conversion to rez screws'em up

I'm a long time Mac classic user who has finally gotten around to downloading and installing EV Nova on my PC. I've authored a few small plugins for my own use. Nothing worth uploading... just little ditties to find out a bit more about how the game works. Nothing fancy at all. Anyway...

I used Mission Computer 9 3.3.3 to convert a few of these plugs to rez format for use on my PC. Worked fine... very fast. Great utility. Anyway... the plugs work great with one exception. Some of the description files seem to be messed up. And the problem seems to be where I used things like the degree symbol in a description. For example... one of my descriptions mentions a turreted weapon as being on a 360° mount. When this plug was ported to rez everything up to the degree mark is fine but the text after the degree mark is from another description. And that description seems to be random. In one outfitter it was from the spob description and in another outfitter it was from another outfit. Of course the fix is to not use symbols and I have corrected my plug to do that. However, I was wondering if the problem might be in the way WinNova handles symbols or something else. Um, a bug or a feature?

Thanks,

z

I'd categorize as "neither." While I have seen this problem occur in Arpia II (which has since been fixed) it appears that the only solution is to not use symbols, as you suggested. Unless you're edging up on that 8096 character limit I found, why not just write "360 degrees" instead, and save yourself a whole boatload of trouble?

Does the same problem occur
a) if you use the convertor included with the Windows version of EV Nova?
b) if you use the stand-alone convertor available from davidarthur.evula.net?

Since you're using Mac OS 9, you won't be able to test the MissionComputer 4.0 beta available from this board, but if it does prove to be a bug in the convertor, I can try to trace and fix it.

I can't see it as anything other than a WinNova parsing bug, (since resource data is copied straight across without regarding what kind of data there is) ... Now where did I put that report on what characters were compatible...
Ah, here.
Character A1 should be compatible. It is probably instead symbol FB, which is some kind of ring (I hope that url works, if not, look at the MacRoman Charset.)

@david-arthur, on Sep 26 2008, 09:24 AM, said in desc problem:

Does the same problem occur
a- if you use the convertor included with the Windows version of EV Nova?
b- if you use the stand-alone convertor available from davidarthur.evula.net?

Since you're using Mac OS 9, you won't be able to test the MissionComputer 4.0 beta available from this board, but if it does prove to be a bug in the convertor, I can try to trace and fix it.

David,

The answer to both of your questions is I don't know. However, I do plan to give them both a try because it appears that the problem is a bit more wide spread than I first thought. Some accent marks that I used in a couple of spob and syst names also seem to be causing a problem. Unfortunately I won't have time to do anything with this before Saturday night at the earliest.

I appreciate you taking the time to look into this. I know that the OS 9 version of Mission Computer is not a high priority for you and I understand completely. Unfortunately, for the time being anyway, it's what I'm using.... along with ResEdit and Nova Tools. I haven't even tried any editors on the PC side.

z

@nonconventionally-creative, on Sep 26 2008, 07:35 PM, said in desc problem:

I can't see it as anything other than a WinNova parsing bug, (since resource data is copied straight across without regarding what kind of data there is) ... Now where did I put that report on what characters were compatible...
Ah, here.
Character A1 should be compatible. It is probably instead symbol FB, which is some kind of ring (I hope that url works, if not, look at the MacRoman Charset.)

Interesting thread. My first thought was that this might be some kind of WinNova problem rather than a problem with Mission Computer 9. The character table in the thread you linked to seems to verify this although I can't be sure. I know that the degree symbol ° and the circumflex symbol ^ seem to be causing me some problems. There may be a few others. I'll have to check my plug to be sure. Of course, as JacaByte said, I should probably just dump'em and move on. Besides, how many people care that Elton John's Honky Château uses a circumflex over the first small a. :rolleyes:

z

Update:

I downloaded the stand alone converter using my OS 9 mac and used it to convert my plugs to rez format. A short operational note if I may... it would be nice if dragging and dropping resulted in the program putting up the dialog box that asked which way you want to convert. As it is, the program will merrily attempt to convert a Mac plug in back to Mac which results in an error. In any case, launching the program by itself will allow you to decide which way you want to convert.

The converted files did not work correctly on my PC. I have no idea what went wrong but I tried twice and on each occasion WinNova ended up crashing. Both times the plugs would load and appear to run but would quickly go belly up. I never even got a chance to check outfitter descriptions for the symbol problem.

After figuring out how I needed to compress plugs in order to have them decompress correctly so that the Windows plug in converter could use the resultant files, I was able to try that option. The plugs worked fine but still exhibited the same problem with symbols that I reported earlier. However, this seemed to be limited to the degree symbol. The circumflex symbol ... and others seemed to work fine.

On a lark, I decided to try Mission Computer 9 again. The resultant rez files worked fine... as they did before with the same problem with the degree symbol. This time the circumflex symbol worked. I have not played the game in any great detail since doing these tests. I ended up spending more time on this than I expected to.

On the Mac when I'm testing various configurations of EVN I usually just make a duplicate of the EV Nova folder, apply whatever changes I want to make... say, for example, swapping out standard EV files for EV Classic files.... and then run EVN from there when I want to test or play that particular version. Is this possible with WinNova? It sure would make testing stuff a lot easier.

z

Yes, there is no problem with copying the whole folder for use with another set of plugins. Note that it's a good idea to remove any plugins and pilots before copying the folder.
Did you check to make sure it is really the degree symbol and not that ring thing? I suppose it mightn't be convenient to check. If you're feeling adventurous the latest CVS code for RezEditor is pretty stable, though lacking things like a graphical file opener except the one that sets the UserSetting for which files to open. It includes a basic hexadecimal editor. I haven't committed the dump to / restore from file pseudoeditors yet, which would allow an external app like a better Hex Editor to view it.
I really should get around to adding those final touches and calling it a beta instead of just talking about it.

@nonconventionally-creative, on Sep 27 2008, 10:47 PM, said in desc problem:

Yes, there is no problem with copying the whole folder for use with another set of plugins. Note that it's a good idea to remove any plugins and pilots before copying the folder.

Thanks, that will make things a lot easier.

Quote

Did you check to make sure it is really the degree symbol and not that ring thing? I suppose it mightn't be convenient to check. If you're feeling adventurous the latest CVS code for RezEditor is pretty stable, though lacking things like a graphical file opener except the one that sets the UserSetting for which files to open. It includes a basic hexadecimal editor. I haven't committed the dump to / restore from file pseudoeditors yet, which would allow an external app like a better Hex Editor to view it.
I really should get around to adding those final touches and calling it a beta instead of just talking about it.

To be quite honest, I don't know for sure that the character is indeed the degree symbol. I used the KeyCaps control panel in Mac OS 9 (which doesn't even tell you what different characters represent) to choose the character and I haven't tried to open the plug in a Windows editor to check. Maybe I should give one of them a try. Any suggestions? :rolleyes:

By the way, I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. I've been busy the past few days.

z

RezEditor should be fully functional within a few days, if I have time. 4 AP classes this year and SAT II on Saturday. Interestingly, whenever I have the least time, I tend to get the most done, since normally I might just go do something else because at times programming is not fun, but in comparison to the kind of stuff I get assigned in EngLit, it suddenly becomes much more pleasing. (Bad Internal Translation) At least Chem is getting interesting. And in Calc we've finally finished review of last year and are starting on the second principle, although generally speaking math is always fun.
About what was this topic again? Maybe I should actually work on RezEditor instead of rambling on.