Oolite Bulletins

Eric / Svengali;

Thanks, I pasted your posts into the TXT file I'm putting together for this.

Important EDIT: By talking about this I HOPE I am not offending any authors of OXPs. I mean to put this together for MY OWN USE only.

Station- By- Tech- Level- has already been covered in the forum...

By government type hasn't, I don't think... and it MIGHT be in the wiki... or economy? I'll have to check...

Thats something to consider...

JUST to show you where my mind is headed... with this input...

Lets say I have a large assortment of stations that I have put together, and I set up strong overriding probabilities by Tech Level AND Government Type AND Economy? I'm considering Griffs Trade Outpost (no neon), extracting neon-GriffsTradeOutpost from YourAdHere, Griffs Gritty Coriolis, the PAGroove stations, and I've downloaded Globe Stations 2.0 and "Military Station" (gwxstations). (I would consider Torus Stations, but there is a minor visual artifact problem with it at present).

I could see the lowest, seediest anarchies (or any type for that matter) with the grittiest, crudest looking stations. Like TL 1, 2, 3 = Griffs Trade Outpost (without neon). Low Tech = Outpost, barely civilized place.

TL 4 thru 6; Griffs Trade Outpost (with "neon" extracted from YourAdHere)... but I customize the neon according to Industrial / Agricultural, and GovType; (i'll have to dig into coding, and examine YAH, I imagine this works by actually defining diff station types, each linked to diff neon).

Ind = adverts for industrial products. Agr = agri products.

Anarchies = seedy ads about "killin folk" (adverts for firearms, ads for narcotics, "wanted posters").

At the other end of the spectrum, CorpStates = fairly civilized ads for travel agencies... media stars (rock stars, actors, actresses)...
... and then for all GovTypes in between I just get creative...

TL 7 + ; this is where the "re-done" Coris come into play; retextured variants that just "look better" than the native coris (and as I mentioned before there is sufficient dialogue on working probabilities already...). Why TL 7; because that is where you can get Maintenance Overhauls, so it is a logical delimiter.

TL 12+ (or say 12 and 13); Re-worked Dodos.

TL 14 / 15 Reworked Icos, and Globe Stations. Maybe Military stations for certain government types (the more "dangerous" ones, say Dictatorships and below... I'd have to look at the wiki to see if there are any TL 15 Industrial Anarchies! hehehe I doubt it... )

For the reworked Dodos and Icos, I would probably look at them, and try to sort some of them by IND/AGR based on subjective impressions about their appearance.

I would not make the stations too dependent on the planetary government, because the planetary government simply has nothing to do at all with the station. The station is none of their business and concern.

All main system stations without any exception are designed, built, deployed, set up, maintained, and run exclusively by GalCop. That is, after all, what GalCop is all about. Enabling trade between the member worlds by running the stations as exclusive trading points. It's the very raison d'etre of GalCop.

As far as I understand in GalCop all members are equal. So what would the Anarchies or Feudals say if they only got the most worn-out equipment? I don't think that would be healthy for the mutual understanding and peace within the co-operative.

CMDR McLane;

Yes, I've calmed down a little from my feverish "pipe dream"...


(and Edit; in addition to the dialogue below, I appreciate your canon-wise thought on it, re: GalCop)

I've selected 5, or possibly 6 OXPs to use. I've "test-driven" all of them individually, temporarily; editing the files to make the stations occur OFTEN so that I can see what they look like in-game (making them all equivalent to Coriolis Stations - just to examine them).

I've decided just to keep it simple and tie them to Tech Level, balancing the probabilities out (as soon as I determine precisely how many stations I will be adding, per "native" type (equivalent to Cori, Dodo, Ico)). For some of these OXPs I will include all variations, for some I will be *reducing* them and trimming them down. Tying some to economy might be nice... but unneccessary. That adds work and filesize... and after a while I wouldn't even notice.

One thing that I MIGHT do for the "higher tech looking stations" is to specifically tie them to systems. If I made specifics for ALL TL 14 and TL 15 stations (specifically, by list), pushing aside the Icos, thats 40 stations. Or just TL 15 = 6 stations.

