Oolite Bulletins

Eh, I did a few snafus on a wiki myself.
It took me a while to figure it out too: now, whenever I make a change I look at the revision history just to double check on myself!

Captain Berf wrote:

Is there a simple & clean way to word the caveat for choosing a role that will work in all or most cases (to bring up the required ship) e.g. only select a defined role with the shipname in it. Or is this wrong.

It is almost right. Whenever you use the :spawn macro, you must use a role. If the ship you intend to spawn has a generic role like hunter, trader etc., then you must add an identifying role in its roleset yourself, then use that role to spawn it. If the ship contains an identifying role in its roleset already, then you can use that.

Example: The Griff Python has roles "trader pirate". In order to spawn a Griff Python using the console, I have to add the role "griffPython" in the set by editing shipdata.plist, then execute :spawn griffPython in the console. As you have already seen, doing a :spawn trader does not guarantee that a Griff Python will be spawned, because there are many other ships that also have the role "trader" in their roleset and the game will pick one from the available options. But griffPython is a role that exists (because I added it myself) solely for the ship I want to generate.

So if you want to spawn shipX and shipX has only generic roles defined:
modifying it to
is sufficient (and correct)? Or does it require further definition.

It's sufficient and correct. Note though that the key is roles, not role.

The first post has been edited and is up for review.

That is one *&!@ complicated answer to

"I made a texture, how do I view it?"

No one expects the JavaScript Inquisition.

Captain Berf wrote:

So if you want to spawn shipX and shipX has only generic roles defined:

Code: Select all

<key>shipX</key>
<dict>
...
<key>role</role>
<string>trader escort hunter</string>
...
</dict>

modifying it to

Code: Select all

<key>shipX</key>
<dict>
...
<key>role</key>
<string>shipX-trader trader escort hunter</string>
...
</dict>

is sufficient (and correct)? Or does it require further definition.

By the way: I'd suggest to all ship designers to always give their creations one unique role (preferably preceded by their own name or the OXP's name), in order to make the ship "spawnable". It doesn't to any harm, and whoever would like to see that specific ship can profit from it.

Example: All ships contained in Personalities.oxp follow the same role convention. Here's my own character as an example: "personalities" is the general role for all ships contained. It is used to create one of them randomly when the player arrives in a system.

"personalities_launcher" is used to make one of the ships launch from the main station (or to make it dock with the main station). Ships too big to dock don't get this role, so nothing can go wrong.

"personalities_privateer" is one of currently three choices describing the basic behaviour of the ship. Only one of those three is given to any one ship (the other two being "personalities_hunter" and "personalities_cruiser"). So if you want to create any random personality with a pirate-like behaviour pattern, you can spawn a "personalities_privateer".

"personalities_mclane" finally is a unique role. No other ship will ever get this role again. So if you spawn it, you will get me, and me only.

It was a real kick to spawn a Generation Ship as I had always wanted to see one.

What happens if you've been assimilated into personalities and spawn a doppelganger? Will the Commander have a goatee? [rhetorical question]

Captain Berf wrote:

It was a real kick to spawn a Generation Ship as I had always wanted to see one.

Well, you could always do a misjump and see them in their natural environment, y'know!

Oh, and I would strongly advise you to do so, because they actually look different. The greenish interstellar space background glow alters their colour quite a lot.

Can you force a misjump?

Never had one in Oolite / happened way too often in the big old E. [Thargon H*ll] I figured it was just deserts since I found a way [a bug] to cross the galaxy on one tank.

Re: the Generation Ship -- that they appeared to be totally sealed up in it was disturbing, like driving by an insular cult compound.

Captain Berf wrote:

Can you force a misjump?

Affirmative. Start a hyperspace countdown and about two seconds before zero do a full pitch up and maintain it so that on T-zero you have full pitch. Just make sure to have enough fuel for the jump back to civilization.

Back to the original topic: as an alternative to launching from the station, etc,etc, after some very recent changes in trunk (rev2772), you can type
in the js debug console when you're docked at a station, and you'll see the ship in question spinning happily on the mission screen...

In 1.73.4 you can still type the slightly-less-catchy to get the same result!

Of course, you won't be able to judge the scale of the ship from the mission screen, but since the original idea was just to check the texture, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

That is very snazzy [which is good in the event it doesn't translate].

Added to the wiki page:

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Viewin ... e_or_Model