Ok, I am still left with some questions about the ship.tbl handling by the game engine and by Fred. I'd use Bugzilla, but I am at work and the IT dept. here is a little anal about what I can and cannot access.
Anyhow, the following list of things happen in any release I have downloaded (I tried all the ones I could get my hands on to make sure):
1, Although I can have more than the origional limits to ship numbers, the database itself restricts the number that can be displayed to about 129. Can the maximum number the database will display in the list be raised to reflect the increased limits in the tbl file? This would be kind of useful. Please note I am not referring to the total allowed number of ships in the tbl, but to the tech database number of ships display limits.
2, The first ship entry in the table (if longer than the origional) will not display in the ship database (in game) as anything but a random character, though the fluff text entry will show up and the model will display. I worked around this by making a dummy fighter entry that is not set to display, but it is a little irritating and wasteful. Can this be fixed?
3, When viewing a custom list of ships in Fred that is longer than the origional, some entries get shortened up, and will crash Fred if they are selected. This also seems to be somewhat random as to what ships get messed up this way. Is it possible to repair this? Would make it easier to work on missions without having to script in dummy entries in the ship.tbl to work around the problem.
4, Some entries after the 129 limit do not show up as well (in Fred), leaving instead only a blank space, which if clicked on crashes Fred. Could this be corrected?
5, There is a limit on the number of alternate ship names that can be used in Fred - can this be raised a bit?
I think the fixes and changes would be a good thing, especially in light of the number of ship models that have been released, and which are pending.
Thanks, you folks are doing a fantastic job!
