Musings for v.1.92

[Cholmondely]

0) List of Contents

1 ) F4 Fast Activation Screen done! (phkb)!
2 ) Long Lists done! (phkb)!
3 ) F6 page colour toggles (economy/TL)
4 ) F5F5 page missions list
5 ) Keyboard Settings page done! (phkb)!
6 ) Allow fuel tanks to exceed 7ly (but keep the 7ly jump maximum distance) - hunh! just discovered that the Vipers have them!
7 ) Solar "Textures"
8 ) Tutorial (docking)
9 ) Console Messages
10 ) 9/F9 screen for OXPs

Appendix 1: Just thinking about the F1-8 screens. Part 1: F1-F5
Appendix 2: Adding some more oxp's into the vanilla game code Not a good idea - see this (2014)
Appendix 3: AI turns Scavengers into Miners With a Pulse Laser done (a_c)!
Appendix 4: Oolite lighting model


•AI behaviour breaking down (see Switeck's & Milo's dialogue on pp 6-7 at the end of this thread)
•Reorganise Joystick configuration menu: the need to organise the 7 pages of the vanilla game Joysticks menu done! (phkb)!



1) F4 Fast Activation Screen

I fear that the Fast Activation selection screen (accessed through the F4 Ship-station interface) is unhelpful for new players.

It talks about offensive and defensive equipment (a red herring, I believe) but gives no idea as to which keys the equipment is to be assigned to.

Would it not be more useful to mention that the first key binding is for the "0" key and that the second key binding is for the "Tab" key?

By the way, the excellent RS does not mention offensive/defensive in regard to the Tab/0 keys. It talks instead about Fast-activate special equipment

And the Keyboard Settings screen (accessed through F2/Game Options) does not mention offensive/defensive either - it refers to Item shortcut 1 & Item shortcut 2)

Would it not be more helpful to adopt a coherent terminology for our new players?

Oh! And the Oolite Keyboard Controls page on the wiki talks merrily of the Cloaking Device and the Energy Bomb! (I can fix that one if someone can come up with a standard jargon for the rest)!



Edited to add emphasis! Re-edited to mark off what has been done
Re-re-edited to add in #6 (larger fuel tanks). Re-re-re-edited to add in #7. And Appendix 4.
Re-re-re-re'd to update (Dec '23)

[hiran]

I fear that the Fast Activation selection screen (accessed through the F4 Ship-station interface) is unhelpful for new players.

It talks about offensive and defensive equipment (a red herring, I believe) but gives no idea as to which keys the equipment is to be assigned to.

Would it not be more useful to mention that the first key binding is for the "0" key and that the second key binding is for the "Tab" key?

By the way, the excellent RS does not mention offensive/defensive in regard to the Tab/0 keys. It talks instead about Fast-activate special equipment

And the Keyboard Settings screen (accessed through F2/Game Options) does not mention offensive/defensive either - it refers to Item shortcut 1 & Item shortcut 2)

Would it not be more helpful to adopt a coherent terminology for our new players?

Oh! And the Oolite Keyboard Controls page on the wiki talks merrily of the Cloaking Device and the Energy Bomb! (I can fix that one if someone can come up with a standard jargon for the rest)!

Edited to add emphasis!

Full ack! I was struggling a long time with that menu and still cannot take full advantage.

[Cholmondely]

For those of us who have more recently come to the game and play with lots and lots of OXPs there is another issue:

2) Long Lists
This of course is not a problem for those of us who play with a mere handful of oxp's


F3 screen We end up with long lists on the F3 page with all the goodies one can buy
Lethargic on-going project found here: Sorting out the F3 Ship Outfitting screen.

F4 screen We end up with long lists on the F4 page of all the options available regarding station interface
Fixed by Alnivel here (in the perfect way: the problem is created by oxp's, and fixed by his new oxp!)

F5 screen We end up with a long unsorted list on the F5 page of all the goodies on our ship

Viewscreen We end up with a long list of primable OXPs



Now, I have no problem with long lists. I do have problems with long random lists.

The F4 list has thankfully been sorted. I can argue with the logic of the sort, but there is a sort, by category and then alphabetical within each category.

The other lists are a disaster. Is there any way of easily sorting them out?



Reminder: Joysticks 7 pages long list: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20818: Configure Joysticks pages (7 so far) - with suggestions of a more rational sorting (Propulsion/Astrogation/Offensive/Defensive/OXP/Miscellaneous) Sorted out by Phkb!

