Startup Crash

So I made a plug for my own enjoyment; tried to compile all the ships from various plug-ins I like and make them available on a planet I made. I thought the plug was sound, then I start the game. It gets about halfway through loading, then gives me an error message:

Assertion failure! Nova will now quit.
The error occurred here:

Volumes/nightly/Nova/releases

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I'm actually not even sure what version of Nova I'm using; don't know how to check.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

In a case like this, a debug log is probably the first thing to try.

The most common cause for loading errors, however, is when one resource refers to another which doesn’t actually exist (particularly if the latter is meant to be a graphic). If you were combining elements from different plug-ins, it may be that one of the resources you copied is dependent on something else which you didn’t include.

@david-arthur, on 31 December 2011 - 06:02 PM, said in Startup Crash:

In a case like this, a debug log is probably the first thing to try.

The most common cause for loading errors, however, is when one resource refers to another which doesn’t actually exist (particularly if the latter is meant to be a graphic). If you were combining elements from different plug-ins, it may be that one of the resources you copied is dependent on something else which you didn’t include.

Yep, looks like that's what it was. Target images. Been a long time since I've done any of this, but I got it cleared up.

Now I have a new problem: I shamelessly grabbed the ships from Acheron and copied them over into a plug for Nova. Reworked stats, outfits, weapons... all kinds of stuff so that everything related to ships fits in nicely with Nova. Everything works fine.

Except: I cannot buy any standard Nova outfits (except for the marines to board enemy ships, oddly) on any ship from my plug-in. I can't find any ncbs set wierdly, or anything in the ships or the outfits that immediately screams, "Prohibit purchase of standard outfits" to me.

Tips? Anybody familiar with this problem? If somebody can point me even towards what general resources I should be looking at, that'd be helpful.

The problem isn't that you have a bit set prohibiting the purchase of outfits. The problem is you're missing a bit that allows the purchase of outfits. EVN has a special type of bit that EVC/O didn't have called 'Contribute/Require' bits. I spare you the details for the moment, but in EVN most ships set a specific Contribute bit. At the same time, most outfits (as you've discovered, the Marine Platoon is an exception) 'Require' that Contribute bit. The only ships that don't set this Contribute bit are Vell-os ships. That's how they stopped Vell-os players from purchasing weapons and ship upgrades for their Darts, Arrows, and Javelins which are supposed to be pure telekinetic energy. Your ships simply don't set this Contribute bit, either, causing the game to essentially think they are Vell-os vessels and not allow purchase of outfits.

I hope that all made sense.

@darthkev, on 01 January 2012 - 08:13 AM, said in Startup Crash:

The problem isn't that you have a bit set prohibiting the purchase of outfits. The problem is you're missing a bit that allows the purchase of outfits. EVN has a special type of bit that EVC/O didn't have called 'Contribute/Require' bits. I spare you the details for the moment, but in EVN most ships set a specific Contribute bit. At the same time, most outfits (as you've discovered, the Marine Platoon is an exception) 'Require' that Contribute bit. The only ships that don't set this Contribute bit are Vell-os ships. That's how they stopped Vell-os players from purchasing weapons and ship upgrades for their Darts, Arrows, and Javelins which are supposed to be pure telekinetic energy. Your ships simply don't set this Contribute bit, either, causing the game to essentially think they are Vell-os vessels and not allow purchase of outfits.

I hope that all made sense.

Absolutely made sense. Found the problem, fixed it. And that's a neat feature to know about; could be a neat plug to make with a few unique outfits for each ship.

Thanks for the help.

And I promise I'll get back to you about ships for Legacy; I'm re-teaching myself all the ship/shan/outf/weap resources by playing around with ships from other plugs. Once I've got this and one or two other self-teaching projects worked out, you'll hear from me.