Retexture OXPs and their place

[Alnivel]

There are at least 5 retextures in addition to the now standard Griff's set. Each of them is beautiful in itself and sets its own feel and mood, and I would be glad to have each one in my ooniverse, but if you mix them all, you get a tasteless mess. I came up with the idea (I'm know I'm not the first) to distribute these retextures to different parts of the galaxy, give each retexture a place to shine, and at the same time add a sense of difference between the regions of the galaxy. I'm currently working on an OXP that will do this.

However, I've run into the fact that I can't quite imagine on my own where these regions would be - I must admit that I don't really know much about the Oolite universe - only bits from the diagonally read wiki.

So I want to ask you all for help, advice and opinions:

• What is your vision of different parts of The Eight? How are the boundaries drawn between them?
• How blurry would these boundaries be?
• Where do you think this or that retexture fits best?
• What kind of mood do retextures give you on their own? In what setting would they be most appropriate?
• How do they (both regions and retextures) interact with each other?

And a couple of slightly less open questions:

• Where should I look to find out more about how looks and feels the different parts of the galaxy?
• Which OXP shipsets should be paired or would interfere with which retexture? For example, Staer9's Shipset is just an inseparable addition to Griff's ships for me, but Murgh's Iron Ass OXP and SimonB's Neolite Ships already have their own versions of the same ships. It may also be that some ships are fit or not stylistically.

[cbr]

I would happily use them all with a per galaxy/region priority.

G1 mainly griff + 15% installed others
G2 50% griff + 35% sung + 15% installed others
G3 25% griff + etc

[Nite Owl]

This will probably only add to the fire but here goes.

This can be either a replacement set or an add on set with a bit of a TWEAK. It does not appear on the page you linked to for some reason but does take advantage of the latest graphic improvements to Oolite.
ANOTHER COMMANDER'S & GRIFF'S SHIP SET

The following two consist of only multiple texture packs and not ship replacements but they do add a lot to a given Ooniverse.
GSAGOSTINHO'S TEXTURE PACKS
PHKB'S FACTORY PAINT JOBS.

As for learning about the Eight and what might fit in where try MAPS.
Highly recommended of those maps would be PHKB'S HTML5 MAPS as it is a stand alone item that can be studied outside of the game itself.

Good Luck with the project.

[Cholmondely]

The other complication is mission.oxp's which introduce many more ships to one particular galaxy.

See Oolite Missions which allows you to sort by Galaxy

The ones of which I know are Ionics (G2), Aquatics (G3), Trident Down (G4) and the Assassins Guild (G7)



Cim wrote this some years ago:

I find the eight galaxies have a very different feel to them.
1 - mostly well connected, but you've got that large bit at 5 o'clock which is almost a separate bit.
2 - lots of bottlenecks. Most of the Eight's double bottlenecks.
3 - similar to 1 in terms of general connectivity, but with that odd disconnection across a lot of the north edge.
4 - odd government types: only four of the eight used, which gives it a lot of Anarchy bottlenecks, especially if travelling east/west.
5 - feels very core+frontier, in a way, with oddities like the Steel Halo or Tetiri Conclave, or the thin route from S to SE
6 - this one just makes me uneasy. I don't know why.
7 - the Great Rift, but even without that divided into two halves with narrow bottleneck routes between them
8 - Oresrati, of course, but also very well connected in terms of routes to reach various points.

And RXSoftware has some very different looking retextures for most of the vanilla game ships.

RX Anaconda

[Redspear]

When I did it (no released oxp, just my own tinkerings), I first decided on a character for each galaxy.

I was at least aware that there were things about existing missions that I didn't know, and of course there was nothing to stop someone releasing a mission at a later date that might be at odds with my ideas.

I decided that if galaxy 1 was to be a place to start then (as an elite veteran) it should resemble to default game fairly closely. Nothing too weird, by the time things are getting samey, I should have the funds to move to the next galaxy.

