That should work, but remember to set the turning speed to 0. The only problem is it'll launch at the speed at the speed of your ship, as opposed to a freefall bomb, which goes at 70%.

Alright, been some good time since I had a paragraph full of decent questions. Commence firing:

I) How do I make an explosion?? I've asked this before but with no good answers. Weapons seem to draw explosions from spin resources just like weapon graphics... But what then are booms for?? All my explosions progress at the same damn speed and it drives me crazy to them on screen for like 2 seconds... -_- I assume it has at least something to do with booms but I have no idea. Give me the rundown on every step of explosion making and their interface with weapons to see what I missed (even if it seems obvious) s'il vous plait.

II) I have an explosion sprite I suddenly decided I want to start at the end and move toward the beginning, do I recut the sprite laboriously or is there a way I can get nova to read it from end to beginning?

III) In another help thread someone mentioned that a picture can be turned into a sprite. On a windows machine is there a program for this??

IV) Is there a way to get two ships to appear together every time they appear, but be enemies of eachother and attack eachother after entering?

V) Anyone know of any resource I could optain sprites for pirate ships (galleys, sails and all)?

VI) Can I design a weapon that gives an enemy ship an outfit on impact?

VII) Can an outfit activate a string that changes the players ship while docked so that if I had two versions of a ship such as a starbridge and bought a certain upgrade, it would turn into a mod starbridge?

VIII) Is there a string I can design that tells nova to use ___ number sound effect when an item is used (such as cloak for example, is there a string to tell it to use __ number sound? I'd like to make a new string that gives the afterburner a sound.

IX) Can a weapon trigger an event? Ex: I have a burst of 13 rearfiring projectiles with no graphic launch when I use a secondary weapon, can they submunition projectiles that fire foward then, or do they themselves have to be firing foward? If not, it there a way to get the submunition or triggered event to spawn behind my ship and launch foward?

X) Finally, I'd like to make beam/missile "mines". I would guess the best way to do this is to make the "mines" be carried ships with a speed of zero and a single weapon, which would detonate after a certain lifespan or something. Maybe even just have them be carried ships period and have to pick them up to rearm them when they run out. But then how would hyperspace work if you jump out? Can they still jump in? That'd be awkward. Have a cloud of mines drop in behind you and have them still be immobile from wherever you jumped in from. "They could afford hyperdrive units for those things, but not subspace engines!?"

I. Booms point to spins; I'm too tired to explain now
III. Unclear question
VI. No
VII. Yes. OnPurchase
VIII. I don't think so
X. I think there's something about escorts with 0 fuel not jumping.

I told myself no more than 10 questions at a time so I'll have this be VII part 2 since its related to onpurchase/sell, is there a way I can get one outfit to sell ALL of the players current ____ item when you buy it?

@match, on Jun 21 2008, 09:16 PM, said in I need some help please:

Alright, been some good time since I had a paragraph full of decent questions. Commence firing:

I) How do I make an explosion?? I've asked this before but with no good answers. Weapons seem to draw explosions from spin resources just like weapon graphics... But what then are booms for?? All my explosions progress at the same damn speed and it drives me crazy to them on screen for like 2 seconds... -_- I assume it has at least something to do with booms but I have no idea. Give me the rundown on every step of explosion making and their interface with weapons to see what I missed (even if it seems obvious) s'il vous plait.

II) I have an explosion sprite I suddenly decided I want to start at the end and move toward the beginning, do I recut the sprite laboriously or is there a way I can get nova to read it from end to beginning?

III) In another help thread someone mentioned that a picture can be turned into a sprite. On a windows machine is there a program for this??

IV) Is there a way to get two ships to appear together every time they appear, but be enemies of eachother and attack eachother after entering?

V) Anyone know of any resource I could optain sprites for pirate ships (galleys, sails and all)?

VI) Can I design a weapon that gives an enemy ship an outfit on impact?

VII) Can an outfit activate a string that changes the players ship while docked so that if I had two versions of a ship such as a starbridge and bought a certain upgrade, it would turn into a mod starbridge?

VIII) Is there a string I can design that tells nova to use ___ number sound effect when an item is used (such as cloak for example, is there a string to tell it to use __ number sound? I'd like to make a new string that gives the afterburner a sound.

