About frakin' time, eh?

Fresh out of its 8-round public beta and some 5- or 6-round not-so-public alpha, SpacePort v1.2 is now ready for public consumption.

Overview
SpacePort is a Mac-only application, originally written by former board member SpacePirate, which will take any Escape Velocity or Escape Velocity: Override plug-in or data file and convert it to a plug-in for use with EV Nova. SpacePort is not a simple creator and type code changer. It will actually read each resource and convert the contents as well as it can. Extra measures are taken to preserve as many of the mechanics of the original games as possible to enhance the experience.

Requirements
A Mac with either Mac OS X or CarbonLib.

Please note: This would seem to be a no-brainer, but in order for plug-ins that rely on data from the original games to work properly, you must be using one of Guy's ports. Do not attempt to use a plug-in which relies one of the original games' data with any other scenario, including the official ports, as compatibility cannot be guaranteed with any ports other than Guy's. Total conversions may or may not have the same problem. As a rule of thumb, if it was a plug-in for one of the original scenarios (i.e. did not replace any data files), you should treat it as such.

The default settings are those used by Guy for his ports. If you are using one of his ports and want to ensure that it integrates properly, you should leave these alone.

Problems fixed since the last beta
- Creator/type codes are fixed (HexEdit ftw)
- EV missile turning now takes the speed setting into account

Download SpacePort 1.2

w00t! Cheers, orca :). I'll test it on thursday. HexEdit? :huh:

@guy, on May 27 2008, 02:19 AM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

HexEdit? :huh:

RB doesn't have any kind of functionality for setting the creator and types in MacRoman, so I have to use standard ASCII characters (i.e. letters), then open the program with HexEdit and replace them with the proper codes.

Weird, have you always had to do that? It was fine before b8.

Okay, it's great to get those two items fixed :). There were a couple of other less-important things I mentioned in an email I sent to you about b8 - did you get that?

(edit) The log improvements are nice too. Though I've just noticed a new problem with this release: When converting the window shrinks but it still says "no target" and "click convert to begin" and the progress bar doesn't work!

This post has been edited by Guy : 29 May 2008 - 01:30 AM

@guy, on May 29 2008, 02:15 AM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

Weird, have you always had to do that? It was fine before b8.

Older versions of REALbasic could do this, but it went strange in newer ones; I think it may have been the internal switch to UTF-8 that broke it. Text-encoding issues have been a recurring nuisance for MissionComputer 4 as well.

@guy, on May 29 2008, 02:15 AM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

Okay, it's great to get those two items fixed :). There were a couple of other less-important things I mentioned in an email I sent to you about b8 - did you get that?

I did get the email, and I'm pretty sure I fixed the stuff in it. I know I did some of it.

Quote

When converting the window shrinks but it still says "no target" and "click convert to begin" and the progress bar doesn't work!

?????

How did you start the conversion?

Okay, here are the others. The last two are extremely unimportant so don't feel any obligation to do anything about them.
- Armour regen should be dependent on the Shield value, not the Armour value: (floor((Shield+99)/100)1000SpeedFactor)/Regen
- Govt jamming flags should be ignored for EV plugs
- The random cargo adjustment (for preserve max) isn't coming out quite the same as my own conversion. Where I should get -14 Spaceport gives me -13. Results should always be floored here, so a value of -10 converted using preserve max would give -10*4/3=-13.3~ then floored should give -14.
- This may be more hassle than it's worth but it would be nice if standard rounding was used in all the speed factor adjustments.

I just tried converting via dropping onto app icon, dropping onto window and clicking the Convert button but saw the same thing each time.

This post has been edited by Guy : 23 February 2012 - 08:37 PM

More detailed labelling of the various options would be helpful. Is the Game Speed slider equivalent to the one in Escape Velocity 's preferences, for example, and if so, why does it default to 150%? And surely the text in the about box could be in a larger font and a larger window, so that one doesn't need to scroll in order to read such a short description.

@guy, on May 31 2008, 01:23 AM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

I'm never sure which way rounding works when the numbers are negative

Floor always goes down; ceil up.
So, floor of, say, -13.5 is -14 and ceiling is -13

@guy, on May 31 2008, 04:23 AM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

Okay, here are the others. The last two are extremely unimportant so don't feel any obligation to do anything about them.
- Armour regen should be dependent on the Shield value, not the Armour value: (floor((Shield+99)/100)1000SpeedFactor)/Regen

Yeah, that one I did a long time ago.

Quote

- Govt jamming flags should be ignored for EV plugs

I remember doing this one.

Quote

- The random cargo adjustment (for preserve max) isn't coming out quite the same as my own conversion. Where I should get -14 Spaceport gives me -13. Did you ceil the result? (Or does it need floor? I'm never sure which way rounding works when the numbers are negative)

It's rounded, but it calculated 4/3 before it applied it, so there may have been an issue with rounding halfway through.

