Weird spinning behavior of a station and fuel station.

[maaarcooose]

After upgrading to 1.77 on my Mac and happily wasting pirates in my PitViper, I've had a few occasions where I've had some odd behaviour from stations and fuel stations.

First, I launched from a station and found myself spinning at a crazy speed. Once I'd got my bearings, I turned round to find the station spinning at about 5 times the speed it should be.
Everyone launching seemed to be having the same problem and docking was not possible. Also the front of the station looked like it had some random bits of textures sticking out the front (I'll post the screenshot after my lappy has charged back up).
I decided to jump out and leave it.

Next I was carefully approaching a fuel station when it suddenly decided to start spinning randomly when i was just about to enter it. Luckily it also jumped away from my ship a little so I avoided crashing with it. The behaviour stopped but I decided to leave it alone.

Lastly I was doing my first passenger run and when I approached the destination station, it was spinning way too fast. I though screw it and tried to dock anyway. Boom!

Anyone else seen this behaviour?

I'm suspecting a bad install or OXP's. I have been running the save game that came with the PitViper but nothing else too odd. I've only got about 20 OXP's installed.

!m!

[Mad Dan Eccles]

I see that occasionally with a non-OXP 1.77 install. First time I crashed into the station (I was too close to stop when it started). Second time there was a camera-shutter effect (I posted about it a few days ago) and I couldn't dock. Third time it was a rock hermit *and* the station; this time I hypered out and back in (after scooping fuel--funnily enough there were two cargo fleets close in to the sun apparently doing the same thing!) and it was OK.

[Wildeblood]

Compare with pagroove's messages here:-

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 8&start=45

[Eric Walch]

It seems to only happen with non-core stations. And probably also none main stations. I never saw it, but the fuel stations are added with a legacy script. Maybe there goes something wrong. It might be helpful to know exactly from which oxps the stations are and how they are added to the universe. Fuel station seems the only one that is clearly linked to an oxp. But then: is it the newest version?

And fuel station is technically no station at all because it explicitly states: "isCarrier = no;".

[Mad Dan Eccles]

Hmm. I have no OXPs. (At least, none I know of!)
Which means I only have core stations, yes?

I'll get a video and a log next time.

[maaarcooose]

I've got myself a vid capture program installed so ill capture next time.

I did just remove BGS recently as I didn't like the sounds.

My symptoms sound very similar to pagrooves.

!m!

[Diziet Sma]

So far, all reports of this happening appear to be from Mac users. Are any Linux or Windows users seeing this behaviour?

[Eric Walch]

You may be right. I thought the first report was from a non-mac user, but looking it up, that was also on a mac. Probably some weird rounding error that is handled different on those macs. I never saw it.

[Commander McLane]

I find the report about the fuel station especially curious, because it isn't supposed to spin at all. What could even make it spin in the first place?

[maaarcooose]

I find the report about the fuel station especially curious, because it isn't supposed to spin at all. What could even make it spin in the first place?

Well it started spinning erratically on all axis' just as I approached it.
It was like I hit it but did no damage. I assumed it was something wrong as whenever I've actually hit a fuel station before it was a press space moment.

!m!

[Commander McLane]

I find the report about the fuel station especially curious, because it isn't supposed to spin at all. What could even make it spin in the first place?

Well it started spinning erratically on all axis' just as I approached it.

Interesting. This would for instance happen, if the fuel station would suddenly get dumbAI assigned to it (dumbAI makes any object just stop dead and spin around randomly). I have no idea, though, how and why this could happen. An object dump would be useful, but unfortunately not possible in the deployment version.

[another_commander]

Moved to Testing and Bug Reports.

[Smivs]

Linux (ubuntu 10.10) with no OXP stations and no sign of this problem, if that helps.

[Thargoid]

My comments and thinking about the fuel station would closely match what McLane says above. It technically isn't a station in the normal sense and should not rotate at all. The only two ideas I had would be a performTumble or somehow it ending up defined as a turret somehow and having it try to track something. But neither would be in its normal behaviour or AI. If it happens again can you get info via the console if you have it of the AI its using at the time? It may be that a bug or another OXP is screwing with it accidentally.

[maaarcooose]

I suspect it may be time for me to get the test release installed and the debug console as I've got the weird feeling in my bones that I'm about to start work on an OXP.

The dark side is calling to me, but then again what side is for those of us that write fiction?
I fear that I may already be a lost cause.

!m!