Asteroid Storm

[Eric Walch]

Concerning the difficulty: For a ship with 4 military lasers, it's very easy. Launched, stopped, fired.....However, a player in a ship with fewer lasers most surely will run into trouble! I doubt that any ship with two lasers could do it by laser power only. Certainly, a ship with only a front laser like the GriffBoa will be unable to do it at all.

Kaks defined 3 asteroids for the mission. One in its original strength as defined by LB, one harder and the last very hard. Number 1 was definitely to week. I think Kaks also found that and never used it. A player with less than 95 hitpoints immediately got version 2. I tested it yesterday and it was quite easy killed with 2 beam lasers.
Problem is that the mission only comes available after 63 hitpoints. So only between 63 and 96 points you get the weaker of the two. Because nr 1 was never used I redefined the asteroids and added one in between for a hitscore 96 until 190. This, in between one, I almost killed with 2 beam lasers. Energy was almost zero before impact. With a military and beam it becomes well possible.

Above the 190 hitpoints you still have the strongest one. On testing I did a strange discovery. It starts searching for the astat station. Once found it flies toward it. Sometimes it took 10 seconds before it found the station and i had a dozen "NOTHING_FOUND" messages in the log. This long delay did make the mission easy when it happened. I find it strange as it was well within scanner range and this scan should always find its target when it is there. I replaced the scan by an instruction to head for the mainStation. This way it acts immediately.

In 4 tries I failed twice and killed it twice. In one of my kills the final blow was done by a small asteroid so I didn't get full reward. (bad luck). I used 2 military lasers. With 1 additional beam laser on the side it would become easy again.

I uploaded it at my box account: Asteroid storm 3.51 Once the wiki is available again Ill re-upload it there.

This version writes the distant to the station at which the doomsday asteroid is added in the log and also who killed it why. This in case others want to test it also.

You can save after mission briefing and reload from there after mission failures.

[Screet]

This version writes the distant to the station at which the doomsday asteroid is added in the log and also who killed it why. This in case others want to test it also.

Just had three other attempts with the new version.
First was almost 20km away - very easy.
Second was 10km away - I was afraid that this would be too close, but the asteroid seemed to have fewer hitpoints than before?!?
Third attempt - I asked myself what happens if it hits - turned out to be impossible: [AsteroidStorm]: Adding doomsday asteroid at :4957 meters

Thus, finally, I happened to see what happens if it hits the station

Maybe ClymAngus always had bad luck with the distance?

Screet

[Eric Walch]

Just had three other attempts with the new version.
First was almost 20km away - very easy.
Second was 10km away - I was afraid that this would be too close, but the asteroid seemed to have fewer hitpoints than before?!?
Third attempt - I asked myself what happens if it hits - turned out to be impossible: [AsteroidStorm]: Adding doomsday asteroid at :4957 meters

Yes, above the 7000 meters there is an extra energy added to the asteroid.

In the original version the energy was constant and the asteroid was added at random. When added at great distance the mission was just easy. Since 1.71 energy became writeble and kaks added energy to the asteroid when above the 7000m. And any asteroid that was placed further than 20000 meters the reallocated to within this range. It still could be added very close by and make the mission really impossible.
Since 1.71 we can add ships at absolute coordinates ("abs"). So for this release I first calculate a random position around the station between 4000 and 20000 meters and only than add the asteroid. This way the very close additions won't happen anymore but I think anything between 4000 and 6000 will still be impossible with only 2 military lasers. So there is still no guaranteed victory after launch.

Would be interesting to know what the closest addition is at which anybody killed it with 2 lasers. With 3 it should be always possible although it needs some skill to aim with the side lasers at a moving object. But for a slow moving thing as the asteroid it is possible after some practise.

[Screet]

Would be interesting to know what the closest addition is at which anybody killed it with 2 lasers. With 3 it should be always possible although it needs some skill to aim with the side lasers at a moving object. But for a slow moving thing as the asteroid it is possible after some practise.

I could make a few test-runs...but really, I was always using all four lasers and with such a big target, I do hit them well. I've some difficulty to shoot down ships like the asp with side lasers, though. Managed to do in some cases, but it's easy to miss.

For the close asteroid, I actually did fire multiple lasers...and I thought the asteroid was beginning to vent plasma - but in that instant it crashed. Maybe I wasted something like 1-2 seconds while firing at it because it was so close and I did want to see a crash anyway

I've seen somewhere an image of a damaged station...maybe the feeling could be enhanced by switching the station to such a model?

Screet

[Eric Walch]

I just discovered a bug that was introduced in version 3.40. With the current versions the station explodes and 50 pieces of metal were added instead with role "station-alloy". It was just a copy of the internal alloy. Yesterday I tried to scoop one for the first time and it smashed into my hull. I could not scoop it. Worse: I could not find a reason why it didn't work. Everything seemed to be defined correct.

