Oolite Bulletins

This is beginning to sound like an interesting (and potentially very beneficial) experiment.

I'd like to propose that the relevant posts get split into their own thread, and mention that I'd love to help playtest when the code is ready.

Right...

Paradox wrote:

Thank you for the compliment! }:]

I am also sooo glad that you at least understand what I was trying to say...

You're welcome on both counts

Paradox wrote:

We seem to be sharing headspace! };]

That's ok, my brain doesn't use much

Paradox wrote:

Is there anything I can do to help? Not a programmer, but can feel my way around a shipdata.plist and rescale! };] Let me know.

I believe there is (please scroll down)

cim wrote:

If you're going to be changing stuff in the source anyway for this experiment, you'd probably find it considerably quicker to make the planets bigger (the sun and the sun-planet distance are based on the planet size, so they'll follow automatically), increase the default scanner radius, and increase the torus/injector modifier. Then you can keep all the models the same size as before, and most of the shipdata too. (Shrinking them, even if you reduce the speed, I think might have slightly odd graphical effects just because of where the 'near plane' of the graphics space is placed, and lots of little bits of the code probably assume something like the current ship scale - e.g. you might find your fuel scoop can grab cargo from implausibly far away)...

OK, so it looks like I should try making things a little bigger first...
I did make a player version of the worm craft once which seemed to work fine (much smaller than a cobra III if I remember...) but I don't think I really tried fuel scooping with it though... I was also thinking of making a manned 'cargo-pod' ship for a silly oxp but it now sounds like that might suffer some issues ...

cim wrote:

#4 I think you're mistaken on: ships you're overtaking will also mass-lock you for longer. On the other hand, this is painful enough already that you probably should go around rather than past ships you don't want to interact with.

Yes I think you're right. Probably divided where I should have subtracted...
Off-lane/on-lane, that pesky ol' issue again

cim wrote:

I expect you have missed some other important things because the whole game is built around the current scale set up, but it might be easier to just test it than try to think of them all in advance.

Yes, I rather suspect you're right there but as you say, hopefully a test will at least make any issues clearer for future considerations of mucking about with scale.

Diziet Sma wrote:

This is beginning to sound like an interesting (and potentially very beneficial) experiment.

I'd like to propose that the relevant posts get split into their own thread, and mention that I'd love to help playtest when the code is ready.

Why thank you

Yes, a new thread makes sense. Shall I put it in the 'moderator request' thread (found in 'outworld' isn't it?)

It sure will need testing (are you reading Paradox? ) so once (if ) I've got something going I'll explain how to set it up (you'll need to build from source) and I'll eagerly await feedback

OK, so some suggested trial environments (probably in this order).

• #1 Planet 3x bigger plus adaptive changes
  #2 Planet 2x bigger plus adaptive changes
  #3 Planet 1.5 times bigger (any smaller than this and I think we may be in 'is it worth it?' territory)
  
  #4 Original shrinkage idea plus speed adjustments
  #5 Reduced shrinkage in line with the increases suggeted in #2 and #3

If it comes to number four (please don't let it come to number four ) then I'll probably put together (or ask Paradox to do it ) a little oxp of the original oolite ships (no subentities or big downloads) that will feature the reduced scale ships. That would make it easier for others to help with testing...

Well, I know where to find some of this stuff in the code, so I suppose I'd better start routing for the rest (PlanetEntity here I come )

Of course the odds of success may not be great (imagine your anthem of choice slowly building in volume at this point ), but if it all goes 'wibbly' then at least we'll be able to say we gave it a try; and hopefully be able to illustrate clearly why it didn't work.

Don't hold your breath on this one, I may be a bit busy this week.
Thanks again for the interest (esp. Paradox and DS) and for the explanations (cim)

Redspear wrote:

Yes, a new thread makes sense. Shall I put it in the 'moderator request' thread (found in 'outworld' isn't it?)

Either that, or report that post (red exclamation mark, bottom right), scroll down to 'Other', and request a split.

Thanks Cody.

Done.

Redspear wrote:

Don't hold your breath on this one, I may be a bit busy this week.

