For a while now (at least since 1.70, but I think even before) I can hardly see the rotating ships on the credits screen or created by showShipModel: in scripts.
I think it is due to the placing of the light source, which seems to be somewhere bottom left. For better visibility I think the light source should be behind me, so that more or less the visible side of the shown ship is illuminated.
(Interestingly, the ship in the screenshot in this thread is far better visible to me and seems to be illuminated as I want it to be, making the side exposed to me visible. So, why does is not work on my system?)
What is the visual difference between "full" and "simple" shading (apart from the light modeling issue)?
Parts of shaders can be disabled for “simple” mode (for instance, hull heat glow in the default shader) using #ifndef OO_REDUCED_COMPLEXITY.
Additionally, ships with no smooth parts, no effect maps and no explicitly defined shader do not use the default shader in simple mode, which improves performance on first-generation programmable video cards like the GeForce FX 5200.
OK, so in the year since I played we've moved from 1.65 to 1.71.2 and there's all this fancy shader stuff going on. Having now got 1.71.2 to compile/install I immediately ran the game and whacked the shaders up to full and get the same dark ship problem that started this thread.
So, the question I'm getting round to asking is this: If I can live with the dark ships on the intro screen should I leave the shaders set to full? What do I gain if I do and what do I lose if I don't, either a) in the basic OXP free game b) in all those OXPs that include ships and effects that use the shaders
Apologies for stupidly complex question (much like my poor programming skills).
If it makes any difference to the answer:
Ubuntu 7.10, nvidia restricted drivers, res 1024x768, Athlon XP 2800+, 128MB FX5900XT, 1GB PC2700 dual channel.
I think having shaders switched on in an 'oxp free' version of the game will make the ships slightly more shiny - (the nav buoys definately seem to gleam a bit more with shaders enabled but i'm not sure if that's just my eyes playing up).
I think there might be glow maps for all the default ships added at some point in the future which will make their windows etc. appear to glow, but that will probably require a fair bit of extra texture work (i wonder if some of us should volunteer to do this? - i'm up for doing a few ships if it will help).
As for shader enabled oxp's, it's still quite early days and there's aren't that many examples, one you could try out DaddyHoggy would be PAGroove's station oxp: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/P.A._G ... ations_OXP
This adds a whole load of shader enabled stations to the Ooniverse, you could try launching with shaders enabled - check out the effects, then switch shaders off and launch again to see which you prefer?
Shaders are purely cosmetic, so they won't affect the gameplay just the visuals
Cheers Griff. Isn't your Krait a shader using model? That's on my list - as is LBs Random Hits, and of course there's black monks and all those lovely new stations, and, and, and...
yeah, the griff_krait has some shader effects, engine exhaust heat effects & a lasergun 'flash' along the barrel when it fires as well as some glowy hull lights.
Svengali has a cool shader ship the vector.oxp, and also makes some pioneering use of oolite's new 'materials' system in the 'GRS buoyRepair.oxp'
CaptKev has reworked a shader test oxp into a cool trade outpost, and has also come up with a fantastic new dodo texture that's eye poppingly good, Captain Hesperus has had to change his kitty litter tray a few times after clocking that, plus PAGroove has created a whole set of dazzling stations in his aforementioned stations oxp. hmm, there's probably a lot more oxp's that i'm forgetting.. oh there's an amazing LED billboard shader by Ahruman plus a couple of example shader oxp's which are the best places to study from such as the shady cobra or the freaky thargoids shader.
there's also a glowing alloy shader arexack_heretic worked on that's is very neat too.
I've put in the shady cobra oxp but I get this in my stderr file:
2008-06-03 23:36:00.456 oolite[9284] Failed to recurse into directory 'AddOns' - No such file or directory
2008-06-03 23:36:00.457 oolite[9284] [searchPaths.dumpAll]: ---> OXP search paths:
("/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources", AddOns, "/home/john/.Oolite/AddOns", "/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/Shady Cobra.oxp", "/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/GrittyCoriolis.oxp", "/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/YOUR_AD_HERE_set_D.oxp", "/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/YOUR_AD_HERE_set_C.oxp", "/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/YOUR_AD_HERE_set_B.oxp", "/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/Lave.oxp", "/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/clearskies.oxp", "/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/YOUR_AD_HERE.oxp", "/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/YOUR_AD_HERE_set_A.oxp")
2008-06-03 23:36:00.457 oolite[9284] [dataCache.rebuild.pathsChanged]: Cache is stale (search paths have changed). Rebuilding from scratch.
2008-06-03 23:36:00.470 oolite[9284] [plist.parse.foundation.failed]: Failed to parse /home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/oolite.app/Resources/Shady Cobra.oxp/Config/shipdata.plist as a property list using Foundation. Retrying using homebrew parser. WARNING: the homebrew parser is deprecated and will be removed in a future version of Oolite.
Parse failed at line 1 (char 20) - extra data after parsed string
2008-06-03 23:36:00.481 oolite[9284] [plist.homebrew.parseError]: Property list isn't in XML format, homebrew parser can't help you.
Is it broken? I certainly seem to get a different looking cobra on the first screen when the game starts (although it's hard to tell because the ship is so dark (shader full issue?))
The error message suggests that the shipdata.plist is broken. It seems to contain an illegal character in its first line.
But mor interesting are the search-paths. I thought you had put your AddOns-folder in the same folder Oolite.app lives in. So how come that all your OXPs are not in that AddOns-folder, but in the Resources-folder within Oolite.app?
Your search-paths should look like this:
/home/john/Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance/AddOns/Shady Cobra.oxp etc.
And the only AddOns-folder that is actually found, does not live in the Oolite-dev/1.71-maintenance-folder, but in ".Oolite" instead.
This probably explains some of the OXP-problems you had.
The fix for the Shady Cobra issue is to add { at the beginning of the shipdata.plist file and } at the end. (This is required by GNUstep but not Mac OS X.) I’ll upload a fixed version to the wiki.
