[ANN] MissionComputer 1.4.0 is Now Available

For those of you still developing for Escape Velocity and EV Override, I present MissionComputer 1.4.0, the latest version of my ever-expanding scenario editor. MissionComputer does not completely replace the traditional tools such as ResEdit, but complements them with an easier way to edit a number of resource types.

MissionComputer can edit the dësc, düde, flët, gövt, jünk, mïsn, and yëä® resources, and in version 1.4.0 adds support for the përs resource. It provides a simple interface for selecting the resource IDs needed when referring to one resource from another, and offers excerpts from the official Resource Bible in a convenient help system. Version 1.4.0 also adds a new file management system (for greater ease of use and protection against file corruption), support for copying and pasting resources through the clipboard, and numerous small fixes.

MissionComputer was first released on 22 December 2001 after several months of development and testing. It is available in both a Carbon edition designed for Mac OS X - including Jaguar - and a Classic edition which runs on Mac OS 9 and below on both PowerPC- and 68000 series-based Macintoshes. It supports both the Escape Velocity 1.0.5 and EV Override 1.0.2 file formats.

As with previous versions, MissionComputer is free and immediately available from my web site at (url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url).

David Arthur
12 October 2002

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David Arthur
As Roosevelt said, there is nothing worse than the fear of fear. - (url="http://"http://pm.gc.ca/")Jean Chrétien(/url)
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url) : The forums are back!

Good job!

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Eww! Troll bogies!
Let the fun begin!

Yay! And this time, I might actually have enough time to use it on some plug-in projects!

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Mike Lee (Firebird)
Visit Cymltaneous Solutions: (url="http://"http://cs.paching.com/")http://cs.paching.com/(/url)
(hosted by (url="http://"http://www.evula.org")evula.org(/url))

Good. Now make a Nova version of it, and I will worship you. R&R; editors are good, but still work a bit like ResEdit in a way. There's a learning curve. Writing Nova missions in a simple EV-editish format would be excellent.

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Enter EVONE. See the link in my sig for more info.

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(url="http://"http://www.ariossoftware.com/upcoming")EVONE 1.0.0 - the plugin editor for EV/EVO/EVN(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by UE Crusader:
**Good. Now make a Nova version of it, and I will worship you. R &R; editors are good, but still work a bit like ResEdit in a way. There's a learning curve. Writing Nova missions in a simple EV-editish format would be excellent. **

<(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/showpic.php?image=mc/shots/futurepreview.png&title;=The+Future+of+MissionComputer&width;=579&height;=573")cryptic grin(/url)>

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David Arthur
As Roosevelt said, there is nothing worse than the fear of fear. - (url="http://"http://pm.gc.ca/")Jean Chrétien(/url)
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer 1.4.0 is Now Available!
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The forums are back!

Quote

Originally posted by David Arthur:
** <cryptic grin>

**

That looks great! Perhaps I should offer a picture of EVONE's desc editor?

For those who want to see it, (url="http://"http://jager.ariossoftware.com/gallery/categories/EVONE_Screenshots/media/EVONE029.jpg")here it is(/url).

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(url="http://"http://www.ariossoftware.com/upcoming")EVONE 1.0.0 - the plugin editor for EV/EVO/EVN(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by UE Crusader:
**Good. Now make a Nova version of it, and I will worship you. R &R; editors are good, but still work a bit like ResEdit in a way. There's a learning curve. Writing Nova missions in a simple EV-editish format would be excellent.

**

Yeah, both future missioncomputer (needs a better name) and EVONE seem to be very nice about the kind of thing. Now, to get the good part and not the bugs of EV-edit...

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Why are you all looking at me like that?
12000 posts as of 07.19.38, 1:23 PM (5:23 ASW time).

Quote

Originally posted by Sheer_falacy:
future missioncomputer (needs a better name)

Yes, I've thought in the past about changing the name, since it now edits a good deal more than just missions (although mïsn is still the most complex editor). For the moment I'm developing it as MissionComputer 2.0, but by the time it's released it may have a different name.

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David Arthur
As Roosevelt said, there is nothing worse than the fear of fear. - (url="http://"http://pm.gc.ca/")Jean Chrétien(/url)
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer 1.4.0 is Now Available!
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The forums are back!

(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/showpic.php?image=mc/shots/futurepreview2.png&width;=549&height;=411&title;=The+pers+Editor")And furthermore...(/url)

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David Arthur
As Roosevelt said, there is nothing worse than the fear of fear. - (url="http://"http://pm.gc.ca/")Jean Chrétien(/url)
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer 1.4.0 is Now Available!
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The forums are back!

david, any chance of adding a shïp resource editor, like Ev-Edit (shudder) but without bugs?
'Cause I downloaded it (mission comp.) yesterday and it's quite good, I just need to have IDs of all gövt and shïp resources. or should I use resedit for shïp and spïn resources and then open it in MC to finish it off?