Today I got a bright light. It's in its name. Anything with "station" somewhere in its role it automatic defined as station. So all 50 pieces of debris were seen as stations. I not tested this but I am sure that using an escape pod would have brought you inside such a metal piece. From other occasions I know you can also launch from such a station once docked with the pod.

I corrected this. In 1.70 one could not add alloy by script because it got a wrong scanclass. Since 1.71 scanclass CLASS_CARGO is defined in shipdata itself for the alloy and script added alloy is now added correct. I now just replaces station-alloy by just alloy. This way it even can add other oxp alloy.

It is under the same link as the previous version: Asteroid storm 3.52

[Kaks]

Thanks Eric, looks like I didn''t pay enough attention in 3.40, & it's good to know you're on the case!

[Eric Walch]

looks like I didn''t pay enough attention in 3.40

Probably nobody looked at it. I never heard a complain about the station debris being unscoopable. Normal players are just down when they see the station explode. They than either leave the system in shame or kill themselves.

There is no station left in the system to reload a saved game so my solution was always to use injectors to crash into the surface. My kind of hara-kiri to punish myself for the death of all those people. And as bonus you can reload an old game faster this way than going to a adjacent system or restart oolite completely. So scooping anything is useless when you intend to kill yourself.

[Kaks]

Normal players are just down when they see the station explode. They than either leave the system in shame or kill themselves.

Hehehe, 'I have disonoured the station and family honour...'

Crikey, I always overlooked the trauma. I almost feel bad now...

[Ark]

The strange thing in this version of asteroid storm is that I always get the message that I have helped in the destruction of the doomsday asteroid even if I am the one who destroys it. No energy bomb

The bug is gone!!!
But I want to ask if the fact that every time one of the smaller asteroids hits the station during the mission you can actually hear a sound like when your ship is been hit by a laser is normal?

[Screet]

But I want to ask if the fact that every time one of the smaller asteroids hits the station during the mission you can actually hear a sound like when your ship is been hit by a laser is normal?

I've been confused by that sound, too, until I saw the asteroids...then I thought "oh well, the shields...maybe they always do the same sound!". I did expect a clank...but then, it's the stations shield, thus not stone on metal!

Screet

[Eric Walch]

But I want to ask if the fact that every time one of the smaller asteroids hits the station during the mission you can actually hear a sound like when your ship is been hit by a laser is normal?

Even more, it is intentional!
The asteroids were flying on a missile script and used to explode just outside the station which gives the bang sound. However, 1.72 has a bug that the death_actions were not executed anymore when a ship exploded itself. So in my first 1.72 version I changed the code so asteroids were really flying into death against the station. This way the death_action code did execute but the sound was gone. In this last modification I changed it again a bit so the sound was back.

(Technically: I put the code "dealEnergyDammage" back in as this produced the sound, but left away the "becomeExplosion" part as this prevented the death_actions to run. Now the sound and the impact has a small time shift.)

[ClymAngus]

Kirked. By yes. you know when you've been kobyed. Well, you certainly know your algebra. But you kept your code nice so. Not too much of a problem.

[Eric Walch]

I uploaded yesterday a new version of asteroid storm. When looking closely at the asteroids you see they all were full of defects. And when loading them in a modelling program, like Wingz, the flaws were even more obviously.

With the help of Griff I repaired all models past weekend. My first intention was waiting with uploading till after a 1.74 release but seeing others still downloading those bad asteroids while I have fixed ones on my computer made me deciding to immediately replace the old dat files. Is now available as version 3.54.

However, on my computer I already have a version with normal mapped asteroids that I planned to only release after 1.74. So you can also wait with downloading until 1.74 is officially released. (trunk users can already download a test "trunk-only" version here

[ADCK]

Haha cool, i also made new hi-res textures and normal/effects maps for asteroid storm a while back, and noticed the jagged-star shape bits on them too.

[Eric Walch]

Haha cool, i also made new hi-res textures and normal/effects maps for asteroid storm a while back, and noticed the jagged-star shape bits on them too.

The way I uv-mapped it now, I think you still can't apply hi-quality maps to the asteroids. To get things seamless all around the rocks, I made a map of the top and one of the bottom half. Then I flipped one and moved it exactly on top of the other. Textures are this way seamless, but normal-maps are inverted at the bottom side. For a blurry map as I use this won't be a problem, bumps become dips and dips become bumps on the bottom, but both generate the grainy structure.
When applying quality maps were the normal map follows the texture things will fail this way.

This said, I am satisfied with the current results and pasted the normal maps in a 1.73 compatible version of asteroid storm and uploaded it as version 3.55 (It is a 1.73 only version)