EV / EVO Sprite Issue

Works fine in EVO, but glitchy in EV.

Greetings.

I'm destroying my brain trying to figure out why a sprite works perfectly fine in EVO, but is glitchy in EV. Roughly -120° to 0° in the rotation has bits of black background that will appear over other objects, and the ship itself will black out in some sections.

I've tried changing the color pallet, in case Override uses thousands and EV 256, but that didn't have any effect. I resized the sprite, in case EVO is happy with an 88 x 88 pixel ship frame, and EV isn't. That had no effect either. I tried using magic-wand in photoshop to remove the black background of the sprite, leaving only the ship. That just made things REALLY wonkey--pretty sure EV/O want that background to be black anyway. I've also checked and re-checked the Spin resource. It's pointing to the right sprite, mask, pixels per frame, and number of frames.

The sprites/masks I am using are Saber Studios' Azdgari Warship, from the "Azdgar" set found at evula's shipyard (SaberStudios > Misc > Azdgar Ships). Problems occur with both the "3D" and Top-Down variations.

So, I'm stumped. Does EVO handle sprites differently than EV? Is there any reason that a sprite designed for EVO would have problems in EV? Or is the source merely corrupted somehow?

Any ideas (short of "abandon EV/O and work with Nova") appreciated.

Very strange. I've used the same sprite as a placeholder in Legacy using Nova, and it works fine there. I also can't really think of any reason why EVO would be able to use it fine but EVC cannot. Are you absolutely sure the sprite generated correctly for EVC when making it with Mission Computer? Have you tried copying the working one from EVO to an EVC plug-in?

@darthkev, on 20 November 2013 - 05:29 PM, said in EV / EVO Sprite Issue:

Very strange. I've used the same sprite as a placeholder in Legacy using Nova, and it works fine there. I also can't really think of any reason why EVO would be able to use it fine but EVC cannot. Are you absolutely sure the sprite generated correctly for EVC when making it with Mission Computer? Have you tried copying the working one from EVO to an EVC plug-in?

Well, in the first place, I don't use Mission Computer. I'm using ResEdit exclusively. That said, I did convert the working EVO test plugin over to EV, and saw the same problem.

I wonder if my issue is reproducible. If you, or somebody else has an old machine that can throw these graphics into an EV plug for a quick test and see how they work, it'd probably be a good troubleshooting step.

(Edit) It's probably worth mentioning that I am using all other ships from that set in their "3D" version without issue. However, I haven't checked out their Top-Down versions; it should be irrelevant since both 3D and Top-Down of the Warship are failing. (/Edit)

This post has been edited by U.E. Admiral : 20 November 2013 - 06:29 PM

Unfortunately, my old grape iMac isn't doing too well and I'm not sure how much testing I could really do with it. I could try getting copies of EV/O into SheepShaver and see how that goes, but being in an emulator could itself alter the results.

However, I can tell you it's definitely not the size of the sprite that's the issue. I remember the Empire plugs and Realm of Prey all having larger ship graphics than the Confed Cruiser, and all worked fine. All were also for EVC. All I can suggest at this point is try using Mission Computer and see if you get the same results. At least that would tell us if the issue resides in EVC or in ResEdit.

Is there an OS9-compatible version of Mission Computer that can edit Ship resources? The most recent I can find is 9-140, which mentions desc, dude, flet, govt, junk, misn, pers, and year.

My old machine does have a 10.3.9 install, so I'll see what I can do on OSX, but in the future I expect it'll be rather annoying to jump back and forth between operating systems to fix any errors I make.

(Edit) Case in point: Boot into OSX, download Mission Computer 420, edit blank plugin, add ship, add sprite, add mask, boot into OS9, load plugin, notice I forgot Spin. Derp. Boot OSX . . . (/Edit)

(Edit 2) I have now edited an empty plugin (albeit initially created with resedit) with Mission Computer 420 and added the Warship's 3D Sprites & Mask, Top-Down Sprites & Mask, a ship to use each, and a corresponding spin for each ship. The same problem persists. (/Edit 2)

(Edit 3) I have now created a fresh plugin with Mission Computer 420 and added the Warship's 3D Sprites & Mask, Top-Down Sprites & Mask, a ship to use each, and a corresponding spin for each ship. As with the edited plugin, the same problem persists. (/Edit 3)

(Edit 4) This is interesting. While pursuing alternatives, I doubled the sprite size of the Arada in that same set of graphics, and I am now seeing very similar (perhaps identical) problems. The Arada worked fine at 56x56, but at 112x112 it's glitchy. Maybe there IS some kind of size issue going on? (/Edit 4)

(Edit 5)
I've taken a short video on my phone. Hopefully this will help diagnose & solve the problem. As you will see, the normal size ship Arada 56 is just fine. Double the size to Arada 112, and we have the glitchy effect. And then we have the Warship 3D and Top-Down sprites at regular size in their own glitchy glory. As before, I have ensured that the spins are pointing to the correct sprites and masks, and the masks (so long as they were right to begin with in the download) are sized to match the sprites. I am also certain that I have the correct number of pixels per frame and number of frames in the spin resource.
Video is on youtube: "EV / EVO Sprite Issue"
Link (assuming a link filter exists) :
(/Edit 5)

This post has been edited by mrxak : 21 November 2013 - 03:31 PM
Reason for edit: made it a real URL, silly UE

Silly UE, there is no link filter.

So I can confirm that I can get the same graphics weirdness with UE's test plug on 7.6 (in Sheepshaver). We're wondering if 88x88 sprites are just bad juju or something, but it really seems to me that the sprite itself is corrupted or the mask is.

How could they be corrupted in a way that only affects EVC? I don't understand how that's possible. I would retract my previous statement about it not being the size of the sprite, but that doesn't explain how Tim Isles pulled it off with RoP and Empire. Might increasing the memory allocated to EVC help?

The odd theory is that it isn't so much the largeness of the sprite, but rather the particular size it sits at right now. However, resizing it one size down or one size up (for a multiple of 16 rather than doesn't resolve the problem either. I myself have plugs with 176x176 ships running around no problem, so I definitely know it isn't because the sprite is too large. I'm already allocating 150mb of memory to EV, which has enabled me to play anything under the sun that I ever downloaded, including Tim's plugs.

I am starting to consider using an entirely different set of graphics for this Gov't, or simply use Override for the project; however, in either of these cases, this kind of glitch has the potential to crop up again.

And so the puzzle remains.