[RELEASE] Gallery OXP v1.21

[Norby]

You can review ships and objects you encountered, rotate and zoom models or compare public data. Get target lock on more and more ship types to extend your [wiki]Gallery[/wiki].

Meet exhibitions to find rare ships and increase your visitor level.

Oolite 1.79 is needed to get all fuctionality but most part works in 1.77 also.
Download in the  wiki.

[spara]

Looking nice. Although game wise some ships should be kept secret . This could also be developed into a mini game: at first your gallery is empty and you get new ships into your gallery by encountering them.

Some in-game rationalization would be nice too. F4 is a "ship and system interface," so who provides this data? Or is it meant to be a debugging tool?

[Norby]

It is an "eye candy" tool. I think if a player want to know these data then can look into shipdata.plist files already, but we can design some restrictions for strict players. Most stict players can avoid install this OXP until a good restriction will be implemented.

Gallery of encounters is a nice idea, I like it.

There are more possible solution for "who provides this data", the question is which ones are acceptable by the community. Here is my ideas, your answers can determine the future improvements.

* Ships in shipyards has details in a public databank, all customer can measure and publish these during shopping.
* You can get or buy informations in the canteen.
* Manufacturers make brochures, I especially like this pdf of Executive SpaceWays.
* To see these you must buy hacker equipments.

Maybe all of these can contain inaccurates due to various reasons.

Some mission ship can be excluded also to save secrets.

[spara]

It is an "eye candy" tool. I think if a player want to know these data then can look into shipdata.plist files already, but we can design some restrictions for strict players. Most stict players can avoid install this OXP until a good restriction will be implemented.

I would not justify anything by saying "you can look at the shipdata.plist" because I want to separate the game from reality. In other words, you can't look at the shipdata.plist when you are in Ooniverse. Because of this I suggest that you print energy as banks rather that the raw number. That's how the pilot sees it game.

Maybe all of these can contain inaccurates due to various reasons.

Instead of inaccuracies I suggest missing data. For player there is no way of knowing what data is bogus and what is accurate.

Some mission ship can be excluded also to save secrets.

I did something similar in Technical Reference Library and spent quite some time justifying the information shown. In the end I ended up with a database provided by ship manufacturers. If you're interested have a peek into the oxp to see what ships I have excluded. For example, because of the commercial nature of the Library I have excluded all police ships as those would be classified in the game world.

[Commander McLane]

I would not justify anything by saying "you can look at the shipdata.plist" because I want to separate the game from reality. In other words, you can't look at the shipdata.plist when you are in Ooniverse. Because of this I suggest that you print energy as banks rather that the raw number. That's how the pilot sees it game.

Quote for emphasis. In-game the number "400" in conjunction with energy does not exist. It has no meaning at all.

And please consider this for all other information that is given on an in-game screen as well. In-game the game is not a game, and there is no such thing as "shipdata.plist" or any other of the technical under-the-hood stuff.

Elite/Oolite is all about immersion into the reality of the Ooniverse. An OXP that has no other purpose than to willfully break or destroy this immersion is in my opinion worse than a cheat.

Again, I can only advise you to consider what you're doing (and releasing) before doing (and releasing) it. Contrary to what youthful exuberance tells you, not everything that is doable should actually be done as an OXP.

[Capt. Reynolds]

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree on the "immersion breaking" angle.

If real-life me is looking to buy a new car/fridge/TV/whatever, I make damn sure I look up specs on whatever it is I'm after so I'm going into it with eyes wide open. It only stands to reason that Oolite me would want to know the specs of a ship I'm considering buying. As it stands, the only info you get is top speed and cargo capacity (plus any additional kit fitted), which only tells a fraction of the story. On a number of occasions I've bought a new ship and ended up thinking "only two energy banks?" or "just one missile bay?" or similar - things which would have stopped me buying it to begin with, and things which are already in the bundled reference sheet. You're already giving players this data as standard, but not in a form they can look at in-game unless they pause, move it to a window then go find the pdf. Now there's an immersion breaker.

As regards showing energy banks as opposed to value, that pretty much makes sense.

[Diziet Sma]

I fully agree with Capt. Reynolds here. If I'm buying a car, and in response to a question, the dealer says "I can't tell you that, it's a secret.", the next words out of my mouth will be "F**k you. Goodbye".

[spara]

The way this oxp currently works, it's a bit of a debugging tool letting the user browse ships by role. It needs more work and hand wavium to make it fit into the game world. In game world the pilot should not be able to browse through ships by their shipdata role.

As for showing the data for ships that are buyable by the player, I fully agree. Although I think it should be implemented to the core game the way I have proposed here.

[Duggan]

Sometimes Norby , rather his enthusiasm gets a bit of a bad press I think. A bit like Marmite. (I do agree that current and active OXP developers retaining control over their creations re the other thread). but to be fair and bluntly honest , if I don't like Norby's OXPs, I don't have to download them.