Given that it was a circular route (+1 unless > 8 and then back to 1), I decided that galaxy 5 was well place to be the weirdest of the bunch (no core ships at all! - I think I used Simon B's waka-piko set). By contrast, galaxy 8 would be both thematically and sequentially close to a return to galaxy 1.

• From there, the rest quickly emerged:
  • I seem to remember that galaxy 4 was a sort of edge of the frontier kind of place, with minimal supplies and Deepspace shipset.
  • Galaxy 2 was sort of commerce minded with constores and a cleaner looking shipset (one of smivs I think...)
  • Galaxy 6 was particularly thargoid infested, a sort of warzone.
  • Galaxy 7 was outpost based - a key difference from galaxy 4 being that it was less in a state of retreat/neglect and more in expansion/development (thinking some more the character of galaxy 4 might have better suited being next to a warzone).
  • Galaxy 8 was heavily industrial and tech minded (I actually had Griff's shipset here and Re2dux in galaxy 1).
  • And Galaxy 3 was... apparently rather more forgettable than any of the others ...

Once I had the character of each galaxy in mind then I found that other decisions became much easier.
Of course, I only had myself to please and maybe that's the most salient point I have to make.

...maybe galaxy 3 had the strongest police presence, I think that might have been it.

[Cody]

... at the same time add a sense of difference between the regions of the galaxy.

Different planet texture sets for each galaxy?

[Cholmondely]

Heh! There's another full set of retextures: M-Pack (rusties) OXP

[Alnivel]

... at the same time add a sense of difference between the regions of the galaxy.

Different planet texture sets for each galaxy?

Planet? I'm talking more about ship retextures, and, I'm sorry, but distributing planetary textures across galaxies doesn't make much sense to me at my current level of sanity (and I don’t know if it needs to be lowered or raised for this).

Just for the sake of clarification - by the regions of the galaxy, I did not mean charts (those are eight), but more in a general sense, I can divide each chart into several regions, for example, one around The Old Worlds, where you can see all the brilliance and the novelty of the ships from Griff Industries, the other around The Tortuga Expanse, where all the gloom and monotony of Murgh's ships shows that it's better for you not to stand out here once again. However, still nothing forbids the region to be the size of an entire chart.

I would happily use them all with a per galaxy/region priority.

G1 mainly griff + 15% installed others
G2 50% griff + 35% sung + 15% installed others
G3 25% griff + etc

Spread them like a gradient? This is an interesting approach, thanks! This will probably even require a different method than the one I planned to use, but it will definitely be worth a try and see how it works.

When I did it (no released oxp, just my own tinkerings), I first decided on a character for each galaxy.

I was at least aware that there were things about existing missions that I didn't know, and of course there was nothing to stop someone releasing a mission at a later date that might be at odds with my ideas.
...
Given that it was a circular route (+1 unless > 8 and then back to 1), I decided that galaxy 5 was well place to be the weirdest of the bunch (no core ships at all! - I think I used Simon B's waka-piko set). By contrast, galaxy 8 would be both thematically and sequentially close to a return to galaxy 1.

• From there, the rest quickly emerged:
  • I seem to remember that galaxy 4 was a sort of edge of the frontier kind of place, with minimal supplies and Deepspace shipset.
  • Galaxy 2 was sort of commerce minded with constores and a cleaner looking shipset (one of smivs I think...)
  • Galaxy 6 was particularly thargoid infested, a sort of warzone.
  • Galaxy 7 was outpost based - a key difference from galaxy 4 being that it was less in a state of retreat/neglect and more in expansion/development (thinking some more the character of galaxy 4 might have better suited being next to a warzone).
  • Galaxy 8 was heavily industrial and tech minded (I actually had Griff's shipset here and Re2dux in galaxy 1).
  • And Galaxy 3 was... apparently rather more forgettable than any of the others ...

Once I had the character of each galaxy in mind then I found that other decisions became much easier.
Of course, I only had myself to please and maybe that's the most salient point I have to make.

...maybe galaxy 3 had the strongest police presence, I think that might have been it.

Thanks for the musings and advice on how to approach this problem! I'll definitely borrow something from your ideas.

