Laser art, turrets and zen

[Kaks]

cant we just edit the source (it is open source right?) and recompile the game code so that we can have our cake and eat it too?

Sure you can.


By the way, this might come as a bit of a surprise, but for quite a few people chasing missions is not necessarily the point of the game.

I've got the strong suspicion that if you ask any of the forum veterans, you're likely to get a different reason for playing Oolite from each and every one of them!

[Simon B]

was very interesting to read this thread.

im new here played this game well elite on c=64 ages ago and have been tinkering with this oolite and ALLL of the oxp's for last 48 hrs on UBUNTU linux.

Welcome

i am getting several errors in the log (running newest version available of oolite 1.73.4) and have only had to pull out about 10 OXP's so far. about to restart oolite again with shift key down to clear cache and then see if my edited saved file will load and not cause problems.

You are doing well then, yell out if you need a hand.

It was obvious to me that many things can be edited but this thread is suggesting that i too wont be able to have a battle star cruiser with 8 self targeting /auto aiming turrets or lasers with dozens of missle racks and mine lanchers / probes / anti missle/ship defensive units all about my awesome ship which i have yet to make Oo.

Well, you can manage a pocket battleship quite happily, but you'll learn they are not much fun.

There are weapons oxps for missile racks for eg.
Players do not get multiple lasers in a given direction because that is actually what the more expensive lasers are - my impression is that npcs getting multiple lasers is a side-effect of the way the game handles subentities. In the original ships, it's rarely used.

You saw this discussion, an npc can have many lasers making the Hydra rather infamous. It is technically possible to give an npc thargoid laser turrets - though the effect would be mostly cosmetic.

Players can have turrets though - as many as you like. The range restriction is not as bad as you'd think.

so while i continue to figure out how to make a battle cruiser the size of a small ship.... the question i have is simple.....

cant we just edit the source (it is open source right?) and recompile the game code so that we can have our cake and eat it too?

Of course you can :) In fact, solve the many problems related to this and you can send us a patch. The reason this has not been done is because it is harder than it looks - and there have been other priorities - but it is clearly doable.

I realize that the idea of this game is to complete missions and spend hours upon hours jumping from place to place buying selling mining or hunting as we go. but like a few out there i would love to program it so i can relive the amazing intense space wars of our imagination like a crazy laser light show at battle of the rock bands; balancing the game/scenarios as we go along add more pirates more police etc till the cpu maxes out on us.

You want the navy and thargoid oxps, with Random Hits - you get some pretty big dogfights which do look spectacular.

A place I'd like to encourage development is increasing the progammable response range of the AIs. I have a thread about arena combat, gunfighting, which covers the advantages of this - OT: but my though is to leverage the foss approach to encourage script writers to design more interesting or cunning AIs by having npc ships duel sometimes out by the witchpoint. (pcs may join perhaps)

Another, long standing idea, is to convert oolite to mmorpg :) there is a thread on that too.

and just to add some feedback to what has been discussed already here, yeah i think a turret is defined all over the internet as a weapon which can be aimed in many directions be it manned or not firing any form of weapon (projectile) so i can see how one would want to make one as a laser BUT i totally understand the confusion as the GAME doesn't know the difference between a orange and a apple. but if ship has a turret on it just had plasma ball like projectiles fire from the ship at whatever the ship happens to be targeting at the time. u just can not change this default predefined characteristic of the game successfully as the game is currently written << thats what i got out of what u all said. but i am still confused...

if you have fwd/aft/starboard/port side mounts for guns and 4 missiles slots, where is the turret go? can i just edit the code and have one on each wing or one in middle top/bottom whatever of the shop or just say that the shop has one and have the turret fire and i suspect the projectiles will just appear to go outward from the ships middle mass?

Have a look at the oxps for turreted ships.

The "turret" declaration turns a subentity into a plasma firing rotating weapons platform. You put the subentity, which will have it's own model,


... this is a neolite military anaconda with turrets and twin fwd lasers. There are three on the top and one underneith - those things that look a bit like Hersheys Kisses?

Other turret shapes are possible:


... closer to battleship turrets. The gun-barrels will not shoot an any direction, only those arcs suggested by their location - pretty much as you'd expect.

There are fancier turret configurations in other oxps.

i realize i can not just add it to the default ship. i will just mod something else till i understand it enuf then actually make one (if i can) i have maya and photoshop and several other apps which i am in no way very good at using lol.

I've been using wings3D to do the basic model and GIMP for the textures, under Ubuntu 9.10 ;)

For those who do not know, Maya is state of the art movie-quality 3D modelling suite. I understand that a version is installable to Ubuntu using alien.