Oolite Bulletins

Ah, the C.W. McCall reference is a nice touch.

I deployed a cargo shepherd today after installing this updated release. It was given the name "O'Malley's Torture".

Solonar wrote:

I deployed a cargo shepherd today after installing this updated release. It was given the name "O'Malley's Torture".

Should probably be excluded as well.

I expect more reports like this in the coming days, because there are so many OXPs which I haven't playtested against.

Excellent OXP. I find myself back Id'ing about every ship I come across just for the naming. May I suggest an expansion on this already excellent oxp?
Maybe also include numbers as ship names: For Example: Cobra Mk3 - ZX123-L (Galcop ID)

Reason for this would be that not every commander would be creative enough to come up with a ship name. So if a commander decides to let his/hers ship unnamed it gets a Galcop ID?

Idea also for asteroids. Named asteroids? Yeah why not. For example: Asteroid: object A-zp123
Why? Because if you see a named astroid it could be that it is protected system property and by mining it you will get an offender tag.

Thanks for releasing these. I really like them. Looking forward to the updates.

Thargoid wrote:

Also now it's released properly, can you add the version number to the OXP folder name please? Just to make keeping track easier as normal.

I'm torn on this one.

The download folder does have a version number ("randomshipnames 1.0"), just like the preview came in "randomshipnames 0.9".

For the OXP itself I'm not sure which is better. If there is a version number in the name, a later version will of course have a different name. This means that the player has to remove the previous version when updating. On the other hand, if the OXP name remains the same, the player just has to drop a new version into their AddOns-folder, which will automatically overwrite the previous version. No need to delete anything by hand. I feel that this removes one possible source of user error, which I find more convenient and secure. Of course, it makes it harder to determine which version of the OXP you have installed. On the other hand, you can get this information by looking at latest.log, or even by right-clicking the OXP and selecting "Information" (at least on a Mac; I don't know whether "Properties" on Windows will show the version as well).

So I'm not sure which one is best. Looking at my OXPs, I seem to have constantly changed my mind about it. Some do contain version numbers in their names, and some don't.

Dredgers are also being given names by this OXP in addition to their assigned dredger designated names.

Commander McLane wrote:

Thargoid wrote:

Also now it's released properly, can you add the version number to the OXP folder name please? Just to make keeping track easier as normal.

I'm torn on this one.

The download folder does have a version number ("randomshipnames 1.0"), just like the preview came in "randomshipnames 0.9".

For the OXP itself I'm not sure which is better. If there is a version number in the name, a later version will of course have a different name. This means that the player has to remove the previous version when updating. On the other hand, if the OXP name remains the same, the player just has to drop a new version into their AddOns-folder, which will automatically overwrite the previous version. No need to delete anything by hand. I feel that this removes one possible source of user error, which I find more convenient and secure. Of course, it makes it harder to determine which version of the OXP you have installed. On the other hand, you can get this information by looking at latest.log, or even by right-clicking the OXP and selecting "Information" (at least on a Mac; I don't know whether "Properties" on Windows will show the version as well).

So I'm not sure which one is best. Looking at my OXPs, I seem to have constantly changed my mind about it. Some do contain version numbers in their names, and some don't.

There are three advantages to version numbering the OXP folder itself:

1) Most people don't keep the zip file, at least in a routinely accessed place. It makes seeing that there's a new version for update easier than going into things and chasing down the read-me.
2) If people update an OXP with the version in the folder name, then the game automatically detects the change (as the cache is now stale given the OXPs listed have changed) and rebuilds it to add the new information. Saves having to perform the "shift key til Cobbie" dance.
3) There is no risk of a partial update if over-writing doesn't work (access denied or people say "no") or older orphan files perhaps getting left behind.

Admittedly there is the slight downside of possibly ending up with two versions installed side by side, but that's minimal.

Also it may be better to remove or comment out the log line in the script. Until I disabled it, it was rather spamming my debug console and log

Commander McLane wrote:

. On the other hand, if the OXP name remains the same, the player just has to drop a new version into their AddOns-folder, which will automatically overwrite the previous version.

Just so you are aware this isn't the case with Win 7 - you get a dialogue box giving you potentially confusing options about overwriting, replacing or keeping copies of the individual files. Win 7's default behaviour is to try and merge the folders. I'm with Thargoid....

Commander McLane wrote:

I'm not sure which one is best. Looking at my OXPs, I seem to have constantly changed my mind about it. Some do contain version numbers in their names, and some don't.

When v1.76 came out and some OXPs needing upgrading, I eventually went through them all and ADDED version numbers to the OXP directory names that did not have them. It took me hours but has made subsequent OXP upgrades easier for me.

For the OXPs that don't have the version number in the name, I keep a local separate unzipped copy so I can diff them as required whenever I think it might have changed.

Dragging c:\download\OXPs\Space_Fillers v2.7.oxp to c:\Oolite\AddOns and then deleting Space_Fillers v2.6.oxp is easier than going through all the sub-folders to check if any files have been renamed or removed. This has happened a few times where upper / lower case file name issues have occurred and a couple where someone has immensely tidied their OXP and removed some of the content.

I can see no real benefit to not having the version number in the OXP directory name. If the user can download an OXP, unzip it, find \AddOns, and move the structure correctly to \AddOns, then the user has the ability to delete the old directory too.

BTW, I also move and READ.ME files into the OXP directory; it is often in the directory above it, and rename it to READ v2.7.ME as well.

Solonar wrote:

Dredgers are also being given names by this OXP in addition to their assigned dredger designated names.

Thanks for the report. They'll be excluded in the next version.

Thargoid wrote:

Also it may be better to remove or comment out the log line in the script. Until I disabled it, it was rather spamming my debug console and log

Oops. My bad. I simply forgot to remove it.

Okay, so I guess v 1.1 (with version number in folder name) is coming soon.

SandJ wrote:

BTW, I also move and READ.ME files into the OXP directory; it is often in the directory above it, and rename it to READ v2.7.ME as well.

On a Mac, there is no "OXP directory" as such: OXPs present as single files, rather than as folders. Although it is of course possible on a Mac to look inside an OXP, by right-clicking and selecting "Show Package Contents", it's not routine behaviour. When making an OXP for distribution, ReadMe files should always be kept in the directory above the OXP itself; if they're placed inside the OXP directory then Mac users won't see them unless they go digging around inside their OXP "file" for some reason. But where you put them on your own machine is of course your own choice! And it's probably a good idea to give ReadMe files a version number to match the OXP, too.

Commander McLane wrote:

if the OXP name remains the same, the player just has to drop a new version into their AddOns-folder, which will automatically overwrite the previous version. No need to delete anything by hand.

Obsolete files don't get deleted, & in the case of scripts this can cause interesting results. Also if you've hand-edited a shipdata.plist (as an example) you're trusting the implementation of unzip to get the "correct" behaviour WRT timestamps.

pagroove wrote:

Excellent OXP. I find myself back Id'ing about every ship I come across just for the naming. May I suggest an expansion on this already excellent oxp?
Maybe also include numbers as ship names: For Example: Cobra Mk3 - ZX123-L (Galcop ID)

I've thought about numbers, and I think I want to use them for system ships (police and military). Seems more fitting for them than individual names. After all, they'll be on some bureaucrat's inventory list somewhere...

I haven't got warm with numbers for asteroids, though.