About player and ships

[spara]

Hello.

I have two in-game wishes concerning ships.

1. I would like to personalize my ship by giving it a name in-game. I mean that in the f5-screen, where it now says "Adder," there would read "Adder (Hand of Death)." That could be oxp achievable, if player.ship.displayName was writable and the text to the f5 screen would come from that source.

2. When I browse through ships in the market, I would like to see the dimensions, energy stats, weapon mounts, maneuverability etc of the ships . I would also like to see those stats of my own ship, so that I can compare them. Not sure what would be needed for this to be oxpable. It could be done with message_log trickery, if there was access to the dataKey of the ship highlighted. Probably easier to do from the code itself as it already shows speed and cargo capacity.

[Cody]

I would like to personalize my ship by giving it a name in-game. I mean that in the f5-screen, where it now says "Adder," there would read "Adder (Hand of Death)."

Like this, you mean...



... that's a very easy tweak in the player-ship's shipdata.plist (I think - I do fly an OXP ship though).

[spara]

I would like to personalize my ship by giving it a name in-game. I mean that in the f5-screen, where it now says "Adder," there would read "Adder (Hand of Death)."

Like this, you mean...



... that's a very easy tweak in the player-ship's shipdata.plist (I think - I do fly an OXP ship though).

Exactly that. What I had in mind, was using random shipnames inside the game. When you start a new game or buy a new ship there would be a "Name your ship" entry in the interfaces screen where you could either type in the name of your choice or you could cycle through random names until you are satisfied. Then you would lock that name and the entry would vanish from the interfaces.

[Cody]

... was using random shipnames inside the game. When you start a new game or buy a new ship there would be a "Name your ship" entry in the interfaces screen where you could either type in the name of your choice or you could cycle through random names until you are satisfied.

A good idea, is that.

[cim]

either type in the name of your choice

Clever as CCL's keyboard is, I suspect you want actual typing here, right?

On names ... should we perhaps separate out the various components of names a bit? At the moment I think there are at least four components which are set in various ways, sometimes displayed, and not clearly distinguished.

• Ship class name: Cobra Mk III (core game)
• Ship name: Ocelot of Diso (e.g. random ship names)
• Pilot name: Arve Arvesson (e.g. Random Hits) {1}
• Savefile name: Cim (core game, player only)

Using the savefile name as the pilot name gets messy when you're in a mission and taking backups as advised in case of bugs ... and then get addressed as "Commander Cim5" as a result.

Then calculate displayName, if it's not explicitly set, as something like "{class}: {ship} ({pilot})"

{1} And this could get even more complicated when adding titles and other prefixes and suffixes but let's just leave it as the phrase by which the person wishes to be known.

When I browse through ships in the market, I would like to see the dimensions, energy stats, weapon mounts, maneuverability etc of the ships . I would also like to see those stats of my own ship, so that I can compare them.

Do you want to try drawing how you think this might look? I'm really not sure there's enough space on the page in the current layout to show all those figures (especially not the 'etc'...).

[spara]

either type in the name of your choice

Clever as CCL's keyboard is, I suspect you want actual typing here, right?

That would be ideal, yes. But as I'm not familiar with the code and how big of a change that would be, I can't really evaluate, if it's worth it. If it's not worth it, then CCL would have to do.

On names ... should we perhaps separate out the various components of names a bit? At the moment I think there are at least four components which are set in various ways, sometimes displayed, and not clearly distinguished.

• Ship class name: Cobra Mk III (core game)
• Ship name: Ocelot of Diso (e.g. random ship names)
• Pilot name: Arve Arvesson (e.g. Random Hits) {1}
• Savefile name: Cim (core game, player only)

Using the savefile name as the pilot name gets messy when you're in a mission and taking backups as advised in case of bugs ... and then get addressed as "Commander Cim5" as a result.

Then calculate displayName, if it's not explicitly set, as something like "{class}: {ship} ({pilot})"

{1} And this could get even more complicated when adding titles and other prefixes and suffixes but let's just leave it as the phrase by which the person wishes to be known.

In my opinion, player entity (is player an entity?) should have a property "name," that would by default be the same as savefile name, but it would be writable, so it could be set by oxps. Ships already have name and displayName. With the present system, it seems that the easiest solution is to make player.ship.displayName writable, but as you suggest, maybe a more thorough change would be in place.

When I browse through ships in the market, I would like to see the dimensions, energy stats, weapon mounts, maneuverability etc of the ships . I would also like to see those stats of my own ship, so that I can compare them.

Do you want to try drawing how you think this might look? I'm really not sure there's enough space on the page in the current layout to show all those figures (especially not the 'etc'...).

Sorry about being vague (kind of a habit of mine, it seems ). The thought rose from the discussion about the difficulty of the game and how the dimensions of the ship have such a big impact on the game. I'll try to sketch something.

Edit: How about printing ships' (player ship and ship for sale) specs on top of the spinning ship? If that feels too violent, maybe it could be toggleable.

[spara]

It could look like this:



Your own shipdata could actually already be handled with an oxp through interfaces.

An oxp solution would probably require support for textual overlay and an event when moving in the menu. Something like shipSelected(ship). And ship argument would be a ship entity.

Another solution could be an extra purchase confirmation screen that would open when you select a ship from the sale list.

[Diziet Sma]

Looks good.. though for Weapon Mounts, 1,2, 3, or 4 would be better than 'Yes'..

[spara]

Looks good.. though for Weapon Mounts, 1,2, 3, or 4 would be better than 'Yes'..

You're right and it would be nice, if the info was of the right ship . Ideally I would like to see the same detailed info I see in the wiki.

