Problems in EVNEW

I am trying to import a new ship into Nova but EVNEW keeps making the sprites transparent.

I import it like this.

Shot at 2009-01-06

Then I go back to it and it looks like this.

Shot at 2009-01-06

The end result is this.

Shot at 2009-01-06

Does anyone know how to stop this from happening?

This post has been edited by rafy23 : 07 January 2009 - 11:52 PM

My entirely uneducated guess is this:

EVNEW reads both pure black and pure white as transparencies. Try making the black outlines slightly grey and see what happens.

(edit)Blast! Beat by seconds! :laugh:

This post has been edited by Archon : 06 January 2009 - 09:11 PM

I'm guessing EVNEW is automatically masking everything that is black.
How did you import the mask for your sprites? You ought to create a copy of you're original image and mask it manually. Look at the other resources (the view menu allows you to alernate between the sprite and the mask)

@archon, on Jan 6 2009, 08:10 PM, said in Problems in EVNEW:

My entirely uneducated guess is this:

EVNEW reads both pure black and pure white as transparencies. Try making the black outlines slightly grey and see what happens.

(edit)Blast! Beat by seconds! :laugh:

I had this same problem once, and used the same solution to fix it. It doesn't take much gray to get it to work and for all intents and purposes have it still look black.

Thanks. It works perfectly now. I didn't have to bother with a mask as EVNEW creates one for the base itself.

Shot at 2009-01-06

I also have a problem where I can't buy most outfits for some reason. I have never run into this problem before.

This post has been edited by rafy23 : 06 January 2009 - 10:32 PM

That's in there for the Vellos, who can't have physical weapons and stuff. It's one of the Contribute bits. I think it's the one that makes a 1 and the end of the zeros. I can't remember if it is taken as bit 1 or bit 64.

EVNEW will take all the black out of an image and interpret it as a mask unless you provide it with a good and proper mask. I choose to render ships on a transparent background then take the sprite into GIMP and play with it until I have a 1 bit B&W mask and a sprite set on a black background. (If there are any places in the mask where more of the sprite shows through than should, it'll blend right into space.)

A word on masks, as I have recently discovered: make sure you flatten the image to a 1 bit (black and white) color depth, or EVNEW throws a fit about the mask.

Everything works fine now. All of the ships I imported look good and can be equiped from the outfiters. Thank you for all the help. It is very appreciated.

If I may can I ask for one more item, I have a fighter that when I buy it should come with a modified radar missile launcher with unlimited ammo that I named the interceptor. If I leave the planet without going into the outfitters, it shows up and works fine but if I buy it and go to the outfitters(I don't even have to buy anything), it does not show up anywhere.

In the shipyard info page it shows this.

Shot at 2009-01-07

Does anybody know what I am missing?

If it helps here is the rez.

Fighters.zip (72.87K)
Number of downloads: 2

This post has been edited by rafy23 : 08 January 2009 - 12:02 AM

Could you explain that a bit more? I'm not sure I follow. As a guess, you didn't by any chance set the tech level of the outfits to 32767?
(edit) Did you name the weapon resource? The ship info there uses the weapon resource names.

This post has been edited by Guy : 08 January 2009 - 04:57 AM

@rafy23, on Jan 7 2009, 11:39 PM, said in Problems in EVNEW:

I have a fighter that when I buy it should come with a modified radar missile launcher with unlimited ammo that I named the interceptor. If I leave the planet without going into the outfitters, it shows up and works fine but if I buy it and go to the outfitters(I don't even have to buy anything), it does not show up anywhere.

When you created your new wëap resource, did you create a matching oütf resource? If not, the engine will lose it when it’s installed on a player ship – that’s why even weapons that can’t be bought or sold, like the Vell-os beams, have an associated outfitter item.

I looked the plug over, and David's right: your problem is that you did not create associated outfit resources and matching descriptions for the weapons. That's the crucial thing.

Aside from the critical problem, here's some tips that might help you with EVNEW and ship creation. Something that I discovered when I created a shuttlebay for a TC I'm helping out with is that you have to make sure that the carried ship's outfit is buyable/sellable. You can make the tech level absurdly high in the advent you want the player to not be able to get the carried ship back once destroyed (which is what I did with the aforementioned shuttlebay.) It may not be relevant to you, but I figured it would be a good tidbit for you to know if you need it.

Also, this isn't quite as necessary, but you should create outfitter pictures and shipyard pictures, as well as the matching description resources. You're using EVNEW, same as me, so this is more simple than one would normall think. In the EVNEW ship dialog, you'll see attached image1. In the outfit dialog you'll see attached image 2. You'll need to know those numbers (easiest way I've found is to have a little notepad with you.) Create the resources with the appropriate numbers and put in whatever you need to.

For good-looking shipyard pictures like EV Nova has for the in-game shipyard dialogue, create a 600x400 good-looking render of your ship on a nice background. Not necessary, and in your case, probably not even practical, but it's there for you if you want it. Now comes the part that wouldn't normally make sense: under the description dialogue, there's a spot for "graphic." Put the associated pict ID that you just imported your 600x400 image as under that spot. It will then show up in the 'yard dialogue nicely. This is NOT the pict ID of the EVNEW's ship dialogue for "shipyard pict." That's for the square picture that shows up in the shipyard itself.

Hope that helps!

Attached File(s)

• Images.zip (3.59K)
  Number of downloads: 2

Thanks man. That did it. I've been using EVNEW for years to basically cheat by inserting really powerful and cheap ships and outfits, changing the chances for the randoms of some missions in plugs that were ridiculously low and to find out where to go in certain plugs like RoP. By the way, I love that plug. I recently inserted the graphics of all the ships that were in both RoP and rEV, like the kestrel, corvette, and argosy from rEV into RoP. They ended up coming out perfect. The argosy is my favorite ship. I hoped someone would update the plug but that seems unreasonable in light of other update attempts.

No prob. Plug creation can have some tricky moments, especially in EVNEW.

Is there any type of template or ruler that I can use to find placements for weapon exit points? Right now I have to change something in the shan and go into nova to test if it works and it can be an exausting process. What type of units is the game using for these measurements? I know it ain't pixels.

Actually, it is pixels. But given that I'm a firm practitioner of the "plug in numbers until it looks nice" philosophy, I will leave it to more able minds to explain the ins and outs of the system.

Take one frame of sprite. Open it in an image manipulation program. Drag a rectangle from the corner to the point desired. Barring 1-and-0 issues, this should work.

That last thing did not work for me. I am using the gimp so maybe that is the problem. The number of pixels I see in the gimp do not correspond with the numbers in nova's shan.

As with Archon, I've discovered that the "guess and check" method seems to work the best. Eventually, after you do it ten or twelve times, you'll get a good idea of how many pixels is how much stuff. Most ships that I've constructed are good with about 8-14 pixels from the center point on an x axis, and 4-10 on the y. Everything is going to be different for each new ship, though.

I'm somewhat perplexed that the pixels in the GIMP aren't corresponding with Nova's pixel count. Are you saving the image as a resized image? How are you getting the pixel count in the GIMP? Remember as well that the pixel distance is figured from the 0,0 point of each sprite.

Make sure you start with the z offset and x/y compress values at zero. If need be you can work those out after you have your x/y offsets.