does anyone know what this error means?
runtime error 207 at 1412:01cf

after the error the game crashes.

Entering Enemy Ships:

Hello
Does anyone know how to display the day?
I used sayval day at 1 6 but it won't let it work
So I figure making a variable take days place,
set d2 = day but this won't work either.

Reason for this is on the ship you can set a course for very long distances in a 3D Cartesian coordinate system. X Y Z.
If the ship is at x 4 and y 6 and z3, then you enter in new coordinates, you will have to wait a whole day for each number to get to the new location. You can warp eventually when you upgrade the technology, but thats part of the plot of the game and takes time. 3 warp drives for each axis of space to obtain. Then just warp to a new location.

To pass the time you can wander around the ship and activities can let hours pass, such as poker games, and sleeping.

So I need to display the present year (variable u, no problem using sayval for u), day, hour and minute.
The hour and minute displays by turning it on in config menu. But to display the day has become a problem. sayval won't use day as the variable. And neither can I set d2 = day. If all else fails I can have the computer tell you. But players would want to see this in the display I think.

Update:
It will let me say:
sayval minuet at 1 3
but not sayval day at 1 3
also i can put set u = minute and it works
but can't put set u = day
Why does it work for hour and minute but not day?

It's really COSMIC EYE, But I made it an I for fitting the name in. Might be seen as a 1 like in the first of a series. But it's suppose to be an eye. The sequel could be crossed eyes.

I have two ways to go here for space combat. I could simulate turn battle with mosaics. That way you don't have to ready another weapon. And the upgrade would give you the chance to fire two photon torpedoes at once. Running into such a situation would be triggered by the step macro. One out of say 20 chances of bumping into a bad space ship. Which brings up the red alert bmp and weapons stations. The mosaic to play will already be chosen by a random number when hitting the fire weapons button. It would be cool to watch a floating torpedo get launched out and then "find its way to the bad space ship".

The other way is just to encounter them like you would any bad guy, by simply finding them along the way. A battle between two screen characters isn't as star treky or submarine style battle as the mosaics would provide.

So if I do away with the later option then why explore space maps at all? For instances of finding planets and interesting objects the crew member on ship could tell you every time you enter a sector of space of the known target to be found there. And ask if you wish to visit any of them.

On the other hand very large space maps might be fun to explore.

The other option of navigating to known targets is to use room maps. If asked to visit a known target, transfer the region to a room map that depicts space and say a planet to land on. Otherwise you would have to search for it on a big space map.

Besides those questions, what already is is once you destroy an enemy, (if the ship doesn't blow up), it leaves behind a vehicle to loot or take control of. Each ship has it's own map to fight in and take control of and loot. If you take control of ship, it replaces your own. Entering the ship took away from the map any vehicles on the map so as not to leave any behind and then leaving the ship requires scuttling it. Also removing it from story and map.

Each ship has two maps, one populated by bad guys and not yours. and one in which you took control of it.

The cargo bay is shared by all ships so that whatever you amass will always be yours but the same cargo bay on uncontrolled ships acts as a random selection of goods added to your inventory. It shuts off after raiding it. And turns on by entering the map (which you can't redo if you leave as the ship gets destroyed.)

Piloting:
You have a shuttle that goes between ships. You can not enter a star ship with another star ship. And you can not land a star ship on a planet, you must use a shuttle. Entering planets ask if you want to land or fly around.

Note to anyone wanting to know how to use the macro fly=1. All items you want a vehicle to fly over must be a space object. Not an obstacle object. So make mountains into space objects set to passable to nothing. You can make a boarding macro and exiting macro. These macros turn fly on and off. Save all your obstacles for town maps and room maps where you do not want a flying vehicle to be in.

Also on a planet the shuttle ask if you want to fly around the planet or go to outer space.

So the question is for star ship battle, is it better for a first person point of view using mosaics and bmps to simulate a battle or is it better to just use the standard creature fight on a space map?

I know that if I just make it mosaics it would grant me many many more map space for planets and towns.
I wonder if it is possible to animated the screen bmp, I could put a little window in a corner that constantly shows stars going by, thus helping the notion that space flight is happening.

Oh, also, at any time you can leave the bridge and explore the other areas of your ship and talk to crew members.

You mean the colors or the layout? Or maybe the screen shots.
The colors is set in object editor. Alt+M sets what the color an object will be in editor view or 40x40 view.
The layout, I loaded a map in a paint program, then resized them (by pixels) to the size of the map I am making (by tiles)
say 240x240. Then turn on a grid in paint program. Then wherever the mouse hovers over a pixel the program tells you the x and y coordinates on the image. I switch to the map editor and draw the corresponding tile. If I am hovering over the edge of a continent, I add an edge tile same x and y location. Thus transferring one tile at a time, the entire map. It's a very slow slow process but since I am chained to a dungeon what else am I going to do?
For the screen shots I hit the view button for the whole map, then press printscreen button and paste to a paint program. For maps larger then the view, I just layer one over the other until they match and flatten the layers.

For repetitive maps, such as space maps and moon maps (which repeat craters and rocks) I made a temporary step macro that, during game play, will draw a random tile with mapset on a blank map. Then quit the game and copy the files for the map (in game save folder) ending in .x# and paste them into the game folder after renaming them to a#. If it is map 12 it will have a .x12 int he save game folder. Copy and rename it to .a12 and then paste it over the one in the actual game folder. This makes all tiles drawn with mapset during game play.

Thats what I do now. Used to copy the x# y# and z# and then rename them to a b and c, but I think I found a problem. The regions report says that I have used the maximum for dropping items and player won't be able to exit vehicles or drop items. Even though this map has no such items on it.
I'm sure it has something to do with copying the wrong files. Now I just copy the x and rename it to a.

Does anyone know exactly what the save game files do?
Such as the ones ending in say, x1 and y1 and z1.
It may be that I only need to copy one such file, rename it and paste/overwrite the corresponding one in game folder.
update: just copied the file ending in .x1 and renamed it to .a1 and the tiles were added to the actual map. No misc stacked items were added. Renaming y1 and z1 to b1 and c1 did not add misc stacked items. If you try this trick only rename the .x1 to .a1 (or whatever number it is. The number is map number, if your 33rd map is a dungeon look for the .x33)

Actually I was thinking that a good ACK thread to start would be a descriptions of all the files generated by ACK and what there purpose is so that we can do more of these hacks or make sure we can avoid doing the wrong thing.

This game will have up to 729 maps to visit. Sure ACK comes with only 100 to make, but with macros and variables, we can repeat maps and have them redisigned. And this game will allow you to explore 729 giant space maps, each populated with planets and moons and space stations to visit. And besides the 729 space maps, there are the regular planets and moon maps, so potentially over 800 maps to visit. Sound like a big enough adventure?

Looks cool. How did you make those gorgeous maps?

The premise is you steal ships and then pirate the space ways for loot. Then sell the loot. There is a plot. And you can visit lots of planets and moons and asteroids and fight bad space ships and robots and aliens.
screens:
Bridge:


Moon Battle:


Future Earth:


Even put in Ultima worlds:


Future SI: