The Dithering Bug also commonly called the Red PICT Bug, was an engine change to 1.09 in which the Macintosh version of Escape Velocity Nova no longer automatically dithered images via Quicktime. Under normal conditions, a player would not notice anything different from 1.08. However, when a plug-in was used, chances are the image would not be in a format Nova considered to be "correct" (16-bit or less, uncompressed) and, consequently, would have errors displaying the image. Most commonly, this resulted in various graphics being overlaid with a bright red hue, though visual oddities, such as lines, splotches of color, and other errors could result as well, even when using some graphics from Nova itself in a plug-in. The proper way to fix the images was to run them through a w00tWare utility known as BlitZen and tell the program to produce 16-bit, uncompressed images. While this worked for new plug-ins, there were still hundreds of plug-ins at least that now had broken graphics.
By popular demand, this "bug", as it was called by the members of the Nova community since the support of the affected image types was purely coincidental to begin with, was fixed in 1.10.
Novaverse Mods | PlugPack (2003) • ARPIA2 (2007) • Anathema (2007) • Brave New Void (2022) Novaverse Total Conversion: White Dwarf (2023) | |
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In Development | You're Not Special, Haiku | |
Tools for Plugin Creation | Mac: MissionComputer • ResEdit • NovaTools • ResForge Windows: EVNEW • RezEditor | |
Bugs | Patch Notes • Dithering Bug • Exponential Beam Bug • 1=X Bug • Auto-Machine Gun Bug • Mass Trick | |
Guides | Nova Bible • Windows Plugin Conversion Tutorial • Nova Control Bits • Pilot File | |
Total Conversions | Major Completed: Polycon EV (2002), Ashen Galaxy (2008), Colosseum (2008) Official: Escape Velocity, Escape Velocity Override Minor Completed: EVN Paintball, Miners, Teacup Blank Slate: Absolute Minimum Released Incomplete: Acheron, Starfleet Adventures Vaporware: Delphi, Aftermath |