Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Tue May 01, 2007 8:16 am**

Ahruman wrote:
There will not be an “official” best OXP distrubution because no-one “official” has the time or inclination to make one. I also think it would be a bad idea for the core game team to be deciding which OXPs are “good”.

However, the Wiki provides a framework for users and creators to categorize OXPs, and there’s nothing stopping anyone from creating an OXP rating site and trying to get recognized as authorative. It would be a significant amount of work, though.

I agree, categorising OXPs in to 'good' and 'not so good' could be a cause of contention, as eveyone has an opinion as to this. One category might be 'In genre', for ships like the ArcElite ships and The Dream Team and 'Out of Genre' for things like Charlie's Navyships.oxp and Azzameen's Star Wars.

Captain Hesperus

Posted: **Tue May 22, 2007 3:19 pm**

Ah, I've finaly found the right place to complain!
<rant>
It would be extremely nice of people who upload their OXPs to write a sentence or two about what it does in some readme file, here at the board or at the Wiki. I've just downloaded all there was to download and I'm slightly, ahm, overwhelmed because I don't know what half of that stuff does!
</rant>
And, of course, a big thanks to all the people who actually make the OXPs and thus make our gaming expirience more colourful

Posted: **Wed May 23, 2007 12:01 am**

Yep, sorry thats my fault rather than the orginal authors!

Oosat2 crashed big time last year and all the OXPs were lost. I reposted the ones on my hard-drive to the new Oosat2 (including a hopefully helpful description) as the "story" to the link on Oosat2. But I'm afraid in most cases I no longer had the readme on my harddrive as I'd read it and delted it. If you read the Oosat2 entry, that should give you an idea what the OXP does, but many are missing their original readme files.

The ones I wrote myself (Assassins, Black Monks, Renegades & Asteroid Storm) have readmes included, but unfortinatley the readme's to many exelent OXPs (Boyracers, Torus etc) were lost in the Crash.

If you are writing a new OXP it is considered "good form" to package it as a zip with a readme and a .oxp folder!

Posted: **Wed May 23, 2007 12:37 pm**

@LB: You really shouldn't apologize for making lost OXPs available to new players.

I had hacked my downloads even worse than just removing the read me files.

@Corbeau: If you have any specific OXP in mind, just ask here or do a search on the BB to find out what it does.

I sometimes forget to put the new read me files in the zips when I update one of my own OXPs, you can follow the link in my signature for descriptions.

Posted: **Wed May 23, 2007 8:24 pm**

I have the following OXPs on my machine in the format in which I downloaded them. If anyone need something from them, just PM me. Mind you, I am not sure if all of them still work as they should.

Code: Select all

Cargo_wrecks_teaser_v1.2.zip    hOopyCasino.zip
CobraClipper.zip                halsis.zip
Diso.zip                        impcourier2_dev.zip
GrittyCoriolis.oxp.zip          installed OXP list
Lave.zip                        longway.oxp.zip
MildAudio.oxp.zip               mPakRusties.zip
Ore_processor.zip               newships.oxp.zip
Outrider.zip                    Shield-tail.zip                 
Taranis.zip                     pelamis.v3.oxp.zip
asps.oxp.zip                    ringpod.v1.0.zip
behemoth-v2.3.zip               sunskimmers.zip
cobra3njx.zip                   tianve.zip
custpaint1.zip                  tori.zip
dreams01beta.zip                transhab.oxp_4.zip
fuelpod.zip                     transports.zip
genship.zip                     tugs.zip
globestations.zip               x-ships.oxp.zip

Happy flying,
Oscar

Posted: **Tue Oct 30, 2007 2:24 pm**

I find the way in which information about ships is spread over the wiki a little bit confusing. There seem to be a couple of different pages presenting more or less the same things. Is this for a purpose? Or should one of the contributers bring more clearness into it?

There is http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_Ships , linked from the Oolite main page and the article index.

There is http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Category:Oolite_Ships , which in the article index confusingly appears under the same name "Oolite Ships", but as a subcategory. Its content, however, seems more or less the same than in the former, only the pictures are missing.

