The Gateway Device - Oolite forever

[DaddyHoggy]

I like the idea of an expandable from the point of view of all you top-notch, gung-ho, nothing scares me, the elite-of-elite type players could go and play missions and fight ships that the rest of us mere mortals would never dare venture, BUT....

the current eight (portions of the same) galaxy have even more potential than currently being exploited.

I'd like to see hostile take-overs of Corporate States, thus plunging them temporarily into feudal or Anarchy states before re-emerging, newly-branded and Corporate States once more.

Sub-catergories of the main trading types i.e. you buy "generic" food at say 2.4Cr and Sell at 5.6Cr or you can take a punt a buy "Goat Soup" specifically for 3.4Cr and find that it sells for 10.2Cr at your destination.

Shipping items that take up large portions of your hold - i.e. how do you move a whole combine harvester (machinery) from an industrial world to the argricultural world that needs it? You may be able to break it up so that it fits into 1 ton cannisters but surely you need to take 5-10 tons of "it" in one trip?

Saving at non-main stations/ships so that you can go deep space xploring as part of a fleet and/or battle armarda.

So, the main game itself has loads of potential to take it from the brilliant to the sublime...

[Cholmondely]

The "How does the seed work" thread in the Expansion Pack forum has made me think about making an idea I had public. I was planning to keep it a secret and only try to implement it at the time of the MNSR, whenever that might be, but as I cannot dedicate too much time on coding anymore, I think I'll just document it here, if someone in the future would like to try to make it happen.

The idea I had combines a new piece of equipment with giving Oolite the potential to expand itself by increasing its content as years go by, even long after development on it has finished. So, here goes with the blueprints:

The equipment is called The Gateway Device. It can be obtained only at tech level 15 worlds. It costs a fortune and then some. What does it do then?

You will not be able to see what it does until you arrive at G8 and one year since the release of the version containing this feature (lets call it v2.0 for example's sake for now) has passed. One year (realtime) after the release of v2.0, G9 will be unlocked. Meaning, an intergalactic jump from G8 will not take you back to G1, but will throw you into G9. If you don't have TGD and do an intergalactic jump, you will return normally to G1, as usual. Now, two years after the release of v2.0, galaxy 10 will be unlocked. Meaning, any galactic jump from G9 will get you to a completely new galaxy, if you have TGD installed at the time of the jump. And so on and so forth. There is no real limit, although I was thinking that something like 10-15 new galaxies could be a reasonable quantity to have, essentially giving the game 10-15 years of self expansion.

All this will be achievable just by buying the thing and having it installed. If you activate the device - and a new key will have to be defined for this - then TGD will catapult you back to G1, regardless of where you happen to be at the time and get itself removed from the equipment list. A new one will have to be obtained to reach the "outer galaxies" again. This is to avoid having to travel through 16-17 galaxies just to return to the first one, if that this is what you wanted to do.

If you think it sounds complex, you are right. I had only a small play with the idea when I was trying to get the user controlled intergalactic jump behaviours to work and it requires plenty of coding and even more plenty of testing (plus fiddling with the computer clock to test correct additions of galaxies etc.), but I think it can be done. It will allow players to keep discovering new things and adventures years after the final release of Oolite.

As a teaser, I will let you have a glimpse at galaxy 9. More could be coming but don't take this as promise or commitment. Just take it for what it is: an idea for the future.

Did anything ever come of this?

[another_commander]

Not really, no. Its functionality requires procedurally generated galaxies which was a thing back in 2008 but we moved away from them later.

[Redspear]

procedurally generated galaxies which was a thing back in 2008 but we moved away from them later.

Are we still tied to 256 (?) systems per galaxy or would adding another x planets to planetinfo.plist be enough to have the game recognise them?

Presumably the 'size' of the galaxy in terms of actual space (canvas size) is preset. Would that be correct?

[Cody]

Damn my old eyes! I keep reading this as the Getaway Device!

[maik]

Damn my old eyes! I keep reading this as the Getaway Device!

I keep thinking of the Heechee saga from Frederik Pohl, one of the books is called „Gateway“. [i know this belongs to fiction…]

[Cody]

I keep thinking of the Heechee saga from Frederik Pohl...

A good read, is that!

[Cholmondely]

As a teaser, I will let you have a glimpse at galaxy 9. More could be coming but don't take this as promise or commitment. Just take it for what it is: an idea for the future.

Any chance of seeing this one?

[another_commander]

Any chance of seeing this one?

No, we moved away from procedural galaxy generation a long time ago and the g9 idea depended on it,