[Beta] Release of Telescope 2.0

[arquebus]

Ok, never mind, I am definitely running 2.0.1 according to the manifest file. And yet somehow the extender OXP is also working...?

I don't know what's going on.

On my Mac install, I can't update to the 2.0.1 telescope without messing up the extender OXP, but on my Windows install, apparently I updated already, and it was fine. I'm just not going to worry about it!

[Cholmondely]

Ok so I have a feeling I'm not actually running the Telescope from the dropbox link. I think my settings are still showing up as mass lock BORDERS instead of RING when I switch through the options.

So here's my question: the dropbox OXPs have different names from the ones downloaded from the installer. Should I just remove the installer ones and put in the dropbox ones, without changing any names, or will I break my existing telescope if I don't rename the OXPs to match what was there before?

With any luck, the newer ones should trump the older when you start up a new game.

Where things are also matters. There is the Managed AddOns folder and the AddOns folder. AddOns trumps Managed AddOns, apparently, But oxp's only get "picked up: in AddOns, whilst oxz's downloaded through the in-game Expansions Managed get bunged in the Managed AddOns (but work fine in AddOns).

If this is not confusing enough, I'm sure we can get one of our boffins to bung in some more complexities for you!

And the newer Telescope oxp's have cag as part of their name (he took over when Norby retired to the Pool of Pellucid Placidity)

[arquebus]

Where things are also matters. There is the Managed AddOns folder and the AddOns folder. AddOns trumps Managed AddOns, apparently, But oxp's only get "picked up: in AddOns, whilst oxz's downloaded through the in-game Expansions Managed get bunged in the Managed AddOns (but work fine in AddOns).

Wait, isn't that backwards? I thought Managed AddOns was the Expansions Manager directory, and AddOns is the manual install one. Anything I put in AddOns doesn't show up in the manager list.

I put all of my OXPs in Managed, but I should probably separate them out. It seems like all the downloaded ones start with "oolite.oxp" so in theory it should be straightforward to find the non-managed ones and move them over to AddOns.

[arquebus]

Also, I can definitely confirm that, while I have 2.0.1 of the telescope installed (and the current station options as well), when I switch through the options with the 'b' key and then flip through the lightballs (which most definitely resets to 'ships' whenever I leave a station), it says "masslock borders" not "masslock rings".

[montana05]

Wait, isn't that backwards? I thought Managed AddOns was the Expansions Manager directory, and AddOns is the manual install one. Anything I put in AddOns doesn't show up in the manager list.

I put all of my OXPs in Managed, but I should probably separate them out. It seems like all the downloaded ones start with "oolite.oxp" so in theory it should be straightforward to find the non-managed ones and move them over to AddOns.

The core-game loads the Managed AddOns first, therefore an OXP in the AddOns will overwrite the managed packages. To make everything a bit more exciting, under windows there is an additionally alphabetical sort. A zz.oxp would overwrite an aa.OXP.

[cag]

I am noticing what I think is new behavior with Telescope 2.0. The lightball setting doesn't save between station launches. It always goes back to "ships" rather than sticking to the brighter masslock setting that I prefer.

You must be using the in-flight config utility. Turns out that it treats MassLockRings as a toggle, not the flags in the station options (a hold over from 1.15). Nice catch. It should be fixed once you re-download (same dropbox links):

Telescope
https://www.dropbox.com/s/swfwx5klha3dn ... .oxz?dl=0
Telescope Extender
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oq331u061tucn ... .oxz?dl=0

Ok so I have a feeling I'm not actually running the Telescope from the dropbox link. I think my settings are still showing up as mass lock BORDERS instead of RING when I switch through the options.

Related to the above, I forgot to change the word 'borders' to 'rings' in the mode/activate functions. Now all the 'borders' should be gone.

So here's my question: the dropbox OXPs have different names from the ones downloaded from the installer. Should I just remove the installer ones and put in the dropbox ones, without changing any names, or will I break my existing telescope if I don't rename the OXPs to match what was there before?

This oxp is still in Beta so it's not (yet) ready for the installer (expansion manager) and is incompatible with those in the installer.

Removing the installer ones and adding in the dropbox ones is the way to go, no name changing needed. I've updated the manifest so Oolite should complain if both are present.

Once we get a few more wringles ironed out (& I get my creds), it will move into the expansion manager and these issues will be resolved.

It looks like if I just plop the new files in, remove the old ones and change nothing else, the extender+gravity scanner OXP won't load.

