BGS - The BackgroundSet

[Corny]

Wow, that looks awesome already

[ZygoUgo]

I rather enjoy coming up with menial vehicles and such that you would find in the docks, especially one I liked that belongs to a company I am yet to use for possible future ship designs, that would fit in with what you are after I think. I also started designing some heavy military and navy battle droids that were to be stood in the back corners of appropriate stations as defence/deterrants.
I'm not capable of modelling them yet but I'll post sketches here if you like..?
There is also a number of menial droids and such that I was planning on making an OXP for that would randomly call at your ship and offer a service or amusing banter, alas my scripting skills remain as skillful as a one legged football team, without a paddle.

[Svengali]

I rather enjoy coming up with menial vehicles and such that you would find in the docks, especially one I liked that belongs to a company I am yet to use for possible future ship designs, that would fit in with what you are after I think. I also started designing some heavy military and navy battle droids that were to be stood in the back corners of appropriate stations as defence/deterrants.
I'm not capable of modelling them yet but I'll post sketches here if you like..?
There is also a number of menial droids and such that I was planning on making an OXP for that would randomly call at your ship and offer a service or amusing banter, alas my scripting skills remain as skillful as a one legged football team, without a paddle.

Sure, post it. Input is always valuable and modellers can pick it up - not only for this specific usecase .-)

[Mutant Enemy]

Hi y'all,

First up I'd just like to offer a huge vote of thanks to everyone who had hand in getting the Oolite project off the ground. Honestly can't believe I'd be getting so much fun out of this game 20 odd years later! Well done.

And now my problem. Only just discovered the wonders of OXPs last week so acting on the advice on the Wiki I downloaded and installed the set recommended by JazHaz. It's taken a bit of time to explore these to find out what had changed from the basic game but I'm gradually discovering that all is not well.

The main issue I've found is with BGS. Most of the features appear to work but the hyperspace tunnel is still that of the basic game (blue circles). Having upgraded everything via the links on the Wiki last week I'm quite confident that I've got all the recent versions (Oolite, 1.77, BGS 1.8, CCL 1.7, etc).

I'm running Linux Mint 13 on an AMD 64 Phenom II (quadcore) with a VaporX 1Gb Radeon HD4890, but here's the odd thing. I've also got Ubuntu 12 installed on the same drive (as a backup system) and sharing the same home partition with Mint. When I run Oolite from there everything works fine! Unfortunately, Mint is my preferred system and I don't want to be switching over to Ubuntu every time I want to play Oolite.

Any advice gratefully received.

Many thanks in advance.

[Smivs]

Hi Mutant Enemy, and welcome to the friendliest board this side of Riedquat.
The game (and the OXPs) are pretty amazing aren't they.
I've No idea why this is working with Ubuntu but not Mint - it's probably something silly which is no help to you I know.
Do you know where the logs are? Look in .Oolite, where the AddOns folder is. I'd suggest starting Oolite in Ubuntu and grabbing the log, then do the same using Mint and compare them - it might show something.
You can post them here (between 'code' tags - you'll see the buttons above the text field when you make a post) and see if anyone can help.
Cheers,
Smivs.

[Tichy]

I'm running Linux Mint 13 on an AMD 64 Phenom II (quadcore) with a VaporX 1Gb Radeon HD4890, but here's the odd thing. I've also got Ubuntu 12 installed on the same drive (as a backup system) and sharing the same home partition with Mint. When I run Oolite from there everything works fine! Unfortunately, Mint is my preferred system and I don't want to be switching over to Ubuntu every time I want to play Oolite.

I'm trying to guess: if you are using the open source radeon drivers (like any good long bearded free software advocate would do ) and you have a r600 gpu (like the HD4000 series), oolite disables the shaders.
To force enable, try to modify gpu-settings.plist:
Copy /usr/share/oolite/Resources/Config/gpu-settings.plist (or where Mint puts it) to ~/.Oolite/AddOns and change lines 138-139 (Radeon R600 section) to

Code: Select all

maximum_shader_level = "SHADERS_FULL";
default_shader_level = "SHADERS_FULL";

[Svengali]

Hello Mutant Enemy.

I'd think it's absolutely worth to try what Tichy said. That you are seeing the rings under Mint suggests that you don't have shader support. BGS disables its effects in these cases. Let us know how it goes after changing the
gpu-settings.plist .-)

[JazHaz]

acting on the advice on the Wiki I downloaded and installed the set recommended by JazHaz.

This is the link!

As to his problem I do say on the wiki: "If you have shaders on your computer, then the hyperspace sequence is enhanced."

