More/ larger galaxies

[ffutures]

Maybe it needs to be set up as a sparsely populated galaxy, e.g. say 10% of systems are known to be populated along a few routes, anywhere off those routes you may find an unpopulated system, a primitive world that wants to exchange goods but can't supply ship parts or repairs (you'd need planetary landing gear to do business), an alien culture that is obviously high-tech but will only barter goods or goods for services (e.g. fuel costs 5 tons of food) since they don't have a currency system in common, etc.

[Zireael]

Maybe it needs to be set up as a sparsely populated galaxy, e.g. say 10% of systems are known to be populated along a few routes, anywhere off those routes you may find an unpopulated system, a primitive world that wants to exchange goods but can't supply ship parts or repairs (you'd need planetary landing gear to do business), an alien culture that is obviously high-tech but will only barter goods or goods for services (e.g. fuel costs 5 tons of food) since they don't have a currency system in common, etc.

That's a great idea!

[Pleb]

Maybe it needs to be set up as a sparsely populated galaxy, e.g. say 10% of systems are known to be populated along a few routes, anywhere off those routes you may find an un-populated system, a primitive world that wants to exchange goods but can't supply ship parts or repairs (you'd need planetary landing gear to do business), an alien culture that is obviously high-tech but will only barter goods or goods for services (e.g. fuel costs 5 tons of food) since they don't have a currency system in common, etc.

This does sound interesting, however this could be done as an OXZ/OXP and would not really require any work doing to the source. Also as you would have to make sure the populated systems were connected, this would be difficult hard coding this and it would work better as creating a blank galaxy, exploring and mapping this yourself (or by using PhantorGorth's spreadsheet to do the hard work for you) and then picking systems from this and populating them by scripting this into planetinfo.plist. However I do really like this idea!

In fact, you could probably do this without having to use the build I created for fun. Now cim has put in place the ability to only load a specific OXZ if loaded through a scenario, you could change the galaxy seed in the scenario save file and then use some scripting to create a blank set of galaxies. To be honest now cim has put this in place it kind of makes the whole process I've done irrelevant, with the exception of the extra systems. However because of the way the galaxy map now works the memory problems that arise from having more than 256 systems makes the larger galaxies idea a problem. A way around this might be to load the extra systems into the memory when loading the game - something currently beyond my coding expertise (being a VERY amateur programmer). However I wanted to at least show I had done something rather than just saying 'oh yeah that can be done'.

[Potential Debris]

I seem to remember once reading that when Braben & Bell were working on the original Elite, they had to spend ages messing with the seeds and checking the results to produce a set of galaxies that had no rude or offensive random planet names.

That sounds way less fun than using this OXP to find out what seed generates the maximum number of rude and offensive planet names. Maybe we could start a list..?

[Switeck]

What if systems only became visible on the charts if you were within 7 LY of them?

Once visited, they remain on the charts...

This idea could even be used with the regular game and give it a new feel.

[Cody]

BGS does something similar with its mapping of trade routes and sector names (now all slightly askew, of course).

[Pleb]

What if systems only became visible on the charts if you were within 7 LY of them?

Once visited, they remain on the charts...

This idea could even be used with the regular game and give it a new feel.

This might actually be possible. If the list of visited planets were stored in the save file and the game read this as a dictionary. This could be something worth looking into and actually a lot more practical. Thanks Switeck! I will get on this and post up my findings if possible.

[Pleb]

I've figured out a way to store each system the player visits in the save game file as a dictionary and be able to load this and read from it. The only issues I'm having is although I can get Oolite to hide all unexplored systems, you can still select them so the cursor jumps onto the system (even if it doesn't display the name of the system). Also if you use the Advanced Navigational Array you can still see all the connected routes. So you'd have to disable use of the ANA until the player has visited all systems in the galaxy, which would be annoying...

[Zireael]

I think it'd be better if ANA use checked if all systems along the route are explored...