Edited to add in Alnivel's & Phkb's solutions

[Cholmondely]

3) F6 page colour toggles (economy/TL)

For the uninitiated, the map toggle colour functions are virtually useless without XenonUI's information panel.

1) Am I alone in finding the colour differences (green-yellow) for the economy toggle unhelpful? And ditto for the red-white for the technology level toggle?

... Sun colour works fine , thank you! (- especially since it seems to map onto the sun colour in the system - and is vital for Strangers World), as does the politics colour scheme.

1a) Might it be better to go for green-red for economy: deep (Pakistan) green/emerald/light green/yellow/light pink/light red/scarlet/maroon ?

1b) And, say, green - brown - white for TL ?

2) And how about some sort of caption on the page explaining which has been selected?



It really came home to me when I was trying to make sense of SOTL's AltMap. There is no information for AltMap apart from what you find on the F6/F7/F8F8 pages. But since dear old Cim changed his political & economic definitions the F6 pages are pretty useless since you don't know if they refer to sun colour, politics or whatever!

[Cholmondely]

4) F5F5 page missions list

Rather than being devoted to missions, this list seems to be a catch-all for all and sundry.


Can anything be done?

Edited to add: this is an oxp problem, caused by oxp's dumping information willy-nilly on this page. Perchance it calls for an oxp solution? But is the Missions sub-heading addable to without vanilla code tweaking?

[phkb]

Can anything be done?

OXP's can do something about this themselves. The most common way of adding info to the F5F5 screen is to do this:

Code: Select all

mission.setInstructions("This will be added to the F5F5 screen", "my_mission_oxp_name");

That will get added under the default "Missions:" sub-heading.

But, if an OXP does this:

Code: Select all

mission.setInstructions(["Sub heading","Sub item 1","Sub item 2"], "my_mission_oxp_name");

The mission items will be put in a section on their own, away from "Missions". An example of this can be found in the LMSS system (file "lmss_core.js", lines 382ff

And if you just want 1 line, but want it to be separate from the "Missions" section, you could do this:

Code: Select all

mission.setInstructions(["Sub heading"], "my_mission_oxp_name");

Edit to add: BTW, the "my_mission_oxp_name" reference would normally be entered as this.name, which refers to the script file in which the code is executing, but I put a text value there for clarity.

[hiran]

While I am thinking about the lifecycle for OXPs and the Expansion Manager, there may be something...

1) The list that the expansion manager downloads should have a time-to-live field. If that is set, the expansion manager would force the user to grab an updated list rather than keeping the download optional
2) So far the list contains all the available OXPs. Not sure whether this has happened in the past, but
if there are multiple OXP versions available, the expansion manager should choose the suitable one (probably most up to date that still supports the given Oolite version)
3) How does the expansion manager react to additional fields it does not understand?
I think there is no way to mark OXPs as deprecated (or discouraged, or proclamated). I'd like to be able to add such information without breaking anything. If such information proves useful, it could then be evaluated and acted on by the expansion manager.

[Cholmondely]

While I am thinking about the lifecycle for OXPs and the Expansion Manager, there may be something...

1) The list that the expansion manager downloads should have a time-to-live field. If that is set, the expansion manager would force the user to grab an updated list rather than keeping the download optional
2) So far the list contains all the available OXPs. Not sure whether this has happened in the past, but
if there are multiple OXP versions available, the expansion manager should choose the suitable one (probably most up to date that still supports the given Oolite version)
3) How does the expansion manager react to additional fields it does not understand?
I think there is no way to mark OXPs as deprecated (or discouraged, or proclamated). I'd like to be able to add such information without breaking anything. If such information proves useful, it could then be evaluated and acted on by the expansion manager.

If you are going to allow the EM to force things in on people, surely it has to be optional? I am driven nuts by my Apple wanting to update, (I do not want this - I am perfectly happy with what I already have), by Firefox wanting to update etc. Windows forced my old windows computer to update and it is now virtually unusable (too slow, too complicated, etc etc).I bought a brand new fobile moan which then started to update while I was still registering it... I ended up having to get a second one, its "brain" burst.

[hiran]

While I am thinking about the lifecycle for OXPs and the Expansion Manager, there may be something...