IX) Can a weapon trigger an event? Ex: I have a burst of 13 rearfiring projectiles with no graphic launch when I use a secondary weapon, can they submunition projectiles that fire foward then, or do they themselves have to be firing foward? If not, it there a way to get the submunition or triggered event to spawn behind my ship and launch foward?

X) Finally, I'd like to make beam/missile "mines". I would guess the best way to do this is to make the "mines" be carried ships with a speed of zero and a single weapon, which would detonate after a certain lifespan or something. Maybe even just have them be carried ships period and have to pick them up to rearm them when they run out. But then how would hyperspace work if you jump out? Can they still jump in? That'd be awkward. Have a cloud of mines drop in behind you and have them still be immobile from wherever you jumped in from. "They could afford hyperdrive units for those things, but not subspace engines!?"

Wow, lots of questions.
I. Okay, step by step. 1. Start by making a spîn of the explosion. 2. Make a bööm. Sadly, there isn't any room for extra explosions, so you'll have to find one that you're okay with deleting. In the bööm, there's a part that's labeled "sprite". This is were you put the ID of the spďn. Put in the sound, and the speed (100 means it'll use one frame of the spďn per second. 50, it'll take half a frame (basically, it'll skip every second one) 200, it'll take two frames). Now you go to your weapon. In the explosion, put the ID of the bööm-128. There you go.
II. If you don't care if it's rotated, yes! Put the original (like the .jpg or something) into Photoshop, and tell it to rotate it 180 degrees. Put it back into the plugin. Same height and width. Each of the frames is upside down, but it shouldn't matter that much if it's a just a general explosion.
III. Sorry, not that I know of. SpinApp is only for Mac (convert!), as far as I know.
VI. No, definitely not. Sorry.
VII. Yep. Several ways to do it, all by using the On Purchase field. Cxxx (xxx is the ID of the ship you're switching to) will let you keep all of your outfits, and you won't get any of the new ships. Exxx gives you all the new outfits, and lets you keep the old ones. Lastly, Hxxx gets rid of all your old outfits, but gives you the new ones.
VIII. I don't think so. That's not the sort of thing strings do. Strings are messages that can be displayed ingame. Like all of the "Landing accepted" things. My suggestion would be to change the Afterburner to a secondary weapon, and give it a very high negative recoil. It'll send the ship forward, and you can then assign sounds as you see fit. You'll have to make one animation that fits all of the ships, though.
IX. No, you can't. You can only activate bits at elapsing of gamedays, using cröns, or things like on purchase, or on complete. I don't understand the second part of your question.
X. I think it would be possible to do this with submunitions, but I don't fully understand them myself. I'll let someone else figure this out.

@match, on Jun 21 2008, 09:50 PM, said in I need some help please:

I told myself no more than 10 questions at a time so I'll have this be VII part 2 since its related to onpurchase/sell, is there a way I can get one outfit to sell ALL of the players current ____ item when you buy it?

Umm, no. I don't think so. What I'd do is, in the on purchase section, put in dxxx<space>. Copy, paste. Paste*(the max number of the item you can have.)

@match, on Jun 22 2008, 12:16 AM, said in I need some help please:

Alright, been some good time since I had a paragraph full of decent questions. Commence firing:

I) How do I make an explosion?? I've asked this before but with no good answers. Weapons seem to draw explosions from spin resources just like weapon graphics... But what then are booms for?? All my explosions progress at the same damn speed and it drives me crazy to them on screen for like 2 seconds... -_- I assume it has at least something to do with booms but I have no idea. Give me the rundown on every step of explosion making and their interface with weapons to see what I missed (even if it seems obvious) s'il vous plait.

0101181920 said this well.

Quote

II) I have an explosion sprite I suddenly decided I want to start at the end and move toward the beginning, do I recut the sprite laboriously or is there a way I can get nova to read it from end to beginning?

See above

Quote

III) In another help thread someone mentioned that a picture can be turned into a sprite. On a windows machine is there a program for this??

I believe EVweb has made a Java app that will do this on both mac and windows, I forget the name of it though.

Quote

IV) Is there a way to get two ships to appear together every time they appear, but be enemies of eachother and attack eachother after entering?