Quote

- This may be more hassle than it's worth but it would be nice if standard rounding was used in all the speed factor adjustments.

Done.

Quote

I just tried converting via dropping onto app icon, dropping onto window and clicking the Convert button but saw the same thing each time.

That's weird, man. At least it converts, though. I'll look into it.

@orcaloverbri9, on Jun 1 2008, 09:20 AM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

Yeah, that one I did a long time ago.
I remember doing this one.

Really? I'm still seeing them. Armour regen is using the Armour value in that equation instead of the Shield value. Converting EV Data gives Confed 25% IR jamming.

@orcaloverbri9, on Jun 1 2008, 09:20 AM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

Done.

Admittedly I didn't check this one. Thanks, I'll take your word for it

@david-arthur, on Jun 1 2008, 12:46 AM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

Is the Game Speed slider equivalent to the one in Escape Velocity 's preferences, for example, and if so, why does it default to 150%?

Yes, though it should be accurate. EV/O's speed slider didn't work correctly. It defaults to 150% because that's the speed the ports are at (and the reason for that is they feel too slow at 100%).

This post has been edited by Guy : 31 May 2008 - 08:07 PM

@guy, on May 31 2008, 09:04 PM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

Really? I'm still seeing them. Armour regen is using the Armour value in that equation instead of the Shield value.

???

Quote

Converting EV Data gives Confed 25% IR jamming.

groans

Quote

Admittedly I didn't check this one. Thanks, I'll take your word for it

I meant done now (for 1.2.1).

DA: I'll fix the about box; that one isn't actually of my creation, although it has changed since I got my hands on it. As for the labeling, have you read the tooltips?

@guy, on May 31 2008, 09:04 PM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

It defaults to 150% because that's the speed the ports are at (and the reason for that is they feel too slow at 100%).

I've always wondered whether this might just represent people being familiar with the game being run on 2002 hardware, rather than what it was designed for.

@orcaloverbri9, on May 31 2008, 11:53 PM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

As for the labeling, have you read the tooltips?

'Controls the game speed' doesn't tell me much that I don't already know when I see a slider labelled 'Game speed'.

Similarly, the checkbox for 'Quick Debug' tells me that it makes the process faster, but doesn't explain why anyone might want to turn this off - are the results inferior? Also, the 'Play Sounds' checkbox's help tag says that it 'Turns sounds off ' when, of course, checking it does exactly the reverse.

@david-arthur, on Jun 2 2008, 01:59 AM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

I've always wondered whether this might just represent people being familiar with the game being run on 2002 hardware, rather than what it was designed for.

Yeah that was my argument originally too and I was reluctant to increase the speed. When the ports were at 100% it was about the equivalent of running the original games at 50% on a modern computer, which was a bit on the slow side. Many people commented on this and when I discovered my acceleration values were too high (meaning correcting them would only make things worse) I finally gave in and went for 150%. Have you played the ports much? The speed does seem reasonable to me.

Since my original post never got a reply, and this is about Spaceports, I'll just post it here. Hope you don't mind sir.

-------------------

After reading the entire EVO Q&A with PAC, and hearing about some classic plugs I never got a chance to try, I finally found a working link of 'Reign Of The UE' v1.2. Unfortunately, it didn't have a graceful transition to Nova, as the galaxy system map is really messed up. I've uploaded the plug. Would anyone consider seeing if they could get it to correctly work with Nova and Guy's EVO?

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PW7EPGA0

SpacePort doesn't support EVO 1.0.0/1.0.1 plugs. You'll have to ConText it and go through with a spreadsheet changing entire columns to 0 or -1.

@guy, on Jun 1 2008, 09:12 PM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

SpacePort doesn't support EVO 1.0.0/1.0.1 plugs. You'll have to ConText it and go through with a spreadsheet changing entire columns to 0 or -1.

Forgive me but what the heck is Context?

@godzfire, on Jun 4 2008, 12:59 PM, said in [ANN] SpacePort 1.2 Now Available:

Forgive me but what the heck is Context?

ConText is one of the w00tWare utilities - a companion to NovaTools - which converts a plug-in into spreadsheet form. Its counterpart, ResStore, converts that spreadsheet back into a plug-in.

I'm really sorry but I still have no idea what the heck I am supposed to be doing here. All I'm asking is if someone might be able to convert that Up With The UE plug to Nova, if it's not too much trouble. Me and anything program-related is like oil and water.

Unfortunately it is too much trouble. Many field in all resources contain garbage and must be corrected. It is a limitation of SpacePort that it does not support EVO plugs in a pre-1.0.2 format and this is one such plug.