i am no expert in these matters

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 8:31 am

Kaks wrote:
You'd have to have a very convincing backstory for things to be otherwise...

You never played Cataclysm! How dare you! DO IT NOW!!!

Screet

Diziet Sma · Post by **Diziet Sma** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 8:33 am

Captain Hesperus wrote:
Consider the hassles the Oresrians get, just for looking like and flying similar ships to the Thargoids...

Captain Hesperus

See Kaks? the convincing backstory already exists..

Edit: Make that two convincing backstories.. I'd forgotten about Cataclysm..

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 9:20 am

@ phonebook: First of all I apologize for the bluntness of the following, I really don't intend to offend you.

I'm sorry if this sounds paternalising, but I suggest you do your homework first. How ships look like, and how they interact with each other, is determined in part by their shipdata (especially their scanClass and bounty), and in part by their AI.

If you want to start OXPing, there is no way around studying the existing scripts first. And if you want to do an OXP of your own, you should at least basically understand what let's say an AI does. So the answer to the question (e.g.) "whom, why and how attack the Thargoids" is found no-where else than in thargoidAI.plist, the file inside Oolite's AIs-folder inside Oolite's Resources-folder. Open it and study it. And then, with the help of the publicly available documentation, find out what the AI-method scanForNonThargoids does, and why, and how.

All the answers to your questions from your initial post are there, in the game, in your computer, not here in the boards. And the Wiki enables you to understand what you find there.

And then you can start to work on questions like "what AI do I have to script for a Thargoid ship in order to make it to this-and-that". And then you go ahead and actually do it. By this time you should already know how to assign an AI to your ship in its shipdata. And so on, and so on.

A final word of encouragement: It is all doable, and it's not even that difficult. Many of us have done it before, scripting OXP which do marvellous things.

But—to use an analogy—before you start writing a novel in a foreign language, make sure you actually understand that language. For this purpose reading other novels first helps enormously.

phonebook · Post by **phonebook** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 9:48 am

no- jolly sound advice! you are definately not paternalizing- the advice is hardly father to son stuff! and nor are you patronising

i have been looking at the innards of anarchies and black monks- and it seems that the latter provides some of the answers (or could do) in the way that it generates ai ships that are debtors.

in fact everything seems do able apart from the original thargoid delegation changing sides and attacking its escort

out of interest, how much of the wiki should I have absorbed before being able to post on these matters?

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 9:52 am

Wiki on shipdata.plist, how to AI and possibly Javascript would be a start, plus looking inside the AI and shipdata plists in the trunk code at the standard Thargoid craft.

My original answer, whilst "in character" was actually a serious one to the questions you posed.

Captain Hesperus · Post by **Captain Hesperus** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 9:57 am

phonebook wrote:
no- jolly sound advice! you are definately not paternalizing- the advice is hardly father to son stuff! and nor are you patronising

I dunno, I wish my dad'd taught me the dos and don'ts of scripting:
Daddy Hesperus: "Well, son, uhhm...You see, there's native AIs and custom AIs....Errr, and if you want your shipdata to be compatable with the native code....Look, why don't you ask your mother about this sort of thing...."

Ah, happy memories.

Captain Hesperus

phonebook · Post by **phonebook** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:07 am

haha!

actually i've got as far as working out the native and the custom AI (well their existence)

variables are the way forward!

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:14 am

phonebook wrote:
i have been looking at the innards of anarchies and black monks- and it seems that the latter provides some of the answers (or could do) in the way that it generates ai ships that are debtors.

I would expect that checking Cataclysm would also help you, as that's working with Thargoids already!

Screet

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:19 am

Argh! And here I am, below 4000 rank still

Cataclysm does start at 5400, doesn't it?

I really have to think of something

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:31 am

Lestradae wrote:
Argh! And here I am, below 4000 rank still

Cataclysm does start at 5400, doesn't it?

I really have to think of something

Get a Merlin and do some GalNavy missions

...and don't forget to clean up remaining thargons with an e-bomb!

Hmmm. I *really* need to get my hands on the source now, for modifications so that my caduceus won't be too powerful with it's MASC and turrets anymore

Screet

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:37 am

Screet wrote:
... so that my caduceus won't be too powerful with it's MASC and turrets anymore

When OSE is finished, it won't ... comparably

Diziet Sma · Post by **Diziet Sma** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 11:35 am

Lestradae wrote:
Argh! And here I am, below 4000 rank still

Cataclysm does start at 5400, doesn't it?

I really have to think of something

Tionisla Graveyard comes to mind... if you want the quick-n-dirty route..

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 12:39 pm

Fine that you don't feel patronized (and that was indeed the word I was after).

phonebook wrote:
out of interest, how much of the wiki should I have absorbed before being able to post on these matters?

Actually, and to be quite honest, you should be aware of everything listed under the Oolite_scripting category.

Of course, "being aware" is not the same as "absorbing", so nobody would expect you to learn every detail by heart. But the absolute basics would be:

What kind of plists are there in Oolite, where are they, and what do they do? Wiki links: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP_howto and http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Property_list
AIs: While also stored as ".plist" files, they are something else altogether. Also: Where are Oolite's AIs stored, and how do they work? Basic Wiki link: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/State_machine , and http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP_howto_AI for reference
Basic JS-syntax (not covered in the Wiki, but there are other places to learn that). Don't bother with learning the so-called "legacy" scripting system, which used ".plist"s for scripting.

By the way: All of that is also linked from the Writing OXPs section of the Oolite FAQ in the wiki. We somehow expected that someone interested in scripting might have a look over there, too.

phonebook · Post by **phonebook** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:05 pm

well i have been ploughing my way through such stuff

but i wasnt in this thread trying to get anyone to do that for me- merely give me some pointers or ideas, not in computer speak, but in english

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