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"To err is human, to blame someone else is politics"
Bottom of Ginger Meggs comic

Quote

Originally posted by David Arthur:
**And furthermore...

**

There you go! So you have figured out how to hook it up to the color picker? (How to convert from RGB values to the hex?)

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(url="http://"http://www.ariossoftware.com/upcoming")EVONE 1.0.0 - the plugin editor for EV/EVO/EVN(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by virmor:
david, any chance of adding a shïp resource editor, like Ev-Edit (shudder) but without bugs?
'Cause I downloaded it (mission comp.) yesterday and it's quite good, I just need to have IDs of all gövt and shïp resources. or should I use resedit for shïp and spïn resources and then open it in MC to finish it off?

I'll probably add shïp somewhere down the line, but as for sprites, my resource framework doesn't have many graphics features at the moment, so it would take some work. For the moment, MissionComputer is intended to complement ResEdit (and, in future, NovaTools), and my current focus is on updating the editors which already exist to support EV Nova.

Quote

Originally posted by AriosSW:
There you go! So you have figured out how to hook it up to the color picker? (How to convert from RGB values to the hex?)

Sure, it's hardly difficult. The colour is just stored in the data files in HTML form, except with an extra 00 in front, and my resource framework can handle hex as easily as it can decimal.

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David Arthur
As Roosevelt said, there is nothing worse than the fear of fear. - (url="http://"http://pm.gc.ca/")Jean Chrétien(/url)
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer 1.4.0 is Now Available!
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The forums are back!

(This message has been edited by David Arthur (edited 10-17-2002).)

smile

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Quote

Originally posted by David Arthur:
**Sure, it's hardly difficult. The colour is just stored in the data files in HTML form, except with an extra 00 in front, and my resource framework can handle hex as easily as it can decimal.

**

Oh... The benefits of using REALBasic... (That is what you are using, right?)

Actually, I just realized I have some old (68k) code that does this! All I'll have to do is carbonize it.

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(url="http://"http://www.ariossoftware.com/upcoming")EVONE 1.0.0 - the plugin editor for EV/EVO/EVN(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by AriosSw:
Oh... The benefits of using REALBasic... (That is what you are using, right?)

I'm developing in REALBasic (that's why I can do it so quickly), but MissionComputer relies heavily on a high-level resource framework I developed before starting on the editor, which makes all sorts of resource management functions available everywhere in the application, and also handles a fair bit of file management and protection against data corruption; files are opened only while they're being read from or written to, and then immediately closed again. It includes a system very similar to ResEdit's template format so that it's fairly easy for me to convert the game's TMPL resources into internal representations of the resources in question.

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David Arthur
As Roosevelt said, there is nothing worse than the fear of fear. - (url="http://"http://pm.gc.ca/")Jean Chrétien(/url)
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer 1.4.0 is Now Available!
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The forums are back!

It's the resource library that allows me to put together (url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/showpic.php?image=mc/shots/futurepreview3.png&width;=582&height;=500&title;=The+PICT+Resource Selector")things like this(/url) so easily.

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David Arthur
As Roosevelt said, there is nothing worse than the fear of fear. - (url="http://"http://pm.gc.ca/")Jean Chrétien(/url)
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer 1.4.0 is Now Available!
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The forums are back!

Do you think that maybe in the future, you can add a feature that could create and/or edit STR's and STR# resources? I think it could make a big difference for improvement.

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Nosumus Fortiolis Quad Volimus
I'm the only guy in the universe that can make horses laugh and cry.
(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/ddstation")DryDock Station(/url), the future site of Coraxus's stuff.

Quote

Originally posted by Coraxus:
Do you think that maybe in the future, you can add a feature that could create and/or edit STR's and STR# resources? I think it could make a big difference for improvement.

I've already done an STR editor for MissionComputer - it was actually the first new feature since 1.4.0 - and STR# is on the drawing board.

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David Arthur
As Roosevelt said, there is nothing worse than the fear of fear. - (url="http://"http://pm.gc.ca/")Jean Chrétien(/url)
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer 1.4.0 is Now Available!
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The forums are back!

A question: would people prefer for me to wait until I've made all the editors work with EV Nova to release MissionComputer 2.0, or release it as soon as I have base functionality, and add further resources in incremental updates?

(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/showpic.php?image=mc/shots/futurepreview4.png&width;=484&height;=452&title;=The+PICT+Editor")The PICT Editor(/url)

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David Arthur
As Roosevelt said, there is nothing worse than the fear of fear. - (url="http://"http://pm.gc.ca/")Jean Chrétien(/url)
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer 1.4.0 is Now Available!
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url): The forums are back!