More/ larger galaxies

[Pleb]

So just to be clear, without modifying the source (so essentially just creating a new OXP) you can create new galaxies, but these would have to replace the originals. You cannot add additional galaxies to the existing game without modifying the source. What you can do, using the scenario features, is create an OXP that runs separate to the existing game. So you'd have like a new type of game within the existing one, like SOTL, that you just create a new save for.

[Cholmondely]

So just to be clear, without modifying the source (so essentially just creating a new OXP) you can create new galaxies, but these would have to replace the originals. You cannot add additional galaxies to the existing game without modifying the source. What you can do, using the scenario features, is create an OXP that runs separate to the existing game. So you'd have like a new type of game within the existing one, like SOTL, that you just create a new save for.

That would be fine, I think.

... But can one use an old "vanilla" save within the new scenario which has a new galaxy bolted on?

[Pleb]

That would be fine, I think.

... But can one use an old "vanilla" save within the new scenario which has a new galaxy bolted on?

Well, if you, for example, replaced galaxy 8 with a new galaxy, and then had a save that was not in galaxy 8, then in theory this would work. But my line of thinking was something more along the lines of SOTL, which is in a sense a 'total conversion' OXP whereby you create a new set of galaxies with a new set of rules. Otherwise to do what you're suggesting is essentially just 'more of the same', which although I love Oolite is what I was aiming to avoid and essentially create a whole new experience/game but by using the existing Oolite engine (as so not to have multiple forks/binaries/versions/etc...).

[Redspear]

I can make a larger galaxy, that's not a problem. The problem is that it involves messing with the source code, so you'd have a separate version/binary to that of the main game. The issue there is that any new updates to Oolite would require you constantly having to mess with the source of your 'larger galaxy version' to keep up with the changes, which could get messy!

Understood. I'm not shy about tinkering with the source code and I understand about 'keeping up'. That's why when you sent me the code for your earlier demonstration I couldn't make use of it with my rescaling experiment - there was no annotation to show which parts you'd changed (my fault for not asking, not yours) and my rescaling had already made changes which were based on a different itteration of the source code.

Some was fairly obvious and some was on this thread but some I just hadn't worked out. I probably could have done it by a process of elimination but that would have been a pain. If you could spell out the necessary sourcde code changes for me then I'd... er... say you were... 'ace' ?

So basically, with my galaxy generator you can generate new galaxies with new systems. However because this is running on an unmodified (no changes to the source) Oolite, you would still only be able to have 256 systems and 8 galaxies, using the same 256x256 coordinate system. Using features in Oolite's scenarios, you can have it so it runs completely separate from the rest of Oolite, so you wouldn't have to have a separate installation of it.

OXP is usually preferable, it's just depends what one wants and whether oxp 'allows' it - although it can be fun finding ways to bend the rules to one's liking

[Pleb]

Understood. I'm not shy about tinkering with the source code and I understand about 'keeping up'. That's why when you sent me the code for your earlier demonstration I couldn't make use of it with my rescaling experiment - there was no annotation to show which parts you'd changed (my fault for not asking, not yours) and my rescaling had already made changes which were based on a different itteration of the source code.

The way I did it all those years ago was somewhat messy, if I had another go now I'd certainly annotate my changes and document everything, plus make it much tidier. And obviously include a settings file for turning certain aspects on/off (which I did last time anyway)! Creating a 1024 system galaxy using 1024x1024 coordinates is completely possible, it just requires changes to the source. How extensive those are I'm not sure on, when I attempted this before I adjusted the internal calculations of distance to create the illusion of it being larger, when in fact it was still using the original 256x256 coordinate system.

[Cholmondely]

I understand that there is an openness to "opening out" the source code, if the would-be changers are willing to do the coding themselves. So this could be included in v.1.91/1.92 (or later if it took longer).

[Pleb]

I understand that there is an openness to "opening out" the source code, if the would-be changers are willing to do the coding themselves. So this could be included in v.1.91/1.92 (or later if it took longer).

I'm not averse to creating a new fork and working on that to provide a framework for larger/additional galaxies, as I did something similar to this back in 2014 (although I didn't really document/annotate it as much as I should have, plus the code was very messy!). My main concern back then was splintering from the main code, and the community, by creating an off-shoot of the game.

[Cholmondely]

I understand that there is an openness to "opening out" the source code, if the would-be changers are willing to do the coding themselves. So this could be included in v.1.91/1.92 (or later if it took longer).

I'm not averse to creating a new fork and working on that to provide a framework for larger/additional galaxies, as I did something similar to this back in 2014 (although I didn't really document/annotate it as much as I should have, plus the code was very messy!). My main concern back then was splintering from the main code, and the community, by creating an off-shoot of the game.

But could it not be included in the main game? All it does it provide more options for oxp's, no?

