Spöb

Spöb (abbreviated form of space object) is a type of data resource in EV Nova. These spobs tell the game about planets and space stations.

The spöb 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.

Spob resources describe stellar objects, such as planets and space stations. (spob stands for space object) Each spob resource represents one stellar object, whose name is the name as the name of the resource. The first three fields tell Nova where to put the stellar and what graphics to use for it:

xPos & yPos

The stellar's X and Y positions in the system. (0, 0) is centered.

Type

Which graphic to use, from 0 to 255.

Spob attributes

The next field stores the flag bits that tell Nova what many of the characteristics of the stellar are. Perform an OR operation on the following flags to get the final flag value:

1. 0x00000001: Can land/dock here
2. 0x00000002: Has commodity exchange
3. 0x00000004: Can outfit ship here
4. 0x00000008: Can buy ships here
5. 0x00000010: Stellar is a station instead of a planet
6. 0x00000020: Stellar is uninhabited (no traffic control or refuelling)
7. 0x00000040: Has bar
8. 0x00000080: Can only land here if stellar is destroyed first
9. 0x00000000: Won't trade in food
10. 0x10000000: Low food prices
11. 0x20000000: Medium food prices
12. 0x40000000: High food prices
13. 0x00000000: Won't trade in industrial goods
14. 0x01000000: Low industrial prices
15. 0x02000000: Medium industrial prices
16. 0x04000000: High industrial prices
17. 0x00000000: Won't trade in medical supplies
18. 0x00100000: Low medical prices
19. 0x00200000: Medium medical prices
20. 0x00400000: High medical prices
21. 0x00000000: Won't trade in luxury goods
22. 0x00010000: Low luxury prices
23. 0x00020000: Medium luxury prices
24. 0x00040000: High luxury prices
25. 0x00000000: Won't trade in metal
26. 0x00001000: Low metal prices
27. 0x00002000: Medium metal prices
28. 0x00004000: High metal prices
29. 0x00000000: Won't trade in equipment
30. 0x00000100: Low equipment prices
31. 0x00000200: Medium equipment prices
32. 0x00000400: High equipment prices

Tribute

The stellar's tribute payout when dominated

• -1 or 0: Default amount (1000 credits x Tech Level)
• 1 and up: This number of credits per day

The next fields tell Nova what items and ships are available for purchase at this stellar:

TechLevel

What the base tech level of the stellar is. Only items and ships with TechLevels at or below this value will be available.

SpecialTech (x8)

Holds the special tech levels of this stellar. Unlike the previous field, only items and ships with exactly this TechLevel will appear here. This is useful for making low-tech worlds that also have a few high-tech items, or for flagging an item with an absurdly high TechLevel (say 15000) and then setting one of the SpecialTech fields of a particular stellar to that same value, thus making that item appear at that stellar and nowhere else.

The next two fields contain info on the stellar's governmental affiliation:

Govt

What government controls this stellar

• -1: ignored (stellar is independent)
• 128-383: ID number of the stellar's government

MinStatus

The point on your record in the current system that you'll be denied landing clearance on this stellar.

• -32767: Ignored (player can always land)
• -1 to -32766: You can be this evil before they shun you
• 0 to 32766: They have to like you this much before they let you land
• 32767: Player can never land.

(Note that this field is ignored if the stellar is uninhabited)

Multimedia

The next pair of fields tells Nova which special landscape to show and which ambient sound to play.

CustPicID

Which custom landscape to show

• 128 and up: ID number of PICT to load instead of the standard landscape display
• less than 128: No custom landscape (Note: for animated hypergates, this field can be optionally used to set the index of the transition between the "opening/closing" animation and the "working" animation. Set to 0 to have the engine use the first half of the frames for "opening/closing" and the second half for "working".)

CustSndID

Which ambient sound to play

• -1: No ambient sound effect
• Anything else: ID number of snd resource to load (Note: for hypergates and wormholes, this field serves a different purpose - it controls the angle at which ships emerge. Values between 0 and 359 specify an exact angle, while any other value specifies a random direction.)

