Galactic Co-operative of Worlds Bulletin: The Orb

Charlie · Post by **Charlie** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:41 pm

Another update to Orb.oxp

- BetterAI
- Fewer ( if any ) crashes
- More Orb ships ( while less potential slowdown )

If you've tried Orb.oxp & it's caused trouble, sorry, please try this one.

Dr. Nil · Post by **Dr. Nil** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 9:24 am

I'd never heard of Orbs beyond your newscasts.

ORBS: What is going on? Prophets Conference

Whatever you did in the shipdata to have Outworlders (claim to) see Orbs, please refrain from using the same entries for any Thargoids.

Charlie · Post by **Charlie** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:42 pm

Hmmm...

Never heard of this myself.

My Orb.oxp seems to have some spooky similaraties...

Just goes to show no-matter how hard you try to do something different / original there is in fact no such thing.

Dr. Nil · Post by **Dr. Nil** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 5:01 pm

I've spend some time studying the nuttiest conspiracy theories and superstitions I could come across and never heard of Orbs as a separate belief before your OXP.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:41 pm

Just installed Orb and it's certainly very intriguing, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops. If I could just make one suggestion, it's that the weird hails very quickly fill up the screen, which is kind of irritating when you want to see what's going on. Could you just quieten them down a bit?

Charlie · Post by **Charlie** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 7:34 pm

@ lolwhites:
Yeh, very good point - I was thinking about trying to do a compile of Oolite with the centre-screen messages disabled!

The Orb.oxp is very much a work in progress - it does lots of things that are new to me ( and poss new to Oolite too

)

In places I've got a little over-exited where I've sussed how to do something & gone a little overboard - too much chatter being one!

Apart from my own plans to develop this .oxp it's written in a way that is very hard to test so I'm very keen on hearing feedback + ideas.

eg:
- too many Orb @ times? ( slowdown ) not enough? ( I think so )
The base ships warp out leaving a nasty suprise when they take a beating - it would be nice to leave a warp-hole too ( how? )
- the AI has been written to be quite variable - they generally just fly about on their own business, but if provoked they go completly crackers swarming about anything in range. ( does this work for you? )
- they tend to be more aggressive when not under the protection of a base ship

- have you sused the language yet? - It's not rubbish!

Better not say too much - spoilers...

I would gladly tone down the comms in a further release. ( as you suggest ) I intend this one to have regular updates...

But:
My computer is dead! So no more development for now

I really don't want people getting p*ssed-off by 'features' of this .oxp that they don't like ( too much work gone into this one ) so please be patient while I'm trying to get going again.
In the mean-time I suggest you look in: Orb.oxp\AIs\
Open each of the ..AI.plist files in a text editor & remove:
"sendCommsMessage: [orb-plea]",
from where-ever you find it. That will shut them up!
A simple find-replace with nothing should do it.
If the editor asks, don't let it reformat to dos.
( Be careful not to leave any orphaned commas / spaces as the AI will stop working )
It will be quite obvious to the eye, , just like this sentence.

Just remember Commander:
'Show the Orb repsect. They may be little buggers, but we don't know what they are up to and if the Thargoids are scared of them you should be too!'.
( Quote from GalCop police flight-training manual - 563rd update )

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 9:24 pm

As soon as I posted I saw your message about your dead computer... but thanks for the advice. Obviously I don't want to shut them up completely if their language is decodable. Maybe remove the code from some AIs and not others? Would that work?

Charlie · Post by **Charlie** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 1:03 pm

Yep - that would do it.

I would start with OAI.plist first, then TAI.plist, then OrbBaseAI.plist...

That is the rough order of how common the ships are & so how much chatter is produced...

For the individual AI's - roughly speaking the most 'active' parts of the AI scripts are near the top, so concentrate on those bits...

Sorry to leave this up to you for now.

If you find a 'nice ballance' let me know what you did...

PS.
Oolite's more annoying features aside the Orb are ment to be cooperative by nature so should chatter a bit.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:52 pm

Well, I cracked their code, and think I may have spotted a spelling mistake. Unfortunately I had to remove it cos when the Orb appear it slows my game to a crawl - I only have 512 MB RAM and cheap graphics card I bought on Ebay.

Charlie · Post by **Charlie** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 9:12 pm

Speeling mitake, what speeling mistake?

Orb-speak isn't nonsence, but it may not be worth the effort of understanding.

Oh! Sorry this .oxp bu**ered your 'pute. Believe it or not I've tried hard to optomise it - it's MUCH less resource hungry than it used to be.

Based on other comments I'll release an update where they don't chatter so much.
While I'm at it I'll look into further optomisations.

Maybe release two versions:
'high-end' - MORE ORB!!! - can't have too many.

'low-end' - Have rather fewer about for a bit more speed.
( Individual Orb ships may need beefing up for such a version as they were concieved as being 'dangerous in large numbers' )

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 10:50 am

I may yet download this and reboot Oolite, just to find out about the chatter.

And to see whatya done (I did some flasher-entities a while back to play around with, I called em will-Oo-wizzp though.

)

I wonder what they use as weapons...hidden plasma turrets? flashing missiles?

yes, I just might.

Charlie · Post by **Charlie** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:04 pm

@ Arexack_Heretic:

There's a new version in progress - more stuf, better AI - less intrusive chatter, lower system requirements too!!

Most of what you mention is already in there - with more to come

Sadly I've abandoned flashers on missiles for the mo'
( NavyShips.oxp is supposed to have photon-torpedos. They do work but don't light up when fired from a ship despite working fine when spawned for testing

)
I wonder if Oolite treats fired-missiles as sub-entities?
( Nested sub-entities not allowed, sadly )
( trying to see if I can get Oolite to spawn rather than fire a missile )

If you do give it a go, hope you like.

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:18 pm

did you add a switchOnFlashers command to the AI?
no, they are not subentities. (otherwise YOU would get hurt if they detonated

)

I did manage to get a fasher missile working... whenI was developing a deathburger superweapon.

I'll look up the specifics for you tomorrow night. (in about 20hours)

Charlie · Post by **Charlie** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 12:03 am

Hi,
yes I did try that - no-go

If you do stumble across the code you used to get flashers working with missiles I'd be very keen to see

-I could do an update for NavyStarships.oxp

-Some stuff I want to do with Orb.oxp, but not worth it without flashers...

Thanks for the reply.

Uncle Reno · Post by **Uncle Reno** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:17 am

Now posting in proper topic (see here for other posts relating).

OK, so "random" attacks are meant to happen, that's fine, I just wondered.

On the subject of getting away from them, I just <SPOILER> J jump away from them as they don't masslock it (they appear white on the scanner) </SPOILER>, I assumed that was intentional though.