OoliteStarter

[arquebus]

Meanwhile I have even more changes.

I can see newer versions do get downloaded eventually but I hear no comments - neither good nor bad.

What is happening?

My play schedule has slowed down. The next time Oolite comes up in my recording rotation I'll be checking out the Starter again. (The episode dropping on Saturday was recorded last week.)

[arquebus]

Meanwhile I have even more changes.

I can see newer versions do get downloaded eventually but I hear no comments - neither good nor bad.

What is happening?

Quick check of v5... Starter reported my save missing some "required" OXPs. I'm assuming that means the save expects them but they're not installed; they're not actually required. (I had the separate Goods Container OXPs at one point but replaced them with the all-in-one from the Manager.)

I did a NEW game from the button, game loaded (but Starter left a "waiting for process" message in the background) and brought me to the main screen. Loaded my current save. Saved it. Exited out. Now* I have an enormous (half the list) number of "not required but installed" OXPs, which were not flagged that way before. If I try to use RESUME, I get "The installed expansions do not match the save game. Do you want to continue?"

So I'm not sure what happened.

*I initially wrote "now" here because I assumed the orange alerts hadn't been in the list before. But see below - I'm pretty sure they were always there, I just didn't scroll down far enough.

[arquebus]

Part 2:

RESUME and then OK brought me into the game save. Saved and quit. I've still got the same list of "not required but installed."

It's super unclear now how the save game and the installed expansion list are related. I have not touched a single OXP installation - so my list is the list I've been using the whole time. But Starter is telling me that half of them are "not required" which appears to mean that Starter's behind-the-scenes list differs. Which is weird - I'm not sure how that's possible.

Furthermore, if I switch to the Expansions screen and uninstall one (for example, DTT Atlas) and then re-install it, if I go back to the save game screen that OXP still shows as "not required but installed." So then what makes that determination? I assumed that if I had my save game selected and moved things around on the Expansion screen, it would update what Starter understood to be my save game's intended list.

[arquebus]

Part 3:

Quit Starter, opened it again.

Now my saved game list reports that the OXP I did that test on (DTT Atlas) is "required but not enabled." It absolutely 100% is; I've checked in the Old Expansions Panel just to be sure.

Half of the list is still "not required but installed." And DTT Atlas shows up twice: once red, once orange.

[arquebus]

Part 4:

Ok this is just bananas.

The reason half of the list is "not required but installed" - exactly half - is because each OXP is showing up twice: once normal (except DTT Atlas), once orange alert. The only ones that don't are the non-managed AddOns.

[hiran]

Thank you for trying. Yes it sounds confusing, also for me. Had this worked better in the stable version? (despite the fact it would freeze at times)?

I tried to make this version more responsive. Which means it tries to scan the filesystem at startup and then monitors for changes. If a change is detected there is an attempt to just scan the changed part. And this is not yet to my taste.

As long as the old panel is used full scans are required but they are no longer automatic - please use the reload button to be sure.

For the savegame to show such discrepancies may be related to reload,, too. I will look into that.
Could you give me a list of OXPs you have installed (both managed and unmanaged) plus a savegame and the logs of a session where you resume a session and save it again? I'd like to first see if we have a data problem or a problem presenting it to the user.

[hiran]

So far I was focusing on the new expansion management tab. But it cannot be denied that an important part is the savegame status - and I emphasized it with the dialog box if differences are found.

Now regardless which/how many expansions I have loaded, there was a savegame which reported three expansions to be missing and an bigger number (I did not count) of expansions that are not needed.

I resumed that savegame and immediately saved it under a new name, then terminated Oolite. OoliteStarter came back and had the new savegame in it's list. So far so good.
When selecting that savegame OoliteStarter did not report any missing expansions any more. That is to be expected - they were not present when the game was saved. But OoliteStarter still reports that a number of expansions are installed but nod needed in that savegame. Questions arise...

Are these expansions really not required by the savegame? If so, how could this be verified?
Somehow I would more question whether all expansions were detected properly when the savegame was stored on disk. How can this be verified?

[hiran]

Looks like I have to go back a few squares.

I based the information about the loaded OXPs on this one:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=289731#p289731

And here you can see the world script that gets injected by OoliteStarter:
https://github.com/HiranChaudhuri/Oolit ... /script.js

We need to validate if this information is reliable at all. Help is welcome.

[arquebus]

But OoliteStarter still reports that a number of expansions are installed but nod needed in that savegame. Questions arise...

Are these expansions really not required by the savegame? If so, how could this be verified?
Somehow I would more question whether all expansions were detected properly when the savegame was stored on disk. How can this be verified?

Are those "not required but installed" expansions unique, or are they duplicates of ones that don't have that flag? In my case, they're all duplicates, taking up the bottom half of the list.

[hiran]

But OoliteStarter still reports that a number of expansions are installed but nod needed in that savegame. Questions arise...

Are these expansions really not required by the savegame? If so, how could this be verified?
Somehow I would more question whether all expansions were detected properly when the savegame was stored on disk. How can this be verified?

Are those "not required but installed" expansions unique, or are they duplicates of ones that don't have that flag? In my case, they're all duplicates, taking up the bottom half of the list.

Actually I expected none to be listed at all. But I will check.

[hiran]

Confirmed. It is a problem within OoliteStarter.
Actually that makes me happy, as it is within my controllable scope.

Thanks for spotting!

[Cholmondely]

...it is within my controllable scope.

I feel deeply that we badly need to come up with some OXP cocktail-mixer buttons for this. And sooner rather than later.

Eg.
*Beginner's Set (Market Observer, XenonUI, Vimana-X HUD, Barrel Roll, Fast Target Selector, ILS et al) Basic information/equipment to play the game
*Depth Set: Lore & Politics (Lave, TOGY, Commies, Feudal States, GNN, Weapon Laws etc)
*G1 Missions & Activities (Asteroid Storm, Long Way Round, GalCop Missions etc)
*Trading (New Cargoes, Smugglers, Bloomberg Markets etc)
*Elite Trader (Reval's suite)
*Stranger's World
*Exploration (Explorer's Club, Zero-Map - Wildeblood will probably have better ideas for this)

We would also want something for new stations (Torus, Globe, SIRF, KW's stations,...), new ships (aesthetics have to be up to snuff) and new weapons

And Arquebus could probably come up with a better set of buttons.

[arquebus]

It would be handy if you could either apply a set as a full override, or apply a set as an additive to what's already there.

So you could apply (using the examples above) Beginner's Set, play for a bit, then add Depth set, then add Trading set, etc.

Obviously that might result in incompatibilities but that's a personal risk that could be noted when selecting the option for additive apply.

[hiran]

It would be handy if you could either apply a set as a full override, or apply a set as an additive to what's already there.

So you could apply (using the examples above) Beginner's Set, play for a bit, then add Depth set, then add Trading set, etc.

Obviously that might result in incompatibilities but that's a personal risk that could be noted when selecting the option for additive apply.

I like that idea. The user should be able to decide whether to add a set with/without removal of expansions not contained in the same set.
There needs to be a method to display conflicts anyway as this situation can come anytime when the user adds an expansion manually.

You can start clubbing together expansions into lists that we activate on button choice. Feel free to continue here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21456&start=15

[arquebus]

Should these be hard-coded buttons, or a loadable list (with defaults) like in my later UI iterations?