Heh.. "week"?

I'd expect this project to require quite a few "weeks".. perhaps even 2-3 months worth..

cim wrote:

If you're going to be changing stuff in the source anyway for this experiment, you'd probably find it considerably quicker to make the planets bigger (the sun and the sun-planet distance are based on the planet size, so they'll follow automatically), increase the default scanner radius, and increase the torus/injector modifier. Then you can keep all the models the same size as before, and most of the shipdata too. (Shrinking them, even if you reduce the speed, I think might have slightly odd graphical effects just because of where the 'near plane' of the graphics space is placed, and lots of little bits of the code probably assume something like the current ship scale - e.g. you might find your fuel scoop can grab cargo from implausibly far away)...

I don't think this addresses the issue though. Problem (for me) with this is:

1. Modeling. This round of discussion started because I tried to model a ship "to scale" and that made it incompatible with Oolites scale. The very heart of the problem is that someone changed feet into meters, and made all the ships ~3 times larger than they were supposed to be. Let's please fix the problem once and for all, and not camouflage it by make everything else bigger. That would still make modelers who are trying to "build to scale" go back and re-scale everything to make it "fit". I have no problem really with everything being in meters, as long as a 1.8 meter tall pilot does not end up being 5.4 meters tall!

2. Cim has said that many things are based on the current size of the planet... So if we change that, we have to change something else, which may lead to having to change yet something else etc... Our problem is only with the ships (I also think stations are too small, but guess what... making ships smaller and leaving stations alone will automatically fix that too!) Ships need to made smaller by 2/3rds I could understand 1/10th or more being an issue, but if you scale a 150 meter ship (smaller than a 'conda at 170m) to 50 meters (slightly smaller than a cobra mk1(at 55m), what problems does that cause? A ship that size can still scoop cargo with no problems right? Now, with that same mindset, a Cobra MK3 becomes 22 meters long (actually 21.666~, but round up };]) Will it have a problem scooping? Only one way to find out... try it, which is what this "project" is all about. (what is the smallest ship that can be fit with a scoop? I will look into that later.)

Redspear wrote:

It sure will need testing (are you reading Paradox? ) so once (if ) I've got something going I'll explain how to set it up (you'll need to build from source) and I'll eagerly await feedback

You bet! However, "build from source" I would really rather avoid for multiple reasons, but let me guess, you're not running windows?

Redspear wrote:

OK, so some suggested trial environments (probably in this order).

• #1 Planet 3x bigger plus adaptive changes
  #2 Planet 2x bigger plus adaptive changes
  #3 Planet 1.5 times bigger (any smaller than this and I think we may be in 'is it worth it?' territory)
  
  #4 Original shrinkage idea plus speed adjustments
  #5 Reduced shrinkage in line with the increases suggeted in #2 and #3

If it comes to number four (please don't let it come to number four ) then I'll probably put together (or ask Paradox to do it ) a little oxp of the original oolite ships (no subentities or big downloads) that will feature the reduced scale ships. That would make it easier for others to help with testing...

Really sorry, but again, I think #4 is going to be the best fix... However, I think I can handle re-scaling some of the core ships. How about the extremes, the Anaconda, the Cobra MK3, and the Adder? That should get us started...?

Paradox wrote:

1. Modeling. This round of discussion started because I tried to model a ship "to scale" and that made it incompatible with Oolites scale. The very heart of the problem is that someone changed feet into meters, and made all the ships ~3 times larger than they were supposed to be. Let's please fix the problem once and for all, and not camouflage it by make everything else bigger. That would still make modelers who are trying to "build to scale" go back and re-scale everything to make it "fit". I have no problem really with everything being in meters, as long as a 1.8 meter tall pilot does not end up being 5.4 meters tall!

Changing the Oolite units from "metres" to "feet" is a simple matter of changing one letter in the Scanner Targeting Enhancement - the only in-flight link between the in-game distance unit and a real-world scale - from "m" to "f".

All other distances in Oolite are in game units, as far as the game engine is concerned. So, if you want to rescale the game to Elite's feet, that's literally the only change you'll need to make. (You'll then still need to scale up your ship by a factor of 3.3 because it's built in 1 unit = 1 metre scale)

Paradox wrote:

A ship that size can still scoop cargo with no problems right?

