Neo-Docklights OXP

[SandJ]

Yet another test case. Now the docking lights have an additional indicator by flashing away from the dock when red, and towards the dock when green.

Downloaded, installed, they work.

They are a bit dazzling - too large? Personally, I preferred the size of the originals.

And I didn't notice the flashing away / flashing toward effect.

[Commander McLane]

Downloaded, installed, they work.

They are a bit dazzling - too large?

Possible. I don't have Thargoid's OXP. How big are his? Mine are 25 meters.

And I didn't notice the flashing away / flashing toward effect.

That's odd. Are you sure you had the last version (0.92)? Before that they were just permanently on.

I see that both the first and the third version have been downloaded. Maybe you have them both installed at the same time? That would explain both the dazzling (two flashers on top of each other), and the non-flashing (the permanent flashers from v.0.9 are at the same places as the flashing flashers from v.0.92).

[SandJ]

They are a bit dazzling - too large?

Possible. I don't have Thargoid's OXP. How big are his? Mine are 25 meters.

They were 10 metres. I have fiddled with yours; personally, I prefer the smaller ones as they are not in my eye-line.

Edit: now I'm not sure - at 10 metres they're too small. Hey ho - I'm fickle.

And I didn't notice the flashing away / flashing toward effect.

That's odd. Are you sure you had the last version (0.92)? Before that they were just permanently on.

v0.92. I could not see them 'moving' because I was moving. Now I have stopped my vessel, and looked along the line of lights, I can see the strobing effect.

I see that both the first and the third version have been downloaded. Maybe you have them both installed at the same time?

I did not download any version prior to the v.92

[m4r35n357]

:idea: I see that both the first and the third version have been downloaded. Maybe you have them both installed at the same time? That would explain both the dazzling (two flashers on top of each other), and the non-flashing (the permanent flashers from v.0.9 are at the same places as the flashing flashers from v.0.92).

I've downloaded 0.92, so one might be me. BTW are you in PM contact with Thargoid over this? Seems we now have two partial implementations, I reckon it's a nice piece of ambiance so it'd be nice to have one complete version.
Also I'd suggest to Thargoid that a higher TL threshold would be better for game variation (I set it to 8 in my copy).

[Commander McLane]

BTW are you in PM contact with Thargoid over this? Seems we now have two partial implementations, I reckon it's a nice piece of ambiance so it'd be nice to have one complete version.

Not yet. This is just my take on the issue, which apparently is a little different from Thargoid's. (Again proving that there are many ways to achieve the same result.)

We can roll it together, or leave the player a choice. I have no problem with either. (We also had another example of two OXPs doing the same thing released by two people quite recently.)

[Commander McLane]

They are a bit dazzling - too large?

Possible. I don't have Thargoid's OXP. How big are his? Mine are 25 meters.

They were 10 metres. I have fiddled with yours; personally, I prefer the smaller ones as they are not in my eye-line.

Edit: now I'm not sure - at 10 metres they're too small. Hey ho - I'm fickle.

It seemed to me that for the strobing effect a certain size was needed. I had them at 20 meters originally, but the strobing seemed to look better with 25 meters. But there's no problem in experimenting with the size. I even had the brief idea that they could get bigger from inwards out.

[Diziet Sma]

I even had the brief idea that they could get bigger from inwards out.

To me, that sounds like it might be counter-productive.. as you get closer to the station, more precision is needed. If they get larger, it would become harder to be sure you were correctly aligned.

[Commander McLane]

I even had the brief idea that they could get bigger from inwards out.

To me, that sounds like it might be counter-productive.. as you get closer to the station, more precision is needed. If they get larger, it would become harder to be sure you were correctly aligned.

That's what I meant. The closer to the station, the smaller they would become. However, I don't think it's a good idea anyway.

But, what I was thinking about was to have two lines of flashers to the right and left of your ship, instead of having only one line in the middle. Then you would have to align between them.

This would be a certain complication compared to my very easy and simple approach, because a frame callback would be needed to have the two lines rotate together with the docking bay.

[Cody]

...what I was thinking about was to have two lines of flashers to the right and left of your ship, instead of having only one line in the middle. Then you would have to align between them.

This is how I would expect to see them... much better idea.

[Commander McLane]

...what I was thinking about was to have two lines of flashers to the right and left of your ship, instead of having only one line in the middle. Then you would have to align between them.

This is how I would expect to see them... much better idea.

I see what I can do…

[SandJ]

I just thought, the docking lights do not need to be on all the time. They need only come on when a vessel emerges, or a vessel gets within, say, 10km of the station or its beacon. They could just switch off when not needed.

That gives more opportunities for removing and recreating them, plus might reduce processor overhead.

[Thargoid]

I just thought, the docking lights do not need to be on all the time. They need only come on when a vessel emerges, or a vessel gets within, say, 10km of the station or its beacon. They could just switch off when not needed.

That gives more opportunities for removing and recreating them, plus might reduce processor overhead.

That's what v1.01 of the OXP (which no-one seems to be using?) does, except it triggers on entering the Aegis rather than 10km (to save another timer).

I did consider a single entity route, but I was planning (at least until all this came up) to perhaps make them detect a close ship when green and turn the string red as a result (ie to change for docking ships as well as launching ones). That would be most simply done using single entities.

It would be good to regroup on this and see if it is the same fundamental issue we saw with Swarm and ghost wormholes. If so then an underlying trunk bug might be lurking, as there's nothing in DockLights that should cause this kind of thing fundamentally I'd say.

@McLane - if you want to either merge the OXPs together or have yours supercede mine and I'll retire it, either is fine with me. Just let me know.

[Commander McLane]

I have most of the stuff necessary for a double row of flashers that rotates with the station. However, I'm hitting a wall currently. Whenever I jump into a system with a Coriolis as main station (which could be from one of several station OXPs), my main entity is taking damage fast and exploding unexpectedly, which of course messes up timers and callbacks. I haven't yet found the cause of this. I also haven't checked yet whether this happens with v.0.92 as well.

So, for the time being, my project is stalled.

[Thargoid]

Grab a copy of my version and use the model in that for your main entity.

That will solve that issue, but may of course bring about the other one.

[cim]

Grab a copy of my version and use the model in that for your main entity.

That will solve that issue, but may of course bring about the other one.

On investigation, use of a zero-poly model causes malloc(0) to be called in the depths of the ObjC engine (OOMesh.m, allocateBytesWithSize). The behaviour of this is undefined, which I guess covers "cargo pods which can't be scooped", "stations which don't really exist", and "semi-transparent ships".

r4997 contains a fix for that (by always allocating at least 1 unit) which may or may not fix the various bits of strangeness which are happening.

I would strongly recommend not using zero-poly models in <=1.76.1, anyway.

...

What it doesn't explain is why the flashers are slipping, since they do that even after this fix. I can't see anything obviously wrong with the JS code to swap them, either. I'll keep looking.