A question....

Hi,
Besides being new to the forum, I'd like to ask a question (of course if this is the proper place to do so... if not, please correct me.) How to i import pict, snd, rle and other resources into EVNEW? I have been trying to do so and have been unable to figure out how to do so via google search and just trying it myself. I have a windows computer. I have no access to a mac. Please don't give me an answer for a mac.

Thanks,
Iosephulus

P.S. will the forum e-mail me when someone replies? If not, is there any way to make it do so?

bbcode is odd...

Welcome to the boards, losephulus. This forum is appropriate for development/plugin questions, so EVNEW belongs here.
The board will email you if you're suscribed; there is an option at the bottom of the "New Topic" and reply windows.
I do not understand your question, so I will goto the nearest 3 explanations for things to do with those resource.
1. Open the resources from the game. Just open the files. I don't remember which is which, offhand, I have an ODS for that.
2. Import your own pictures and sounds into those resource formats. First, create a new resource of that type (unless you're just modifying an existing resource, - remember, never work with the original files!) and then select File -> import. (The file menu can hide since most resources don't have one).
3. Copy the game resources to a new plugin. Select the resource(s) and use copy and paste (right click or in the edit menu, or use keyboard shortcuts). It may be helpful to have two separate EVNEW windows open at the same time, otherwise you can just copy, open a new one, and then paste.

Whoa, thank you! When I did my Google searches I saw, choose the "import" choice on the menustrip but I had no idea that there were new menustrips on the forms where you edit the resource. Thanks a bunch, I know exactly what I wanted now.

Thanks,
Iosephulus

And also, thank you about the monitor the thread thing. I eventually figured it out but thanks for answering it anyway.

Iosephulus

By the way, if anyone comes across this again, what are rel8 resources? Whenever I open up one of them from Nova
Ships *.rez, it is always funky. I hear it's like a mask or something but I really don't understand what people are saying. In essence, why are rle8 resources required if we have rleD resources with color?

Iosephulus

rle8 resources are Mac resources for machines that are running 8 bit color. They do nothing at all on Windows, and truth be told, are all but completely obsolete. I doubt that there is anyone out there still running 8 bit Macs capable of running Nova, especially not the latest version, since it's now Intel native. rle8s on a Windows .rez file are more or less just a holdover from the converted .bin resource files.

Importing files is usually quite easy, but be careful with a few resources. When importing masks for rle resources, make sure to flatten the mask down to a 1 bit (black and white only) image using some sort of image manipulation program like Photoshop or the GIMP. Sound files have to be something that Quicktime understands. Usually, .wav files work the best to import into EVNEW, though I've had some limited success with .mp3 files. EVNEW understands quite a few image formats as well, ranging from .jpg all the way through the more Mac-based .pict.

Also, when you import image files, be careful when specifying sizes for things. Sprite sheets to rle resources can really be a pain when you're just starting out.

QUOTE (Iosephulus @ Mar 16 2009, 05:36 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

By the way, if anyone comes across this again, what are rel8 resources? Whenever I open up one of them from Nova
Ships *.rez, it is always funky. I hear it's like a mask or something but I really don't understand what people are saying. In essence, why are rle8 resources required if we have rleD resources with color?

The 'funkiness' comes from EVNEW not knowing how to decode rlë8s. MissionComputer's RLE decoder produced similar effects until I was able to get hold of the colour table.

An rlëD resource contains a 16-bit picture along with its mask. An rlë8 serves exactly the same purpose, except that the picture is 8-bit. When EV Nova was being developed, a significant number of people still used computers set to 256 colours, and so the developers provided two separate versions of the sprites, so that they could downsample at a higher quality than such older computers would be able to perform live.

As krugeruwsp says, rlë8s are now quite obsolete, and the Windows version of the game ignores them entirely. There is no longer any reason why you should bother supplying anything other than an rlëD.

Thanks, I was wondering about making a plugin that adds a ship that is like the current space shuttles in use today. Has something like this already been created? If so, will it be a bad idea to reproduce it?
Thanks,
Iosephulus

Actually, I think it'd be kind of cool to fly the space shuttle around in Nova. You'd have to find some way to justify it having interstellar hyperdrives, but that would be pretty sweet.

I'm working on it right now.... I used SpinApp7 (thanks to creator) to create the rleD resources. I was wondering A) how to make a mask for the ship with the GIMP; If my rleD's show up in 5x2 instead of 6x6 (6x6 is how spinapp created them) will that be a problem in the future?

Thanks,
Iosephulus

QUOTE (Iosephulus @ Mar 17 2009, 02:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If my rleD's show up in 5x2 instead of 6x6 (6x6 is how spinapp created them) will that be a problem in the future?

EVNEW won't let me change them. As soon as I hit "update," it switches back to 5x2. By the way, if you want a quick glance at how I'm doing the shuttle (I repainted it myself from a picture), you can look here. (This URL may change in the future...)

Thanks for your help,
Iosephulus

What EVNEW does automatically if you have large sprites is it does a sort of screen wrap into pages. Your sprites didn't disappear, they just broke up into pages. If it's not doing that, then you have a problem.

