Just a little request...

Hi all!

I've been playing EV since 1997, but since I no longer have a Mac I'm forced to play the original game through EV Nova. One thing I miss, though, is the original game's documentation, specifically the first-person narrative part. I've checked around, and the manual doesn't seem to be available in a PC-readable format anywhere on the web. I was wondering if one of you might be willing to copy the text of the narrative from your manual and post it here for me, if that's possible. I'd really appreciate it - I remember that reading that always helped me get in the mood to play the game for hours on end, and its been years upon years since I've even gotten the chance to glance at it.

Thanks!

Here's a zip with the text documents contained in the documentation folder, as well as screenshots from the proprietary program Ambrosia used to display the other help files.

http://encodable.com/cgi-bin/filechucker.c...cumentation.zip

I think I'll compile the screenshots into a PDF if I have time.

-Peter

Welcome JuanBolio. That sounds like a much needed piece of info that Guy could include with his documentation to his ports.

p3ter_st0ry, that sounds like a lot of work. Why not just print the document to a Postscript file, and convert it to PDF? Takes just a few minutes.

I did that for undead_shadow, but now I can't find the final PDF. I'll keep looking though...

EDIT: Yeah, apparently I'm full of utter shash. ^_^ I made a PDF for the EVO Ship Guide. But if you want me to make one for EV I can, just not right now.

This post has been edited by Callide : 26 August 2008 - 05:46 PM

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p3ter_st0ry, that sounds like a lot of work. Why not just print the document to a Postscript file, and convert it to PDF? Takes just a few minutes.

Gar!!! Darn you Callide!!!
I already did it! Why didn't you tell me earlier!!! I spend over two HOURS!!!

Oh well. Now all I've got to do is turn all the little pages into one big PDF and upload it.

-Peter

edit: Alright. Done! Scroll down.

This post has been edited by p3ter_st0ry : 26 August 2008 - 08:38 PM

@callide, on Aug 26 2008, 06:36 PM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

Welcome JuanBolio. That sounds like a much needed piece of info that Guy could include with his documentation to his ports.

p3ter_st0ry, that sounds like a lot of work. Why not just print the document to a Postscript file, and convert it to PDF? Takes just a few minutes.

I did that for undead_shadow, but now I can't find the final PDF. I'll keep looking though...
EDIT: Yeah, apparently I'm full of utter shash. ^_^ I made a PDF for the EVO Ship Guide. But if you want me to make one for EV I can, just not right now.

Thanks for the files, p3ter_st0ry. It was nice to read that again.

Callide - thanks, I'd love a PDF whenever you can get around to it. The Quicktime image files are a little awkward to read... (though much appreciated!)

@callide, on Aug 27 2008, 10:36 AM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

Welcome JuanBolio. That sounds like a much needed piece of info that Guy could include with his documentation to his ports.

Duly noted

Alright, finished it up. Feel free to bundle it with anything you want.

http://encodable.com/cgi-bin/filechucker.c...cumentation.zip

Someone also might want to run an OCR on it, so it'll be searchable.

-Peter

p3ter_st0ry, you're the man! Thank you so much for your efforts. You've made an old-school EV nut very happy indeed.

@p3ter_st0ry, on Aug 26 2008, 04:41 PM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

Gar!!! Darn you Callide!!!
I already did it! Why didn't you tell me earlier!!! I spend over two HOURS!!!

How was I supposed to know about this? At least you learned something.

applauds your much-appreciated effort

@guy, on Aug 26 2008, 05:22 PM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

Duly noted

I applaud the effort too but I think we can do better than that. Here's what we get with a couple of click from PrintToPdf: Escape Velocity Documentation (file removed). Unfortunately some of the images get cut up and today's date is stuck on every page but we do get bookmarks

(edit) The documentation is mostly irrelevant or redundant with Nova. How about just including the Scumdog parts?

This post has been edited by Guy : 04 September 2008 - 04:55 AM

I guess my work was for naught ^_^

Oh well, good time killer anyway. Now I know how to make PDFs the hard way AND the easy way.
And I made someone happy.
And I got more posts.

-Peter

This post has been edited by p3ter_st0ry : 27 August 2008 - 06:05 AM

@guy, on Aug 27 2008, 12:23 AM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

I applaud the effort too but I think we can do better than that. Here's what we get with a couple of click from PrintToPdf: Escape Velocity Documentation. Unfortunately some of the images get cut up and today's date is stuck on every page but we do get bookmarks

Yeah, I noticed that on the one I made as well. It kinda bugged me and I've wanted to experiment with it, but it wasn't a priority and didn't have the time. Now I think I'll make some time.

