Escort Contracts added imagery & F4 screen

[ZygoUgo]

Now appears in the F4 screen, with added imagery too, credits to Capt Murphy of course, and to Keeper for the update

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?qp58li16vi715iw

[Diziet Sma]

Does it get installed alongside the original, or replace it?

(Yes, I know the answer, but it pays to spell these things out, for the newcomers to Oolite )

[JeX]

Will try tonight!

[ZygoUgo]

Eyup chaps This is exactly the same just with images added, so replace I suppose

[Keeper]

Tonight I also made an adjustment to this old OXP, making it basically 1.77 compatible, using the F4 Interfaces screen instead of popping up right when you dock (and don't have a chance to repair your ship first, and can't go back to look at the contracts after repairing your ship or selling your cargo, whatever it is you might want to do before signing a contract that requires you to leave straight away). Also added an entry for the Griff Prototype Boa as a potential mother, but didn't test long enough to see one actually pop up. (And fixed some grammatical things throughout, but I do that to every OXP that I download.)

Only did a little bit of testing but it seems to work. If there are no contracts offered, it doesn't show up on the Interfaces screen. If there are contracts, then the "Escort Contracts" listing is there. If you accept one, the listing disappears so that you can't accept two. I ran a mission through to completion and that all still works.

What I'm debating is whether to make it so the entry on the Interfaces menu disappears after you've selected that you don't want to take a contract. Otherwise, you can say no, then go back to through the menu and there are new contracts available. Repeat, repeat, repeat, until you find a good one. That's not right. I don't have the know-how to make it "remember" contracts for a certain time. I know spara's In-System Taxi does that so I might be able to figure it out with more study. Similarly, it would be nice if it said "x contracts available" like the cargo or passenger contract listings do, instead of just saying "Escort Contracts" regardless of how many there are. Likewise, I'd have to study how other OXPs do that and see if I can figure out how to incorporate that feature.

Whether I actually will is another matter, as I did this for me. But if there are people who'd want an updated version, and Capt.Murphy remains nowhere to be seen, then maybe ...

[Diziet Sma]

That sounds like a very useful update. Being forced to turn down an Escort Contract because I have some time-consuming re-arming to do is always irritating.

[Rorschachhamster]

I'd like to have that functionality, too.
But I was always able to "cheat" by looking at the long range chart, pressing F3, repair, fuel up, and go back to the long range chart and back into the mission offers.

[ZygoUgo]

Yes please, amalgamate my piccies in and credit Cappie Murphy, and all is well

[Keeper]

I'd like to have that functionality, too. :D
But I was always able to "cheat" by looking at the long range chart, pressing F3, repair, fuel up, and go back to the long range chart and back into the mission offers. 8)

Yeah, there is a timer in the OXP that will change offers after a time, but it only operates when you use that "View short range chart" option. I could make the timer work if you quit altogether, and see if new offers show up (and the current offers remain until they time out), but then I'm worried about the offer variables not being cleared at all (until you dock at a station again; the clearing command is issued then also, so maybe it's not a big deal to leave them floating -- or maybe I can figure out how to make it run the cleanup script when you launch).

For now, what I did before going to bed last night was to add a note on the initial screen that informs you that if you proceed to view the offers, you must accept or reject them, then I set the script to wipe away offers when you select "Not interested in a contract offer at this time" from the offer viewing screen (which I re-worded to "Reject offer" or "Reject all offers" to make it more clearly a final decision). So once you proceed to view offers, that's it. You won't see offers other than those until next time you dock somewhere and the randomizer decides there will be offers at that station. At least, that's how it should work. I did not have time to make sure yet.

What it doesn't do yet, as far as I can tell (there is that randomizer after all), is to make offers available when you first load your commander. You have to go through a docking procedure before offers show up. I'll muck about with the startup script more and see if I can work that out. I'm no programmer; I just look at existing code and go, "Hmm, is that doing what I think it's doing?" and copy/paste/modify as I think will work. So far, so good.

Yep, Zygo, I didn't start doing this until I had your backgrounds in place.

[Wildeblood]

Similarly, it would be nice if it said "x contracts available" like the cargo or passenger contract listings do, instead of just saying "Escort Contracts" regardless of how many there are. Likewise, I'd have to study how other OXPs do that and see if I can figure out how to incorporate that feature.

Have a look in Trading Assistant and you'll get two examples for the price of one, since it sets two interface screens, both with variable titles. The script to look in is trading_history.js.

[Keeper]

It all seems to work, including the addition of a Griff Prototype Boa to the list of potential motherships, and the chance of having ITHA contracts available when you load a saved game. (I didn't put the number of contracts available on the menu entry; I didn't get it to work easily and it wasn't too important because it tells you the number on the next screen along with the warning that once you proceed you'll only get one chance to look through the offers and must decide to accept/reject them.)

Packed up in a ZIP here (and it's even Mac-friendly with the readmes outside the OXP folder as well as inside for the rest of us): Link removed because there's a newer version later on in this thread!

I added all the details to Zygo's "NewReadMe.txt" file. But here they are in tiny text for space-saving.

...or not, because these details now are out of date! See the later reply!

[ZygoUgo]

Bonza, replaced my download with this too
EDIT: Link removed-out of date

[Rorschachhamster]

It all seems to work, including the addition of a Griff Prototype Boa to the list of potential motherships, ...

Oh. I suppose, I'll have to watch out for that turrets and friendly fire...

[Diziet Sma]

It will make a nice change in my Ooniverse to run across some GPBs that aren't being flown by pirates!

[Keeper]

It will make a nice change in my Ooniverse to run across some GPBs that aren't being flown by pirates! :lol:

They're out there. There are four types of GPB by default -- one for each set of four decals. The first set's role is strictly as a pirate. The next two are trader or pirate, and the fourth is trader only. For this OXP, I added the trader-only set as a mothership.

In the future, I think I'll try to eliminate the first screen and the "Reject" selections on the offer screens, or at least make them behave like the "View Chart" but without the "press F6 to return" function. This way the offers should stay put, so that you can't cycle through the first page until there are many different offers available; the offers would stay there on a timer. Ideally I think they should stay even if you launch and re-dock. I'm sure it must be possible to move the data-purging script to when you leave the system, but I'm not sure about preventing it from creating new offers upon re-dock. That may be too complicated for me to attempt, but the timer part while docked should be easy. The timer code is already there; it just needs to be copied with the F6 notification and function removed. As it's written, it would generate the potential of new offers when the timer runs out, which is good, but if it decides that no offers are available, the entire thing will stop and never will produce a new offer until you re-dock. That's kind of weird, but hey, at least it would make you find something else to do... I probably could get it to run the timer continually, though.