Oolite Bulletins

phonebook wrote:

i like the rings, they are functional and quick

There's one enhancement I could think of:

Currently the player sees the rings (when launching or jumping), then sees free space and then the game does pause for a short period as the scripts are executed which will add ships, check missions and such.

I would prefer it if the pause would either be directly after the rings, before showing space or during the rings...

Screet

Lestradae wrote:

A_C, would it be very difficult to allow alternate versions of the hyperjump and docking rings each to be oxp'ed?

(Already dreading the answer)

L

Actually, if someone comes up with an impressive ring.dat model, this can be easily oxpable.

For anyone who wants to see what I mean, try this:
- Rename the ring.dat file to something else, like ring.dat.original.
- Make a copy of the splinter.dat file in the Models folder and name it ring.dat.
- Launch Oolite with Shift pressed and launch from station. The resulting effect is already quite a bit awesome.

Yes, that's rather good, A_C.

A more impressive witchspace tunnel would be a nice feature. I'd prefer to avoid Star Trek and Star Wars references though and Keep Things British ... the 1970's Tom Baker era Dr Who tunnel would be a good model IMO.

I've always considered the 'material' travelled through during Witchspace transit to be something that can't be comprehended by the human (or at least, sentient) eye (or at least, sensory organ). In my mind, ships with a small crew requirement like the Cobras most often use 'Hypersleep', when the ship uses something similar to a hypnotic trance and then a form of suspended animation to while away the hours between departure and destination point. On larger ships with bigger crews, this would be unpractical, it would require that all the crew 'take positions for hypersleep', either going to their bunks or settling in seats and looking at monitors for Hypersleep induction. In these cases, I'd say that the ship's external viewscreens become blank, except for diagnostic screens that repeatedly run on the various vital systems in use during Hyperspace.

So going by this assumption, for a small ship, the animation would be 'eyelids closing' and 'eyelids opening', while big ships would have scrolling data for a few seconds.

Although I agree there should be some differentiation between the Hyperspace and docking animations, I wonder what requirements there would need to be put in place to create a 'cut sequence' docking routine and whether they would work for those of us with less than cutting edge (read: steam-powered) computers.

Captain Hesperus

Captain Hesperus wrote:

there should be some differentiation between the Hyperspace and docking animations

Captain Hesperus

I agree there, but please no "cut sequence".

For a replacement docking animation, I'd be happy with a rectangular, metallic-looking tunnel effect with maybe the odd decal or two painted on the walls. I'd prefer to keep the first-person perspective at all times, though.

I assume that, in witchspace, a crew performs a range of activities, depending on shift patterns and the length of the jump: routine maintenance, eating, sleeping, cleaning, playing Fox-in-a-Box for duty chits, filling out customs forms and tax returns and other general administrative trivia ... which is why the game decides to slide smoothly past that with a "time passes" animation. The current effect could stand being a bit prettier, is all!

Disembodied wrote:

For a replacement docking animation, I'd be happy with a rectangular, metallic-looking tunnel effect with maybe the odd decal or two painted on the walls. I'd prefer to keep the first-person perspective at all times, though.

I agree there, as well. Have you tried A_C's little switcheroo as above. It's now my default.

i thought the Witchspace travel for the ship was virtually instantaneous, w/ no time for sleeping or anyhting else?

Look at your ship's clock next time you jump.

Not quite, KW. A good deal of the original Elite fluff did talk about it taking some time to get between systems, although obviously not as much time as it might by going by standard means. That was B&Bs excuse for the rings, because they reasoned that instantaneous travel across uhundreds of billions of miles of space was a bit of a stretch of the imagination.

Captain Hesperus

Killer Wolf wrote:

i thought the Witchspace travel for the ship was virtually instantaneous, w/ no time for sleeping or anyhting else?

By all means NO! Have a look when you select a witchspace target next time. The further you jump, the more time is being used, and that's not even linear advancing! Thus, if you are in a hurry, it's better to make multiple short jumps than one large jump.

Screet

El Viejo wrote:

I agree there, as well. Have you tried A_C's little switcheroo as above. It's now my default.

Works for me as a hyperspace jump animation, but I'm less happy with it for docking.

Presume the only way to have two separate animations is for additional lines of code to be added that point to different .dat files on jump or docking.

Actually now that I think about it, you'd probably need 3 different files. 1 for hyperspace, 1 for entering dock and 1 for leaving dock.

Sendraks wrote:

Actually now that I think about it, you'd probably need 3 different files. 1 for hyperspace, 1 for entering dock and 1 for leaving dock.

I suggest 1 for each circumstance. Entering/exiting hyperspace, entering/exiting dock.

Have each one currently point to the same file for the sake of compatibility, and then customise from there.

Edit: Hyperspacious interruptus in intergalactic space is another candidate as well.

Screet wrote:

Killer Wolf wrote:

i thought the Witchspace travel for the ship was virtually instantaneous, w/ no time for sleeping or anyhting else?

By all means NO! Have a look when you select a witchspace target next time. The further you jump, the more time is being used, and that's not even linear advancing! Thus, if you are in a hurry, it's better to make multiple short jumps than one large jump.

El Viejo wrote:

Look at your ship's clock next time you jump.

I don't quite agree. Yes, the time for the outside world advances in square to the distance. But I always assumed that "inside the tunnel" time passes differently from outside of it. Therefore to me it was always clear that witchjumps—from the crew's perspective—always take the same (relatively short) amount of time. Only the time in the destination system has already advanced. And this is the reason why the ship clock has to be adjusted after arriving at your destination.