Effect #9 Glow Pulse Options

[Rabain]

I can never seem to get this to work without copying another glow effect from an existing item...this time i want to try other colours than gold!

Basically the Effect says:

Pulses the area specified by the 'Location and Speed' field, at the rate specified by the 'Location and Speed' field, with the colour specified by the 'RGB colour' field.

The 'RGB Colour' field is handled as follows:
Second byte = Red (0-255)
Third byte = Green (0-255)
Fourth byte = Blue (0-255)

The 'Location' field is handled as follows:
First byte = Location
Third byte = Speed (0-255)

A speed of 0 does not pulsate. A speed of 1 is fastest, and a speed of 255 is slowest.

Known values for 'Location' are:
00 Belt Buckle (on armor) or amulets (on robes)
01 Minor colour
02 Major colour
03 Skin colour...etc

The problem I have is that if I put Location 03 and Speed 0 together in the Location field then DLTECP resolves this to 30 and when "Checking" it says the effect is invalid...and i get no glow ingame.

In the item with the gold glow that gives no errors the Location/Speed field has this number 25559045. How it comes to this from a possible 3 digit (255) and 2 digit number (location 02,04 etc) is beyond me.

[pro5]

Use NI, and you won't have to do any additional thinking on what byte means what.

Attached File(s)

 NIcpulse.JPG ( 14.73k ) Number of downloads: 30

 

[Rabain]

How do I know what colour I'm using?

Is there a chart somewhere with the red/green/blue settings for various colours?

It's funny, in colour DLTCEP is so much easier but not in Location/Speed and its the other way around for NI!

[Rabain]

This website helped: http://www.pitt.edu/~nisg/cis/web/cgi/rgb.html

[pro5]

Every graphic editor has such chart, including MS Paint. You can pick desired color there, then switch back into NI and input R/G/B values.

[igi]

Rabain: It sounds like you have the parameter values showing as dword values (i.e. a single value), when you want them to be shown as byte values (for this effect at least).
Try the 'Explode' buttons.

[Rabain]

Thanks, that works fine for the colour field...however the Location and Speed field isn't changed by any of the buttons (Explode/Undefined/IDS/Colour/Damage).

If I understood how the system was making this value I might be able to make an attempt at understanding...maybe.

[igi]

There are two explode buttons (one next to param1, one next to param2). If pressing the button does nothing, I'd say it's a DLTCEP bug (it works fine here btw) - what version are you using?

The way the system generates the value:
The parameter fields are stored as dwords (double words), where a word is 2 bytes, therefore a parameter is 4 bytes. The explode button show the parameter field as the 4 individual bytes, the imploe button shows the parameter as a single 4 byte field.
The number the parameter represents is the same whether the field is treated as a dword or 4 bytes, it's like saying 1234 represents 1234 and the values, 1,2,3 and 4.

[Rabain]

Heh...why did i not see that Explode button?

Sorted...thanks!

[Avenger_teambg]

Actually dltcep should use a default field size for each opcode, but i never gotten around to work it out. (Which is a shame, since the original IEEP had it).

However, I believe DLTCEP is still more usable for this particular effect than NI.