Third alpha of MissionComputer 4.0

Well that's good. Do things seem to run more smoothly with less crashing and stuff on Leopard?

In the shďp editor, the yellow help box for the 'Require' field has a triangle "?" in it. Hopefully this is not (yet another) intel problem and is something that's actually helpful :rolleyes:

Edit: spelling error <_<

This post has been edited by EV Wolf : 15 December 2007 - 01:26 AM

When I edit the s˙st resource, the window is larger than my screen and I can't edit any of the data at the bottom of the window.

@ev-wolf, on Dec 15 2007, 01:24 AM, said in Third alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

In the shďp editor, the yellow help box for the 'Require' field has a triangle "?" in it.

Fixed, thanks — it’s just another of the many invalid characters that crept in when I converted MissionComputer’s text content from MacRoman to Unicode.

@sp3cies, on Dec 15 2007, 09:09 AM, said in Third alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

When I edit the s˙st resource, the window is larger than my screen and I can't edit any of the data at the bottom of the window.

What are your screen’s pixel dimensions? (Also, does this happen when you are editing a individual systems, the entire star map, or both?)

It happens in both and I believe 1024x768.

@sp3cies, on Dec 16 2007, 04:13 AM, said in Third alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

It happens in both and I believe 1024x768.

I can’t trace this immediately — if you can post a screenshot, that might help.

Why not just use Apple's help viewer for the help? It just uses HTML files, and there's a program in the Apple Developer Tools to create the index that it uses for searching the help system.

That just seems like a better solution than opening Safari with the help document, and it would allow people to get to MC's help from anywhere where they can open Help Viewer.

Map...

Attached File(s)

System...

Attached File(s)

Thanks — I’ve shrunk the windows a bit, which will hopefully fix it.

@sp3cies, on Dec 16 2007, 01:54 PM, said in Third alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

System...

sees Newberg 4 and the recolored Auroran station
gasps at the sheer awesomeness

Just thought I'd mention, that station sprite is actually from rEV. I hope he's including the license file with his plug 😉

I just yesterday had a chance to see the "messed up thumbnails on Intel" bug in action. Given that my mostly-red target pictures came out mostly-blue, I suspect it's simply an endian-ness issue. Just my 2 cents.

@lindley, on Dec 24 2007, 10:25 PM, said in Third alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

I just yesterday had a chance to see the "messed up thumbnails on Intel" bug in action. Given that my mostly-red target pictures came out mostly-blue, I suspect it's simply an endian-ness issue.

What system version are you using? Others have reported that it doesn’t occur on 10.5, suggesting that it may be someone else’s endianness issue. 🙂

I can't be certain, because it wasn't on my machine. However, I know he had 10.5----I'm not certain whether he installed it.

Heh, it's only a temporary placeholder but if I did use it for a public release I would ask for permission.
I'm not sure how worth mentioning this is but when I try to type -1 in the Sub-asteroids field it only lets me type 0 despite advising me to type -1. Again not sure if that's a prob but I noticed that a couple of the resources that I copied from the Nova files do have a -1 in that field so I figured I would mention it.

EDIT: Hmm won't let me put -1 in the explode type field either and when I set the yield field to "Nothing" it switches it to "Commodity" which is fine because I can still set the amount to 0 but why have the "Nothing" option if it doesn't stick?

This post has been edited by Sp3cies : 26 December 2007 - 10:02 AM

@sp3cies, on Dec 26 2007, 08:26 AM, said in Third alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

I'm not sure how worth mentioning this is but when I try to type -1 in the Sub-asteroids field it only lets me type 0 despite advising me to type -1. Again not sure if that's a prob but I noticed that a couple of the resources that I copied from the Nova files do have a -1 in that field so I figured I would mention it.

EDIT: Hmm won't let me put -1 in the explode type field either and when I set the yield field to "Nothing" it switches it to "Commodity" which is fine because I can still set the amount to 0 but why have the "Nothing" option if it doesn't stick?

All three fixed, thanks.