A ship the size of a cargo pod can quite happily scoop a (much larger) Thargon fighter, since we don't check scales for that. However, the scoop range is exactly 250 in-game units (regardless of what you call an in-game unit). So if you make all the ships 3.3 times smaller, their scoops will start attracting cargo from - relative to the size of the ships - 3.3 times further away. You may or may not consider this a problem...

This (among other things) is why I suggested making the planets bigger rather than the ships smaller - the planets will end up 3.3 times bigger than the ships either way, but making the planets bigger is a change to one line of code, and making the ships smaller is a change to every core and OXP ship model in existence (yes, you can test with a smaller sample, but what if it actually worked?). Considerably more of the game's code relates to ship scale rather than to planetary or system scale - scoops being one example, but also laser ranges, missile ranges, distance from planet to get "close to surface" events, scanner ranges, collision detection set up, etc., so I think you'll get more oddities by scaling the ships down than you would by scaling the planets up.

cim wrote:

Paradox wrote:

1. Modeling. This round of discussion started because I tried to model a ship "to scale" and that made it incompatible with Oolites scale. The very heart of the problem is that someone changed feet into meters, and made all the ships ~3 times larger than they were supposed to be. Let's please fix the problem once and for all, and not camouflage it by make everything else bigger. That would still make modelers who are trying to "build to scale" go back and re-scale everything to make it "fit". I have no problem really with everything being in meters, as long as a 1.8 meter tall pilot does not end up being 5.4 meters tall!

Changing the Oolite units from "metres" to "feet" is a simple matter of changing one letter in the Scanner Targeting Enhancement - the only in-flight link between the in-game distance unit and a real-world scale - from "m" to "f".

Right, I understand that we are using units here, and that feet and meters are for the most part irrelevant and just a matter of spelling.

cim wrote:

All other distances in Oolite are in game units, as far as the game engine is concerned. So, if you want to rescale the game to Elite's feet, that's literally the only change you'll need to make. (You'll then still need to scale up your ship by a factor of 3.3 because it's built in 1 unit = 1 metre scale)

Then why, when I modeled that ship in wings3d, using 1 wings3d unit = 1 meter, do I then still need to scale it up 3.3 times to "make it work"? Because all the ships are 3.3 times too big.

Ok, someone wanted to use the word "meters" instead of "feet" to describe a unit in Oolite right? Thats fine except then, they took a Cobra MK3 and said "this ship is no longer 65 feet long, it is now 65 meters long", making the pilot for that ship a freaking giant (bet his mom was shocked!). What should have been done right then and there, was to make the Cobra MK3 19.812 meters long... but they didn't and that is what needs to be fixed. Saying and using meters instead of feet is fine! As long as the scale is kept consistent, and it wasn't. So let's fix it...

cim wrote:

Paradox wrote:

A ship that size can still scoop cargo with no problems right?

A ship the size of a cargo pod can quite happily scoop a (much larger) Thargon fighter, since we don't check scales for that. However, the scoop range is exactly 250 in-game units (regardless of what you call an in-game unit). So if you make all the ships 3.3 times smaller, their scoops will start attracting cargo from - relative to the size of the ships - 3.3 times further away. You may or may not consider this a problem...

Okay, then that may be something that Redspear will need to look into, but until we actually playtest, hard to tell.

I understand "units"... 1 unit in Wings3D = 1 unit in Blender = 1 oonit in Oolite. and a unit can be called a "foot" or a "meter" or whatever... and it's just a word at that point. Oolite has chosen to call a unit a "meter", which is just fine and dandy... However, a human pilot is not 5.4 meters (oonits) tall! But that is what we have to deal with when we model right now.
Ok, I take back what I said earlier, it wasn't the change of the word "feet" to "meters" that caused all the problems, it was the not re-scaling everything afterwards that fubar-ed everything...

cim wrote:

This (among other things) is why I suggested making the planets bigger rather than the ships smaller - the planets will end up 3.3 times bigger than the ships either way, but making the planets bigger is a change to one line of code, and making the ships smaller is a change to every core and OXP ship model in existence (yes, you can test with a smaller sample, but what if it actually worked?). Considerably more of the game's code relates to ship scale rather than to planetary or system scale - scoops being one example, but also laser ranges, missile ranges, distance from planet to get "close to surface" events, scanner ranges, collision detection set up, etc., so I think you'll get more oddities by scaling the ships down than you would by scaling the planets up.

