A few rleDs

if you like that kind of thing

Hello everyone,

I'm working on a plug with EVNew on a Windows machine and I've come to a point where a few new rleDs would be really nice. Of course - I haven't the faintest idea how to make them myself. I don't really know if what I'm asking for is easy or difficult but I might as well ask.

If anyone knows of any current plugs, or designs one themselves with the following resources if would be hugely appreciated.

~ relDs for the light, medium, and heavy blaster shots in green (instead of the standard orange).

~ relDs for the light, medium, and heavy blaster shots in red.

~ relDs for Rebel ships (Destroyer, Starbridge, IDA, Valk, Viper, T-Head, and Lightning) with a dark grey-blue theme instead of a green theme.

If this request is very difficult then please don't spend hours working on it for me (unless you have a lot of time on your hands) alternatively, if this sort of thing is incredibly easy to do then I might appreciate a tutorial on the subject.

Thank you all very much.

~ Bootstrap Bill

With a bit of searching I can find blue and green blasters. The blasters are easy enough for anyone to recolour, though the ships may be a bit more complicated.

Btw, I discovered you can list every single addon here. Takes a while to load but makes for easy searching

This post has been edited by Guy : 12 November 2007 - 04:12 PM

Thanks alot for the links Guy. I did a search myself but I obviously wasn't able to find those.

I figured that the ships would be the more difficult aspect, it's no problem if you can't find any.

I have Windows and EVNEW as well. You can make rleDs graphics out of .png and .pict files. The files themselves are in the form of a "tileset", a serie of smaller pictures of equal size within the same file. You can what I mean by exporting one from the nova data files.

All you need to make those files is mspaint. I have made explosions, ships and weapon graphics in paint in the past, without problem. I recommend getting spinapp, though. Makes your life much more simple. For instance, for your gun thing, all you would do is create the "12 o' clock" graphic and then drag it into spinapp and it will create a new picture with as many angles as you want. Import that. Rinse and repeat with the mask.

For explosions and all other non-spinning graphics, you will need to make a "grid" yourself and make each picture yourself, by hand, unless you have better tools than paint.

EDIT: 400th post. Not that anybody cares. :ninja:

This post has been edited by Mumbling Psycho : 12 November 2007 - 05:46 PM

@guy, on Nov 12 2007, 01:11 PM, said in A few rleDs:

Btw, I discovered you can list every single addon here. Takes a while to load but makes for easy searching

Wow, I've been wanting to do that for years.

I can't really be bothered to re-rlëD and compress the pictures I have(everyone seems to find it easy but I always have a hell of a time doing it all) but I have no problem sending you the .picts of those ships in dark blue and then you can re-rlëD them...

EDIT: Also if you do, do you want the original sized ships or ones that work with the Small Fighters & Weapons plug?

This post has been edited by Sp3cies : 14 November 2007 - 11:31 AM

Wow. I really wasn't expecting somebody to do this.

Picts would be amazing - I can figure out how to do the rleDing (hopefully).

I don't use the small fighters plug so original size would be ideal I suppose.

Thank you very much sp3cies.

Meh, I tried messaging you on through the board but I can't upload more than 100kb so here is my e-mail... Squidsh_t at Hotmail dot com. Just e-mail me there and I will send the picts via that.

Alrighy, Sp3cies sent me 8 lovely .pct files of the newly themed ships and 8 matching .pct masks all with 36 or more degrees of rotation. These files open with Quicktime picture viewer.

I am at a loss on how I might get these files into EVNew and this seems to be the perfect place to ask.

Here is what I have tried:

~Copy and paste the file into MS Paint - not really sure what to do after that if that was even an appropriate first step at all.

~Change the file extension to .rez and set it to open with EVNew. That obviosly didn't work. Error: 4-byte header of file "C:\Program Files\EV Nova\rereldsemail\128.rez" did not match 0x42524752 ("BRGR"). Is what I got.

~When I go into the pct under File, it gives me the greyed out option to Export, but to do that I have to purchase Quicktime 7.0 Pro for $37. Is that necessary.

If you have the patience to explain to a newbie how to get these lovely pictures functioning in .rez files please take a minute to help me out.

Not sure if EVNEW can import pcts or not so your first idea sounds like a good way to start. Next you just save it as a png and then EVNEW ought to be able to import it into an rleD.

For the record though, you cannot change the format of a file by changing its extension. So yeah, never change a file's extension unless you know what you're doing.

This post has been edited by Guy : 15 November 2007 - 05:25 PM

ooohhh, it's been too long since I was on EVNEW, and I no longer have access, I'm afraid, but maybe I can remember enough to help you.

If the ship .pcts are arranged in a grid format when you open them in MSPaint, you're actually really close to being where you need to be. I'm not certain what formats EVNEW can import, so if the next step doesn't work you may need to switch the file type with a "save as". (actually, after rereading your post, if you're copying and pasting into MSPaint, just save that file as a .bmp, and you can import into EVNEW from there)

Anyways, create a new 'rled' resource in EVNEW, then open the resource and head up to import (possibly under "file"). You'll have to specify what dimensions your graphics are in, though you're allowed some trial and error. However you should be able to set the horizontal and vertical dimensions of each frame, along with the total number of frames you have. Once you get the dimensions set correctly it should show up in the resource, where you can eyeball for any errors. (if your dimensions were off, it'll show up easily)

The same procedure is followed for importing the masks, which is done in the same rled resource as the ship you just brought in. You just have to specify what you're importing.