[Diziet Sma]

G'day, Mutant Enemy, and welcome to "the friendliest board this side of Riedquat"™

I'm trying to guess: if you are using the open source radeon drivers (like any good long bearded free software advocate would do ) and you have a r600 gpu (like the HD4000 series), oolite disables the shaders.
To force enable, try to modify gpu-settings.plist:
Copy /usr/share/oolite/Resources/Config/gpu-settings.plist (or where Mint puts it) to ~/.Oolite/AddOns and change lines 138-139 (Radeon R600 section) to

Code: Select all

maximum_shader_level = "SHADERS_FULL";
default_shader_level = "SHADERS_FULL";

I'm inclined to agree with Tichy here, but I'd like to recommend that you create a 'Config' folder in 'AddOns' and put the copied gpu-settings.plist in that folder.. keeps things tidier, and down the track you may want to add further custom config files, such as a keyconfig.plist, in which case it's nice to have them all in the one location.

[Svengali]

After talking with pagroove we have done another attempt for the docking shader (tunnel effect). It' a simple texture distortion, a lot faster, less resource hungry and the shape of the tunnel can be adjusted. Stations can define own tunnel textures and shapes (script_info keys). By default BGS will do it only for main stations, but if secondary stations are defining at least one of the keys BGS will do it's job.

The second new feature is that BGS-XMapping has been implemented. BGS-XMapping is a mechanism to display the named areas and lanes from Clym Angus excellent maps in the game. The maps are all done (thanks to PhantorGorth), the mechanism shows them accordingly, but a few sets of coordinates may not work properly. To use this feature the player needs the ANA (ADVANCED NAVIGATIONAL ARRAY) and starts with one area and one lane in all galaxies. Via Snoopers updates are received (so you need Snoopers as well for this feature).

If you are interested to test these things let me know.

[Mutant Enemy]

Hello again,

What a friendly bunch. 'Twas great to get all that good advice so quickly. And the icing on the cake ...

... SUCCESS!!!

BGS is now working fine under Linux Mint 13. I'm so impressed with that Wormhole effect and my Cobra MkIII is just too cool with the new Skull and Crossbones decal!

So how did I fix it. Well Tichy's recommended tweaks to gpu-settings.plist seemed to be the best place to start so following Dizlet Sma's advice I copied that file to a new Config folder under Addons and applied the following changes there:

maximum_shader_level = "SHADERS_FULL";
default_shader_level = "SHADERS_FULL";

Fired up Oolite and the first thing I noticed was that now the sound seemed to be corrupted (like everything was coming through a badly tuned AM radio station). And you've guessed it, absolutely no difference to the graphics. But when I read through Tichy's post again the phrase "open source radeon drivers" caught my eye. OK - confession time! I've been using Mint for just over a year now and the initial install worked perfectly, straight out of the box. I'm not such a big games player (occasionally dig out something on the Win Xp side of my dual boot) and most of the applications I run are not graphics intensive. Essentially, I've never ever installed any drivers other than those that came with initial install. Nope - none at all! My Ubuntu installation on the other hand has the ATI Catalyst driver installed and as I reported previously BGS seems to run fine on that.

I'm sure you can all predict the next step in the process - installed ATI Catalyst, fired up Oolite again and suddenly the universe is a beautiful place once more!

Sorry Tichy, but as much as I like to think of myself as a free software advocate (most definitely unbearded!) it was much simpler to install Catalyst (it was all queued up under the Additional Drivers option of the main menu, awaiting a single mouse click and system restart) rather than start bashing away a load "sudo apt gets" at the command line. If it's any consolation I do intend to explore the open source radeon drivers fairly soon and promise to ditch ATI if they come up to scratch.

Many thanks to all once again - OK, gotta go thrash some Thargoids!

M-E

[Tichy]

Sorry Tichy, but as much as I like to think of myself as a free software advocate (most definitely unbearded!) it was much simpler to install Catalyst (it was all queued up under the Additional Drivers option of the main menu, awaiting a single mouse click and system restart) rather than start bashing away a load "sudo apt gets" at the command line. If it's any consolation I do intend to explore the open source radeon drivers fairly soon and promise to ditch ATI if they come up to scratch.

I know... I know... At the moment I'm with proprietary drivers too, because the free ones doesn't works correctly with the shaders in pioneer (and I'm a ollite/pioneer junkie). I'm waiting for Mesa 9.2 and linux kernel 3.11 (august/september), that should include many ati r600 improvements. Then I'll return to the oss drivers and try to find a way to clean my karma.

[CheeseRedux]

I've never ever installed any drivers other than those that came with initial install. Nope - none at all! My Ubuntu installation on the other hand has the ATI Catalyst driver installed and as I reported previously BGS seems to run fine on that.

Are you by any chance using the no-codecs version of Mint? That could possibly explain it.
My Mint 15 has shaders straight out of the box on my Radeon (which is a different Radeon, but still).

Not that it matters much now that it's all fixed.

[Smivs]

Hi Cheesy, long time no see. Good to see you back

[Cody]

Hi Cheesy, long time no see. Good to see you back

<nods>