DarthTex

Have her do it here Mitth. That way I can read "the burning flames of hell"

Mostly because they're conservative, especially compared to today's liberal Democrats. Today's Republican party is not the Republican party like back in the days of Ronald Reagan. Today's Republicans practically look like yesteryears Democrats. So that should show you how much today's Democrats have slid to the socialist left. I believe the Federal gov't should be as small as possible, and concentrate on the things that impact the country as a whole. The states should take more responsibility for their citizens, as they should know the needs of their own people better than the national Congress back in D.C. People need to be more responsible for themselves and not rely on the gov't to take care of them (gov't officials only care about their power, money and getting re-elected; and people want them to take care of their welfare when they get old? That's crazy). How did this country survive all of those years before FDR started Social Security? They did it with hard work, good family, friends and community. Now people are lazy getting welfare, collecting unemployment and waiting to get their Social Security. Why work hard, when others will work hard for you (meaning they work hard, get taxed to high heaven, and then the gov't gives their money away)? Social Security should be privatized into IRA's; Disability & Medicare should be scaled back. I know not every single person in the country can survive on this plan, but the majority of these people can fend for themselves but they don't want to. Today's liberal Democrats want to tax the rich to pay for their programs to take care of the poor. The poor in turn receive all of this and in return vote liberal Democrats in power; that's the only thing needed to "repay" them. The more you tax "the rich" (people and companies who work their arses off) the more likely they will leave this country for somewhere else. A lot of businesses are moving overseas because the taxes are cheaper. When they leave, the gov't gets the tax on zero company revenue, plus people are now laid off from their jobs. Not smart in my opinion. Currently the top 1% of wage earners pay 39% of the taxes; the top 25% of wage earners pay 86% of the taxes; the top 50% of wage earners pay 97% of the taxes; and the bottom 50% fo wage earners pay 3% of the taxes! And the Democrats want to RAISE taxes on the rich! The "rich" are the people who buy things, spend their money to keep the ecomony rolling. They get higher taxes, they slow down spending on buying things, then stores have layoffs and everybody suffers. Basically it comes down to personal responsibility (Democrats don't want you to have it, and Republican do), and this country's citizens need a good dose of it. Sorry for the rant.

BS, when's the next installment coming out?

Def, when's the next installment coming out?

To find out which planet/system goes with what sector; that information is located in the SYSTEMSD.DAT file. The sector ID number there correspondes with the SECTORSD.DAT file. The data contains location data in the TEXTSTRA.DLL file for the names. I haven't yet worked on the character files, so I don't have anything on that. Revolution (the creator of RedEd) supposedly worked on the original game, so he would have a deep knowledge of the files and their structure. Vakundok & The Mask has done alot of research & such to dig out details and such. That sounds great, I wish you the best of luck. Keep me informed on how that goes. When I get back on the saved game format I'll let you know anything I find out. Oh, and I was off on my saved game spreadsheet file, the size is 250 Megs!

Your absence can be seen in the threads

Bad luck matey, but it sounds like at that age she had a good crack of life's whip! I just got a letter on Saturday informing me I have inherited 1/3 of my recently departed, also ninety so and so great-uncle's estate, which according to the letter, and my knowledge of quite how wealthy the guy was, should revolutionize my life. This was a guy who even in his late eighties would send post cards from some safari in Africa, or the far-east. I can only admire his physical endurance and zest for life! I hope I will possess the same Condolences to both Mitth & J. And good fortune to you J (literally too!)

Nothing. I have an exceedingly rich friend who's business is based in China, who sends me stuff at home for free, or he is being sold utterly over-priced Adobe software on the cheap in Beijing which I have no moral problem in installing on my home PC. Select option A or B. So not even the postage. Class You can't beat that for Arrrrghdobe software matey. Aye!

Not quite; the first number is the maximum possible and the second number is the actual amount used in the game. See the attached thumbnail http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/5680/savedgamesamplesystemdajq2.th.jpg This is a print from my spreadsheet. The left hand side is the hex data, with the decimal equivalent on the right hand side (I color coded it for an easier explanation). The gray area is the sector information which includes a sector ID number corresponding to the ID numbers in the SECTORSD.DAT file. The yellow area is the system information which includes a system ID number corresponding to the ID numbers in the SYSTEMSD.DAT file. I know there's info in there about system control (Imperial, Alliance or Neutral) and the popular support bar presuming the system is occupied. I just don't remember the fields, but I'll work on that later. You can see the system energy and raw materials info, and there is a field for the number of "items" on the system. The two red and green fields represent Alliance and Imperial fleets, but I'm not sure of the details. I'm guessing the first occurance is for ships in orbit, and the other is for ships enroute. The purple and blue areas are a mine & refinery. This is the area (right after the fleet data) where data for anything on the system is located. This can be fighters, facilities, characters, spec forces, etc. The last three areas (red, orange, blue) I believe represent manufacturing (shipyards, training facilities, construction yards). I'm just not sure of the order, but that can wait until later. The very end is beginning of another system info field (yellow). Now, remember that field for the number of "items" on the system? There are the 4 fleet areas, 1 mine, 1 refinery, and 3 manufacturing areas: 4+1+1+3=9. This minimum number for this field is 7 because every system must have the fleet & manufacturing areas. I hope this helps you out. I would like again to acknowledge that Vakundok laid the ground work for everything I've done. The saved game file changes size as things are built and/or destroyed in the game, therefore static hex locations would never work. Recognizing the header data for items is the only way to go.

