Nova tools ship paint colour system...

Yep, it's definately a tough one to crack...

Okay, the scenario is, I've basically just been messing around (as you do) with the ship paint outfit, but for the life of me I can't figure out any logical system to how Nova figures out what colour I'm punching in. I've tried all the logic I can muster to find by trial and error the system and how it works, but for the life of me I'm sitting here, as confused as ever. I had a little look around the relevant read me's, and with the search down the next best bet is to shoot off a question to you guys... does anyone understand the numbers involved.

It'd be appreciated if you could help me out here. It's not urgent though, I'm just mucking about.

Thanks guys.

~A~

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"How can I make it go faster?" -Me-

I think that Nova's color is RGB using hex values (like html), but I could be wrong about that. Check out AAC's Paint Station outfits.

Matrix

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Could also just check the utilities page on the nova add-ons page.There is a paint calculator that lets you pick what color you want, then it gives you the hex number to put in.

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Quote

Originally posted by Azdara:
**I can't figure out any logical system to how Nova figures out what colour I'm punching in.
**

There are three ways to color-tint a ship in Nova. The first and most obvious is the Paint outfit ModType 43 which uses a 15-bit color value in its ModVal field. This means that there are only five bits each for the red-green-blue colors. This is specified in the oütf resource section of the Nova bible, but it's easy to overlook.

The second way to color ships is with the person resource "Color" parameter which accepts a standard 32-bit HTML color that uses eight bits for each of the RGB values. This is also specified in the Nova bible in the përs resource section.

The third way to color a ship is with the government resource "ShipColor" parameter, which is also a 32-bit HTML color. But this one doesn't behave the same way as the person color does, and frankly I haven't figured it out yet. It appears to be a lot less granular and shifts colors in large steps.

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(This message has been edited by Arturo (edited 07-29-2003).)

Thanks guys... I'll try it out.

The thing that confused me is the way nova tools has the explanation in the outfit editor, because it says, like arturo, that it uses five bits for each colour, RRRRRGGGGGBBBBB, but the field where you type the number is a 0-32767 range, and I can't understand what the hell it means... all the different numbers.

I'll give the paint calculator a go eh? See if it helps.

Thanks again.

~A~

EDIT: Just tried the program, it works, it's brilliant, ++ to it's maker, and ++ ArcAngel for the directions.

Thanks guys.

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"How can I make it go faster?" -Me-

(This message has been edited by Azdara (edited 07-30-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Azdara:
**The thing that confused me is the way nova tools has the explanation in the outfit editor, because it says, like arturo, that it uses five bits for each colour, RRRRRGGGGGBBBBB, but the field where you type the number is a 0-32767 range, and I can't understand what the hell it means... all the different numbers.
**

Yes that five bits per primary color thing is partly to blame for the confusion. The other thing that creates more confusion is that even though the game-engine internal representation, and Nova bible documentation, is a 16-bit hexadecimal number, the Novatools outfit ModVal needs a decimal integer to be entered.
The individual algorithm for determining each of the primary color values is:

color_percentage * 31 * bit_position_factor

Where:
color_percentage is from 0 to 100
31 is the highest possible decimal integer value for each individual primary color (2^5 = 32 which yields a range of 0 to 31)
bit_position_factor value is 1 for blue, 32 for green, and 1024 for red
(note: the product of "color_percentage * 31" must be reduced to an integer value)

This general calculation is performed for each of the RGB primary colors and then the three values are added together to get the ModVal entry.
So the whole ModVal decimal integer can be calculated as follows:

ModVal = (red% * 31 * 1024) + (green% * 31 * 32) + (blue% * 31 * 1)

(edit: added integer qualifications)
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(This message has been edited by Arturo (edited 07-30-2003).)