If the problem was the relative size of ships to planets or ships to stations etc, then making the planets/stations/whatever bigger would indeed work, but that is not the issue at all because a pilot/ship/whatever would still have to be modeled 3.3 times bigger. It doesn't fix the original boo-boo... A Cobra MK3 should be ~20 meters, the Planet Express should be ~15 meters and a human pilot should be ~1.8 meters.

I know this is going to be a big hassle to fix. Probably too big... I don't know how proficient Redspear is at programming, and maybe he won't be able to fix it (though I, and I am sure others, are very glad that he seems willing to try! ). However, that is not a good reason to not fix it correctly. Making things bigger in relation to the ships does not fix the original problem. You are still going to have the inevitable "question about scale" post again and again and again... If someone is going to go to the immense trouble of re-programming the core game... why not fix it correctly this time?

Well said.

Paradox wrote:

...I tried to model a ship "to scale" and that made it incompatible with Oolites scale. The very heart of the problem is that someone changed feet into meters, and made all the ships ~3 times larger than they were supposed to be. Let's please fix the problem once and for all...

The nub of your arguement seems to be that the Oolite ships are the 'wrong' size. They are not. They are the size they are! They are the size they are for many reasons, some 'in-game' and some real world reasons. If there is a 'problem' (and I truly don't see a problem here) it is that ships from other universes are smaller overall, and hence look silly-small when moved directly into Oolite.
Elsewhere there has been mention of giant pilots, but I really don't see what this assertion is based on - there are no human/spacesuit models in Oolite so there is no point of reference for what 'human size' is.
There is no need either as I don't have a problem with a 1.8m human piloting a 65m long ship - a present-day shuttle is 37m long, and I have no problem with a more sophisticated ship with lots of extra hardware and equipment (a Cobby 3) being half as long again. Indeed smaller would be silly! And the shuttle only has a cargo capacity of around 24 tonnes which whatever a TC is, is less than the Cobra.
So the Oolite ships are the right size, in terms of being the size they are, in terms of scale to humans, and in terms of what would be reasonable for a ship of the type, sophistication and purpose they have. There is no problem and nothing needs 'fixing', except perhaps the un-reasonably small ships from other universes.

Smivs wrote:

There is no problem and nothing needs 'fixing',

Then why are we constantly running into this non-existent problem every time somebody new begins modelling ships in Oolite?

Smivs wrote:

except perhaps the un-reasonably small ships from other universes.

Including, I presume, the "unreasonably small" ships in the Original Elite, upon which Oolite is based?

Diziet Sma wrote:

Smivs wrote:

There is no problem and nothing needs 'fixing',

Then why are we constantly running into this non-existent problem every time somebody new begins modelling ships in Oolite?

1) Because Oolite is not to scale at all, and neither was Elite - for Elite Dangerous they've kept the Sidewinder scaled in feet like its Elite cousin, but their Anaconda is closer in size to our Anaconda (and might even be bigger), for the purposes of implementing ship interiors.

2) Because different settings have very different ship sizes - once you get beyond single-seat fighters (which even scaled in feet the Sidewinder is far too big to be) where the pilot might be visible in an external shot, the ships vary massively in size.

If you import a Star Wars Star Destroyer into Oolite, it'll look suitably huge (three times the length of a Behemoth carrier, and a little bit longer than a Coriolis station). The Corellian Corvette blockade runner is about the same length as a Boa or Anaconda freighter, and can meet a similar role, so that works too.

Okay, now scale Oolite's ships down by a factor of 3.3. The Star Destroyer is now approaching the size of the Generation Ship. The Corvette is bigger (a little) than the Behemoth. That's not right...

