Spïn

Spïn is a type of data resource in EV Nova. These spins tell the game about simple graphics.

The spïn resource

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EV Bible text

The following information was transcribed from the Nova Bible, ©1995-2006 by Matt Burch. The original document can be viewed here.

Spin resources contain sprite info for simple graphical objects. Whenever Nova needs to load a set of sprites for a particular object, it looks at that objects's spin resource, which in turn tells the game how to load the object's sprites. Nova sprites are stored as paired sprite and mask PICT resources, or as rleD/rle8 resources. The sprites in each PICT are arranged in a grid, which can be of any size. The spin resource tells Nova what shape and size the sprites' grid is.

Spin resources have the following fields:

• Sprites ID: ID number of the sprites' PICT resource (or the ID of the rleD/rle8 resource)
• Masks ID: ID number of the masks' PICT resource
• x Size: Horizontal size of each sprite
• y Size: Vertical size of each sprite
• x Tiles: Horizontal grid dimension
• y Tiles: Vertical grid dimension

Spin resources have certain reserved ID numbers, which correspond to different types of objects:

• 400-463: Explosions
• 500: Cargo boxes
• 501-504: Mini-asteroids for mining
• 600-605: Main menu buttons
• 606: Main screen logo
• 607: Main screen rollover images
• 608-610: Main screen sliding buttons
• 650: Target cursor
• 700: Starfield
• 800-815: Asteroids
• 1000-1255: Stellar objects
• 3000-3255: Weapons

It is important to note that the ID numbers of the PICT/rleD/rle8 resources are non-critical, as Nova looks at the spin resources to find the sprites, and not at the actual PICT/rleD/rle8 ID numbers themselves.