Oolite Bulletins

Could the racing rings be used in some way?

Like that idea. Fly though a fuel ring and fuel is awarded and credits deducted. Very BBC Microsoft Moonraider / 80s scramble!

I was working on this very thing in my asteroid-belt racing system...

I added code to addFuel: if one passed a ring.

...but I had some trouble with their placement (inside planet=boom).
The first ring was lost, so no testing, and haven't gotten round to re-plotting coordinates.

I think you need to hit CTR-r or -t (something like that) in a racing-system, in order to activate the racing rings?


then the burg came along.

I'll get back to my private neck of the starcluster in due time.

When Assassins is done I'll make fuel-rings my next project (unless you want to bag it)

In doing the 43 different AIs for Assassins I've looked at Giles's standard AIs a lot! Noticed he has a racing ring AI. I haven't tried to take it apart yet, but it shoudn't be too difficult to mod it to have a flown though ring = award fuel : 1, deduct credits : 10 (ie it would take 7 fly thoughs and 70 credits to top up the tank to full - price of convience)!

Then in script have an add maybe 6 fuel rings at particular pwm co-ordinatates in diferent places between the beacon and the station, but only at a techlevel > than say 11?

Maybe give it a beacon of F and do a scan for ships player, target found, comms message : "Right this way Commander, to top up your tanks!"

That is exactly what I have already done.

very simply added addFuel: 1 to the list of things todo when z-traversed.

I think I may add some subentities to PIT rings, tanks and such.

Another thing that may be fun: instead of addingFuel, have the ring eject /spawn fuelpods into the flight path of passing craft.

(This because I have a nagging suspicion that addfuel maybe a player player only method. And it requires some skill to scoop a pod when racing.)


Go ahead and make fuelrings, but I don't think I will endorse them outside racing cirquits.
-then again, some guys are waiting for those refueling stations.
you could add a series of rings below one of Murgh's fueltankers....

Nah, it's your baby so you should do it your way!

Besides, my wife and daughter have been Oolite Widows whilst developing assassins! Determined to get assassins up on Oosat fully polished, but maybe should wait a while before starting another project!

yeah, one project at the time...or risk ending up like me.

Would the rings necessarily have to be rendered? Could they instead be a model with no polygons?

Then you could build a box of them at the fuel station, and toggle a variable to determine if the player has entered or exited the box. As long as he's in, he gets fuel (and loses credits).

I'm not sure...

models with no polygons caused crashes last time I tried.
Coincidently that was during a racing ring experiment, before Giles made them work.


One could use flashers offset by 0.5rad and frequency 0 as subentities instead of the models, except for the one main-AI-model entity....
But I think because they have no collision detection, this will not work for determining the 'ring' boundingbox for Z-traverse.

why dont you try it.

Who, me?

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

yeah, one project at a time

I'm updating and maintaining Serendipity. I get about 3 minutes free each day, and I use it watching this forum. :)

I was just hoping to make someone's life easier. (Hope I didn't come off snippy or anything.)

serendipity?
the simultaneous invntion of the same principle by multiple independent people, because 'the time is right'?
there was a movie named like that a short while back...
a game? a site? a religion?

My serendipidous thought of today is: "coffee".

In this case, Serendipity is a blog engine. You'd be amazed at how much support bloggers can need.