Oolite Bulletins

Happy to help in any way that might work.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 5:48 pm

Happy to help in any way that might work.

I suggest we create a wiki page where we collect everything we know. It is visible to others, so we could get comments or contributions from potentially everyone. And whoever dares to 'I told you so' us afterwards - well, also that person can contribute on time.
Once we are happy with the plan we can try to execute it.

On top of that we need to create something like a dictionary. Where we agree on what should be named how.
I remember I was talking about expansions in early OoliteStarter versions, then it changed to OXPs/OXZs, and now I was pointed to the name 'Addons'.
Meanwhile I am completely agnostic what word we use - but I'd like to have consistency across the game, documentation, wiki, forum, ... Otherwise it is not a standard but each and everyone's personal word that he/she/it believes to be the clearest to understand.

AddOns!

OXPs!

"AddOns" makes more sense. But "OXPs" is used everywhere else!

The benefit of “AddOns” or “Expansions” is that they are self-explanatory. “OXP” needs clarification. For a brand new player (and that is the goal here, to attract new ones), the first 2 would make more sense.

That said, I don’t think we’ll ever get everything unified under one descriptor. The name of the folder where you put them is “AddOns”. But the in-game utility to download them is “Expansion Manager”. And we kind of have a history of inconsistent naming. Is it a torus drive? A jump drive? Is it witchspace, or hyperspace? In some ways, those little quirks reflect reality- sometimes we are just inconsistent, and there is no one size fits all.

Going by the wiki it seems the word Addons is similar popular as Expansion. I do not know what the witchspace lobster did so that Extension is quite uniformly used for the ending of filenames.

@Cholmondely, could you put up some nice wiki page as dictionary and whenever we find diverging terms we just vote for the 'official' one?
Similarly we will need a page that depicts the process how to release the software.
And one to update the website.

* For the dictionary we already can arrange the first few terms: witchspace vs hyperspace, addon vs expansion.
* For the release procedure we can add items from here.
Or should we just extend the list that already exists? Updating the wiki is just so much easier than version control - especially for non-dev people.

Just for the procedure to update the website I'm afraid we have a SPOF. Let's sit in a circle and pray that over time we will get enlightened, and that we shall not run into timeouts.

phkb wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 8:33 pm

Is it a torus drive? A jump drive? Is it witchspace, or hyperspace?

That's opened a can of wormholes!

First iteration: https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Dictionary

Let the tweaking commence!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 9:19 pm

First iteration: https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Dictionary

Let the tweaking commence!

Maybe we can build up some logic. Here is my reasoning:

* An additional ship, or equipment, or mission, or ... that can be loaded by Oolite is a resource.
* Resources delivered within the Oolite distribution are within the Resources folder.
* Resources delivered independently from the Oolite distribution need to be placed in a folder with metadata.
* The folder with metadata is an Oolite Expansion Pack (OXP).
* Zipping the pack so that the whole structure can be transported as a single file will make it an OXZ.
* We could use the term Addon when we do not want to emphasize whether it is an OXP or OXZ.

How does that sound?

Hyperspace is the technical term for witchspace - power-up the hyperspace motor, open a wormhole, slip into witchspace.

hiran wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 9:38 pm

How does that sound?

Overly complicated, to be honest. Whether they’re ships or equipment or new explosions or major changes to the commodities market, they’re being added onto the existing game. For a player (and I’m talking specifically about players here, not those working on expansions) that’s all that matters. We don’t need to overthink this. They’re AddOns or Expansions, that can happen to have one of two extensions, either OXP or OXZ.

It’s only when you descend into the tweaking/coding side of things that any of those finer points matter, and by that stage players should be familiar enough with the basics that the extra definitions won’t matter so much.

phkb wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 10:03 pm

hiran wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 9:38 pm

How does that sound?

Overly complicated, to be honest. Whether they’re ships or equipment or new explosions or major changes to the commodities market, they’re being added onto the existing game. For a player (and I’m talking specifically about players here, not those working on expansions) that’s all that matters. We don’t need to overthink this. They’re AddOns or Expansions, that can happen to have one of two extensions, either OXP or OXZ.

It’s only when you descend into the tweaking/coding side of things that any of those finer points matter, and by that stage players should be familiar enough with the basics that the extra definitions won’t matter so much.

Agree. I just wanted to define when to use the terms expansion and expansion packs. The ordinary player will not need them.
It is kind of like design patterns. You would not talk about those to users I guess. Yet, when talking to developers you need such terms.

@Cholmondely We might want to document the website status somewhere in the wiki. Also, we need to start a todo-list.
One initiative would be to fix the website, which actually boils down to
- check if oolite.site is sufficiently functional, or document gaps
- fix gaps that are showstoppers
- switch oolite.space to the same destination as oolite.site

Another initiative would be to distribute access privileges to enable those who want to act. We have Github, CloudFlare, Wiki and Forum.

Yet another initiative would be (reverse) engineer the release process.

As a first priority, I'd like to suggest we need to get an update in the "Latest news" section on oolite.space. In that update, I'd like to send users to a wiki page that includes instructions on how to fix their current version to point to the new download location.

However, I don't want to try and instruct people on how to edit the .GNUstepDefaults file. Instead, I was thinking that perhaps we could supply a generic, mostly empty file for each platform that only needs to be copied to the correct location. Now, I understand that joystick config is stored in this file, so users would have to set up their joysticks again. But that's a lot easier than messing with instructions telling you to open a file in a text editor, find settings, type in things, etc.

If we can get a default file for all 3 platforms, the instructions could be as simple as "download this file, make a backup of the current file in (appropriate location for platform), then overwrite current file with downloaded file."

That way, the Expansion manager starts working again, and all that's missing is some joystick setup. Could that work, do you think?

phkb wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 7:47 am

If we can get a default file for all 3 platforms, the instructions could be as simple as "download this file, make a backup of the current file in (appropriate location for platform), then overwrite current file with downloaded file."

That way, the Expansion manager starts working again, and all that's missing is some joystick setup. Could that work, do you think?

Thought about that, too. A static file might be easiest for us to provide. How about a small patch executable that performs the necessary edit operation? It should be small and have zero addon dependencies. A statically linked (Objective)C or golang application?

@Cholmondely please add that to our todo list...