As far as masking goes in the GIMP, take the equivalent of the magic wand tool (you should find it under the selection tools,) and select everything that is around your sprites. Cut that, then paste it as a new image. Make sure that the new image is exactly the same size as the old one. You'll want to make sure that you either paste it onto a transparent background, or just fill in where the sprites are with white. Make the area around the sprites black. I don't know specifically how to do this in the GIMP, but you should find the equivalent of a "flatten image" command somewhere in the program. You'll want to flatten it down and save it as a 1-bit image, or completely black and white. Anything other than this makes EVNEW angry and creates fuzzy masks. Sorry I can't be of more help with the GIMP, but I use PaintShopPro. I've only messed with the GIMP a handful of times. However, image manipulation is pretty much all alike at the basic levels.

When importing them into EVNEW, under the same rleD resource image dialogue, it will ask you whether this is the image or the mask. Make sure to select "mask." Voila, there's your masked image! Do a quick double check to make sure that it imported correctly by selecting mask under the viewing pane.

A couple of words to the wise: large sprites don't really work out as well as you'd think. The space shuttle isn't all that big. I'd say reduce your sprite to maybe 50-60 x 70-80 range and see if that looks better in Nova. I'd also say it might be worth it for you to just find a stock Google image of the shuttle, cut out the garbage around it, and spin that.

You think so? I was worried about copyright issues with google images.... Thank you for explaining with the mask. I got what you mean. A quick question, how would I (in any photo editor, i have the GIMP and Photoshop CS at my disposal) create a target image (for example, the red-lines target).

Thanks,
Iosephulus

Also, is there any way to play a sound resource on launch from a planet? I know this thread was originally started about rle's and stuff but is it alright if I turn it into a question thread?

I don't know if the engine would allow a sound to play on launch or not. I can think of a very extended workaround that would do that, but it would be so unreasonably complex as to make it pointless.

As far as creating red-line targets, it would depend on if you're on a Mac or not. There's a little program on the add-ons that I don't quite feel like taking the time at the moment to dredge up (it sould be under essentials, I believe...) that will generate targeting images for you. It's Mac-specific, however, if I recall right. In the GIMP or Photoshop, you could just use the recolor function on a single sprite image, and turn it red. If you really wanted to add the lines, you might be able to find a lens filter that would create that. I haven't played around much with that personally, so I couldn't tell you a lot.

As far as copyright infringement, I don't think NASA is going to go after you for using the space shuttle. Also, as long as you're not selling the plug-in for money or depriving others of their ability to earn money, you should be okay. I would think the only other copyright area that anyone could get angry about is if you don't give due credit to the original image's holder as their intellectual property.

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Mar 18 2009, 09:24 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As far as creating red-line targets, it would depend on if you're on a Mac or not. There's a little program on the add-ons that I don't quite feel like taking the time at the moment to dredge up (it sould be under essentials, I believe...) that will generate targeting images for you. It's Mac-specific, however, if I recall right.

In fact, it isn't! There wasn't even a Windows version of EV Nova when I made that utility, but creating a Windows version took about a minute of extra work, so I went ahead. (It hasn't been tested all that much, so let me know if you have any trouble with it.)

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Mar 18 2009, 09:24 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As far as copyright infringement, I don't think NASA is going to go after you for using the space shuttle.

I suspect the majority of images of the Space Shuttle are Nasa photographs, and as Nasa is an agency of the U.S. government, it's forbidden to claim copyright on most of its work. The safest way, though, would be to go either directly to Nasa's web site, or to the relevant Wikipedia articles, since Wikipedia images are tagged for source and copyright status. (The fact that a plug-in is free, however, does not give it a free ride with regard to copyright infringement.)

Ah, good stuff on the target generator. I was unaware that a Windows version was available. I'm glad to know that my own self!

And, you're right about the fact that a plug-in being freeware does not give it complete license to avoid copyrights, but it does muddy the waters somewhat. The holder of the copyright would have to be able to claim that it somehow deprived the holder of a royalty or did not give proper credit to the holder of the copyright. While that's difficult to do when no money is involved, intellectual property holders who really go after their copyright infringements like LucasArts, Disney, and Paramount are quick to point out the lack of payment for royalties. More or less, it depends on the holder of the copyright, and the manner it is used. And, those companies have good reason to protect their intellectual property. If a person can prove that the material in question has been used significantly over an extended period of time without the copyright holder's doing anything about it, it can be argued that the material has fallen into public domain. Paramount has been fighting this with Star Trek for decades, and that's why it has actively fought copyright infringement.

Really, you should have the expressed written consent of the holder of any copyright, and that's the only sure-fire way to avoid getting nailed. All that being said, I think using a picture of the space shuttle from anyone except a photographer who is selling the image should be fairly safe.

OK, thank you everyone. I don't think they'll even be able to tell I used a NASA space shuttle. Even if they could, I got it from a blog and shrunk it from 2059x3000 pixels to 70x101. I'm sorry I asked about the legal gibberish, I should've looked it up myself. And, to David Arthur, thanks for supplying the target generator (greatly appreciated!).

Thanks,
Iosephulus

P.S. I almost have it working, I have been unable to buy it within the game but I'm looking to see why not. (probably the target image)

Yeah, you've got to make sure that you have all the required associated IDs, or it won't work. Might I also suggest putting a plain text file into your Nova folder called "debuglog.txt" Nova will dump its startup and shutdown contents to it, and that will help you to deduce any issues that your plug might be having.