Oolite Bulletins

JazHaz wrote:

It's not as simple as creating a new entry in shipdata, its the views too, internal and external. I know I'll never understand quaternions, and as for producing a new texture, I know I've not got the artistic talent.

Well, the views are simply a part of the shipdata-entry, aren't they? And you don't even need any understanding of quaternions for your views to begin with.

Internal views: they don't even have anything to do with quaternions. You only need to set coordinates inside the ship or just outside its hull. The DAT-file tells you what the outermost coordinates are. Just browse through it and find the biggest and the smallest number in each of the X, Y, and Z columns. Still easier: copy the weapons positions and simply raise the Y-value of each position by a couple of meters in order to get the common effect of your laser emerging from the bottom of your screen.

External views: copy and paste the external views of the biggest current ship, vanilla or OXP. Try them out. Do they fit? If not, simply adjust the coordinates (X, Y, or Z). Disregard the quaternion parts completely, they're already pointing in the right directions. Just adjust the distance of the cameras.

Producing a new texture is of course another thing altogether, but it's not strictly needed for a player flyable version, so for the time being this won't prevent you from flying your Behemoth.

Why won't you listen? I CAN'T DO IT. I have tried before. Why do something yourself when someone else could do a far better job?

Who is willing to help me out with this? I'll let you know what the OXP will do by pm, and you will get full credit.

JazHaz wrote:

Why do something yourself when someone else could do a far better job?

<chortles> Here... have a cookie!

JazHaz wrote:

Why won't you listen? I CAN'T DO IT. I have tried before. Why do something yourself when someone else could do a far better job?

Who is willing to help me out with this? I'll let you know what the OXP will do by pm, and you will get full credit.

<Waves hand> I've been getting reasonably comfortable with shipdata.plists of late.. I'll take a crack at it, if you like.

JazHaz - I've been busy with RL events lately so my OXPing has been somewhat limited and probably will be for the next couple of weeks or so.

If however you are still after some help in a couple of weeks time drop me a PM and I'll see what I can do to help.

Thanks Dizzy, & Shipbuilder, I should be ok with most of the shipdata plists. Going to go with the basic behemoth model for now, but I will need help with the views and texturing. Texturing is low priority though. If I can get the rest of the oxp built then the texturing can be done last. The views will be something I will need help with.

If I can make a flyable behemoth, one problem is equipping it. I envisage not being able to dock it. I have some ideas around this.

For now, I envisage it coming with all the equipment installed already. What equipment would you want to have? Not OXP only standard equipment of course.

If you send me a copy of the OXP when you are in a position to do so I should be able to sort the internal and external views out for you and send it back.

Switeck wrote:

It could probably be launched from a Superhub station though, so one could be given to the player there...

Yep.. docks and launches nicely from a Superhub, as I learned while setting up the internal/external views for JazHaz.

"Interesting" ship to fly, too..

Do you have a nice screenshot from that?

pagroove wrote:

Do you have a nice screenshot from that?

I'll sort one out for you...

Looking forward to it .

EDITED to Add: Don't know if it is possible to make a special shipmarket on the Superhub for those big ships. Also waiting for Smivs' Goliath.
But I would be glad to lend the Superhub.oxp just for that purpose.

Player Behemoth and a Superhub at Zaonce by JazHaz, on Flickr


Superhub viewed from the docking port of a Player Behemoth by JazHaz, on Flickr

I have been wondering about this fr a while now... If players are now able to buy extremely large ships, how do you save your game? I DLed the Save_Anywhere oxp, but it doesn't show up on the superhub...

Paradox wrote:

I have been wondering about this fr a while now... If players are now able to buy extremely large ships, how do you save your game? I DLed the Save_Anywhere oxp, but it doesn't show up on the superhub...

Currently you can't. You can buy a big ship and launch it, however if its too big for the dock on a main station then you cannot dock back again.

I'm working on something that, if it works out, will work around this problem (can't say any more). Smivs is working on a ship that has a separate docking module.