Just imagine! You could rise to the dizzy ranks of Commodore! Or maybe even the Admiralty! Grand Admiral of the Fleet Pleb!! How does that grab you? (desperation on seeing the glorious Admiralty shrink from 16 doughty hard-bitten sea-dogs to a mere three outnumbered outgunned defenders of civilisation... )

[montana05]

But could it not be included in the main game? All it does it provide more options for oxp's, no?

Just imagine! You could rise to the dizzy ranks of Commodore! Or maybe even the Admiralty! Grand Admiral of the Fleet Pleb!! How does that grab you? (desperation on seeing the glorious Admiralty shrink from 16 doughty hard-bitten sea-dogs to a mere three outnumbered outgunned defenders of civilisation... )

In my point of view, preserving Elite is certainly an honorable task, but Oolite should focus on progress as well. Some new ships or a new frontier galaxy in the core game are making sense. Cim had a vision, but unfortunately in later releases a lot of his improvements were ignored.

[Pleb]

In my point of view, preserving Elite is certainly an honorable task, but Oolite should focus on progress as well. Some new ships or a new frontier galaxy in the core game are making sense. Cim had a vision, but unfortunately in later releases a lot of his improvements were ignored.

I think it's safe to say, that cim's vision was more of opening up Oolite to the kind of 'total conversion' I'm proposing, which inheritantly builds upon some of the ideas he started with SOTL. Whilst SOTL was more of a showcase of how one might start to go about this and was probably hoped as a catalyst to more intuitive ideas springing forth, it would seem that things have stayed more less the same. That isn't a fault of the developers of Oolite, as the ability to create these new universes still exists within Oolite, but more to do with people not taking advantage of how to go about doing this (which admittedly probably isn't clear enough to the majority of those still left in the community).

What I'm proposing, and what I hope that my current project will lead to, is rather than changing the core game (which I believe is quite frankly best left alone for the most part) we use Oolite as a sort of engine to create a new game with these new features in it. Creating new galaxies and systems is more than possible. Yes, if we wish to add larger or additional galaxies to the game then we would of course have to modify the source, but at least as a starting point we should make good use of what we already have in the game. The recent inclusion of planetary shaders and heightmaps opens up the possibility of dramatically improving upon the game's visuals. The ability to create new galaxies and systems allows for a far different atmosphere, one of either frontier exploration or galactic warfare. The existing capabilities of Oolite are not yet being used to their fullest. Yes, having additional systems and galaxies would be a boon, not to mention other adjustables that would help, such as galactic hyperdrives that go in reverse (which I've demonstrated before), and adjustable distances on how far hyperdrives can work. But until these or other game changing features get implemented (if at all) we should definitely start making better use of the tools we already have.

Oolite is a great game and I don't want to change its base game experience. But I'm definitely up for creating a whole new experience using its core and building upon it!

[Pleb]

But could it not be included in the main game? All it does it provide more options for oxp's, no?

Just imagine! You could rise to the dizzy ranks of Commodore! Or maybe even the Admiralty! Grand Admiral of the Fleet Pleb!! How does that grab you? (desperation on seeing the glorious Admiralty shrink from 16 doughty hard-bitten sea-dogs to a mere three outnumbered outgunned defenders of civilisation... )

Oh don't get me wrong, I completely agree and I made that argument back in 2014 and provided (admittedly messy but working) code back then that included settings to turn this kind of thing on and off and specify how many galaxies or system you wanted to add. However my understanding was that people weren't massively interested in it, or that they didn't want to split the code/community based on it. Which I get, but I never wanted to change the base game, just have options for either expanding it or creating a new one in the style of a total conversion. Cim provided some of that framework and even made SOTL to show it could be done, but that fact that no one continued that work I took to mean people weren't interested. However it's something I'd very much like to do!

[Cholmondely]

But could it not be included in the main game? All it does it provide more options for oxp's, no?

Just imagine! You could rise to the dizzy ranks of Commodore! Or maybe even the Admiralty! Grand Admiral of the Fleet Pleb!! How does that grab you? (desperation on seeing the glorious Admiralty shrink from 16 doughty hard-bitten sea-dogs to a mere three outnumbered outgunned defenders of civilisation... )

Oh don't get me wrong, I completely agree and I made that argument back in 2014 and provided (admittedly messy but working) code back then that included settings to turn this kind of thing on and off and specify how many galaxies or system you wanted to add. However my understanding was that people weren't massively interested in it, or that they didn't want to split the code/community based on it. Which I get, but I never wanted to change the base game, just have options for either expanding it or creating a new one in the style of a total conversion. Cim provided some of that framework and even made SOTL to show it could be done, but that fact that no one continued that work I took to mean people weren't interested. However it's something I'd very much like to do!

I can't see why our three remaining developers (a_c_, Getafix & Phkb) would be against it, and the two people I've noticed who have been active on the developmental end of things (Redspear & Tsoj) ditto. Redspear actually seems to be in favour...

The only outright "no" I've seen in my year in this community was to the proposal to forcibly change a game rule for the entire game (not counting derelicts as kills - which might well be OXP-able, but nobody seems to have considered that). What you have described is merely allowing an option for players, not forcing all players to do it.