What about our Orbital Shuttle - that's 20x20x35. Make those units metres, and it's about the same size as a NASA space shuttle. Make them feet, and it's about the size of a pair of double-decker buses, which seems a bit small for an orbit-capable transport ship. Indeed, if you make the units feet, the Transporter has the size and canonical passenger capacity of a pair of double-deckers, which implies it only has the same space left over for engines, too.

There are plenty of examples where making the units feet works better too, of course (I'd assume 1 unit = 1 foot if I was importing a Star Trek ship, for instance, and even then the starships probably come out a bit small), but even scaled to feet, the X-wing is only as big as the (tiny, uncrewed, difficult to hit) Thargon, and considerably less filling of its bounding box - import that at 1:1 scale even with Oolite units as feet, and its four (four!) forward weapons would make a complete mess of your Sidewinder light fighter.

Smivs wrote:

Paradox wrote:

...I tried to model a ship "to scale" and that made it incompatible with Oolites scale. The very heart of the problem is that someone changed feet into meters, and made all the ships ~3 times larger than they were supposed to be. Let's please fix the problem once and for all...

The nub of your arguement seems to be that the Oolite ships are the 'wrong' size. They are not. They are the size they are! They are the size they are for many reasons, some 'in-game' and some real world reasons. If there is a 'problem' (and I truly don't see a problem here) it is that ships from other universes are smaller overall, and hence look silly-small when moved directly into Oolite.

If:

1. Elite originally used the word "feet" instead of "meters", and a Cobra MK3 was 65 "feet" long.
2. Someone changed the word "feet" to "meters", but did not re-scale the Cobra MK3 to 19.812 meters to account for the change (this includes all other ships as well).

Then:

FACT: The size of the Cobra MK3 IS WRONG, as well as that of all the core ships that were not re-scaled when the wording change was made.

It cannot be stated any more simply. 1 + 1 = 2 (unless you doing weird chaos maths or whatever}:])

Smivs wrote:

Elsewhere there has been mention of giant pilots, but I really don't see what this assertion is based on - there are no human/spacesuit models in Oolite so there is no point of reference for what 'human size' is.

But there is a point of reference, and it is called Scale, and it was called into being the instant someone used the words "foot" or "meter" as a scale of measurement as these two words have Real Life connotations. Using the unseen "human pilot" gives us a common frame of reference that can be applied to all ships and universes no matter which word was used. So, there is a frame of reference "for what "human size" is", it is that the average human male is ~1.8 "meters" or 6 "feet" no matter what universe it is.

Smivs wrote:

...So the Oolite ships are the right size, in terms of being the size they are, in terms of scale to humans, and in terms of what would be reasonable for a ship of the type, sophistication and purpose they have. There is no problem and nothing needs 'fixing', except perhaps the un-reasonably small ships from other universes.

1+1=2. No Smivs, they are not... And saying that all other ships from all other genres are unreasonable, just because they don't fit into Oolites admitedly messed up scale enviornment is... unreasonable. ANY ship made to scale from ANY book/movie/genre will be out of scale when brought into Oolite, and you are saying that it is their fault, not Oolites...? Really?

Here's an easy fix for this whole mess....
Remove ALL references to humans/cats/dogs/fish/lobsters etc. (any animal/object that would give an undeniable common frame of reference to Real World animals or objects). Call them splergs, grogstats, iffelmuffs, snogglemifs, and bumblssnits. Then take out all references to "feet" or "meters", and call them oonits. Then tell all modelers/oxp-rs that 1 oonit =3 units in whatever modeler they use.

Problem solved.

If you change the scale from meters to feet the planets and ships all change whether thats larger or smaller by the same amount. Therefore the scale issues will remain the same.
If you change the everything to feet and then make the planets and stations 3 times larger then the scale issue will be much more realistic however all stations will need docking bays reduced in size.

Alan

I say you do one of the following in your experiment:
1) change meters to feet OR
2) scale meters down by /3

And in the main branch, we should just call the units Oolites, therefore removing any reference to metres.

BTW I'd gladly playtest the re-scaled version.