...
On my Mac install, I can't update to the 2.0.1 telescope without messing up the extender OXP, but on my Windows install, apparently I updated already, and it was fine. I'm just not going to worry about it!

The extender is part of Telescope but separate as it modifies the game play (some would say it's a cheat). They are quite intertwined, so version 2 of the extender goes with version 2 of the telescope (I made more manifest changes).

Both version 2 oxps should install on a Mac but Apple is (much!) more stringent with its plist syntax, so check your Latest.log for errors if this gives you further problem.

Where things are also matters. There is the Managed AddOns folder and the AddOns folder. AddOns trumps Managed AddOns, apparently, But oxp's only get "picked up: in AddOns, whilst oxz's downloaded through the in-game Expansions Managed get bunged in the Managed AddOns (but work fine in AddOns).

Wait, isn't that backwards? I thought Managed AddOns was the Expansions Manager directory, and AddOns is the manual install one. Anything I put in AddOns doesn't show up in the manager list.

I put all of my OXPs in Managed, but I should probably separate them out. It seems like all the downloaded ones start with "oolite.oxp" so in theory it should be straightforward to find the non-managed ones and move them over to AddOns.

The core-game loads the Managed AddOns first, therefore an OXP in the AddOns will overwrite the managed packages. To make everything a bit more exciting, under windows there is an additionally alphabetical sort. A zz.oxp would overwrite an aa.OXP.

I try not to mix because I never get it right. I'm on Windows and Managed AddOns loads first but won't load the AddOns ones.

With 1.15 in Managed AddOns & 2.0 in AddOns or 2.0 in Managed AddOns & 1.15 in AddOns, I get the same:

Code: Select all

[oxp.conflict]: OXP Norby.cag.Telescope.oxz conflicts with 
    oolite.oxp.Norby.Telescope.ver.1.15.oxz and 
    was removed from the loading list

Trying to fix an incompatibility

Code: Select all

[oxp.duplicate]: OXP ../AddOns/HUDSelector-1.18.oxp has the 
    same identifier (oolite.oxp.Norby.HUDSelector) as 
    D:\testrelease/oolite.app/GNUstep/Library/ApplicationSupport/Oolite
    /ManagedAddOns/HUDSelector-1.18.oxz which has already been loaded.

The Managed AddOns oxp gets there first and refuses to leave! Could this be system dependent? <cringes>

[arquebus]

You must be using the in-flight config utility. Turns out that it treats MassLockRings as a toggle, not the flags in the station options (a hold over from 1.15). Nice catch. It should be fixed once you re-download (same dropbox links):

Thanks! I'll get those slotted in.

[arquebus]

You must be using the in-flight config utility. Turns out that it treats MassLockRings as a toggle, not the flags in the station options (a hold over from 1.15). Nice catch. It should be fixed once you re-download (same dropbox links):

Turns out, this new version appears to break the masslock rings entirely. I can configure them in the in-flight utility to be on (Lightballs: bright masslock rings), but they do not appear, whether or not I have my weapons on, and regardless of the status of my torus drive (active or inactive).

[arquebus]

Ok... update on the issue here. Testing further.

I believe my initial settings were as follows:

Condition Green: rings with weapons on and off
Condition Yellow: no rings
Condition Red: no rings

(This conforms to what I was seeing under the earlier versions of Telescope, but I admit I didn't actually confirm it before I reset the settings.)

I reset the Telescope Options to defaults, then went through and adjusted things to my needs. Pertinent to this issue, I set the masslock rings to:

Condition Green: rings with weapons on and off
Condition Yellow: rings with weapons on and off
Condition Red: no rings

Then I exited the station. Now I'm seeing the rings correctly, but only when I'm at condition green. They do not appear under condition yellow, even though I've set them to be visible that way.

So I suspect the programming logic for those conditions (well, the conditions on the conditions, as it were) is slightly off. If I had to make a really dumb guess, it would be that the switches for green and yellow have been flipped, and yellow doesn't work. So that when I was still operating under the pre-reset settings (condition green was the only one with rings, before the reset), Telescope was treating my condition green as a condition yellow, and since condition yellow doesn't work, the rings didn't appear.

(I hope that makes sense.)

[montana05]

The Managed AddOns oxp gets there first and refuses to leave! Could this be system dependent? <cringes>

In the version you use in your AddOns please try to remove the manifest and change the OXZ to an OXP. While not all of my overrides work as intended, at least most of them do after some workarounds.