By the way, we need a 512*512 icon! 😛 (sorry, just downloaded the alpha and saw it in my Downloads folder in CoverFlow)

But more on topic, is it possible to make the "map as image" thing work not as a screenshot (i.e. limited to what you see in your window) but as a full map image (for everything on the map, not only the part you see in the window)?
If you could make that work, then another feature request (probably much harder?) would be to enable file interdependence, so you could link two data files together (for example, have nebulae in one file and the starmap in another, and get them both to show, or have two different starmaps blend together like when you create an expansion).
Of course, this is just a stupid wish, because I know full well you can achieve that kind of result by taking a screenshot in-game 😉

Apart from that, I noticed that the image & RLE bug I reported in alpha two and that EV Wolf re-reported has gone for me, though I'm not opening it with Rosetta...

This post has been edited by Pace : 30 December 2007 - 04:39 AM

@pace, on Dec 30 2007, 04:29 AM, said in Third alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

But more on topic, is it possible to make the "map as image" thing work not as a screenshot (i.e. limited to what you see in your window) but as a full map image (for everything on the map, not only the part you see in the window)?

That’s odd — it used to export the entire map. It must have broken when I switched away from caching the entire map in memory. I’ll have a look at this. Thanks for drawing it to my intention.

@pace, on Dec 30 2007, 04:29 AM, said in Third alpha of MissionComputer 4.0:

If you could make that work, then another feature request (probably much harder?) would be to enable file interdependence, so you could link two data files together (for example, have nebulae in one file and the starmap in another, and get them both to show, or have two different starmaps blend together like when you create an expansion).

This is a long-term ‘desirable’ feature, but well beyond the scope of current updates.

David Arthur, Mission Computer 4 is awesome. In particular the ability to open multiple editor windows simultaneously makes it very usable. That is a must-have feature and I'm glad you have it. 😃

Now on to the bugs:

As has been mentioned, STR# has a problem. When I try to open an STR# resource that was NOT created by MC4, MC4 starts using all available processor power but does nothing except spin a beach ball until force-quit. However, STR# resources I create with version 4.0 open fine.

A similar effect comes from opening mďsn resources, but not all of them. In the stock game files, missions can be edited just fine. Same with most plug-ins. However, there is one particular file I'm working with that has 6 missions which will open properly in Mission Computer 3.3 but DO NOT OPEN in version 4.0. MC4 crashes exactly as it does opening pre-existing STR# resources.

I'm on an Intel Mac running 10.4 and I have the inverted colors for PICT and RLE icons, as previously mentioned by others.

When I have an snd resource open and I close it BY CLICKING THE RED DOT, MissionComputer 4.0 unexpectedly quits. It works fine if I type command-W to close the window, but if I click the dot the program crashes. I haven't seen this in any other resource editors, but neither have I thoroughly checked.

Once when I typed command-Q to quit while I had an unsaved file open, then clicked "Don't Save" in the dialog that pops up, I was given a message saying "MissionComputer 4.0a3 has unexpectedly quit". Nothing went wrong per se, it was just weird to see that dialog after I manually quit. Hasn't happened since though.

That's about it for the bugs themselves, but there are a few things I'd like to see:

Resizable editor windows. Frankly, this is almost a must-have. It can be very frustrating not to be able to resize windows.

When in the spďn or shän editors, clicking the magnifying glass to select a source image gives a list. I'd like the option to pick from thumbnails as well.

When in that same image selection dialog, as far as I can tell it only lets a PICT be chosen. I'd like to be able to chose an RLE as well.

And when you do assign an RLE to a spďn or shän, it would be nice to have the "Size" fields update automatically.

Here are some "dream features" that would greatly improve my MissionComputer experience:

Record directly to snd resource.
Create new PICT resource by pasting from clipboard as well as importing from file.
Be able to change names of fields/create custom editors.
Not have dsďg resource added automatically.

And some things that might be beyond the scope of the project:

Be able to see all resource types (even unsupported ones.)
Be able to copy, paste, and delete unsupported resource types.
Be able to open any resource (supported or unsupported) and edit as straight hex OR text.
Be able to create unsupported resource types and edit as hex or text.