[Alnivel]

This will probably only add to the fire but here goes.

Adding to the fire is sometimes exactly what is needed, especially what you add is exactly what I asked for!

This can be either a replacement set or an add on set with a bit of a TWEAK. It does not appear on the page you linked to for some reason but does take advantage of the latest graphic improvements to Oolite.
ANOTHER COMMANDER'S & GRIFF'S SHIP SET

It's more of just an enhancement to the default textures than a change to them, so there's nothing to do with it.

The following two consist of only multiple texture packs and not ship replacements but they do add a lot to a given Ooniverse.
GSAGOSTINHO'S TEXTURE PACKS
PHKB'S FACTORY PAINT JOBS.

Factory Paint Jobs is one of those OXPs that I want to be paired with standart set, and about Gsagostinho's shipset I didn't even know, thanks!

As for learning about the Eight and what might fit in where try MAPS.
Highly recommended of those maps would be PHKB'S HTML5 MAPS as it is a stand alone item that can be studied outside of the game itself.

Good Luck with the project.

The Galaxy Guide linked in this article definitely looks like something worth digging deep into and thanks for the good luck wishes!

[Alnivel]

The other complication is mission.oxp's which introduce many more ships to one particular galaxy.

See Oolite Missions which allows you to sort by Galaxy

The ones of which I know are Ionics (G2), Aquatics (G3), Trident Down (G4) and the Assassins Guild (G7)

Won't they just add their own color to the picture of these places? Also, I've only crossed paths with the first two so far, but they look like they fit quite well with the retextures I've seen. Moreover, these organizations, as for me, look powerful enough to set their own rules how to look.

Cim wrote this some years ago:

I find the eight galaxies have a very different feel to them.
1 - mostly well connected, but you've got that large bit at 5 o'clock which is almost a separate bit.
2 - lots of bottlenecks. Most of the Eight's double bottlenecks.
3 - similar to 1 in terms of general connectivity, but with that odd disconnection across a lot of the north edge.
4 - odd government types: only four of the eight used, which gives it a lot of Anarchy bottlenecks, especially if travelling east/west.
5 - feels very core+frontier, in a way, with oddities like the Steel Halo or Tetiri Conclave, or the thin route from S to SE
6 - this one just makes me uneasy. I don't know why.
7 - the Great Rift, but even without that divided into two halves with narrow bottleneck routes between them
8 - Oresrati, of course, but also very well connected in terms of routes to reach various points.

Thanks to reminding me of this, these observations are indeed worth remembering to take it into account.

And RXSoftware has some very different looking retextures for most of the vanilla game ships.

Well, who knows, maybe another misjump pulled them out of their reality and left them in this one, leaving them to wonder about the bizarre shipbuilding of these places! In any case, in order to use them, I will have to check how well they are preserved and make an addition version of them, fortunately, at least there should not be any problems with licensing.

Heh! There's another full set of retextures: M-Pack (rusties) OXP

I'm treating this as a pre-pre-early version of the yet-to-be-released Rusty Ass OXP. However, it surely should be taken into account while the remake is still in the works.

Thank you for letting me know about these shipsets!

[Cholmondely]

Heh! There's another full set of retextures: M-Pack (rusties) OXP

I'm treating this as a pre-pre-early version of the yet-to-be-released Rusty Ass OXP. However, it surely should be taken into account while the remake is still in the works.

I'm not sure that we'll ever see the Rusty Ass OXP. While Murgh did inform me that he'd met a member of the fairer sex, the real problem is that he'd also just taken delivery of a new computer which could play E:D

References: The two lead designers of HIMSN
*Gimi's new E:D'able computer - and his abandonment of HIMSN (more in the HIMSN thread)
*Pleb's leak and impending new fibre optics
*Pleb's new E:D'able computer - and his abandonment of HIMSN

[Cody]

... the real problem is that he'd also just taken delivery of a new computer which could play E:D

<chuckles> He's probably found the E:D Oolite group - some old faces there, I expect.