Oolite Bulletins

Capt. Slog wrote:

It's a supercobra. It rotates in the tunnel.

The SC has no subentities attached to it, so it must be something else with you. Inside the structure you should be able to turn around a bit. Specially at the end of the tunnel were it widens up. Although I only tried it with a boa that is more slim than a cobra.

Capt. Slog wrote:

Eric Walch wrote:

Capt. Slog wrote:

I'm having difficulty auto docking with a hackers outpost. Crashes every time. Is this a feature or a bug, does anybody know?

I could be the same bug with player ship subentities that leads to crashes inside structures like fuel-station thargoid-hives etc.
In that case it is the type of ship you are using that leads to the crashes. Currently Oolite seems not to support rotated player-ship subentities like turrets very well.

It's a supercobra. It rotates in the tunnel.

Hi, Capt. Slog!

Auto-docking with a Hacker Outpost or Salvage Gang may be tricky. I wouldn't advise to do it.

Your docking computer is far from being perfect. It may lead you on a docking course, and then decide in the last minute to do some adjustments right in front of the docking bay. This is okay if you're out in the open, like you are with any usual station. However, if you happen to be in a long, straight tunnel, it is generally not a good idea to turn and go a few dozen meters sideways. Unfortunately your docking computer is too stupid to realize that your ship is in a tunnel. Bang! Press Space, Commander!

So my only advice would be that you skip the docking computer in case of Hacker Outposts and Salvage Gangs, and dock manually. Should be really easy anyway, because they don't rotate, and the long tunnel makes it very easy to align perfectly.

Finally succeded. I.ve had this problem with other stations, occasionally. This time I must have just had a run of bad luck.

Commander McLane,
So it wasn't just bad luck, after all. I did try manually, after using auto to line up. The problem I had then was an FPS of 5, left me with adjustment problems. This abnormally low rate seems to be associated with Anarchies, particularly if there is a station in the vacinity, I had to abandon a Random Hits mission because I couldn't line up the target. Funnily enough, after restarting the game I was able to complete it, any ideas/tips about the slowdown? Terrific oxp though (would've been deleted otherwise), the description doesn't really do it justice.

First of all, 5 FPS are indeed good for nothing. I immediatly understand that manoeuvering is simply impossible under these conditions.

Which specs does your computer have? Myself I am playing on a first generation MacBook Pro, Core Duo, 2 GHz, 1.5 GB Ram. I get about 30-50 FPS in front of a Hacker Outpost or Salvage Gang.

What is slowing it down are the shaders. Before I implemented the shaderified asteroid models there was no slowdown at all. So perhaps playing in simple shader mode would help you.

There is also currently a bug in the shaders of both asteroids, which I haven't fixed yet due to a long absence while it was discovered. As soon as I get to it, I will upload version 2.2. I don't know, however, whether this bug is responsible for the slowdown.

If nothing else works and you're still stuck with 5 FPS in the vicinity of one of the asteroids, you should probably consider to downgrade to Anarchies 1.1, which still uses asteroid models without shaders. Perhaps less pretty than the ones with shaders, but definitely without slowdown.

Capt. Slog wrote:

Terrific oxp though (would've been deleted otherwise), the description doesn't really do it justice.

Thanks a lot!

Laptop with duo 1.73 1 Gb ram. Reduced shaders to simple and off. Simple gave me 13 fps at a Salvage Gang which was OK for docking. Off gave no further benefits. I think the problem could be with graphics and also Vista. Pah!

Hm, so it seems that your laptop simply cannot cope very well with shaders. I'd like to know what experiences you have with other models with a heavy use of shaders. Have you for instance tried to install and fly by one of Griff's revised ship models? Or use the PAGroove stations?

I'm also afraid that fixing the shader bug won't help you, because it actually affects only the Salvage Gang, not the Hacker Outpost.

And, by the way:

Capt. Slog wrote:

..., the description doesn't really do it justice.

I'd like to know which description you are referring to. I thought the readMe (and the OXPs wiki page) were quite extensive.

Is there any particular reason why this oxp is incompatible with 1.73. In other words can I delete or modify the requires.plist

Ark wrote:

Is there any particular reason why this oxp is incompatible with 1.73. In other words can I delete or modify the requires.plist

I think it was just limited as a precaution of McLane. It does work with 1.73 but will than write often warnings in the log about deprecated functions that really will stop working with 1.74.

Like Eric says. I am going to make it 1.73-ready as soon as 1.73 is out. But I'm too lazy to build from trunk, so any usage with versions above 1.72.99 is at your own risk. Personally I am not aware of anything that would stop working, but then again I haven't followed the trunk-developments that took place during the last five months.

Bottom line: I guess you can simply remove the max-version, but I can't guarantee for anything.

Trunk is also not a versioned release, so in a sense it is fair to say that nothing is known to be compatible, and that furthermore, it should only be used for testing and everything is at your own risk