Considering this is the friendly board this side of Riedquat and all. my concern being that in some cases , someone who works hard to knock out OXP's could, in the face of discouragement, up and off along with their back catalogue of OXP's. OXP's that may be thought of as flawed by some and yet contain with them the bones of a good idea and the makings of an excellent OXP that could be developed (with permission where available).

However, because said back catalogue has poofed into the ether along with it's creator because of observations that, when viewed in a certain light, might be seen as negative, (and I would emphasize at this juncture, I have nothing against constructive criticism or indeed suggestions for possible improvements.)

I wonder if the situation has arisen before where a fledgling OXP developer has gone because of this.

I am not suggesting that the Villagers are descending upon Frankensteins Chateaux just yet, but would like to caution against such an eventuality by way of this small and polite missive.

[Commander McLane]

On a number of occasions I've bought a new ship and ended up thinking "only two energy banks?" or "just one missile bay?" or similar - things which would have stopped me buying it to begin with, and things which are already in the bundled reference sheet.

I believe there's a misunderstanding here. I'm not opposed to showing energy banks, only to showing the raw number. Indeed, I'm all for including the number of energy banks and even a hint to their recharge rate (in the form of for instance a scale between "poor" and "excellent", like I've proposed and at one point implemented on the Wiki ship pages) in the shipyard screen, because it is vital information for the potential buyer. The same goes for manoeuverability. That one even could be given by the raw data, because they represent radians per second, and a full 360 degree turn does exist in-game.

But I'm also all for keeping the different levels distinct from each other. Playing the game is different from programming (for) the game. The programmer needs some knowledge about the inner workings, the player does not. Dangling this knowledge in front of them is bad style. If the energy level of a ship is represented in the form of energy banks in the game, then this is what the player knows and can relate to. It's the unit of energy that is provided for the GUI by the game. Game mods should respect that, and not arbitrarily replace with a unit that has no meaning for the player who is not in the know, and cannot be found anywhere in the playing experience.

I fully agree with Capt. Reynolds here. If I'm buying a car, and in response to a question, the dealer says "I can't tell you that, it's a secret.", the next words out of my mouth will be "F**k you. Goodbye".

The dealer doesn't say "I can't tell you". He says "four energy banks". He does not say "250; and by the way, each hit with a military laser eats 23 of its energy; but you don't need to worry about hull damage, because all of this is only a computer game anyway; in reality there is no car".

[Capt. Reynolds]

I believe there's a misunderstanding here.

I think you're right. You didn't say anything about being in favour of any aspect of it in your previous post, but it's good that we all seem to be facing the right way on this in general - it just seems to be the details (basically banks over numbers) and everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet on that.

I fully agree with Capt. Reynolds here. If I'm buying a car, and in response to a question, the dealer says "I can't tell you that, it's a secret.", the next words out of my mouth will be "F**k you. Goodbye".

The dealer doesn't say "I can't tell you". He says "four energy banks". He does not say "250; and by the way, each hit with a military laser eats 23 of its energy; but you don't need to worry about hull damage, because all of this is only a computer game anyway; in reality there is no car".

But right now the dealer does say "I can't tell you".

[Norby]

Thank you for all criticisms and suggestions. Implemented in  Gallery v0.7:

* Gallery of encounters: show encountered and playable ships only.
* Energy printed as banks, recharge as in wiki: poor below 2.5, excellent from 4.5 and a new extreme from 10.
* Name shown instead of dataKey, more ship with same name can appear sequentially.
* Hide some ship details using validator from Technical Reference Library OXP, thanks for spara.
* Hide a few more also which are hidden in Telescope OXP: ccl_missionShip in scriptInfo or "stealth" word in dataKey.
* Search menu with text entry in Oolite 1.79 and a shortened list in 1.77.
* Gallery of all objects is disabled but unlockable in js - it is a debug tool which show datakeys and roles.

Thanks Duggan for your words, fortunately I like criticism and seek the good will behind any words. I hanlde these as a personality development course, try to learn from my mistakes (with more or less success) and rarely allow myself to become discouraged.

Thank you Commander McLane for the fatherly behaviour, I like your corrections. In RL only my best friends say things with similar explicitness to me.

I also want to say huge thanks to dev team for the new functions in 1.79!

[Duggan]

I was wondering what to do with an oxz file, I'd usually add an oxp folder to the add ons folder, however I have no idea where to insert an oxz expansion in the game.

[spara]

Very nice, Norby.

[another_commander]

@Norby: I have seen in the OXP's wiki page a note saying that v1.79 is recommended. As v1.79 has not been released yet, be aware that anything within the dev version of the game could change without warning, even tomorrow, rendering the recommendation false. Maybe it would be best to keep the recommended version at 1.77.1 and wait until 1.79 ships out before advising players to use it with your OXP?

@Duggan: .oxz is a new single-file (extension renamed) zipped OXP format being proposed for v1.79. It requires a recent nightly build to work and (assuming you are willing to play using nightlies) the only thing you need to do to make it work is just drop this file inside the AddOns folder.