Defence

The next two fields tell Nova what kind of ships, if any, to create for the planet's defense fleet:

DefenseDude

Which type of dude to use for the defense fleet:

• -1: Ignored (no defense ships)
• 128-639: ID number of the dude resource to use to determine the defense ships' characteristics

DefCount

The number of ships in the defense fleet. If you set this number to be above 1000, ships will be launched from the planet or station in waves. The last number in this field is the number of ships in each wave, and the first 3-4 numbers (minus 1 from the first digit) are the total number of ships in the planet's fleet. For example, a value of 1082 would be four waves of two ships for a total of eight. A value of 2005 would create waves of five ships each, with 100 ships total in the planet's defense fleet.

Flags2

1. 0x0001: For an animated stellar, the first frame will be shown after each subsequent frame.
2. 0x0002: For an animated stellar, the next frame in the sequence will be picked at random. The same frame will not be picked twice in a row. Note that this can be combined with the previous flag and the Frame0Bias field to create interesting effects such as random planetary lightning or lights twinkling.
3. 0x0010: Play this stellar's sound in a continuous loop
4. 0x0020: Stellar is always dominated (all your base are# # belong to us)
5. 0x0040: Stellar starts the game destroyed
6. 0x0080: For an animated stellar, the stellar's graphic is animated after it's been destroyed and static when it is not destroyed. The normal behavior is the opposite of this: static when destroyed and animated when not.
7. 0x0100: Stellar is deadly - all ships that touch it are destroyed immediately
8. 0x0200: If the stellar has a weapon, it will only fire when provoked (i.e. only when the player is trying to dominate it)
9. 0x0400: If the stellar has an outfit shop, it can buy any nonpermanent outfits the player owns, regardless of tech level
10. 0x1000: Stellar is a hypergate - if the player lands on it he will be given a choice of which other hypergate to travel to (see HyperLink1-8 below)
11. 0x2000: Stellar is a wormhole - if the player lands on it he will be transported to some other random somewhere in the galaxy. If all of the wormhole's HyperLink1-8 fields set to -1, the player will end up at another random wormhole which also has no defined hyper links. If the wormhole has any hyper links defined, the player will end up at one of the wormholes on the other end.

AnimDelay

The time to wait between frames, in 30ths of a second.

Frame0Bias

If greater than 1, this is used as a multiplier to extend the display time of the first frame in the sequence. For example, a Frame0Bias of 3 would cause the first frame in the sequence would be held for three times longer than the rest of the frames.

HyperLink1-8

IDs of the spöb resources of up to eight other hypergates or wormholes to which this hypergate (or wormhole) is connected. Set to zero or -1 if unused. For a wormhole, setting every HyperLink field to -1 will cause the wormhole to randomly connect to any other random wormhole when the player goes through it.

OnDominate

Control bit set expression which is evaluated when the stellar is successfully dominated by the player

OnRelease

Control bit set expression which is evaluated when the stellar is released from domination by the player

Fee

The fee that is deducted from the player's credits when landing on this stellar. Set to zero if unused.

Gravity

The stellar's gravity - 0 for none, positive for stellars that pull, negative for stellars that push. Beware! This feature is mostly here for laughs. It severely confuses the AI, so it should only be used in empty systems where only the player can go.

Weapon

Stellars can have a single projectile or missile type weapon, with unlimited ammunition (don't put the ID of a beam or PD weapon here or bad things will happen). Stellars' weapons can be made to fire either only when provoked or any time an enemy ship is present.

• 0 or -1: No weapon
• 128-383: Stellar has a weapon of this type

Strength

The amount of combined mass and energy damage this stellar can take from planetary-type weapons before it is destroyed. Set this to 0 or -1 for an invincible stellar.

DeadType

Which stellar graphic to use when the stellar is destroyed.

• -1: Don't display different graphic type when destroyed
• 0-255: Display this stellar graphic when destroyed

DeadTime

The amount of time a stellar remains destroyed before it regenerates itself. Set this to 0 for a stellar that regenerates at the end of every day, or -1 for a stellar that never regenerates on its own.

ExplodType

What kind of explosion to show when the stellar is destroyed

• -1: No explosion
• 0-63: This type of explosion
• 1000-1063: Explosion type 0-63, plus a random number of type-0 explosions around it

OnDestroy

Control bit set expression which is evaluated when the stellar is destroyed.

OnRegen

Control bit set expression which is evaluated when the stellar automatically regenerates.