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(edit) The documentation is mostly irrelevant or redundant with Nova. How about just including the Scumdog parts?

New players won't know this, though you COULD mention it in the docs.

Sorry, what are you saying? New players won't know... ?

Adding and removing linebreaks here and there (with ResEdit) I adjusted the override documentation (as linked above) to avoid images getting cut up. Don't know what to do about the footer though - there don't seem to be any options anywhere.

(edit) I can get the links on the Contents page working thanks to Preview in Leopard. I've also considered setting the computer date to force the date in the footer to be something more interesting. Creation date of the doc? Start date of the game?
(edit2) Okay, you can't set the computer date as high as 2148 so I've used the original creation date. Further hackery avoids the page numbers jumping from 1 to 21 in the Unofficial UE Training Manual.

This post has been edited by Guy : 28 August 2008 - 05:50 AM

@guy, on Aug 27 2008, 11:49 PM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

Sorry, what are you saying? New players won't know... ?

Ooops, my bad.

You said: The documentation is mostly irrelevant or redundant with Nova.

I meant to reply that new players won't know it's irrelevant or redundant.

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Adding and removing linebreaks here and there (with ResEdit) I adjusted the override documentation (as linked above) to avoid images getting cut up.

Great idea. I never thought to use ResEdit.

Quote

Don't know what to do about the footer though - there don't seem to be any options anywhere.

I haven't had time to mess around with it yet, but there has to be a way to remove them.

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(edit2) Okay, you can't set the computer date as high as 2148 so I've used the original creation date. Further hackery avoids the page numbers jumping from 1 to 21 in the Unofficial UE Training Manual.

You The Man.

@callide, on Aug 29 2008, 05:33 PM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

Ooops, my bad.

You said: The documentation is mostly irrelevant or redundant with Nova.

I meant to reply that new players won't know it's irrelevant or redundant.

Okay, so you're saying there could be a problem and I may need to warn users in the read me?

@callide, on Aug 29 2008, 05:33 PM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

Great idea. I never thought to use ResEdit.

Well if you ever need to do this again yourself...
The text is all the styl/TEXT resources (split up by chapters). You can delete images by deleting plnf resources (IDs are organised by chapter: 2xx for 1st chapter, 3xx for 2nd chapter etc) though I'm not sure how to add them. Chapter titles are stored in 'STR ' resources and to move/remove/add chapters you'll need to look at styl, TEXT, STR , and Wndo resources.
(edit) Duh! Delete the footer by deleting the 'foot' resource.

@callide, on Aug 29 2008, 05:33 PM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

You The Man.

Oh, I know :rolleyes:

(edit) Heh, the Nova documentation was created with PrintToPDF from ClarisWorks 5 :laugh:

This post has been edited by Guy : 13 February 2009 - 03:35 AM

@guy, on Aug 29 2008, 02:40 AM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

Okay, so you're saying there could be a problem and I may need to warn users in the read me?

Well, not so much a problem, more like... a need for that information. Because JuanBolio asked for specific info, and he's new. IMO a new player should find the answers to their questions (except mission cheats) in the Read Me, or other Docs, because they might not know to look here for answers.

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Well if you ever need to do this again yourself...
The text is all the styl/TEXT resources (split up by chapters). You can delete images by deleting plnf resources (IDs are organised by chapter: 2xx for 1st chapter, 3xx for 2nd chapter etc) though I'm not sure how to add them. Chapter titles are stored in 'STR ' resources and to move/remove/add chapters you'll need to look at styl, TEXT, STR , and Wndo resources.

Awesome. Thank you.

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Oh, I know :rolleyes:
(edit) Heh, the Nova documentation was created with PrintToPDF from ClarisWorks 5 :laugh:

ClarisWorks!?! laughs Whatever works!

@callide, on Sep 13 2008, 07:31 PM, said in EV Classic Doctumentation:

Well, not so much a problem, more like... a need for that information. Because JuanBolio asked for specific info, and he's new. IMO a new player should find the answers to their questions (except mission cheats) in the Read Me, or other Docs, because they might not know to look here for answers.

Okay, I'm afraid I'm still a little fuzzy on exactly what information we're talking about here but the current plan is to have the whole EV documentation, minus the troubleshooting/contact sections at the end (as opposed to only having the Scumdog parts - aside from them the documentation doesn't really have any info relevant to the scenario). So hopefully there'll be no problem :). If you have any suggestions for further edits though, do let me know.

This post has been edited by Guy : 14 September 2008 - 02:35 AM

Sure thing.