There is http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Ships_%28Oolite%29 , presenting some of the ships in a table, again with clickable links like the others (not for all ships, though).

And finally there are some other tables, made for comparison of the ships' specs, again incomplete, namely http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Fastes ... 8Oolite%29 and http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Larges ... 8Oolite%29 .

And of course there are the download links on the http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP page, some linking directly to download directions, some linking to the various single ship-pages in the wiki.

Quite confusing for my taste.

Part of the background of this is that Cmdr Wyvern asked me to put a ship OXP of his, the Dragon.oxp up on the wiki. But I really don't know how and where to start.

I know that some people already did put a lot of effort into these pages and keeping them up to date, the name of Dr. Nil springing into mind. So my hope is that there are perhaps some thoughts and ideas out there on how to organize things (and especially ships, in this case) better on the wiki.

******

Similar, but not that confusing is the way the pages about OXPs are sorted. The central page, listing all the OXPs and their download locations is simply called http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP and is hiding somewhere on the index page, while on top of the page the unsuspecting user would perhaps already have clicked the subcategory http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Catego ... sion_packs , in order to get to download locations.

I would vote for (1) renaming the "OXP" page, either to something like "Table of all OXPs" or "OXP download links" or something of the like and (2) putting it on the main page (EDIT2: Oops! Is already there! Was I blind? Anyway, suggestion 1 stays as it is). And to keep the system of two entries per row also the FAQ could be made accessible through the main page. Only problem with renaming is that all the external links pointing to the OXP-page from e.g. here in the BB would be broken.

Nevertheless, are there some ideas on this one?

EDIT1: typo fixed

EIDT3: OOPS! Links not working when followed by a comma or full stop. Sorry! Edited them out.

Posted: **Tue Oct 30, 2007 2:36 pm**

I've (slowly) been getting round to sorting out the OXP page. The format I've gone for is that if the OXP only adds one ship, the link on the table (does / will when I get round to it) go to the Ship page entry for the ship, and the download link is on the ship page. If the OXP includes missions or lots of ships (eg the Master & Commanders Specials / X ships), the link on the OXP page goes to a Wiki page giving some info about the OXP with a download and wiki links to information about indiviual ships or stations added by the OXP is shown in the Ships / Stations section of the table. Apart from my own OXPs though, I've only so far done this for Ageidien's Specials / X-ships, Military, Thargoid Wars, & Hoopy Casino. I'd vote for somthing similar if peeps want to improve the linking on the OXP page. Jumping directly to a download can be annoying if the player wanted to find about a bit about what the OXP did first before downloading.

Posted: **Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:44 am**

Commander McLane wrote:
Part of the background of this is that Cmdr Wyvern asked me to put a ship OXP of his, the Dragon.oxp up on the wiki. But I really don't know how and where to start.

I know that some people already did put a lot of effort into these pages and keeping them up to date, the name of Dr. Nil springing into mind. So my hope is that there are perhaps some thoughts and ideas out there on how to organize things (and especially ships, in this case) better on the wiki.

The ships page as it is set up at the moment isn't very practical for making updates. I don't know how to solve this. When I have made updates I have had to change everything from the new ship and down to keep the four columns. A new way would be nice. Preferably one which doesn't involve deleting all those thumbnails and ship pages I made

Posted: **Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:26 pm**

The question is whether there is a way of handling tables that makes it easy to insert a new element anywhere, and the rest would move automatically.

Having to re-write the whole table each time is of course annoying. I can understand you.

So is there a smart way to handle this?

Cause I like the http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_Ships page and would like to have it as the central place for everything about ships. I'd rather trash the category page http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Category:Oolite_Ships , which in my view seems to be a confusing doublette of the former.

Another question: Is there a template for the single ship-pages? Or do I take one of them and re-save it under another name? And how do I do that?

Posted: **Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:50 pm**

I don't know if there's any easy way to handle tables, but I agree that it should be implemented if it exists.