Granted, that was probably confusing as hell, but I hope it helps a little. :unsure: I remember one thing that helped me out when I was just starting was opening up a copy of Nova's data files and exporting some of the rled's there then trying to reimport them, just to figure the entire process out, since the exporting is pretty much just the opposite of importing.

If the redone ships are still the same size as their original counterparts, you can also check your dimensions in Nova's data files. I'm not certain if EVNEW lets you copy/paste between two windows, but if you have your plug open and one of the rleds is a match for one of your files (for instance, if you have a different colored IDA frigate, you copy the IDA rled over to your plug, then just import the new graphics over the old ones. you wouldn't even have to mess with the mask this way, either)

Edit: In fact, I'm beginning to realize just how useful EVNEW's ability to export and import entire tilesets really was.

This post has been edited by GutlessWonder : 15 November 2007 - 05:49 PM

Great tips guys.

Now that I have discovered the File -> Import within the rleD resource my life becomes possible.

Should I be able to copy the dimensions from the originally colored ships in the new rleDs? It seems to me that they should have the same dimensions.

@bootstrap_bill, on Nov 15 2007, 05:05 PM, said in A few rleDs:

Great tips guys.

Now that I have discovered the File -> Import within the rleD resource my life becomes possible.

Should I be able to copy the dimensions from the originally colored ships in the new rleDs? It seems to me that they should have the same dimensions.

I'd say yes, in all likelihood. If I remember right EVNEW has something of a bug* when it comes to importing something into a new resource, where if you get the dimensions wrong the first time you actually have to create a new resource and import there to be able to change the dimensions to something else, since you can't change the dimensions in a resource once something has been imported into it.

*I don't know that it's a bug, as it could simply be the way that EVNEW has to handle the information, but it can get tedious if you're guessing and get a pixel off here and there, or make a stupid typo, then have to go to the trouble of making more new resources and deleting the bad ones.

I am here to report Victory!

I have imported the rleD for the first ship, the newly colored Destroyer and given it it's own shan and ship resources. I went into my plug and fought a few of them - they look awesome with the blue blaster bolts.

I do seem to still be having trouble importing ships with banking frames. I end up with a lot of white blocks in my rleD. Is there something I can do to fix that?

EDIT: I fixed the white blocks problem but I still can't seem to get the 108 frame banking rleDs to work.

This post has been edited by Bootstrap_Bill : 15 November 2007 - 07:22 PM

@bootstrap_bill, on Nov 15 2007, 05:49 PM, said in A few rleDs:

I am here to report Victory!

I have imported the rleD for the first ship, the newly colored Destroyer and given it it's own shan and ship resources. I went into my plug and fought a few of them - they look awesome with the blue blaster bolts.

I do seem to still be having trouble importing ships with banking frames. I end up with a lot of white blocks in my rleD. Is there something I can do to fix that?

EDIT: I fixed the white blocks problem but I still can't seem to get the 108 frame banking rleDs to work.

Can you verify if you're not importing the graphics properly, or if you just haven't set the proper checkbox in the shän resource "Extra frames are used for banking"?

I was having trouble with importing the banking frames. I will make sure that I set the proper checkbox in the shan when I get there, thanks for the heads up.

I have figured out the trouble I was having with the importing - using incorrect dimensions etc. It will just take a little bit more time for me to do each of those.

@bootstrap_bill, on Nov 15 2007, 07:01 PM, said in A few rleDs:

I was having trouble with importing the banking frames. I will make sure that I set the proper checkbox in the shan when I get there, thanks for the heads up.

I have figured out the trouble I was having with the importing - using incorrect dimensions etc. It will just take a little bit more time for me to do each of those.

I remember I always used one quite large set of frames, that included all of the frames at once, including the banking ones, so you only have one import. In fact I don't think there's any other way to do it. Then you use the shan resource to tell Nova how many frames to use for the main rotation, usually 36. Any extra frames are then used as specified in your shan for the banking animations.

If your .pcts don't have the banking frames in with the normal frames, you'll have to use Paint to make it all one giant image. Again I suggest exporting an existing rled that shows banking as a reference point.

You may have all of this figured out by now, but hopefully this helps.

All the frames, including banking, are in the same image so that's no problem.

The dimensions for the IDA frigate were 89 by 89 so it took me a little while to find that. First 100 by 100, then 80 by 80, then 90 by 90, then 88 by 88, and then finally arriving at the proper dimensions.

I suppose I was just blindly lucky on the Destroyer with it's 80 by 80 dimensions exactly matching those of the stock nova ship.

Eh? The IDA is supposed to be 100x100. Did Sp3cies change the dimension?
Oh and that's not a bug with EVNEW, it's just how RLEs work. You simply can't just change the dimension of an RLE like that, you have re-create it. Of course it could be nice like MissionComputer and show a preview of the grid.

I didn't touch the dimensions... Just copied and pasted the image into Photoshop and saved as pict.