — was the rest of the window there? What system version are you using?
Does this happen all the time, or was it just once?

@jacabyte, on Jun 9 2007, 05:20 PM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

What's the word on Windows availability? Is it just too hard to do?

I am gradually building the technologies on which it would depend, so it’s still possible.

@lnsu, on Jun 9 2007, 06:05 PM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

Can you make something similar for weapons?

I intend to try.

@lnsu, on Jun 9 2007, 06:05 PM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

It seems to be slower than the last one.

Slower at what tasks?

@lnsu, on Jun 9 2007, 06:05 PM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

It crashed when I tried to use the new system-linking tool.

At what stage did it crash — switching to the tool, selecting a system, or creating the link?

It takes longer to open and close the resources themselves. Its faster to open the file as a whole, but it takes a bit longer to open a specific resource to edit it.

It crashed after I tried to create a link. But it works now. I think the problem has something to do with memory handling. As I open and close files and resources, MC gets laggier. But it seems fine now. Its one of those freak things that I can't explain.

This post has been edited by LNSU : 09 June 2007 - 05:54 PM

Hi David,

Whats the best way to give you data back, have you got a report format you would prefer as i'm going to download this when i get home on my old Imac 500Mhz OSX 10.3.9 system.

If there is a particular set of data you'd like, or format could you post an example.

The rest of the window is fine. It did seem to take a moment to open though. Also, the Find Resource menu didn't seem to do anything, it showed outf and syst but nothing happened when I selected either.

(edit) It happens with any NCB editor.

BTW, I notice the shan editor is 'rdl2'. What's new?

This post has been edited by Guy : 22 June 2007 - 05:52 PM

Bad cicn:

(edit) Ooh, I just had a crash when I closed a ship. Can't provide any more info, sorry.

(edit2) A ship resource gets marked dirty if I click in a weapon field to edit it and then click somewhere else without actually changing the field. Also, you can't 'revert' once you've closed the resource?

This post has been edited by Guy : 28 March 2008 - 08:27 PM

I like the new editors, but it still lacks the one thing I need it to have for it to replace Nova Tools. The shan editor. The Nova Tools one is just way better.

@lnsu, on Jun 9 2007, 05:47 PM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

It takes longer to open and close the resources themselves. Its faster to open the file as a whole, but it takes a bit longer to open a specific resource to edit it.

Yeah, and it seems to be pretty slow at simply switching between open windows as well. Graying out the one you're switching from and un-greying-out the one you are switching to takes up to a second or so on my computer.

Charset might be the problem.

Guy, are you using an Intel Mac?

The main difference between .rdl and .rdl2 is that .rdl2 is saved as Unicode rather than MacRoman; there are also a few very minor syntax differences.

Guy said:

A ship resource gets marked dirty if I click in a weapon field to edit it and then click somewhere else without actually changing the field.

I’ll take a look at this and see if I can find a way of making it cross-check that isn’t excessively complicated.

Guy said:

Also, you can't 'revert' once you've closed the resource?

Correct — short of rewriting the entire thing in Cocoa there’s no practical way I could provide this.

EVWeb said:

The shan editor. The Nova Tools one is just way better.

Given that NovaTools has a shän editor, that’s not surprising.

Nil'kimas said:

Graying out the one you're switching from and un-greying-out the one you are switching to takes up to a second or so on my computer.

Because of the nature of EV resources, MissionComputer’s windows have many more controls than most; would it be better if they didn’t grey out?

@david-arthur, on Jun 10 2007, 11:04 AM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

Because of the nature of EV resources, MissionComputer’s windows have many more controls than most; would it be better if they didn’t grey out?

Maybe it would be better if the title bar, close button, drop-down menus, radio buttons, etc. grayed out, but not all of the text in the window. That way, you could still see that a window is in the background, but it wouldn't have to take time greying out as much stuff.

I found more invalid characters: In the përs editor, the "Credits" option has one. Also, in the outf editor, "Apply Require to" has two of them.

EDIT: There's one in the gövt editor too, in the "Pers ships don't use escape pods" option.

EDIT: In the mďsn editor, the "Ship behavior" menu under the Special Ships section has a blank option. I believe it should say "Attack enemy spöbs".

This post has been edited by Nil'kimas : 10 June 2007 - 12:48 PM

Cool, so far at least I can open up multiple windows, also I noticed in the preference you can now choose which plug-in to load up its data from, not just the ones from all the trilogy. I've yet to check out the syst editor so far though.

(UPDATE)

So far the star map is working, I now see the one-way links, cool. Anyways, is it possible to add an option to see government borders? And Finally, will it be possible to add a search feature in the syst editor, you know to find which system you're looking for, I also see the potential of this search feature to be used elsewhere too.

This post has been edited by Coraxus : 10 June 2007 - 01:03 PM

@nil-kimas, on Jun 10 2007, 01:23 PM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

I found more invalid characters:

Thanks.

@coraxus, on Jun 10 2007, 01:53 PM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

Anyways, is it possible to add an option to see government borders?

I’ve considered it — I’m not sure whether it will be possible to add one without slowing down the rendering unacceptably (even the game itself has trouble with this).

@coraxus, on Jun 10 2007, 01:53 PM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

And Finally, will it be possible to add a search feature in the syst editor, you know to find which system you're looking for, I also see the potential of this search feature to be used elsewhere too.

I’m not sure what you’re asking for — there’s already a search feature for the star map editor, and it doesn’t really seem necessary in the s˙st editor, since a system can only contain 16 planets at most.

When you open and close a resource, it scrolls the resource list so that the resource you closed is at the bottom of the window. I seem to remember this being something you said you were planning to fix in MC 4, but it still does it.

Oh, I must have missed the search feature for the star map somewhere in there. At least the scrolling works.

@david-arthur, on Jun 11 2007, 04:04 AM, said in First public alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

Guy, are you using an Intel Mac?

Yup. And even on a fast intel I notice the delay when switching between windows. Are you sure it's the fault of having to grey everything out? Surely that wouldn't take a noticeable amount of time.

This post has been edited by Guy : 11 June 2007 - 03:30 AM

Also on an Intel Mac(book), so far the only things I've had problems with are cicns (see Guy's post), the same problem also affects rleds, rle8s, and PICTS that get imported, it looks like.

Another thing I've been having trouble with is that I have to adjust the resolution of my computer to work with some types of files. Most notably when I'm working with the ship editor, and the system editor. Those two pictures are at a 1152 x 720 resolution, and if I change it to 1280 x 800, they fit fine (maybe a scroll bar or re-adjust option could be put in?). The system editor is at about the biggest it can go (as far as placing spobs in it, they're at 9000,9000 and comparable), and it is still working well, although I have to close and re-open the system editor if I want to be able to see the spobs after I move them (for example, typing in the value of 9000, -9000 results in the spob disappearing from the screen, because the screen only opens to the maximum width/height it needs to when you first open it. Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing).

This post has been edited by Razzle Storm : 11 June 2007 - 03:11 AM