Or, maybe I will just let them sort themselves out.

I haven't decided yet if I want to "combine" sections of these into one OXP (copy/paste), or just use altered OXPs. Combining them probably isn't that much of a benefit... and more work.

The overall goal is: make sure that the frequency of occurance of all of these new stations is about equal (given tech level).
=====

As far as system_redux... I notice Kaks put in an edit on the previous page of this thread (Thanks Kaks), indicating how much work it would be to insure that system_redux consistantly shows the textures in the F7 screen, as well as when viewed from space.

I was going to say that I looked things up (remember I am still a relative n00b). The wiki indicated 256 systems per galaxy. Thats 2048 systems that I would have to code. Kaks shows 3 lines of coding per system. Thats 6144 lines of code; to specifically tie the various textures to all of the 2048 systems. I don't think it's worth it, just to deal with "odd behavior of the F7 screen"; I can live with system_redux as it is.

(Edit - it would take a long time just to come up with assignments! "Should this one look like a desert? THAT one should be earthlike! But this one should look like a rock".) I could probably use the C++/C compiler on my other computer to * write the file for me *, randomizing it. Maybe have it write certain specifics for certain systems, such as Lave, Tionisla or whatever. To do it properly though, the in-game descriptions should be considered.

And it MIGHT bog things down? I'm not experienced enough to know that... I have 8 Gb of memory, an NVidia 8800GTX Vidcard, an AMD 5200+ dual core CPU (2.6 Ghz)... maybe it wouldn't. But still... JUST to tweak the F7 screen... I will leave things as they are.

Commander McLane wrote:

All main system stations without any exception are designed, built, deployed, set up, maintained, and run exclusively by GalCop.

... in the vanilla game. There's nothing to stop an OXP from replacing the main station with one of its own, and there are a few that do.

Thargoid wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

All main system stations without any exception are designed, built, deployed, set up, maintained, and run exclusively by GalCop.

... in the vanilla game. There's nothing to stop an OXP from replacing the main station with one of its own, and there are a few that do.

Yes, of course an OXP can replace a main station. But the pretense would still be that the whole game is located in the Galactic Co-operative of Worlds, wouldn't it? And that it is a GalCop station.

At least I wasn't aware yet that installing an OXP automatically means that nothing of "vanilla" Oolite's backstory is valid anymore???

Without having read this thread, I was considering mechanisms for making the planet previews match reality earlier today. Fancy that. :-)

Please do, Ahruman... I would love to make SR2 consistent without resorting to a 6.1K line Planetinfo.plist (which I've started on, just in case).

My proposed mechanism is this: planetinfo entries, including universal, can have a “preview_script” entry. This is the name of a script (as in “this.name”) which implements a setUpPlanetPreview(planet, systemInfo) method. The first parameter is the preview planet object, the second is the systemInfo dictionary for the target system.

Very cool... And easy on the OXP'ers, thank you!

So, this'll be ready some time... What? Next Week?

Watches, then...

Because I was considering starting on one myself (what Cmd Cheyd last posted...) EDIT: Three posts back, zero-based...

It would take a massive overdose of coffee to get it done.

I don't know enough about coding for Oolite to add to whatever method is being proposed...

I will "stay tuned"...

<SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION>
BTW JeffBTX, you might be interested in a thread regarding a project I'm currently working on.... It's a page or two back on the Expansion Pack forum, so you may not have seen it.

System Redux 2.0
</SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION>

Cmd Cheyd;

THANKs, I just speed-read through the thread. Looks very promising so I will watch it. (pardon if the below dialogue was covered already...)

One thing that I was going to do for system_redux 1.2.1, was that I was going to take planet descriptions into account... I would just use the planet descriptions from the wiki (which are hopefully accurate, and simply extracted from the game...);

# 1. Qube (152,205), {40,74,159,187,194,240,242,251} within 7.0 LY. Radius 5528 km.
Corporate State, Rich Agri. Pop. 3.7 B, Prod. 16280 MCr. HC: 8, TL: 7, Human Colonials.
Qube is reasonably well known for its great dense forests but scourged by deadly civil war.