[cag]

You must be using the in-flight config utility. Turns out that it treats MassLockRings as a toggle, not the flags in the station options (a hold over from 1.15). Nice catch. It should be fixed once you re-download (same dropbox links):

Turns out, this new version appears to break the masslock rings entirely. I can configure them in the in-flight utility to be on (Lightballs: bright masslock rings), but they do not appear, whether or not I have my weapons on, and regardless of the status of my torus drive (active or inactive).

This was a tricky one. The in-flight configuration treats masslock as a toggle, while in Station Options, it's a group of flags. Telescope 1.15 had hard coded green alert or weapons off-line as criteria. My previous attempt was to preserved your Station Options setting across the toggling you get in the "off", "navigation only", "ships", "masslock rings", "bright masslock rings", "large" sequence.

The fix in the latest release is to fold your current state into the Station Options flags.
Eg. you set MassLockRings in staton to be green alert, weapons on or off and launch. Since you in a station's aegis, you're in yellow with weapons on-line, if you use the in-flight config to turn on the rings, that's what will appear when next you dock and look at the MassLockRings setting (green, weapons on or off and yellow, weapons online). The same thing will happen if you turn off masslock rings; your current state of alertCondition and weaponsOnline will have its flag reset.

This is not ideal, I know. If all you want to do is turn on large Lightballs, you may end up altering your masslock flags. One solution would be go give masslock rings its own sequence separate from lightballs. (we have 10, what's one more!) Try it out and let me know what you think.

This latest should get you up and running for now:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/swfwx5klha3dn ... e.oxz?dl=0
(same link as in 1st post)

If you have further problems, there is an option DebugMessages near the bottom of the 'UI_and_docs' page in Station Options. I've added some extra log statements for this and your Latest.log file would be most helpful.

[arquebus]

The fix in the latest release is to fold your current state into the Station Options flags.
Eg. you set MassLockRings in staton to be green alert, weapons on or off and launch. Since you in a station's aegis, you're in yellow with weapons on-line, if you use the in-flight config to turn on the rings, that's what will appear when next you dock and look at the MassLockRings setting (green, weapons on or off and yellow, weapons online). The same thing will happen if you turn off masslock rings; your current state of alertCondition and weaponsOnline will have its flag reset.

This does make a lot of sense. When I switch the rings around in a given state (green, yellow, red; plus weapon status), I'm doing so because the settings for that current state aren't what I want. I don't necessarily want to override any other state, and since I'm doing it "now" then the most obvious state to change is the one that's happening "now." I think any other method (that doesn't involve completely revamping the in-flight options) would be less intuitive.

[arquebus]

I do think that separating lightballs from rings would be a good idea, and having the rings setting in in-flight be listed as something like "Rings in current context:" so that it's clear you're only modifying the current position in the matrix of condition & weapon status.

[cag]

I do think that separating lightballs from rings would be a good idea, and having the rings setting in in-flight be listed as something like "Rings in current context:" so that it's clear you're only modifying the current position in the matrix of condition & weapon status.

done.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/swfwx5klha3dn ... e.oxz?dl=0
(same link as first post)

[cag]

...
Edited to add: the only really important issue that I have (and have had) with any of the versions of Telescope is "death by ILS". The other problems I find rather minor. As mentioned elsewhere, in my early days, I died 5 times by ILS/Telescope whilst being murdered only twice by pirates!
...

I think I've got a fix

When ILS is set to the player's ship, all automatic targetting is suspended. If you disengage ILS, it resumes as normal. I usually land manually, so am not that familiar with ILS. Those of you who've become tri-dimensionally challenged in the past would be better able to judge, so please give it a try and let me know.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/swfwx5klha3d ... .oxz?dl=0
(same link as first post)

...
iii) I don't understand how the fast activation system works, but is it possible to have the spotting of other "targets" disabled by a fast activation button? Or disabled when ILS is operating? The first suits me better, but ...

I'm not sure what you're asking here. Telescope operates quite differently depending on whether weapons are online (AutoLock) or off-line (GravLock). Either can be altered to any value that suits (0 (off) to 180 degrees (full sphere). Are you looking for a temporary suspension, based on time or context (alertCondition/weapon state)? Or a manual toggle to flip at your discretion? This last is problematic until we get more buttons, as Telescope already has 10 11 modes (which can be trimmed to 5 using the RemoveInFlight option.