[Release] Station Ads

[Cody]

Seems to be working fine, so far.

[Fritz]

Esorza, feudal, Icosahedron station: 1 side ad
Gearzaen, corporate state, Dodecahedron station: 2 front ads, 2 side ads
Tionrebi, confederation, Icosahedron station: 1 side ad, 1 front ad
Islaenbi, anarchy, Icosahedron station: 1 side ad
Orqube, communist, Dodecahedron station: 2 side ads

Seems to work!

[spara]

A new version (0.10) in a quick succession as usual: https://app.box.com/s/x8em012fjun6qn9wz8vgcypygcqdvirm

* Manifest identifier corrected. Thanks Norby.
* Some optimization.
* Better ad switching timings. Dock ads and front ads now work separately and out of sync. Looks better. In the previous version a front ad and a dock ad always switched at the same time.

A note about the number of ads. If you see something else, then there's a bug lurking somewhere.
* Coriolises have 1 dock ad and 0 or 1 front ad.
* Dodos have 2 dock ads and 0, 2 or 4 front ads.
* Icos have 2 dock ads and 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8 front ads. Internally it's possible to show 10 or 12 front ads, but that seemed a bit over the top. Can easily be configured in the script, if someone fancies.
* The number of front ads shown is scaled by productivity and a bit of randomness.
* Front ads are only used in confederacies, democracies and corporacies.

Fritz, those system/station combinations look a bit strange. I don't think that a combination of anarchy + Ico is possible in the core game. Is there some OXP at work there?

[Cody]

I don't think that a combination of anarchy + Ico is possible in the core game.

<nods> Highest TL at anarchy systems is nine, I think - no Ico there (nor at a feudal, methinks)!

[Norby]

0, 2, 4, 6 or 8 front ads

In my taste max. 4 are enough but can be some double sized boards to be readable from larger distance. The small letters cause me to stop right before the dock and hold up the queue while I read, better if I can read during approach.

[Amah]

Teonrebi is normally a Coriolis (flying in and out there to test the noshaders tradeoutpost, which replaced it, atm)... so 1 ad would make sense.

Speaking of... working great even on my choking-on-shaders machine on normal details here.

No support for the ZGroovy extra stations here atm, but haven't looked into it so far and I wonder if there's demand for it... you do some shipdata magic I guess and redefine the defaults with your own entries?

[Fritz]

Fritz, those system/station combinations look a bit strange. I don't think that a combination of anarchy + Ico is possible in the core game. Is there some OXP at work there?

Sorry, I meant "Coriolis" when I wrote "Icosahedron". I didn't dock at Icosahedron stations since installing the OXP and didn't find one in my save files.

[spara]

0, 2, 4, 6 or 8 front ads

In my taste max. 4 are enough but can be some double sized boards to be readable from larger distance. The small letters cause me to stop right before the dock and hold up the queue while I read, better if I can read during approach.

Good point, I'll test a bit with bigger screens. For aesthetical and size reasons, Coriolis as at it's max and Dodo too. Ico could work with a bit bigger screens. Then again, more screens than other stations gives a feeling of greater size.

Speaking of... working great even on my choking-on-shaders machine on normal details here.

Front ad frame uses Griff's custom shader from YAH and looks a bit better with shaders on. Does not require shaders though. All ad switching in screens is done with scripting instead of shaders.[/quote]

No support for the ZGroovy extra stations here atm, but haven't looked into it so far and I wonder if there's demand for it... you do some shipdata magic I guess and redefine the defaults with your own entries?

Totally doable, just need to add the ad frames and screens to stations and add them to the script. I'll put that to my todo. But first I want to finish with core stations.

[spara]

And here's a version (0.11) with up to 4 Ico front ads: https://app.box.com/s/rhyvvxcfjfjkratnw58d3iypxqwxl29r for a test drive. Ads are quite a bit bigger, thus easier to read. I think it's quite good, but feel free to comment. For comparison, I have linked the earlier pic with 12 ads here too.

As a side note about the Ico. Has anyone else noticed that the dock is upside down? There's some text in the dock clearly showing which way is up and I have aligned the ads accordingly. However, if you launch from the station, you are upside down with respect to the dock. And NPCs who dock, do it upside down. The dock itself is symmetrical, so it's just the texts. If those were flipped, the dock would be ok. And I would naturally need to flip the ads.

[Fritz]

There are texts and signs on the Coriolis stations too (SLOW, ARAF, a hand symbol). But on the opposite side of the docking port there is a figure and a warning sign, and they are "upside down". The orientation of the ads matches the latter.

So up and down isn't really defined for the stations, and this makes sense because you may dock in either orientation. That's why I asked about the orientation some days ago.

(PS: I wonder why the mentioned texts and signs were made almost invisible. Warning signs or texts should be very prominent and probably lighted too because the docking faces of most stations are in the shadow.)

[Cody]

This has me thinking of a much slower launching speed - hardcoded, I'd wager?

[spara]

There are texts and signs on the Coriolis stations too (SLOW, ARAF, a hand symbol). But on the opposite side of the docking port there is a figure and a warning sign, and they are "upside down". The orientation of the ads matches the latter.

So up and down isn't really defined for the stations, and this makes sense because you may dock in either orientation. That's why I asked about the orientation some days ago.

(PS: I wonder why the mentioned texts and signs were made almost invisible. Warning signs or texts should be very prominent and probably lighted too because the docking faces of most stations are in the shadow.)

Inside Coriolis dock, on both side walls, is a text "Gasec" that quite clearly shows which way is visioned to be up and which down. Also the two door like features suggest the same orientation. I don't think the texts outside the dock mess with that, because it's possible to to dock any way around. You also always launch from the station same way around.

Dodo dock is not symmetrical vertically, so I chose up from the launch orientation. An interesting detail about the dock is that model wise it's on it's side.

Ico has text inside the dock (Warning - Croeso) clearly showing which way is visioned to be up and which down, but model wise it's upside down causing the launch orientation to be upside down too.

Because of these differences, I had to orient the ads for each station individually with respect to the dock. Coriolis is straight, Dodo rotated 90 degrees and Ico 180 degrees. Quaternion calculator from wiki has proved to be priceless.

[Fritz]

Inside Coriolis dock, on both side walls, is a text "Gasec"

I must admit that I had missed this one! "Floor" and "ceiling" have different structures too, although the "beams" make the floor look like the ceiling.

[spara]

Inside Coriolis dock, on both side walls, is a text "Gasec"

I must admit that I had missed this one! "Floor" and "ceiling" have different structures too, although the "beams" make the floor look like the ceiling.

I have never examined the docks in such detail as I did when aligning the dock ads.

[spara]

The left side dock at the Ico station was upside down and both dock ads were actually badly aligned. That's been fixed in version 0.12: https://app.box.com/s/q8orkuhxro6swtx25m3ta04o0uaoxu6z. No new versions today, I'll park my Cobra and take a lift to level 27 .