Oolite Bulletins

On the subject of exhausts, one really useful feature I'd like to see is the ability to attach exhausts to sub-entities, not just the main model, so that if the sub-ent is removed/destroyed the associated exhaust is also removed.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Ok.. I may be wrong, I often am.. and I'm not about to go looking now (gone 2.30am and I'm gonna go crash out) but I'm sure I recall many times requests were made to improve lasers and/or plumes and the answer was always 'no' or 'no can do'.

I asked for laser eye Candy back in 2007.

Cheers,

Drew.

in trunk, do the new exhaust plumes come with easily editable vertex and fragment shaders? i had a quick look but i couldn't find them in the shaders folder with all the other ones, i was wondering if it would look nice to add a small amount of noise to the model verts so the plumes 'jitter about a bit' like they do in Frontier

Griff wrote:

in trunk, do the new exhaust plumes come with easily editable vertex and fragment shaders? i had a quick look but i couldn't find them in the shaders folder with all the other ones, i was wondering if it would look nice to add a small amount of noise to the model verts so the plumes 'jitter about a bit' like they do in Frontier

No - they just use basic OpenGL additive blending, so there's no shader file needed. Fly out some distance from the witchpoint and they'll start jumping about anyway, though. (Get far enough out that this is noticeable in the external views, and it looks terrible in the aft view, in my opinion)

Those new exhaust plumes are looking fantastic! I like all the little differences - but what happened to F8F8 screen? I knew it was being worked on to be more practical, but I'm not getting the contracts to pull up at all .

CommRLock78 wrote:

... but what happened to F8F8 screen?

All contracts, including parcels, are on F4 in trunk.

This new contract page allows an oxp to insert its own contracts to the list. I have been playing with it today, works great, so I probably try adding an occasionally UPS contract here.

It also allows other stuff, like adding an option to enter the Random Hits contract pages again, when in the spacebar. (Instead of only showing the pages on docking).

Eric Walch wrote:

This new contract page allows an oxp to insert its own contracts to the list. I have been playing with it today, works great, so I probably try adding an occasionally UPS contract here.

It also allows other stuff, like adding an option to enter the Random Hits contract pages again, when in the spacebar. (Instead of only showing the pages on docking).

Sweet! I knew there had been some improvements, I just didn't realized the keybinding had changed . Thanks Eric and EV for the help - it would have taken some time to figure that one out .

CommRLock78 wrote:

Sweet! I knew there had been some improvements...

Try a few trunk-only demo OXPs - cim's sunspots and rings are good (they're permanent in my AddOns), and Svengali's animation demo is cool.

El Viejo wrote:

CommRLock78 wrote:

Sweet! I knew there had been some improvements...

Try a few trunk-only demo OXPs - cim's sunspots and rings are good (they're permanent in my AddOns), and Svengali's animation demo is cool.

I definitely want to try both of those . <navigates to alioth.net>
Edit: I haven't seen any sunspots or rings yet, but I'll be on the lookout .

Thargoid has a bunch of nice trunk-only Betas as well..

Diziet Sma wrote:

Thargoid has a bunch of nice trunk-only Betas as well..

<Nagivates to alioth.net>.... I see! Looks like I've got some questions for Thargoid . If it (the planetary compass) works like I'm thinking (or at least would like) that would be excellent. Now that DHS and Distant Suns are working together, I actually have sub-planets and moons to add to the compass (in most systems ).

CommRLock78 wrote:

If it (the planetary compass) works like I'm thinking (or at least would like) that would be excellent.

If you alter the beacon codes to have leading blanks, i.e. " Planet" instead of "P", they'll look more like planets on the compass display, and the "Beacon:" prefix will be suppressed in Destination ETA.

What happened to some of the materials rendering in trunk... Specifically, emission and possibly illumination glows? It would be sad to learn they were somehow diverted to the new #%6&* exhaust plumes.

@cim:Good day! I know you're busy so I'll try to be brief.

I suspect some materials issues in oolite going back to 1.76 which at first I thought was just because of my limited hardware but now looks like it is in oolite itself.

When using diffuse map, diffuse color, emission map, emission modulate color, illumination map and illumination modulate color I am having some problems in 1.76 and 1.77trunk(my trunk is a few months old but will update soon for testing in light of capt.solos post that he is also having problems).

Here is what happens:

-when I use "" diffuse maps plus emissions and illuminations maps for both player and npcs when I set materials, everything is perfect.
-when I set the players diffuse map to a 512x512 or a 1024x1024 with matching resolution maps for the emissions and illuminations and the npcs use a "" diffuse map plus emissions and illuminations maps, the color where there are illuminations maps appears black.
-when I reverse that so the npcs use the diffuse maps but the player uses "" diffuse map, it all works(because of my limited hardware, I set both player and npcs to "" diffuse map and after playing and the paint jobs appear, change the settings to a 512x512 diffuse map for the npcs, restart and it works, but if I don't start out playing with the "" diffuse maps and try to use "" diffuse map player and 512x512 diffuse map npcs, then it doesn't work or takes a long time to start working while the paint jobs are all black on the parts that are using an illumination map.)

Also, on a recent test for a temporary glow feature when hitting an unshielded hull, the illuminations modulate color would only work if the value was "1.0 0.0 0.0" where "0.99 0.0 0.0" would not work. This is definately a bug of some kind.

I hope this is not confusing.

Capt. Murphy, Thargoid and others have had problems and there was a fix for the setShaders in trunk but I believe there may be a serious problem in setMaterials which manifests itself when using hundreds of setMaterials commands on both the player and npcs which shows some kind of player specific/related issues with diffuse map/illuminations map combinations. The apparent player relation with this issue is what makes me think it is in the core code of oolite rather than the result of my hardware as I can get things to work in a specific combination as long as the player uses "" diffuse map. Strange. Are the materials wired up in such a way that is connected directly with the player

I just thought I would report this and ask if there will be at least until the end of february before 1.77test is released. It will take until then for me to finish this customships oxp which will then make a perfect testbed oxp to find what the problem might be among many different people with different hardware combinations.

Please let me know how I can help and if I have enough time at least until end of february to get this oxp out to be tested.

Thanks, and great job by the way on oolite 1.77trunk so far.