Missile ammo troubles

Yes. Please test out a backwards beam using negative length or -180 innacuracy, and then one using both, and please tell us the results.

Well, currently for this plug I have 14 weapons:
Hyper Missile: A cloak tracking missile
Hyper-Velocity Rocket: An instant fire rocket
Marker-Trails: A bolt that leaves a particle trail to follow
Stationary Mine: A space mine
Gravity Trap: A mine that tugs in enemies
Auto-Defense Gun: A better QLB
Defense Beam: A point defence beam
Cluster Bombs: A bomb that splits apart
Defense Bombs: A PD cluster bomb
Diamond-Boron Missile: A missile with a huge area of effect
Anti-Missile Missile: A PD missile
Back-Rocket: A rocket firing out of the back of your ship. Hard to aim though.
Point-Defense Targetable Rocket: A powerful rocket that can be shot down by PD
Gatling Gun: A fast firing chain-gun
Ion Cloud: A cloud that ionizes and sticks around for a while

I also have 62 new outfits. They range from better than average battery cells to extra shield generators, non real space, and cloak scanners. But I am still looking for other ideas. I want to make this a good plugin.

I just figured out what tiles mean. It's the frames in the animation. So a 36 frame animation is in a 6x6 tile grid, and the tiles are 6x6.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 15 September 2007 - 12:58 PM

Okay, did the testing. Final results:
-180 degree inacurracy did nothing. Probobly because it was going from the center of the ship.
But, negative length works like a charm. No problems. Woohoo. You can definatly look for this in the final.

Hello, I am royally screwed. Most of my graphics in game are completly screwed up. I need help. I'll email it to anyone, if they'll help me fix it.

Um, you may want to post some more info.

Good point. All of my bombs have their graphic be the 400mm railgun spin, all of my explosions are wrong, my defense cluster bombs and my gatling gun won't fire, and all of my outfits are displayed in the outfitters before I want them to be. Also, I keep getting challenged by Aurorans in the bar, on a non-auroran world. That world is part of my plug, by the way.

Okay, um, that sounds like a lot of problems. Is there some plug or data file you removed/added that would be interferring? Can you revert back to a state before these problems appeared? Have you tried fixing the problems yourself?
Let's start with the first one. Weapon graphics are controlled with the Graphic field in the weap resource. Refer to the bible for info on this, then check the corresponding spin resource to make sure they're pointing to the correct sprites.

Okay, I think think I solved those problems. I was trying to have my files go for spins in the 200's, instead of the 3200's. So now the problem is that it won't start up.

It came up with:

Error loading spin resource from PICT

Resource ID: 3034
Code: Resource not found

Then, I hit the OK box, and I got this:
Assertion failure! Nova will now quit.
The failure occured here:

Sprite.c 1583 N/A

For the outfits showing up before they're supposed to be, check the "Hide unless player has one or Availability is true".

Okay, I think I fixed the outfits, but I still can't start it up. As far as I know, I use no PICTs for spins, and spin 3034 is the gatling gun. All of my PICTs are outfits, and they start in the low 6000's.

Are your spins connected to rleDs? I know that's caused many a crash, just forgetting to put that link in.

Check for rleD 3034?
If you were trying to use 200s for weapons you may have an outdated copy of the EVN bible.

Actually, I've been using rle8 files. Do I still need rled? Anyway, it says failure loading spin from pict , not rled or rle8.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 19 September 2007 - 08:26 PM

Yeah, the error dialogs don't know the difference. You're supposed to be using rleD, not rle8. That will definitely be the problem.

@guy, on Sep 20 2007, 12:14 AM, said in Missile ammo troubles:

Yeah, the error dialogs don't know the difference. You're supposed to be using rleD, not rle8. That will definitely be the problem.

You know, error dialogs can be patched in EVN; a bunch of them are controlled by a STR# resource in the EV Nova app file.

I don't recall, though: are bug reports currently being collected, and by whom? Or is there zero chance there will be an EVN 1.0.11 because there are no problems any larger than this?

Edit: Hm. Just checked: There's an "Error loading spďn resource from RLE data" error message possible, as well as the PICT one. There must be complexities in the bowels of the code.... Getting to the bottom of that probably isn't worth it.

This post has been edited by Dr. Trowel : 20 September 2007 - 09:54 AM

Possibly if the RLE was malformed?
I'm keeping a list of bugs myself. I don't think it includes every bug reported around here but I add bugs when I remember or encounter them. What's the bug here though? If Nova fails to find any sprites for a spin, how is it to know whether you intended to use PICT sprites or RLE sprites?

Okay, I added rled's as well, now it works. But I'm still having trouble with the showing when it shouldn't. Anychance someone made a list of what contribute/require bits the standard game uses?

Yeah, search around for the contribute/require bits. What exactly is showing up when it shouldn't?

Just FYI, RLEs are sort of like an animation - they know their frame size and frame count and even contain their own transparency data. Back in the EV/O days sprites were stored as two PICT images, one for the sprite and one for the mask. In order for the game to use these images as a sprite it had to refer to spin resources to find the sprite, the mask, the frame size and the frame count. RLEs make spins redundant but they still exist (and sadly still required, even though the only field that's used is the SpriteID) as a legacy from the EV/O days.
rleDs are 16-bit, rle8s are 8-bit. rle8s are only used by the Mac version of Nova when the display is set to 256 colours, ie. never. It is recommended that rle8s be left out of plugs in order to save space.

Okay, the problem resolved itself, and I found a contribute/require bit list. So ha.
Just wondering, has anyone ever seen polaris IDA Frigates and Argosies? I've started running into them in Kontik.

EDIT:
I also just saw a polaris Pirate Starbridge.

Edit:
And I think I missed the memo saying that the Federation can buy Aurarn Cruisers.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 21 September 2007 - 08:11 PM

Methinks plugs...