Sniper Sight - MilHUD integrated

[Wildeblood]

This is what I found while playing with it.

- The first working MilHUD-integrated iteration, using Murphy's script code, could and would cause random CTDs. The crashlog was strangely silent on the issue, making the cause impossible to track down. Apparently the standalone, using the same code, would cause CTDs as well.

- The second integrated iteration uses award.equipment/remove.equipment, with a corresponding check in the plists. The result is much cleaner and stable. Not a single CTD from using it.

As Capt. Murphy could confirm, because he downloaded the prototype, equipment switching is the way I did it from the start. I never trusted the idea of HUD switching. I never had a problem with it because it was part of my own HUD, but attempting to separate it into a purchasable equipment OXP was just a plain bad idea. I initially wanted to integrate it into another HUD OXP, but the person I approached (sorry Cmdr Wyvern, yours wasn't my first choice) didn't want to know. All-in-all, I'm left with very mixed feelings about sharing anything I learn.

[Matti]

Don't feel too bad about it. I have had great success with this mod. That version which is bought as equipment. And price is more reasonable than Rock Hermit Locator.

[Smivs]

...I'm left with very mixed feelings about sharing anything I learn.

Sharing's good. It's why this board is such a useful resource.
I'm sure many people have learned something from my failures and idiocy as well as my successes!

[Mauiby de Fug]

...I'm left with very mixed feelings about sharing anything I learn.

Sharing's good. It's why this board is such a useful resource.
I'm sure many people have learned something from my failures and idiocy as well as my successes!

Indeed! As CommonSenseOTB's sig says: "Who knows what one idea seen by one person, twisted/modified in a different way as a return suggestion and then seen by a third person who sees a part of it that can apply to the oxp they are currently working on can do." Whatever you produce, there is bound to be someone who appreciates it! Some oxps may have a small market, others may have wider appeal. It doesn't matter! That's the beauty of them! And as Smivs said, if you make mistakes, there are bound to be people who can help, and posting them can help people who are stuck on the same thing!

[Capt. Murphy]

Indeed, don't lose heart..

On another note I've just spent the last hour doing my best to reproduce the CTD and can't.

I have found another oddity though. Target the station Nav boy, and go from target mode to 'N' mode and it stays on sniper-hud with a big N. Only happens when targeting the station Nav bouy.

[Wildeblood]

Sharing's good. It's why this board is such a useful resource.

Is it a useful resource? So whatever happened to poor ICON? Remember him - the guy who innocently asked whether he still needed an obsolete OXP, and got treated to a RTFM rant from McClane? Or have you all suppressed the memory already? (It was only last week.) Did he ever get his problem, whatever it was, sorted out? Does anyone know? Because I sure don't, and I'd very much like to.

I've been lurking on this board since the day V1.75 was released, and I've only joined in the last few weeks, and in that short time I've witnessed you lot chase away more new users than you've welcomed. And I've spent a considerable time, by which I mean a considerable time - many, many hours - reviewing old threads from years ago, and in my reading I've seen a lot of usernames that I don't see posting here any more. What happened to those people?

[Capt. Murphy, you do know shooting the Nav Buoy is a crime, and will make you a fugitive instantly? (I hadn't noticed that.)]

[Capt. Murphy]

I would never shoot it (much), targeting is not a crime guv.

Wildeblood - the problem with any forum is that with a few exceptions amongst some long term members I doubt very many have met face to face, so people don't really know each other. It's very easy to misread, misunderstand or incorrectly assume a motive about a post that may have been made in all innocence. I always do my best to assume the best of people and try not to get involved in flaming/trolling something that is thankfully absent from this board.

I'm sure ICON is fine, I agree that McClane's comment was harsh to say the least, but he did acknowledge that it was, and anyone can be having a bad day, or feel a bit frustrated about being asked the same question as another newbie asked the week before.

I've never been a member of a forum which doesn't see people drifting in and out, I've drifted in and out a fair few myself, not because I've been driven away - just because something else catches my interest.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Wildeblood, I guess you're free to derail your own thread but think carefully. Everyone here has been most accomodating and helpful including letting you use huds and code and taking a very active part because they see as I do some excellent quality in the discovery you have made. Had I been asked to incorporate this into a hud I would have asked for a little patience as I wrapped up what I was doing. It is your discovery and kudos to you and nobody wants to take that away from you. Please also do not be offended if you PM someone and ask to have a peak at what they are working on and they refuse, purely on practical grounds as it may be duct taped together and not very exportable.