That's a good question LLF. I think (theoretically) it could be possible, but ... I'm not sure if it is the "right time". The Democratic Party convention will decide the first hurdle (Billiary Clinton or Barak Hussein Osama). Then the big choice will come November 4th.

Don't worry Mitth, there's still time to change your mind

I WISH I had hair

It was just to show him that I could... I always believed it was "operator error" But still, it was weird

If you go over four more bytes, that's the location for the number of raw materials. The maximum number of energy or raw materials can be set to 256 (FF in hex), but of course when looking at the sector screen the bar goes out of the sector (it's truncated at the edge of the sector screen). Also, any system to the right is partially blocked by the elongated energy bar. I haven't game tested anything yet, so I'm not sure how the game would handle more than 14 singular items (i.e. 24 shipyards: one hex byte is 16 (0 thru F) so technically it should handle 15 items no problem, but it really depends on the internal coding). I made a spreadsheet last spring to convert the hex of a saved game to decimal. I mapped out approximately 50% of it (I went through the entire file, but there are portions that I couldn't determine what it was for). Vakundok had a utility program that did an excellent job "decoding" the first 10%-25% approximately. I just built on that. It is quite cumbersome to do. I used a small galaxy game at the start (day 2) which was approximately ~300K big (in bytes). This would require 600+ pages if you wanted to print it out! My spreadsheet ended up being over 100 Meg's in size decoding this beast, and that was a small galaxy with minimal data! I've been working on my "Master Plan". Seeing how the saved game is laid out, I have a bit of confidence I could "build" a galaxy to approximate the true SW galaxy at the end of ANH. The first task is a WIP and nearing completion (see Galaxy Configuration). Once I have that done, I need to determine the initial state fo the SW galaxy: which systems were on which side & how much support; which were neutral; then facilities to which system (can anybody say Kuat shipyards ); then add specified military forces and such, and finally making sure there are enough mines/refineries to maintain this galaxy configuration. Since I want the Empire to really kick some arse, I initially plan to have this "modified saved game" be a rebel game (hopefully the AI won't mess things up too bad). I also believe I know the reason why the Traitor program doesn't work quite right. This is all hypothetical on my part. The Traitor program changes a "byte" in the saved game for which "side" is to be played, and that's all it changes. I believe that the mission objectives also need to be modified, and some other things "reversed" (Imperial to Alliance, and vice-versa) to make a true "swapping" game. I haven't dug too far into that, but it just came to me when scanning through my saved game spreadsheet. So, someday there might be some slight glimmer of light that a saved game editor could come to pass. But in the meantime, I'll be buying plenty of lottery tickets; I think my odds are better doing that Keep up the good work Slocket!

Then how on earth did you get 11 options in there?! Scath, that post is like 2+ years old And I thought I was getting senile

OOC: I'm in; but I can't do anything just yet. Hopefully in the near future

What a bummer All I can say is: Thanks for the great times and fond memories RIP Gary. Not gone, just leveling up to the next plane of adventure!

I though it ended OK Def. You don't have to describe or spell out every detail. It leaves something for the imagination to "fill in the gaps" so to speak. If there was something that was a plot driver or a critical event, then I'm sure you would have added more to your post. Great job, keep up the good work!!

On this day in 1998 – Star Wars: Rebellion released on the PC platform. Happy Birthday Rebellion! PS I'm now a Warlord, 1500 (mostly quality) posts!

I like the new layout as well, though it might take awhile to get used to. What happened to "Site Feedback"? Since I can't find it, I'll post my comment here. 1) When clicking on links, why don't they open "new windows" like it used to do? 2) When browsing an updated forum topic; if the new number of posts run over to a new page and I hit the "Back" button on my browser to go back a page, it doesn't. It jumps to the last message posted in that topic. What gives?

Good job Def. Keep 'em on their toes (and me on the edge of my chair )

Yes. One B5 fan here I liked B5 alot. I just wondered how the series would have run had they not chopped it down to 4 years instead of the originally planned 5 Epsilon III was never truly utilized I think the last year of the series (though good) was a bit ... rushed. Watch it if you get the chance I came out as Yoda (I really think it had more to do with age than anything else ).

I found them J. There's the current Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, then the newest USS Freedom (LCS-1), followed by the furturistic Zumwalt class destroyer The Zumwalt somewhat reminds me of the battleship from the game Monopoly

The same thing happens with the word "U.N.I.O.N." I added the periods so it would actually print

Well to put some of this into a nutshell, I created a spreadsheet to convert the hex data in the file to decimal numbers, then display the info "per system". You can get all of the field lengths and descriptions from the "Mechanics of Rebellion" thread. After changing the X and Y coordinates of each system, my spreadsheet converted the data back to hex for pasting into a hex editor. Then I saved the file with the correct file name. My best piece of advice: use RebEd to "move" all of the sectors first. Then after reading in the "new" data for each system, find the maximum and minimum X & Y coordinate values for the systems in each sector. Make sure your "new" system locations stay within the "maximum and minimum X & Y coordinate values"; then everything should work OK the first time (or close to it).