[Pleb]

Well another issue would also be that contracts can be offered to unexplored systems. Admittedly this wouldn't be an issue with uninhabited galaxies but this would need looking at in populated ones. What would be handy, although I'm not sure if it's possible yet, is to get Oolite to think that any system not yet visited or within 7 lightyears does not exist. As I said unsure of possibility as this is untested.

[Disembodied]

Well another issue would also be that contracts can be offered to unexplored systems. Admittedly this wouldn't be an issue with uninhabited galaxies but this would need looking at in populated ones. What would be handy, although I'm not sure if it's possible yet, is to get Oolite to think that any system not yet visited or within 7 lightyears does not exist. As I said unsure of possibility as this is untested.

In the game Escape Velocity you could be offered missions to places you didn't know about. What happened then was that a star system would be added to your map, out in the wilderness as it were, unconnected to anything else, and you would have to work out how to get there. EV worked by a network of jump lanes, rather than by range (you could be next door to a system, but unable to reach it directly, if there wasn't a connecting route), but a similar principle could work here.

Disabling the ANA might be the best bet, perhaps with the player being given the opportunity to acquire "data sets" or something which would fill in chunks of map. Visit enough systems in the lower-left quadrant, say, and take enough observations/buy or otherwise acquire local data, and a chunk of map gets filled in. No (or perhaps patchy) system information, but the stars and links could be shown.

[Wildeblood]

A couple of interjections that may be helpful or stupid, because I came in late and am not really sure what you're trying to accomplish...

Recall Spara's buy-able maps OXP, that copied all the sysinfo for the galaxy to mission variables then nulled it all and gradually restored it as you either visited systems or bought the information. (At least, I assume that's how it worked.)

Explorers' Club includes an interface function for other scripts to check whether the player has ever visited a particular system.

[spara]

Recall Spara's buy-able maps OXP, that copied all the sysinfo for the galaxy to mission variables then nulled it all and gradually restored it as you either visited systems or bought the information. (At least, I assume that's how it worked.)

Now that's a blast from the past. Here's a snippet from the readme:

Buyable Map OXP ver 0.3.1 (28.8.2012)

Author: spara

_The_Story_

In the world of Oolite, everything comes with a price tag. When you start your game, you get a shining new Cobra mk III with a factory installed map-module. It's somewhat disappointing to notice that your map-module is a bit dated. All you've got is a map with the names of the systems and the current statuses of the "Old Worlds." All other information about the other systems is simply unknown.

You can explore the unknown systems and your map gradually updates itself or you can buy a new map module for the current galaxy with full information and replace the factory installed one. You can also buy short range update on main stations.

The bought-in map-module is a bit fragile, so it can be damaged. If that happens, you simply put back the old one and use it until you get the broken one fixed. The original module is indestructible.

_What_it_does_

This oxp hides information of unknown systems from the short range scanner screen and the system data screen. When you visit an unknown system, the new system is updated to the map. When you visit the main station of a system, you can buy an update that updates all nearby systems the map.

If you buy the galactic map equipment, you will get the whole galaxy of data, but your old map does not get updated. If your bought map get's damaged, your old map module is in use again.

You will need a different map for every galaxy.

_Word_of_warning_

This oxp alters the properties of systems when the player is in the short range scanner screen. The properties are restored in the other views. If another oxp reads system properties when they are altered, problems may occur.

[Zireael]

I'll need to check out that buyable maps OXP asap then. Will it work with 1.80?

[Pleb]

I will have to check this out to. So it would seem that I'm right in saying then that you could achieve most of the whole exploring uninhabited galaxies idea without having to modify the source after all. The only difference would be you would still be able to actually see the systems... I will still for my own enjoyment try and improve the whole invisible galaxy map idea just to see if it could be done properly but it would seem that you could easily create an uninhabited galaxy using scripting and editing of the planetinfo.plist file and the create a scenario and an OXZ based off spara's to blank out the data and have that OXZ only work with the scenario. Still... would be nice to have an invisible explorable galaxy but it seems to be a trivial thing to amend the source code for...Unfortunately!

As for the original idea of this thread, the whole larger galaxies idea still needs a lot of work as the new galactic chart makes this heavy on memory...