Liners OXP

[Thargoid]

The Emerald should already do that (at least the launching bit). Having the station also launch is possible, but it's a pain to synchronise to allow the liner to leave again within any suitable time.

I already sent Smivs an update file to sort a few of the known bugs out in the OXP. I guess he's not had time to work on it yet though.

[Fatleaf]

I already sent Smivs an update file to sort a few of the known bugs out in the OXP. I guess he's not had time to work on it yet though.

Well I washed up on his doorstep looking hungry, taking up some of his precious time.

[Smivs]

I already sent Smivs an update file to sort a few of the known bugs out in the OXP. I guess he's not had time to work on it yet though.

Well I washed up on his doorstep looking hungry, taking up some of his precious time.

He did, as well! Imagine waking up one morning and finding this large hungry green thing with big teeth on your doorstep?!
Seriously I will look at this soon...I'm plucking up the courage to try and sort out the Aurora's dock at the same time, and have been on a bit of an OXP binge of my own lately (four releases in the last month, and Christmas as well!).

[Smivs]

v1.2 is now available for download

The shader updates from Thargoid have now been included, and the dock issue has been resolved. The problem seemed to be with the model for the dock sub-entity, and was not going to be quick or easy to sort out, so the decision was made to remove it entirely. The ship looks fine without the dock (better in my opinion), but it does of course mean a feature has been lost from the OXP. At least it looks good and works without any strange things happening.

Downloads as before from Smivsonline

[Commander McLane]

I just downloaded and installed liners.oxp (v 1.2) for the first time, and I am a little puzzled. The included readMe claims

This OXP is self contained and has no dependencies. Big Ships and CCL are NOT required.

However, I don't see any script that will spawn one of the liners inside the OXP. And none of the liners has any generic role. Therefore—as far as I can see—no liner will ever get spawned.

Was there a spawning script that somehow accidentally got deleted in version 1.2? Or is the readMe just wrong, and bigShips.oxp is required? All liners do have a "bigTrader"-role, which may be the one used by bigShips.oxp.

I also notice that the Aurora model isn't centered, which leads to two issues: first, the reticle box gets too big; and second, the escorts are placed so far away that they're practically useless. An escort out of the scanner range of its mother won't be much help in case of an attack.

[Thargoid]

Yes there should be a spawning script, which does seem to have gone AWOL from v1.2.

The OXP will work with bigShips, but should also have that script as a supplement (the script used to self-disable if bigShips was present).

[Smivs]

The spawning script has definitely gone missing from this OXP, and unfortunately so has all trace of it, so I think we may need to re-write it.
I am temporarily suspending downloads of this OXP until this is fixed. As soon as it is sorted out I'll let you all know here.
Sorry.

[Eric Walch]

The spawning script has definitely gone missing from this OXP, and unfortunately so has all trace of it, so I think we may need to re-write it.
I am temporarily suspending downloads of this OXP until this is fixed. As soon as it is sorted out I'll let you all know here.
Sorry.

The script is still on my computer were I never updated after version 1.0

And even when it did, I have Time Machine installed on my mac. That allows me to retrieve any file that has been on my mac for over a week. (Providing my backup disk is big enough). Currently my backup still contains weekly snapshots of my HD since I bought it mid 2010.

[Thargoid]

I've got a copy of it (it was in v1.1 - it's script.js in the config folder of the OXP) but as noted it's missing from v1.2.

I'll make it available later today if I get chance. In the meantime the OXP will work fine if bigShips.oxp is installed.

[Smivs]

Ah, yes, I see.
I do have that so can proceed with sorting this out. There is also one other minor scripting issue to look at.
Hopefully later today I'll be able to re-upload and re-release this OXP.

[Smivs]

Bugfix release v1.3

OK, all done (I think/hope )
v1.3 has now been uploaded.
As all previous versions had issues I would suggest that everybody using this OXP now upgrades to v1.3.

[Commander McLane]

Smivs, you're ahead of your time.

Version History

v1.3 Released Nov 23rd 2012 - Major bugfix - re-installed spawning script which was absent, and corrected one ship-script.

[Smivs]

Ha, thanks. That's the peril of c&p-ing then forgetting to change stuff.
Corrected now.

[Commander McLane]

I also notice that the Aurora model isn't centered, which leads to two issues: first, the reticle box gets too big; and second, the escorts are placed so far away that they're practically useless. An escort out of the scanner range of its mother won't be much help in case of an attack.

To illustrate, here are two screenshots. The first shows an Aurora as it comes with the OXP. I'm flying alongside it at a distance of roughly 10km:

You notice that it only fills the first half of its target reticle box, which is much too big for the ship. This is caused by the model being off-center. Its origin is relatively close to the rear end of the ship. Oolite calculates the ship's radius (and therefore the size of the box) from the ship's origin's distance to the vertex that is farthest away from the origin, which in this case is the ship's bow. So the ship appears much bigger to Oolite than it actually is. This has another consequence as well apart from the oversized bounding box: The position of its escorts depends on the ship's size. The bigger the ship size, the further away will the escorts be. In the screen shot only one of the four escorts can be seen by its blip on the scanner. It's one of the innermost escorts, and it's almost a full scanner range away from the mother. Too far to be of any help in case of an attack. And the outermost escort is even further out by another scanner range.

For comparison, here is another screen shot, after I've spent the night centering the Aurora model:

Now the ship fills the complete target reticle box, which I find aesthetically more pleasing. But there is a practical difference as well: Now Oolite has correct information about the ship's real size, and calculates completely different escort positions, much closer to the mother. On the scanner you now see the blips of both left-side escorts. The outermost escort is now in the place where the innermost escort was before. The escorts are no longer disconnected from their mother.

I'd still suggest to use the new custom escort facilities and place the escorts even closer to the mother, though.

Another point: while I was at it, I not only centered the main entity of the Aurora, but the engine entities as well. As a byproduct of this, I was able to get rid of three out of four engine models, and simplify the ship by using only one engine model and putting it on the ship at four different places. Three DAT files that could be scrapped completely. Also, I added a pirate-victim-roles.plist with the role that is used in the spawning script.

If pagroove is interested, I can make these changes available.

[Commander McLane]

I'd still suggest to use the new custom escort facilities and place the escorts even closer to the mother, though.

For further illustration, here's an X-shaped escort pattern sideways to the ship:

Distance of each escort to the mother: about 7750 meters.