New Player + Manifest (and many other) Question(s)

[DeathKnyte]

I may as well stay in this thread with some more questions, if that is permitted here (?).

Being ignorant of so many things about the game, if one of the following is impossibly ridiculous, please excuse me now.


- What is the difference in the language between; "US English", "RP English", and 'Default"? They all sound the same to me...

- I see some of you have different visual impressions for your ships, in other threads like the 'Screenshots" one. How can I make mine in the color black, and have a silver skull & crossbones insignia on it?

- How can I get my ship name to appear on my cockpit dashboard?

- Is there a specific career that suits the "Fer-de-Lance' ship? I have been studying it (in the available ships for sale screen), as it seems quite expensive for something that looks inferior to either the Cobra Mk III or the Boa Class Cruiser?

Thanks for your time.

[Cody]

Ask away - we love questions here!

Heh... a standard Fer-de-Lance is flashy and basically useless.
Which shipset OXP are you using? Only a couple (I think) allow customised colours/decals.
Your ship's name on the dashboard requires a little tinkering with graphics, and probably is only possible on a few huds.

[Smivs]

The Boa Class Cruiser is taller than wide, so if you're manually docking, try going in 'sideways'. Works a treat

As for joysticks, they are still available from Logitech amongst others. The 'Attack 3' is a popular choice - I use one and can recommend it.

[Rese249er]

- I see some of you have different visual impressions for your ships, in other threads like the 'Screenshots" one. How can I make mine in the color black, and have a silver skull & crossbones insignia on it?

Careful, friend. I bounty-hunt as a habit...

[Cody]

Careful, friend. I bounty-hunt as a habit...

<chortles> ... and I hunt bounty-hunters for sport!

[Rese249er]

You and I may meet on the lanes one day; a battle for Snoopers!

[Cody]

You'd probably be interested in Commander McLane's wip Personalities OXP... heh!

[Rese249er]

If he'd update it *grumbles*

Also, my ship is still in test production.

[Wildeblood]

- How can I get my ship name to appear on my cockpit dashboard?

By editing the HUD file. If you're not using a HUD OXP, find the file oolite.app/Resources/Config/hud.plist and copy that file to AddOns/Config/hud.plist, then hack away. You want to add another item to the "legends" section, which is near the bottom in that particular file, but might not be in other HUDs.

[Zieman]

- I see some of you have different visual impressions for your ships, in other threads like the 'Screenshots" one. How can I make mine in the color black, and have a silver skull & crossbones insignia on it?

For standard (included in Oolite by default) ships, I think the safe & easy route is to make a tiny OXP.

For example having special texture for player Cobra mk I & III:
(this is a step-by-step instruction, just in case you have no experience in Oolite OXP:ing)

1. make a folder to your ..\Oolite\AddOns, e.g. myplayertextures.oxp
2. inside that folder, make two more folders: Config and Textures
3. create shipdata-overrides.plist into Config-folder
4. shipdata-overrides.plist should look something like this:

Code: Select all

{
	"cobra3-player" =
	{
		materials =
		      {
		         "cobra3_redux.png" =
		         {
		            diffuse_map = "myawesomecobra3.png";
		         };
		      }; 
	};
	"cobramk1-player" =
	{
		materials =
		      {
		         "cobra1_redux.png" =
		         {
		            diffuse_map = "myawesomecobra1.png";
		         };
		      }; 
	}
}

5. copy cobra3_redux.png and cobra1_redux.png from ..\Oolite\oolite.app\Resources\Textures to your OXP's Textures-folder
6. edit the copies to your liking and rename them to have exact (case sensitive) names as the diffuse_map-entries in your shipdata-overrides.plist

What texture(s) which ship uses can be found usually in relevant shipdata.plist. If materials-entry is not present, then check used textures from that ship's .dat file (specified in shipdata.plist, model-entry, .dat file itself resides in relevant Models-folder).

[Eric Walch]

- What is the difference in the language between; "US English", "RP English", and 'Default"? They all sound the same to me...

I had to look up "RP English":

It is also referred to under the terms "BBC English," "Public School English" or even "Standard English.

No idea how you link it with Oolite, but it is probably in the windows part op spoken messages that is not available on my mac. I would say: choose the one that sounds best.

I realise this is a stupid advise when they all sound the same.

[Smivs]

- I see some of you have different visual impressions for your ships, in other threads like the 'Screenshots" one. How can I make mine in the color black, and have a silver skull & crossbones insignia on it?

Further to Zieman's post, if you want to make a custom texture for your ship, you might find my Texture Tutorial useful.

[another_commander]

- What is the difference in the language between; "US English", "RP English", and 'Default"? They all sound the same to me...

I had to look up "RP English":

It is also referred to under the terms "BBC English," "Public School English" or even "Standard English.

No idea how you link it with Oolite, but it is probably in the windows part op spoken messages that is not available on my mac. I would say: choose the one that sounds best.

I realise this is a stupid advise when they all sound the same.

Eric is right in that these languages are part of the speech synthesis functionality in the Win32/Linux ports. They actually don't sound the same, there are small differences in accent. RP English is more official British, while US English is more, well, US. The default - if I am not mistaken - is the standard no-accents-added speech file in eSpeak, but don't quote me on that as I have not looked at the library files for quite a while.

Also note that all these configuration speech files, much like the Oolite data files, are plain text and available for further editing to anyone who wants to change the accents further or add more languages or even voices. You may want to have a look at the eSpeak site for details on how this can be achieved.

[Kaks]

To further expand on the previous answers:

In homage to Bell & Braben, & Giles (praise be!*) Default is just an alias for RP English. And, to be honest, the fact that 'a few' of the dev team are UK based (or close enough - go europe! ) kind of helped too.

Granted, eSpeak isn't terribly natural sounding, however the differences between eSpeak's RP & US english do seem pretty distinctive to me, though I might be biased after 'a few' years in the big smoke!



* Giles Williams, being the Creator of this game, has got a devoted group of followers, most of which can indeed be found on this very board...

[Rese249er]

A ship's voice shouldn't sound too natural, otherwise pilots on long hauls might end up going a little loopy when they hear a natural-sounding voice and there's a face with it.