Oolite Bulletins

Diziet Sma wrote:

If you read back through from the original post and the readme in the OXP, superbatprime was always hoping somebody would pick the OXP up and run with it..

superbatprime's README file wrote:

This OXP is a work in progress.
Please feel free to improve and expand the functionality of this OXP, more cats can be added, it still demands several obvious features beyond my ability.
-A script to randomly destroy a damaged ships cat ("Ship's Cat has been killed!") is something I'd love for this oxp.

In regard to which, I was the individual who OXZ-ified it.

So you can upload new versions of this oxz to the central system?
If you can, please consider to upload my new version directly (after testing).

Diziet Sma wrote:

[...] and I have a current project under way (albeit very slowly) to add sound effects.
@ v4hn: would you be interested in us both working on it together?

Sure!

v4hn wrote:

So you can upload new versions of this oxz to the central system?
If you can, please consider to upload my new version directly (after testing).

Certainly!

v4hn wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

[...] and I have a current project under way (albeit very slowly) to add sound effects.
@ v4hn: would you be interested in us both working on it together?

Sure!

Excellent.. I'll be in touch soon.

v4hn wrote:

So you can upload new versions of this oxz to the central system?
If you can, please consider to upload my new version directly (after testing).

Nobody seems to have reported any problems, so your new version is now available via the Expansion Manager.

Diziet Sma wrote:

v4hn wrote:

So you can upload new versions of this oxz to the central system?
If you can, please consider to upload my new version directly (after testing).

Nobody seems to have reported any problems, so your new version is now available via the Expansion Manager.

Yeah, well...

Updated today; second combat I was in the cat was (presumably) injured and marked as Ship's Cat Stray N/A or words to that effect.

I've now made two flights, ending up at Xevera (TL 15), but can't apparently buy a "repair" or delete him from my equipment list, and for the first time in ages there are no cats on sale in ship's equipment.

Could this be because Stray has no initial cost so it can't work out a cost for repairs?

ffutures wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

v4hn wrote:

So you can upload new versions of this oxz to the central system?
If you can, please consider to upload my new version directly (after testing).

Nobody seems to have reported any problems, so your new version is now available via the Expansion Manager.

Yeah, well...

Updated today; second combat I was in the cat was (presumably) injured and marked as Ship's Cat Stray N/A or words to that effect.

I've now made two flights, ending up at Xevera (TL 15), but can't apparently buy a "repair" or delete him from my equipment list, and for the first time in ages there are no cats on sale in ship's equipment.

Could this be because Stray has no initial cost so it can't work out a cost for repairs?

OK, after seven or eight more stops the repair finally came up - free - on the equipment purchase list as "repair existing system." Why the delay? Seems a bit unkind to the cat. Or has he just been slowly healing and finally got better?

Forgot to say that once the cat was "repaired" I was offered other cats again.

ffutures wrote:

Forgot to say that once the cat was "repaired" I was offered other cats again.

Well, the Catmongers are more likely to offer one to somebody who has lovingly nursed their pet back to health than someone who already has a cat that has come to harm.

Congratulations.. don't think I've seen or heard of a successful cat-repair before..

ffutures wrote:

Updated today; second combat I was in the cat was (presumably) injured and marked as Ship's Cat Stray N/A or words to that effect.

Granted "N/A" is probably not the best description for an injured cat.. I didn't look into possibilities to rephrase that yet..

ffutures wrote:

I've now made two flights, ending up at Xevera (TL 15), but can't apparently buy a "repair" or delete him from my equipment list, [...]

Yeah, well.. that's an artifact of the original code which I didn't address in the new version..
I'll fix that in the next release.

ffutures wrote:

and for the first time in ages there are no cats on sale in ship's equipment.

Come on, Cat's are precious, furry and everyone likes them! You can't just buy a cat at every single station, ya know?
Actually I considered this a shortcoming of the original code, so I reduced the opportunities to buy cats quite a bit.

ffutures wrote:

Could this be because Stray has no initial cost so it can't work out a cost for repairs?

Nope, not related at all

ffutures wrote:

OK, after seven or eight more stops the repair finally came up - free - on the equipment purchase list as "repair existing system."
Why the delay? Seems a bit unkind to the cat. Or has he just been slowly healing and finally got better?

The "repair" takes you 1/2 * 9/.3 = 13.5 stops on average. You were pretty lucky to get it after eight stops.

Also, you should have to pay a doctor/nanobots to heal your cat..
It doesn't make much sense to calculate the price for the repair from the original price...
I'll add that to my todo list.

ffutures wrote:

Forgot to say that once the cat was "repaired" I was offered other cats again.

This should be completely unrelated. If you didn't get any opportunity to buy another cat/dog in the meanwhile,
you were quite unlucky.. There should be one at about every 3rd-4th station if you don't own any other cats.

This doesn't seem to make a huge amount of sense. Once it's injured it presumably doesn't get worst - I was in several combats while it was injured and it didn't die or anything - so there isn't much drama in keeping it injured. Given that pilots are never injured apart from the rare hyperspace sickness thing you'd imagine that there would be pretty good veterinary help around, at least anywhere with sufficiently high tech levels.

ffutures wrote:

This doesn't seem to make a huge amount of sense. Once it's injured it presumably doesn't get worst - I was in several combats while it was injured and it didn't die or anything - so there isn't much drama in keeping it injured. Given that pilots are never injured apart from the rare hyperspace sickness thing you'd imagine that there would be pretty good veterinary help around, at least anywhere with sufficiently high tech levels.

Agreed.. at an average "repair" time of 13.5 stops (jumps?) you could be waiting anything up to a month or more to get your cat treated. Doesn't seem realistic, IMO.

Diziet Sma wrote:

ffutures wrote:

This doesn't seem to make a huge amount of sense. [...] you'd imagine that there would be pretty good veterinary help around, at least anywhere with sufficiently high tech levels.

Agreed.. at an average "repair" time of 13.5 stops (jumps?) you could be waiting anything up to a month or more to get your cat treated. Doesn't seem realistic, IMO.

It doesn't make sense and it's not intensional. It's a bug. I'll fix it, I promise

Thanks!

Some suggestions for more cats:

GarfOOld - Lazy orange cat that seems to like lasagne
Schroedinger - Quantum cat, sometimes disappears from the equipment list
CrOOkshanks - extremely ugly but very intelligent, with a hint of strange powers.
BagpOOs - brightly striped, but so quiet you'd think he's a stuffed toy

lots more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_cats

Schroedinger is great.

We will probably want to restrict the maximum number of cats (that is, not sell new ones if there are >=X on board)
if we add a lot more cats/pets. Otherwise we could end up with like 20-30 different cats on one ship..

Do we want that to be possible?
Being a "cat person" is one thing, but if there are more cats than other equipment aboard
it also becomes unlikely that fights actually harm your *useful* equipment..

v4hn wrote:

Schroedinger is great.

We will probably want to restrict the maximum number of cats (that is, not sell new ones if there are >=X on board)
if we add a lot more cats/pets. Otherwise we could end up with like 20-30 different cats on one ship..

Do we want that to be possible?
Being a "cat person" is one thing, but if there are more cats than other equipment aboard
it also becomes unlikely that fights actually harm your *useful* equipment..

Yes, that thought had crossed my mind. At the moment the cat is the only really "expendable" equipment on my ship, I can see that if I had several there would be less chance of e.g. the cloaking device getting zapped.