Progress

[Fatleaf]

A Friendly Gourd has already  been there, done that



Time to go back to my normal avatar.

[Venator Dha]

New feature for tonight's build: if you have an Advanced Navigational Array installed, you can set a distant system and route mode on it, and activating the witchdrive will take you to the next system on the route.

I'm really enjoying this feature and feel useful improvement to it would be to be able to switch to the start of the route (and back), as currently pressing F6 in short range chart shows the end of the journey.

[another_commander]

I'm really enjoying this feature and feel useful improvement to it would be to be able to switch to the start of the route (and back), as currently pressing F6 in short range chart shows the end of the journey.

There is lots of potential to mess up the chart functionality if not done very carefully, I think. You can see the starting point in any case by unzooming the chart to a level that encompasses the entire route.

Edit to add: You can also scroll it to the start of the route if not too far away, but use the mouse for this or the destination system selection changes as you move the cursor with the arrow keys.

[Venator Dha]

I'm really enjoying this feature and feel useful improvement to it would be to be able to switch to the start of the route (and back), as currently pressing F6 in short range chart shows the end of the journey.

There is lots of potential to mess up the chart functionality if not done very carefully, I think. You can see the starting point in any case by unzooming the chart to a level that encompasses the entire route.

Whilst that is true, I use the toggle on the short range a lot to show system government/TL/economy of the next system, which isn't shown on the long range chart. It is also useful to see where a wormhole is going to, and if it's a viable option to take. So it would be nice not to have to drag across (potentially) the whole chart just to check.
Of course if it's problematic or breaks things, then it can remain a wish/hope/aspiration

[another_commander]

Whilst that is true, I use the toggle on the short range a lot to show system government/TL/economy of the next system, which isn't shown on the long range chart. It is also useful to see where a wormhole is going to, and if it's a viable option to take. So it would be nice not to have to drag across (potentially) the whole chart just to check.
Of course if it's problematic or breaks things, then it can remain a wish/hope/aspiration

Good points and I see where you're coming from. Just to clarify, it's not an impossible task (nothing is impossible). I just feel that the chart is a place where things can break easily if one is not careful.

[cim]

Whilst that is true, I use the toggle on the short range a lot to show system government/TL/economy of the next system, which isn't shown on the long range chart.

You can press '?' to cycle the chart highlight mode between its four settings. (star colour, government, economy, techlevel)

[JensAyton]

A new way of handling string substitutions in native code has been added. It’s safer, more uniform and more consistent with the JavaScript way of doing things, but it adds busy-work for translators because strings like "Witchspace to %@ in %.0f s." are replaced with strings like "Witchspace to [destination] in [seconds] s." A list of the changes so far can be found in the changelog. This list is likely to grow.

To cover the needs of the old system and keep code simple, we’ve added a concept of “formatting operators”. These work from JavaScript as well. A formatting operator is added to a [foo] substitution using a pipe (|), like this: [foo|dcr]. There is more information in descriptions.plist.

(For an example of what I mean by consistency with JavaScript, you could use the witchspace string above in JavaScript like this: expandDescription("[witch-to-x-in-y-seconds]", { destination: "infinity and beyond", seconds: 10 }). There is no provided way to deal with %@ and %.0f in JS. I posit that "[destination] in [seconds]" also has a legibility advantage.)

[Redspear]

A new shipdata.plist property: model_scale_factor. This takes a ship model and scales up or down all relevant dimensions at once, so
- the model itself
- subentity scales and positions (including exhausts and flashers)
- weapon positions
- view positions internal and external

Great stuff

[cim]

A couple more changes for tonight.

• Waypoints can now be given an orientation of [0,0,0,0] - this makes them unoriented waypoints, which removes the directional arrow running through the middle.
• There are now two extra scanner display colours for the "ship is hostile to player" state. scannerHostileDisplayColor1 and scannerHostileDisplayColor2 (with corresponding shipdata.plist properties). If these aren't set but the normal display colours are, then as before the ship won't change colour when hostile. If these are set but the normal display colours aren't, then it'll use the normal scan class colours when not hostile.

[cim]

shipWillEnterWitchspace now has a second parameter - destination. For in-galaxy jumps, this is the system ID; for galactic jumps it's the galaxy ID. (Because shipWillEnterWitchspace itself can change the galactic jump behaviour, the system ID can't be given reliably for those - another OXP might change it after your OXP has read it)

This is considerably more reliable - especially on wormhole-initiated jumps, of course - than player.ship.targetSystem for working out where the player is going to end up.

[cim]

A couple of new world event handlers

Code: Select all

playerRescuedEscapePod(fee, reason, occupant)

This gives scripts the ability to report on non-scripted escape pods. Scripted escape pods will not trigger this - it's assumed that all handling of those should be done by the attached script.

Code: Select all

playerCompletedContract(type, result, fee, contract)

This lets scripts take additional actions on contract completion. Useful if you added a special contract and want to find out the result without having to constantly watch the player's contract lists.

[Cody]

New feature for tonight's build: if you have an Advanced Navigational Array installed, you can set a distant system and route mode on it, and activating the witchdrive will take you to the next system on the route.

If there was one tweak I could add to this, it'd be to make F7 display the next system rather than the ultimate destination. Is that possible, cim?

[Wildeblood]

Code: Select all

playerCompletedContract(type, result, fee, contract)

And playerEnteredContract?

[cim]

And playerEnteredContract?

Why not.

Code: Select all

playerEnteredContract(type, contract)

If there was one tweak I could add to this, it'd be to make F7 display the next system rather than the ultimate destination. Is that possible, cim?

Possible, certainly, but I think it would be inconvenient at different times to have the F7 screen consistently display a system tens of light years away from the various systems you're investigating, unless you turn off the route planner and lose the travel time information. I can't immediately think of a good "display the one I'm interested in now" approach here.

[Venator Dha]

If there was one tweak I could add to this, it'd be to make F7 display the next system rather than the ultimate destination. Is that possible, cim?

Possible, certainly, but I think it would be inconvenient at different times to have the F7 screen consistently display a system tens of light years away from the various systems you're investigating, unless you turn off the route planner and lose the travel time information. I can't immediately think of a good "display the one I'm interested in now" approach here.

I think this is a courier thing, our destination is sort of fixed by the contact, what we want is info on the next system we are going to be jumping in, to assess the risk and mitigate it if necessary. A long jump into an anarchy system carrying lots of sensitive parcels, can be quite envigorating So some quick way to check this would be good, as the F6 now shows the final destination by default as well.