[Paint Ballz] have a little foible. The game does not like it when you put a paint ball somewhere and give it the x,y,z co-ordinates of 0, 0, 0. I _think_ that the reason is that those co-ordinates cannot really exist because they aim for the very centre of the base ball -- and paint ballz need to go on the outside of a base ball. But I only think this, I don't know for sure; the workings of the game's virtual "mind" are devious, frustrating and fascinating.
Anyway, back to the problem. Your new breed has mysterious patches of colour, or black, moving around on the pet's chest, belly, head, or other annoying place, and you cannot get rid of them no matter how much you fiddle with hexing the breedfile. If you look inside one of the afflicted pets, and you see lines like this, in the [Paint Ballz]:
1 109 -1.#IND -1.#IND -1.#IND 244 -1 0 -1 -1 0 1
then you have been hit by the terrifying #IND nasties. Elementary, my dear Watson!
And this means that you've got some paint ballz with a y and/or z position of 0 in your breedfile. The game doesn't mind the x position being 0, and it will only irritate you a little if you do 0 for the x and z, but the x y _and_ z set to 0 is just too much. Sometimes when it gets all upset it produces data like this:
0 0 -1.#IND -1.#IND -1.#IND 244 -1 0 -1 -1 0 1
and here the ball size is 0 so nobody notices it so there is no problem unless you expected to see a patch, in which case you'd probably tear out just as much hair trying to figure it out.
Don't go thinking that you can change the "0"s to something infinitesimal, such as .01, because the game firmly changes that to 1. It doesn't do the #IND nasty, it just drives you crazy because the patch is in absolutely the wrong place. The examples below show you what happens in a petfile when you try different combinations of position numbers in a chest paint ball in the breed:
breed
50 109 0 .01 .0 134 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
pet
50 109 0 1 0 134 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
breed
50 109 0 .0 .0 134 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
pet
50 109 -1.#IND -1.#IND -1.#IND 244 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
breed
50 109 0 -.011 0 144 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
pet
50 109 0 -1 0 144 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
breed
50 109 0 .011 0 74 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
pet
50 109 0 1 0 74 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
breed
50 109 0 -0.5 0 144 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
pet
50 109 0 1 0 144 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
breed
50 109 0 0.5 -0.5 144 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
pet
50 109 0 0.707107 -0.707107 144 -1 2 -1 1 1 0
Aha! See? it _likes_ the last one! It's changed it very slightly; that's a random variation in the game, very small, and therefore acceptable.
So, to recap: When you make [Paint Ballz] patches, you won't get what you expect if you have two of the co-ordinates set to 0, and if you set all three to 0 you'll most likely get hit by a case of the #IND nasties.
An addendum to the above; please be careful with your x,y,z data format. Since writing the above I've heard from people who have made the following mistakes:
1. In a negative number, leaving a space between the minus sign and the number (or the decimal point at the start of the number). This makes the game-engine see an extra, nonsensical number.
2. In a negative number, putting the decimal point in front of the minus sign. This makes the game-engine see a nonsense number.
3. Putting a period after the x or y or z number instead of a comma or just a space or a tab. This would make the game-engine think you have a number with two decimal points! Nonsense of course.
Think about it for a moment. All of the above would confuse the game; the amazing thing is not that it produces big ugly blobs in place of your tidy spots, it's that it does not crash in despair when it sees such errors. I'm sure people can dream up all sorts of other careless mistakes to make, so what I'm trying to tell you here is -- take care when typing in your x,y,z numbers (or any others of course), even when there are loads of them and you don't have time. It saves time in the end to do it carefully. And try to understand the way the game is likely to interpret what it sees.
And that's my lecture on Paint Ballz for today
Cheers!
Carolyn