Editing
Plug-ins can be created or edited either by a resource editor such as ResEdit, or by a third-party editor specifically designed to edit plug-in files, such as MissionComputer. The first two Escape Velocity incarnations utilise simple templates included with the game files that can be loaded into ResEdit and used to edit the resources in a human-readable fashion. With EV Nova, these are still available, but have been superseded in general use by a set of ResEdit add-on editors called NovaTools, which offer a more graphical interface, and can perform necessary hexadecimal calculations which the templates left to the user’s own mathematical skills.
Even with the benefit of NovaTools, however, ResEdit can prove unwelcoming to many users, and cannot run natively under Mac OS X (or at all on Windows and on Intel-based Macintoshes). There is therefore a long-standing tradition of purpose-built plug-in editors, which offer extra features and a more user-friendly interface. The present-day editors supporting EV Nova are the free MissionComputer, the shareware EVONE, the under-construction Rezilla Custom, and the Windows-only EVNEW, which is at present the only option open to Windows-based developers. Past editors which have not been updated to support subsequent games include Schmelta-V (named for Ambrosia's delta-v plug-in development mailing list), EV-Edit, EEEV (later called Override Override), EVO Developer's Map, and many others.
Alternatively, programs such as ConText and ResStore (both part of the NovaTools package) can be used to export certain types of resources into spreadsheets, where various values (such as damage dealt by a weapon) can be edited. This can be particularly useful for modifying many resources at once, as many spreadsheet programs provide the ability to fill cells. These spreadsheets can then be imported back into plug-in format.
Read more about this topic: Plug-in (Escape Velocity)
Famous quotes containing the word editing:
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