Using the përs resource it is possible to make it very likely for them to appear together every time.

Quote

V) Anyone know of any resource I could optain sprites for pirate ships (galleys, sails and all)?

No idea. I'm not a graphics guy.

Quote

VI) Can I design a weapon that gives an enemy ship an outfit on impact?

No, and most oütfits don't do anything on AI ships. They only come into effect when you capture the ship. Check the bible for a listing of which ones have effects and which ones don't.

Quote

VII) Can an outfit activate a string that changes the players ship while docked so that if I had two versions of a ship such as a starbridge and bought a certain upgrade, it would turn into a mod starbridge?

Yes, as 0101181920 described.

Quote

VIII) Is there a string I can design that tells nova to use ___ number sound effect when an item is used (such as cloak for example, is there a string to tell it to use __ number sound? I'd like to make a new string that gives the afterburner a sound.

No, but you can make weapons have sounds when they fire.

Quote

IX) Can a weapon trigger an event? Ex: I have a burst of 13 rearfiring projectiles with no graphic launch when I use a secondary weapon, can they submunition projectiles that fire foward then, or do they themselves have to be firing foward? If not, it there a way to get the submunition or triggered event to spawn behind my ship and launch foward?

Using SubTheta and making it a guided projectile can make it fire forward. If it needs to be a "dumb" projectile, give it a guidedturn of 0.

Quote

X) Finally, I'd like to make beam/missile "mines". I would guess the best way to do this is to make the "mines" be carried ships with a speed of zero and a single weapon, which would detonate after a certain lifespan or something. Maybe even just have them be carried ships period and have to pick them up to rearm them when they run out. But then how would hyperspace work if you jump out? Can they still jump in? That'd be awkward. Have a cloud of mines drop in behind you and have them still be immobile from wherever you jumped in from. "They could afford hyperdrive units for those things, but not subspace engines!?"

No, they would have to be carried fighters. Each fighter would have the weapon. The weapon would need a decently long burstcount (however many shots you want the "mine" to fire, make that the burstCount). Then you would check the flag "use ammo at end of burst".
IIRC, putting -999 in the ammo field will make the ship self-destruct when it tries to "eat" the ammo. The fighters would need to be maneuverable to be able to get close to the enemy (or do you want them to just sit there?)

Thank you gentlemen, very very helpful.

Uh, new question: I don't know anything about how mission resources work but is it possible to remove the operator (whatever it may be) to make major storyline missions still offered even after you have completed one? I thought I saw a plugin somewhere that made all major storylines playable under one pilot but I can't seem to find it anymore.

Yes, it is possible. On entering a storyline, the mission sets a bit. All of the first missions in the stories have !(b511 | b515) (it can't have bit 511 or 515 set) in the box that says it is required to be offered. So what you want to do is on the last mission of each story, put in !b511 !b515 in the on complete field. When you finish the story, it clears the bit, and you can start another.

@0101181920, on Jun 23 2008, 05:06 PM, said in I need some help please:

Yes, it is possible. On entering a storyline, the mission sets a bit. All of the first missions in the stories have !(b511 | b515) (it can't have bit 511 or 515 set) in the box that says it is required to be offered. So what you want to do is on the last mission of each story, put in !b511 !b515 in the on complete field. When you finish the story, it clears the bit, and you can start another.

Except for the points when a storyline depends on a planet that isn't there anymore.

Errr... Is that an ironic way of saying it won't work if I do it this way?

I think that the only planet that gets destroyed is New Ireland (of course, I haven't played through the actual game recently. Been more focused on modding.)

@match, on Jun 23 2008, 11:32 PM, said in I need some help please:

Errr... Is that an ironic way of saying it won't work if I do it this way?

@0101181920, on Jun 23 2008, 11:33 PM, said in I need some help please:

I think that the only planet that gets destroyed is New Ireland (of course, I haven't played through the actual game recently. Been more focused on modding.)

There are several planets that change state, and several systems as well. Actually, a changed system doesn't matter, if it points to the same planet. But sometimes the actual spobs change, usually to change either the graphic or the government.