1) The list that the expansion manager downloads should have a time-to-live field. If that is set, the expansion manager would force the user to grab an updated list rather than keeping the download optional
2) So far the list contains all the available OXPs. Not sure whether this has happened in the past, but
if there are multiple OXP versions available, the expansion manager should choose the suitable one (probably most up to date that still supports the given Oolite version)
3) How does the expansion manager react to additional fields it does not understand?
I think there is no way to mark OXPs as deprecated (or discouraged, or proclamated). I'd like to be able to add such information without breaking anything. If such information proves useful, it could then be evaluated and acted on by the expansion manager.

If you are going to allow the EM to force things in on people, surely it has to be optional? I am driven nuts by my Apple wanting to update, (I do not want this - I am perfectly happy with what I already have), by Firefox wanting to update etc. Windows forced my old windows computer to update and it is now virtually unusable (too slow, too complicated, etc etc).I bought a brand new fobile moan which then started to update while I was still registering it... I ended up having to get a second one, its "brain" burst.

Ok, maybe I am asking too much for the expansion manager's behaviour. I'd like to add a time-to-live field to the expansion lists to be sure we do not have ancient package lists that users are trying to use. Whether the the Expansion Manager forces a user, or just displays a warning or simply feels sorry for the user not having received the expansion they hoped for is out of scope for me.

[Cholmondely]

RED HERRING!

I am driven nuts by my Apple wanting to update, (I do not want this - I am perfectly happy with what I already have), by Firefox wanting to update etc. Windows forced my old windows computer to update and it is now virtually unusable (too slow, too complicated, etc etc).I bought a brand new fobile moan which then started to update while I was still registering it... I ended up having to get a second one, its "brain" burst.

[PM text removed at hiran's request.]

Linux
I've played around with the idea of installing Linux. But, I dislike change. I was very keen on the AppleMac OS up to when they changed to OX10. Especially OS 6 & 7, which I thought were super - and which I understood.

Since then it's been a losing battle.

And the older windows machine is a dead loss. Few ideas about how to do things, too complicated, too unintuitive (for me). At least with an AppleMac I can understand a little more about how to do things.

I have formed a strong impression that Linux is really for people like you and Montana who understand the guts and what's what. Goodness! You breeze in from the outer darknesses, and immediately start editing the impenetrable Dark Side pages in the wiki! Me ... I've been gazing forlornly at those pages trying to work out how to put a Yes/No choice on a mission screen, having virtually no context to work out what I'm supposed to do - or where I'm supposed to do it. I would never have guessed phkb's tweak to the SothisTC file to alow Market Inquirer to pick up the existence of Sothis externally. More importantly I would not have know where to look.

Even if I'm wrong, I just don't have the enthusiasm to learn to navigate yet another utterly unfriendly unintuitive operating system with its own list of quirks, issues, system architecture and jargon.

I never really believed in progress, Hegelian or otherwise. Developments in computers have borne out my prejudice. Oolite seems to be the only exception! I look at my screen for v.1.90 and am seriously impressed. I then look at v.1.77, and am not. And what I can do with v.1.90 - Strangers World, Diplomancy, Weapon Laws, etc. etc. ... SOTL, ... Goodness!

Managing the Manager
As regards the Expansions Manager and expiry dates, we are in a situation where there seem to be fewer and fewer people involved. Look at the discussions going on back in 2016 - and how many more involved people there were. Still Cody, phkb, Redspear, Montana etc, but also Dertien, Cim, Smivs, Norby, Spara, ...

Some still visit, thank heavens, but they don't get stuck into discussions the way they used to.

And then go back another 5 years ... and then go back another 5 years (and remember, we've lost many of the posts from this last period ... http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Great_Deletion)

I feel that one of the most important things is not too put too much stress on people, because that will drive them away. Look at poor old phkb updating XenonUI so that the background screens show. What a palaver! He should be enjoying his Oolite experiences, not drudging away making himself sick over stuck-up semicolons.

As regards the EM and the growth of OXZ's, I welcome that. More people getting involved, more super ideas, etc, etc.

What I think we could do with is a new set of Norby-type meta-OXPs as adumbrated elsewhere. We sit down together and create an aesthetics meta-OXP with Griff-style ships & stations. We create a useless combateers meta-OXP with aids to combat for the pathetic such as myself. We create a realistic politics & economics meta-OXP with Diplomancy, Weapon Laws, SW Economy, Docking Fees, etc. A lore meta-OXP with Lave, Tionisla, Tianve etc. A realistic physics OXP with the Strangers World suite. How about a piracy career Meta-oxp built around phkb's experimental pirate player oxp but with smugglers, manifest scanner, broadcast comms & anarchies added in? Or a Star Wars variant? Or a Star Trek variant?