I think that the Category page is ok for Wiki editors since it has a link that shows which ship description pages are still stubs (I didn't know of this page before you linked to it). Lots for ships still need a description.

The way I make a new page (as far as i remember) is to begin with copying a ship entry on the Oolite Ships page. When the info has been changed to that for the new ship, the page is made for editing automatically (again - as far as I remember) and can be accessed simply by clicking on the link - and I'd recommend to copy the content of another ship page to start with. The thumbnail page is not automatically but is displayed in red. Click on the red link and you will be given the option to upload an image.

The thumbs I've made were grabbed from the demoships screen with 'o'. Then the image is cropped to fit just around the ship itself. The background and any other non-ship detail (like parts of 'Press Space Commander') is deleted (make selections with magic wand and or polygonal lasso and press 'delete'). Then the image is resized so that the largest dimension is 100 pixels. Finally the canvas is resized to make the smallest dimension 100 pixels also, and the image is flattened with with white as your background color and saved as a png.

edited

Posted: **Wed Oct 31, 2007 2:08 pm**

Dr. Nil wrote:
The way I make a new page (as far as i remember) is to begin with copying a ship entry on the Oolite Ships page. When the info has been changed to that for the new ship, the page is made for editing automatically (again - as far as I remember) and can be accessed simply by clicking on the link - and I'd recommend to copy the content of another ship page to start with. The thumbnail page is not automatically but is displayed in red. Click on the red link and you will be given the option to upload an image.

The thumbs I've made were grabbed from the demoships screen with 'o'. Then the image is cropped to fit just around the ship itself. The background and any other non-ship detail (like parts of 'Press Space Commander') is deleted (make selections with magic wand and or polygonal lasso and press 'delete'). Then the image is resized so that the largest dimension is 100 pixels. Finally the canvas is resized to make the smallest dimension 100 pixels also, and the image is flattened with with white as your background color and saved as a png.

*sigh* Sounds complicated. Okay, I'll give it a try (but not today or tomorrow, and probably not any time soon).

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2007 10:22 am**

I've updated the Oolite Main Page, adding into the table a link to the FAQ and, thinking what other information a user might want to adress from the main page, another one to the Planet list. If you have other suggestions for the bottom left space, feel free to change it.

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:12 am**

Good job, well done.

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:25 am**

Right now I'm trying to make a wiki page for a new ship. Looking at the existing pages I've discovered that in the template for the ship stats there is an entry for gunmounts. But that doesn't show up on the stats table, because it is suppressed, supposedly by this command in the template:

Code: Select all

class="hiddenStructure{{{version|}}}"

Any ideas why this is so?

(PM'ing Winston as well, as he has set up the page.)

Posted: **Tue Nov 06, 2007 12:55 pm**

Category: Oolite Ships is automatically maintained. Any page containing [[Category:Oolite Ships]] or using the {{Infobox ShipStats Oolite}} template is automatically listed on it, in alphabetical order. Categories are also a familiar way for experienced Mediawiki users to navigate, and the proportion of Web users with Mediawiki experience is growing pretty fast.
Oolite Ships is manually maintained, which requires anyone adding or removing ship pages to do the right thing, which takes effort, and therefore won’t get done. It also requires more bandwidth and is slower to skim through. I’d suggest renaming it to “Oolite ships spotter’s guide” or similar and relegating it to a secondary role.
Fastest Ships (Oolite), Largest Ships (Oolite) and Ships (Oolite) also need manual maintenance and hard work, and are clearly of secondary importance. The latter in particular has not received it. I question its usefulness.
If you move a page, such as OXP, the software will by default create a redirect page so old links continue to work. However, it’s a big page with three essentially orthogonal types of information. I suggest it be split into Oolite expansion packs, Table of Oolite expansion packs and Oolite expansion packs by category – although I submit that replacing the latter with appropriate wiki categories would be the Right Thing, as it would reduce the amount of work required to add a new OXP correctly (thus improving the odds of new OXPs actually being added correctly).

Oolite Bulletins

Please use the wiki for OXPs