Thargoid Wars

[Eric Walch]

- no messages in the debug console

When you use the console you can type the following in the console when outside the station:

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missionVariables.thargoidwars_station_attack = "POSSIBLE"

and than dock. The mission should trigger within a minute. It is delayed with a timer. Although the reported error are irrelevant for the crash, I can not be sure that the mission did not trigger the problem. Juts try it a few times.

[Ironfist]

Guys,
I have been through all the OXPs that I am using and the only reference to thargoids is in thargoid wars, but this is not to the warship. So I downloaded the source code and took a trawl through that and low and behold it is in the shipdata.plist

"thargoid" =
{
aft_eject_position = "0.0 0.0 -20.5";

can I correct this by putting a custom shipdata-overrides.plist in my config folder? Also where should I post a comment to get this corrected in the next trunk build?

By the way Eric the trigger works fine - it just results in a crash:(

[Wildeblood]

Guys,
I have been through all the OXPs that I am using and the only reference to thargoids is in thargoid wars, but this is not to the warship. So I downloaded the source code and took a trawl through that and low and behold it is in the shipdata.plist

"thargoid" =
{
aft_eject_position = "0.0 0.0 -20.5";

can I correct this by putting a custom shipdata-overrides.plist in my config folder? Also where should I post a comment to get this corrected in the next trunk build?

There is little need to correct the aft eject position, because thargoids never eject anything.
I just checked and in 1.75.3 the missile launch position is as Thargoid said earlier: missile_launch_position = "0.0 -46.0 91.0"; Although that number still seems silly to me. I've always assumed it was intended to be 0.0 -20.5 0.0 and someone just got their x, y & z mixed up and put them in the wrong order.

But remember what you posted earlier, Ironfist:-

12:42:10.140 [ship.missileLaunch.invalidPosition]: ***** ERROR: The missile_launch_position defines a position (0, 0, -20.5) behind the <ShipEntity 0x1eabf980>{"Thargoid Warship" position: (-64938.4, 18149.7, 461817) scanClass: CLASS_THARGOID status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT}. In future versions such missiles may explode on launch because they have to travel through the ship.

So either you have an old shipdata.plist in your Oolite installation (could that happen?), or you have an OXP that copied the old numbers before they were changed. And yes, if it concerns you, you can change it by editing the shipdata.plist or by creating a shipdata-overrides.plist.

[Eric Walch]

aft_eject_position = "0.0 0.0 -20.5";

can I correct this by putting a custom shipdata-overrides.plist in my config folder?

No, that value is correct. Only before 1.75 also the missile_launch_position used the same value, that was wrong.

By the way Eric the trigger works fine - it just results in a crash:(

Goot to hear that it crashed. That indicates that it is related to the thargoid addition. When it is in this oxp, than its probably caused by the latest change. I prepared a thargoid wars testversion were I don't delete the timer reference, but instead add a new variable to achieve the same goal. Please test this if it helps

- If yes, it means that some systems have problems deleting the timer reference at that moment.
- If not, it means that the bug is in one of the thargoids that gets added. It could be a shader or anything else, but than its not from this oxp and you probably will get it more generally when encountering thargoids.

I've always assumed it was intended to be 0.0 -20.5 0.0 and someone just got their x, y & z mixed up and put them in the wrong order.

The fact that it always was identical to the eject position, suggest to me that it always has been a C&P error but was never spotted.

[Wildeblood]

aft_eject_position = "0.0 0.0 -20.5";

can I correct this by putting a custom shipdata-overrides.plist in my config folder?

No, that value is correct.

It's well inside the body of the thargoid vessel, so not really an ideal eject position.

[Ironfist]

Eric,
Downloaded the test version and will give it a try. Will post results.

[Wildeblood]

I've always assumed it was intended to be 0.0 -20.5 0.0 and someone just got their x, y & z mixed up and put them in the wrong order.

The fact that it always was identical to the eject position, suggest to me that it always has been a C&P error but was never spotted.

Hardly "never spotted". It's been mentioned many times on this BB, just that no-one cared enough to change it until recently.