So, to do a reset, it would probably be easiest to reset all the bits used by the planets, too. Open the systs of these planets and see (there might be more):
Earth
6 Auroran capitals
Brass
Nirvana (presumably safe to leave as-is)
Ar'Za Iusia
Rebel 1/2

Which would involve..? Do I change what the mission requires as far as planets go or planets themselves? Sorry but the control test bit expressions are the one thing in nova modding that absolutely baffles me.

The easiest way would be to create a cron or mission (cron would require less modification) triggered by completing a string (there's some bit set at the end of every string, I think - hence the cron) and put !b511, etc. for all the bits that cause such changes. Of course, that bit might just be the one that makes those four special systems appear.

Okay well I have no idea how to design a cron at all... But even if I did, would I keep the require bits for items? So say there is a spob that has the tech requirements for me to buy a faction specific item there if I had the require bits, would I lose the ability to purchase technologies when the universe resets?

Also, how do I make it so that a stellar turns into another stellar if you purchase a certain unsellable outfit? Or is that possible?

Additionally, is it possible to make an outfit require a certain combat rating??

@match, on Jun 26 2008, 06:59 PM, said in I need some help please:

Also, how do I make it so that a stellar turns into another stellar if you purchase a certain unsellable outfit? Or is that possible?

Whenever a stellar 'turns into' another, what's really happened is that you've hidden the entire system, and shown another one which is almost identical.

So, for the effect you describe, you would create your outfit, and put 'b123' (for example) in its OnPurchase field. You'd then make two copies of the system you want to change, and have them contain two slightly different versions of the same planet. In the version of the system you want to be shown before the player buys the outfit, you would set the Visibility field to '!b123'; in the version you want shown after , you set Visibility to 'b123'.

@match, on Jun 26 2008, 06:59 PM, said in I need some help please:

Additionally, is it possible to make an outfit require a certain combat rating??

Not directly, but you could make it require that a certain bit be set, and then create a silent auto-executing mission that requires the necessary combat rating, and put the same bit into its OnComplete field.

This is a little less about nova and more about files and such in general, ahh...anyone know how to export or convert voxels (either stored in a .mix file or by themselves, extracted) into more regular images such as a .bmp or .png or .gif preferrably? Theres some I have that I could use as some very cool EV nova graphics but alas they are locked up in their ancient gaming file format.

I found one program, Picture It, that will let you open .mix files, and save them as .jpegs or whatever. One problem: it's $295, plus shipping and handeling. I think that's a bit out of your budget. That's apperantly the only official way to open them. I found another "solution" that you need to input your credit card info to view (no, I'm not doing that for you.) Here's the link, in case you want to do it: Convert .mix files You might be able to open it with MS Word. Apperantly the files are created with Microsoft Photodraw. Hope that something in here will be helpful. Result of sixteen minutes of Googling.

New question: I have this homing weapon I'm calling the Parallax Torpedo. In game fiction I am saying that this advanced weapon uses solid state holography and sensor jamming to produce a set number (probably 2) of decoy missiles to appear alongside it in an attempt to fool point defense weapons. How this could be coded I'm very very unsure. Obviously submunitions are the topic of thought when considering, but exactly what these subs should do is not crystal to me. I was wondering, is it possible for a weapon to submunition without blowing itself up? Because then the missile head could sub into two non-damaging copies and still be able to deliver. The other thought would be a sort of launched fighter with very very low health that spawned a pair of fool missiles every certain number of seconds (with the previous expiring simultaneously) and then exploded itself after the lifetime of the "missile" expired. I don't know a better way to do this.

My idea would be a to use two different weapons. How this would work:
I believe that when you set two weapons to secondary fire, and give them the exact same name, they'll appear and be fired under one category. Hence my idea is this: make the Parallax Torpedo and the dummy, and then give them the same name and different inaccuracies so they won't just be directly on top of each other. The dummy should have no damage, and probably have very low health and a slightly faster speed and turning to further the gap between the dummy and the real missile.. Other than that, they should be exactly the same. In the outfit for the weapon, tell it to grant two of the dummy weapon outfits. In the weapon ammunition outfit, tell it to grant two ammunition for the dummy weapon. And get rid of them on sell, of course. There are a couple problems, though. You'll display three times the actual ammunition you have. And of course, odds are that this won't actually work, since it's a patented 0101181920Ž Untested Idea.