First we need to decide what meta-OXPs we could do. Then we start creating them.

Would this not be simpler, more fun and better for new players than mucking about with the EM? All we would need would be a new, introductory category, of Meta-OXPs. Or Oolite Worlds. Or scenarios? Or whatever.

(Put up as I believe this relevant for a wider discussion. Hiran's pm edited to remove his more personal comments)

[hiran]

Would this not be simpler, more fun and better for new players than mucking about with the EM? All we would need would be a new, introductory category, of Meta-OXPs. Or Oolite Worlds. Or scenarios? Or whatever.

Well, I am not good with the story, the wordings or drawings. If I were to design spaceships they would all look cuboid and be drawn as wireframes.

So I look at something that is more in my domain: the OXP lifecycle. It may not be evident to others, but the current process of creating and managing OXPs is cumbersome, and all I am trying is to improve on that.

[Cholmondely]

5) Keyboard Settings page

Apropos of my comments on the Configure Joysticks pages (7 so far): viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20818

Might it also be possible to rejig the Keyboard Settings page under Game Options?

Once again, the terminology used there differs from what we find on the wiki, and differs again from what is found on the Configure Joysticks pages.

Code: Select all

Roll Left                         Pitch Down                       Yaw Left
Roll Right                       Pitch Up                           Yaw Right
Accelerate                      Decelerate                       Fuel Injectors
Mouse Control                                                         
Forward View                 Status Screens                   GUI Left
Aft View                         Chart Screens                   GUI Right
Port View                       Systems Screens                GUI Up
Starboard View               Market Screens                 GUI Down
External View                 Show Chart Icons               Home Map
Take snapshot                Route planner                    Chart highlight

Fire laser                       Launch missile                   ECM
Ident system                  Target missile                    Untarget missile
Weapons toggle              Next missile                      Target incoming
Next target                    Previous target                  Escape pod

Torus drive                    Witchspace jump               Galactic jump
Docking computer          Fast docking                      Request clearance
Docking music
Zoom scanner                Dump cargo                       ASC back
Unzoom scanner            Rotate cargo                      ASC forward
Comms log                    Cycle MFD                          Select MFD

Select Item                    Item button 1                    Item button 2
Item shortcut 1              Item shortcut 2

Pause                            Show FPS                           Toggle HUD

These were my suggestions for change for the Configure Joysticks pages:

Propulsion
*Roll
*Pitch
*Yaw
*Increase thrust
*Decrease thrust
*Fuel injection
*Hyperspeed → Torus jump drive
*Hyper/witch drive
*Roll/pitch precision toggle

Astrogation
*Next compass target
*no Earlier compass target?
*Scanner zoom
*Scanner unzoom
*View forward
*View aft
*View port
*View starboard
*Toggle ID
*Docking clearance
*Autopilot (standard) → AutoDock (waltzing)
*Autopilot (fast) → AutoDock (fast)

Offensive
*Weapons online toggle
*Primary weapon → Fire Laser
*Secondary weapon → Fire Missile/Bomb
no target missile?
*Arm secondary → Arm missile
*Disarm secondary → Disarm missile
*Target incoming missile (should this be defensive, instead?)
*Cycle secondary → Cycle missiles/bombs
*Select previous target
*Select next target

Defensive
*ECM
*Jettison cargo
*Escape pod

OXP special equipment
*Prime equipment
no Reverse prime equipment?
*Activate equipment
*Set equipment mode
*Activate first fast equipment
*Activate second fast equipment

Miscellaneous
*Take snapshot

If someone is willing to bung the game code on the viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20818 thread (for both the Configure Joysticks pages & the Keyboard Settings page), I'd be more than happy to rework them both to come up with consistent jargon for them (and for what we find in our wiki). I'm presuming that I can decipher the relevant sections of the code!

[phkb]

I fear that the Fast Activation selection screen (accessed through the F4 Ship-station interface) is unhelpful for new players.

Would this be better?

[Cholmondely]

A vast improvement, to my eyes!

Thank you!

[phkb]

I’ll put a simple OXP together for this shortly, so it can be tweaked a bit before I commit anything to the core code. I can do a similar thing with renaming the various mapping labels for the joystick functions.

The ordering of items in the joystick mapper will require core code changes though. I’m seeing how hard it would be to add some headers as well, but the order can be changed with relative ease.