Of course the aft eject position was copy/pasted from the missile launch position. Thargoids are the flying saucers, right? I mean we are all thinking about the same things here? Why is it apparently hard for you to accept that the "missiles", which aren't normal missiles, would come from the eject position? And that the eject position would be the centre of the underside of the saucer? Unless I'm the one getting x, y & z confused, 0.0 -20.5 0.0 would be the logical position.

[Thargoid]

On the standard model, [0,-20.5,0] is indeed just below the bottom of the ship (just under the larger octagonal face, which is -20m on the Y axis). The only problem with using that as the position would be if the ship pulls up (pitches) then the trailing edge of the ship will collide with whatever just got ejected (although at a 0.5m clearance it will probably trigger a collision anyway).

But I can see the logic of thinking it may have been in the past a Y/Z accidental swap-over, although with Oolite's collision detection it's still probably too close anyway.

[Eric Walch]

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aft_eject_position = "0.0 0.0 -20.5";

It's well inside the body of the thargoid vessel, so not really an ideal eject position.

You are right when only looking at these figures. It is not mentioned anywhere, but Oolite always compares the launch position and the eject position with the bounding box. When its inside the box, it is recalculating a new eject position along this vector that does lie outside the box.
Although it would be more efficient to start with values that lie outside the bounding box.

On the standard model, [0,-20.5,0] is indeed just below the bottom of the ship (just under the larger octagonal face, which is -20m on the Y axis). The only problem with using that as the position would be if the ship pulls up (pitches) then the trailing edge of the ship will collide with whatever just got ejected (although at a 0.5m clearance it will probably trigger a collision anyway).

With so little clearance, the size of the tharglet has to be taken in consideration also. They will touch, meaning that Oolite itself will already decide to place it further down along the [0, 20.5, 0] vector so they won't touch on launch.

[Ironfist]

Eric,
Progress - the test OXP does not cause a crash in Oolite. I still get the error report about the position, but from the other messages here that seems likely. When I docked after the fight I got the spy satellite message, so will keep playing.
Report back later.

[Wildeblood]

On the standard model, [0,-20.5,0] is indeed just below the bottom of the ship (just under the larger octagonal face, which is -20m on the Y axis). The only problem with using that as the position would be if the ship pulls up (pitches) then the trailing edge of the ship will collide with whatever just got ejected (although at a 0.5m clearance it will probably trigger a collision anyway).

But I can see the logic of thinking it may have been in the past a Y/Z accidental swap-over, although with Oolite's collision detection it's still probably too close anyway.

I thought the disk was about 20m thick in total, so -20.5 would be about 10m below. But if I was wrong about that, then I like the -46 in the new position, 0.0 -46.0 91.0, but I still don't see the sense of the 91.0. I would use 0.0 -46.0 0.0 for both the eject position and missile launch position.

[Thargoid]

I've got the dat file back-converted into an obj and in Wings3D to take a measurement.

You can also see it if you open up thargoid_redux.dat (the model file in the trunk resources/models folder), as the model dimensions are listed at the top.

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model size: 180.000 x 40.000 x 180.000

So the launch position is well below and 1m in front of the ship. The 91 makes a little more sense in game terms as it prevents a missile launched by a diving ship (pitching downwards) colliding with its launcher.[/color]

[Eric Walch]

Capt. Murphy notified me that the current release of Thargoid Wars 4.5.3 has a bug. Under certain circumstances is can happen that a wrong variable is stored resulting in not offering any station attack anymore. This bug must have slipped in during one of the last updates.

Anyhow, I changed the code so it will not happen in future. When you update to version 4.5.4 and your save game had that wrong variable stored, you'll immediately get a station attack on loading the game. (Just to compensate for all the action you missed because of the bug)

The other parts of the oxp still worked as they should.

[Anonymissimus]

I've been whimpering like a baby many times so far just because the query screen popped up right before I wanted to press enter in order to enter some other menu in the station attack mission. To prevent this you could initiate the screen immediately as done in "asteroid storm" instead of after a random time. Or let the by default selected item do nothing (or force the player to participate).

[Amah]

Actually I always liked that kind of fire alert scenario, where anybody has to stop doing the things he/she was up to and have to get out and make a quick decission to be brave or not.