Now to what is at hand and needs discussion. Is this too good to be just incorporated into a hud. Should it really be a design element for specific player ships which can then have a corresponding npc with better accuracy and an alterred(sniper-like)ai?

The advantage at this point is that a lot of preliminary testing has now been done. I leave it for all of you to discuss. My personal view is that it makes a "beautiful" built-in sniper camera for a bounty hunter (special) ship. I would like to announce my intention to pursue this concept further as a sniper camera system built into the chupacabra when I create the hud for this ship. Version 1.2 of numeric hud will be released as soon as the custom adjustable sight is complete at which point I will be starting on the chupacabra hud. You have at most a week to debate this and I am also officially asking for Wildeblood's blessing to pursue this concept.

Wildeblood, please take this as the highest compliment from me as this is one of the few true OTB ideas put forth since I became a member of this board(that were not my own admittedly off the wall zany suggestions) and it will push back some of my other work to do so but I feel this will be justified if I can get it to work the way I want. Then every bounty ship designer will benefit from this and there will be playability checks and balances.

Let the discussion begin(continue?) and if you have a thought on this it would be good to say it here(and soon).

[Wildeblood]

I would never shoot it (much), targeting is not a crime guv.

Wildeblood - the problem with any forum is that with a few exceptions amongst some long term members I doubt very many have met face to face, so people don't really know each other. It's very easy to misread, misunderstand or incorrectly assume a motive about a post that may have been made in all innocence. I always do my best to assume the best of people and try not to get involved in flaming/trolling something that is thankfully absent from this board.

I'm sure ICON is fine, I agree that McClane's comment was harsh to say the least, but he did acknowledge that it was, and anyone can be having a bad day, or feel a bit frustrated about being asked the same question as another newbie asked the week before.

I've never been a member of a forum which doesn't see people drifting in and out, I've drifted in and out a fair few myself, not because I've been driven away - just because something else catches my interest.

I think you're seeing what you want to see. I'm not talking about the natural change in a population over time. I'm talking about deliberate, calculated rudeness aimed at anyone new.

I didn't want to re-visit the ICON episode particularly, but since we're there now, it's a perfect example. McClane calls the guy an idiot. That's one person being out of line, and it's a fact of life, we all do it occasionally. Grown-ups can deal with that. But then look what happened next: ICON replies with sarcastic irony or ironic sarcasm, whichever, "Sorry for being an idiot, Cmdr McClane." Meaning, "Pull your head in, McClane." But Smivs' irony detector is broken and he tells the guy not to feel bad about being an idiot. WTH? No wonder he never re-appeared, he probably thinks we're all fruitcakes.

Now Smivs doesn't seem like a bad chap to me, and this isn't about him (he wasn't the only one), or McClane, as individuals. The point is: why did his irony detection fail? Because he's used to seeing newbies cowering and apologizing. When ICON stood up for himself, it was mis-interpreted because no-one expected it to happen.

Back to this here technical situation: don't be telling me not to feel bad about my failure, folks, it's not my failure. There's obviously a bug in the game engine, if it can be crashed just by trying to switch two things that are supposedly switchable (the HUD and the compass mode) simultaneously. Now I don't know if this bug has been identified before or not. It could be we've just discovered it, or it could be well known and documented. No doubt, somewhere there's a bug tracker I could check. Just tell me again why I should bother?

I'll tell you about my one and only bug report to Mozilla (hey, that's going back a way, remember when Mozilla was still trendy). Oh yeah, the bug. It was a vaguely similar situation: switching things in ways no-one usually did. So within a day or two the devs had categorized my bug report as "Completely insignificant, because no-one would ever do that". Almost a decade later, it's now a central "feature" of every HTML5 compatible web browser. And other people take the credit for "inventing" it. So yeah, bug reporting, another thing I have mixed feelings about.

[Mauiby de Fug]

Back to this here technical situation: don't be telling me not to feel bad about my failure, folks, it's not my failure. There's obviously a bug in the game engine, if it can be crashed just by trying to switch two things that are supposedly switchable (the HUD and the compass mode) simultaneously. Now I don't know if this bug has been identified before or not. It could be we've just discovered it, or it could be well known and documented. No doubt, somewhere there's a bug tracker I could check. Just tell me again why I should bother?

I'll tell you about my one and only bug report to Mozilla (hey, that's going back a way, remember when Mozilla was still trendy). Oh yeah, the bug. It was a vaguely similar situation: switching things in ways no-one usually did. So within a day or two the devs had categorized my bug report as "Completely insignificant, because no-one would ever do that". Almost a decade later, it's now a central "feature" of every HTML5 compatible web browser. And other people take the credit for "inventing" it. So yeah, bug reporting, another thing I have mixed feelings about.