Reference: Destroying a derelict should not count as a kill (2020-1) https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20825

Edit: Just stumbled across this:

This is mainly how I see this, as I said before this is a casual project not a practical one. However if it evolved into something more practical then that would be different...

Absolutely, and when that happens I would be more than glad to press the button for merging into master.

[Pleb]

I can't see why our three remaining developers (a_c_, Getafix & Phkb) would be against it, and the two people I've noticed who have been active on the developmental end of things (Redspear & Tsoj) ditto. Redspear actually seems to be in favour...

The only outright "no" I've seen in my year in this community was to the proposal to forcibly change a game rule for the entire game (not counting derelicts as kills - which might well be OXP-able, but nobody seems to have considered that). What you have described is merely allowing an option for players, not forcing all players to do it.

Sorry what I meant was that I think back in 2014 when the community was much larger, those of us who were all for adding features like this were in a minority to those who were happy with what already existed. And whilst I had toyed with the idea of just going ahead and forking the game, the code I had written was poorly optimised. Plus in those days the game had to generate all the systems everytime, hence why loading times were longer (and even longer still once I upped the system count to 1024!). Now I think it wouldn't have such an impact, but there's other things to take into consideration, such as how the best way of enlarging the galaxy would be. Its all possible, just needs to be coded, tested and optimised. And certainly better than the shoddy job I did all those years ago!

EDIT: Also I think it was considered that adding more systems and galaxies would be adding more of the same thing, which admittedly is pretty pointless. The current 2048 systems is plenty for what Oolite is. However in the wake of SOTL and showing just what's possible, the reason for having larger galaxies, more systems, customisable jump distances, etc... I think is a stronger argument now than it was then.

[Cholmondely]

I can't see why our three remaining developers (a_c_, Getafix & Phkb) would be against it, and the two people I've noticed who have been active on the developmental end of things (Redspear & Tsoj) ditto. Redspear actually seems to be in favour...

The only outright "no" I've seen in my year in this community was to the proposal to forcibly change a game rule for the entire game (not counting derelicts as kills - which might well be OXP-able, but nobody seems to have considered that). What you have described is merely allowing an option for players, not forcing all players to do it.

Sorry what I meant was that I think back in 2014 when the community was much larger, those of us who were all for adding features like this were in a minority to those who were happy with what already existed. And whilst I had toyed with the idea of just going ahead and forking the game, the code I had written was poorly optimised. Plus in those days the game had to generate all the systems everytime, hence why loading times were longer (and even longer still once I upped the system count to 1024!). Now I think it wouldn't have such an impact, but there's other things to take into consideration, such as how the best way of enlarging the galaxy would be. Its all possible, just needs to be coded, tested and optimised. And certainly better than the shoddy job I did all those years ago!

EDIT: Also I think it was considered that adding more systems and galaxies would be adding more of the same thing, which admittedly is pretty pointless. The current 2048 systems is plenty for what Oolite is. However in the wake of SOTL and showing just what's possible, the reason for having larger galaxies, more systems, customisable jump distances, etc... I think is a stronger argument now than it was then.

larger galaxies, more systems, customisable jump distances

So larger galaxies, yes! More systems - more than the octant, I presume. Customisable jump distances - please explain.

Personally, for me, it is uninhabited systems, hidden within-map systems awaiting discovery, political blocs and non-256 system galaxies. Which to me means adding more as I don't see the point in wrecking the octant with its wealth of lore and missions... And I feel that larger galaxies are needed to help psychologically escape the 256 system straitjacket.

As previously adumbrated, I can't code for toffee. What can I do? Offerings in the Grand Cathedral in Digebiti to Saint Phibo Nacci? Sacrificing sombreros to the Witchspace Lobster? Bugging Redspear until he sees Red? Speak!

[Pleb]

So larger galaxies, yes! More systems - more than the octant, I presume. Customisable jump distances - please explain.

So by customisable jump distances I mean hyperdrives that can have different jump ranges, a bit like in Frontier or E:D. This would of course break the base game in Oolite, because because game works around the premise of 7 light years being the limit. But for scenarios involving a larger galaxy this would be a great feature to have. Again, changing the number of galaxies/systems and the size of galaxies would break the base game as the base game needs these things to be constant, but for new scenarios this would be a brilliant feature. I'm fairly certain the scenario feature was added after I came up with my code hacks, which actually if you sift through the forums I originally did much earlier than even 2014, so back then this would have (possibly) had an impact on the base game but I don't think that would be the case now thanks to the scenario feature.

I'm going to polish up my generator so that it can at least show some examples and then I'll post up some results and I'll put the code onto a public github repo. The next step after I've got it successfully generating standard oolite galaxies, will be to start implementing the features that allow uninhabited systems, factions, realistic suns (no green ones!), multi planet systems with realistic positions and planet types (rocky, icy, gas, etc...) and so on!

EDIT: Also the hidden systems is already a feature in Oolite, so this is already possible.