[UPDATE RELEASE] Xeptatl's Sword OXP

[Smivs]

I dunno! You lend your Thargoid Uber-ship to the larvae one evening, and look what happens?!





Progress is currently brisk on this OXP, and we are currently working on the Grand Finale, although there are still a few minor details throughout to check and sort out.

Provisional release in early November <crosses fingers>

[Cody]

I didn't do it! Nobody saw me do it! You can't prove anything!

[Thargoid]

Bloody kids! Don't know they're hatched...

Now when I was a lavae we never had such luxuries as borrowing the ship to go loot the shops!

[Smivs]

Nearly there

Things are coming together nicely and I hope to have this OXP essentially finished this weekend.
As you will have gathered it is a big and reasonably complex project, so I'm going to have two or three experienced testers run through it before release. Guild of Test Pilots members have already been approached, so we don't need any volunteers, thanks.
Release is expected early November assuming all goes well in beta testing.

[pagroove]

Looks like you are taking good care of 'the disc'. I spot some interesting mods to the original model. BTW any time to release the Liners.oxp in between now its practically ready (sorry for the thread hijack).

[Cody]

Looks like you are taking good care of 'the disc'.

Oh yes indeed... it's a beautiful ship!

[Smivs]

Looks like you are taking good care of 'the disc'.

Well, mostly, although it is proving very hard to kill!



The OXP is now out with the testers and generally seems to be performing well. There are a couple of minor glitches to sort out, one of which is stopping some of the visual SFX we've developed (like the Big Bang above) from causing problems in trunk and future releases.
However we are still on schedule and I'm confident release is on course. The provisional release date is Saturday 5th November, so, cue the fireworks!

[Cody]

Ahh, yes... one benefit of being a member of the Honourable Guild of Test Pilots is getting to work on new ships and big explosions... we like big explosions!

[Eric Walch]

Browsing through the shipdata of this oxp, I encountered an interesting 'conflict'.

One ship has the role 'none'. I assume to show it will never be used. But in the old days the role 'none' was used for other stuff e.g.

Asteroid Storm changes the role of the mainStation to 'none' after failure. In 1.65 that mend that Oolite tried to add a station with role 'none' to the system as mainStation. As such a role didn't exist, there was no station added. This no longer works as Oolite now noticed that it failed to add a station and tries one of the default station roles instead. However, 'none' role is still present in the asteroid storm oxp and is even stored in the save file. So even removing it from asteroid storm (what I do for the next release) does not prevent that based on the info in the saved game, the code might still try to add something with role 'none'. And there might be other oxps around doing something similar.

I just put it here and not to the author, as others oxpers should also be aware of this.

[Smivs]

Thanks Eric, I'll take a look at that, and also the shipdata keys you mentioned elswhere.

[Smivs]

Ten days to go!

The OXP is pretty much finished and working now, so release is on course for 5th November as previously mentioned.
HIMS Thunder Child exchanging fire with the Thargoid Annihilator. Click to enlarge (1360x768px).

[DaddyHoggy]

Looks good Smivs - really good - the lasers look a little odd...

[Smivs]

Extremely distant lasers, even enormously powerful ones, do have a 'broken' appearance.

[DaddyHoggy]

Extremely distant lasers, even enormously powerful ones, do have a 'broken' appearance.

I'm always running away from this stuff - I miss out on a lot obviously...

(I really do need to start an alternative alter-ego)

[Smivs]

I'm always running away from this stuff - I miss out on a lot obviously...

Anyone with any sense at all would run away from that stuff!
I took a 'realistic' approach with these ships and their weapon systems. The ships are very strong, and the weapons really are extremely powerful. If you got caught in the crossfire there you'd experience the equivalent of 38 military lasers hitting you at once.
It would be a short-lived experience