I'll try and keep out of the rest of this, but for me personally, I wasn't telling you to feel bad about crashing the game. No oxp should be able to crash the game, and if it does, then the problem is clearly with the game itself. I was trying to encourage you that sharing and posting oxp ideas on the board is a worthwhile thing to do, even if it doesn't always get a great reception.

I sympathise with your Mozilla experience. I've never really got into the bug reporting thing on Ubuntu, mainly because I find the Launchpad system somewhat confusing, but also because I sometimes come across bug reports which relate to severe usability issues which get their priority marked up and down, end up as low, and then nothing much seems to happen.

[DaddyHoggy]

"Sorry for being an idiot, Cmdr McClane." Meaning, "Pull your head in, McClane."

Do you know this for sure? Did you have a PM from ICON? If not, this is supposition on your part.

I've been on this board for 5+ years, but I disappeared for 18 months, but that was down to a sudden earth shattering RL(tm) moment, same for Captain Hesperus, same for... lots of other people.

Depending on which papers you read 80% of communication between humans is done through vocalisation, mannerisms and body language.

Therefore a text message is a terribly inaccurate method of communication, on a multi-national, multi-cultural board I'd expect it to be even worse, and yet, for 99% of the time this board runs beautifully. That's an amazing feat. Better than any board I've ever been on.

I read every single post on this board eventually, so please, if you have the time, post links to the endemic unfriendliness to new arrivals you see, because even though I'm only a spam assassin I've clearly been remiss and will ask the moderators to spend more time with the newbies. However, to paraphrase you - "I think you're seeing what you want to see."

I'm not sure what you gain by stating that you are unhappy or unwilling to share coding and/or bug reporting info with the BB or developers other than letting us know that you've brought a lot of historical baggage with you. Thanks for sharing, it's very candid of you, but your motivations are your own.

Also not sure why you're comparing the tiny and voluntary Dev team for Oolite with the organisation that is Mozilla. There's a bug reporting mechanism, feel free to use it, or not, it's entirely up to you. I'm sure somebody will (or the bug will remain until the Devs stumble over it accidentally).

Anyway, thanks for the reminder about the ICON incident - I meant to send him a PM asking if he was lurking or given up. I've just done so in another window.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

@Wildeblood -
If you hadn't discovered a way to use the compass as a sight, someone else would have, eventually. You beat us to the punch. Kudos! \m/
That a small but irritating bug in the core game was discovered along the way, well, who would've seen that coming, eh? It was easy to work around that little pest, nonetheless. Kudos again.

Version 1.0 of MilHUD way back in Oolite 1.65 days featured a contraster and central dot, features that made it into various other HUDs. It was just that awesome. Now you've made a discovery that may find itself spread around, because it's just that awesome. Well done, Commander!

As I've seen on a bumper sticker at the local shooting range, "Gun control means hitting your target." Thanks to you, we're hitting the target.

[another_commander]

I have found another oddity though. Target the station Nav boy, and go from target mode to 'N' mode and it stays on sniper-hud with a big N. Only happens when targeting the station Nav bouy.

Oops. That seems to be a core code bug. The event handler compassTargetChaged does not fire in that particular case because the compass and the player targets are the same thing and there is a check specifically for not firing the handler when this happens.

[Wildeblood]

I have found another oddity though. Target the station Nav boy, and go from target mode to 'N' mode and it stays on sniper-hud with a big N. Only happens when targeting the station Nav bouy.

Oops. That seems to be a core code bug. The event handler compassTargetChaged does not fire in that particular case because the compass and the player targets are the same thing and there is a check specifically for not firing the handler when this happens.

Yes, that's what I was just about to say. I've just confirmed this behaviour. I don't think I'd characterize it as a bug, though. The event we're using is called compassTargetChanged, not compasssModeChanged, after all. (This is something that was driving me nuts a few days ago, "Why doesn't this compassModeChanged thingy work!?".)

What about that more serious bug discussed up there ^, is it a documented one or not? Why isn't there a big, obvious link to the bug-tracker at the top of every page?

Version 1.0 of MilHUD way back in Oolite 1.65 days featured a contraster and central dot, features that made it into various other HUDs. It was just that awesome.

I just noticed that this evening. How's it done? Obviously with a PNG overlay, but slightly more specifically, how's it done (the contraster, I know how to draw a dot)?

[Zireael]

About the contraster: would it be possible to have just the contraster as a buyable "flare" equipment?

Just a thought.