For example:

Type: Wolf Mark II
Size (W×H×L): 81 m × 36 m×111 m
Speed / Thrust: 0.34 / 0.03 LM (or is it LS?)
Roll / Pitch: 1.8 / 1.2
Cargo Capacity: 20 TC
Cargo Bay Extension: N/A
Energy Banks: 5
Energy Recharge Rate: 4.0
Weapon Mounts: FAPS
Missile Slots: 2
Shield Boosters Available: yes
Military Shields Available: yes
Hyperspace Capable: yes

[cim]

Ideally I would like to see the same detailed info I see in the wiki.

From a core-game point of view I don't know how suitable all that info is.

Speed / Thrust: 0.34 / 0.03 LM (or is it LS?)
Roll / Pitch: 1.8 / 1.2
Energy Recharge Rate: 4.0

These figures aren't (except speed) readily visible in-game (and for the player ship, the thrust figure is also wrong). I'm not sure whether they should be displayed here either. Roll, pitch and recharge rate do not have particularly obvious units. The reference sheet PDF is a bit vaguer in this area, I think rightly so.

(Energy Recharge Rate is usually measured in 64ths of a bank per second, and the turn rates are in radians per second.)

Shield Boosters Available: yes
Military Shields Available: yes
Hyperspace Capable: yes

All buyable core game ships (and almost all OXP ones) can fit shield boosters and have a witchdrive, so this seems superfluous information. I'm not sure that military shields are so interesting that they need a special mention.

[spara]

Ideally I would like to see the same detailed info I see in the wiki.

From a core-game point of view I don't know how suitable all that info is.

Speed / Thrust: 0.34 / 0.03 LM (or is it LS?)
Roll / Pitch: 1.8 / 1.2
Energy Recharge Rate: 4.0

These figures aren't (except speed) readily visible in-game (and for the player ship, the thrust figure is also wrong). I'm not sure whether they should be displayed here either. Roll, pitch and recharge rate do not have particularly obvious units. The reference sheet PDF is a bit vaguer in this area, I think rightly so.

(Energy Recharge Rate is usually measured in 64ths of a bank per second, and the turn rates are in radians per second.)

Thanks for the info, I was not aware of these.

Some kind of meta info (bad, good, excellent...) or Reference Sheet's vague categorization (Holdstock & KeZecky scales) would be quite sufficient. What I would like is some way of comparing the ships in-game when I ponder about buying a new ship.

Shield Boosters Available: yes
Military Shields Available: yes
Hyperspace Capable: yes

All buyable core game ships (and almost all OXP ones) can fit shield boosters and have a witchdrive, so this seems superfluous information. I'm not sure that military shields are so interesting that they need a special mention.

Quite true. Not really interesting facts and if they practically are same for all the ships, quite useless.

To summarize at this point the data I would find quite useful when buying a new ship:

Type: Wolf Mark II
Size (W×H×L): 81 m × 36 m×111 m
Speed: 0.34 LM
Maneuverability: Good
Cargo Capacity: 20 TC (not expandable)
Energy Banks & Charge: P40
Weapon Mounts: FAPS
Missile Slots: 2

[cim]

To summarize at this point the data I would find quite useful when buying a new ship:

Something like that should be practical. The text would have to be in yellow if it was overlaid on the model, since the GUI library doesn't allow different colours of text on the same line, but I'm fairly sure it could be right-aligned to separate it from the ship list.

Maneuverability: Good

This might be better as "Turn Rate: Slow/Medium/Fast", since higher numbers here are not necessarily a good thing.

"Cargo Capacity: 20/35 TC" perhaps?

[Commander McLane]

Have you looked at the Wiki template for ships? That's basically the same as you want, just not in-game.

There has been some debate about whether it should be treated as a resource for OXPers (who would be interested in the "under the hood" numbers) or for players (who wouldn't have use for exact numbers, but would be better off with an understandable scale between "poor" and "excellent"). Personally, I am firmly in the second camp, and therefore have created such a scale, when I worked on the templates years ago. Because it's a Wiki, many other people have of course also worked on the templates, and not everybody with consistent goals, or in a consistent way. But I think the scale is still present at least in the energy recharge figures.

[spara]

Have you looked at the Wiki template for ships? That's basically the same as you want, just not in-game.

Yes, that's what I'm using for now. From the game point of view, I think that that (or something like that) information should be available in-game.

There has been some debate about whether it should be treated as a resource for OXPers (who would be interested in the "under the hood" numbers) or for players (who wouldn't have use for exact numbers, but would be better off with an understandable scale between "poor" and "excellent"). Personally, I am firmly in the second camp, and therefore have created such a scale, when I worked on the templates years ago. Because it's a Wiki, many other people have of course also worked on the templates, and not everybody with consistent goals, or in a consistent way. But I think the scale is still present at least in the energy recharge figures.

I also think that in game when it comes to things like maneuverability or energy recharge rate a descriptive "Poor," "Excellent" etc would be preferable. But for things visible to player like missile slots, energy banks and cargo space an exact figure would be my choice. Size and speed are somewhere between. For those I would like to get an exact number, as I would expect that in RL too when I go and buy myself an expensive spacecraft .

[Commander McLane]

I also think that in game when it comes to things like maneuverability or energy recharge rate a descriptive "Poor," "Excellent" etc would be preferable.

Yes, I'm also talking about those areas where a number doesn't mean anything for the player anyway, which are mainly manoeuverability and energy recharge.

And I agree with cim that the range for manoeuverability should give a feeling of the relative speed rather than go from "poor" to "good", because a very quick turn rate may actually not be that good, as the occasional requests for slowing down turn rates here on the board testify to. So the scale could range from "sluggish" to "frantic", or whatever mildly humourous descriptions we can come up with.