# 7. Lave (20,173), {39,46,55,129,147,255} within 7.0 LY. Radius 4116 km.
Dictatorship, Rich Agri. Pop. 2.5 B, Prod. 7000 MCr. HC: 6, TL: 5, Human Colonials.
Lave is most famous for its vast rain forests and the Laveian tree grub.

# 19. Azaqu (6,110), {0,27,71,72,165,193,239} within 7.0 LY. Radius 6662 km.
Democracy, Average Agri. Pop. 3.7 B, Prod. 11840 MCr. HC: 7, TL: 7, Red Slimy Lobsters.
The planet Azaqu is most famous for its pink oceans and Zero-G cricket.

#251. Xexeti (146,237), {1,74,187,194,229,233,240,254} within 7.0 LY. Radius 3474 km.
Anarchy, Poor Agri. Pop. 1.6 B, Prod. 1536 MCr. HC: 8, TL: 3, Large Red Frogs.
This planet is notable for the Xexetiian edible arts graduate and its great volcanoes.

#255. Orerve (12,203), {7,23,46,55,147,177,204} within 7.0 LY. Radius 5132 km.
Feudal, Mainly Ind. Pop. 2.5 B, Prod. 7000 MCr. HC: 7, TL: 6, Human Colonials.
This planet is a dull place.

Commander McLane wrote:

Thargoid wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

All main system stations without any exception are designed, built, deployed, set up, maintained, and run exclusively by GalCop.

... in the vanilla game. There's nothing to stop an OXP from replacing the main station with one of its own, and there are a few that do.

Yes, of course an OXP can replace a main station. But the pretense would still be that the whole game is located in the Galactic Co-operative of Worlds, wouldn't it? And that it is a GalCop station.

At least I wasn't aware yet that installing an OXP automatically means that nothing of "vanilla" Oolite's backstory is valid anymore???

Not necessarily - for example see the station around Aqualina in Aquatics, and it's back-story.

I was meaning more that you're (again) making sweeping statements that may not be true in Ooniverses of people other than your own. The original comment was relating to your part in italics, the generalisation without the quantifier that it relates only to original Elite vanilla canon (which some of us prefer not to let get in the way of a good improvement in gameplay).

JeffBTX wrote:

...

All those descriptions are quasi-randomly generated, and i don't think there was much diversity among them, you'd end up with alot of similar planets.
And how do you texture a planets based on "this planet is a dull place" a planet can look awesome yet still be very boring to go to.
Also, Famous planets 2.0 oxp does alot of what you're trying to achieve already (although for only 50 planets in Gal1)

EDIT: SORRY, this is wordy, it is just to show where I am "coming from".

I didn't know that the planet descriptions were quazi-randomly generated? I thought those descriptions were set... from game to game... that they are universal.

"... dull place" = subjective.
"diversity"... also somewhat subjective. But whoever codes it ("the final solution") would probably insure that there IS diversity.

This concerns me a bit... a snippit that I copied from some other thread and archived:
==========================================
OXP's that fritz with the maps. And will eventually need to be addressed

Assassins
Aquatics
Famous Planets 2.0
Ionics
Lave
Lovecats
Oolite Shipyards Extension WiP V0.4
==========================================

At present, I am running and archiving a series of games under Vanilla Oolite, NO OXPs. Whenever I work to doing my goals (ultimately, simply the native missions), I use those savegames and back them up. They are archived and "closed" when certain situations occur. OXPs are NOT loaded while doing these, I flush the cache after clearing the savegame folder (just to be sure), and THEN I restore my current savegame (Native Missions) and do some work.

Whenever I want to check or play with or just mess around with an OXP, I will use my most advanced savegame... whatever that happens to be... but I will not archive the saves. They are "experimental", and thrown away eventually.

I want a "better looking" game, but not OXPs that would be a drastic change from "Vanilla Oolite" (and naturally anything that might interefere with native missions... actually there seems to be very few of those, perusing old forum posts).

The game that I would like to "run with" would be mostly eye candy;

Better looking universe, better looking ships.

For the most part, system_redux does it for all of the planets and the entire Ooniverse. There is JUST that one little odd thing with the F7 screen... and it is minor, NOT a showstopper. I AM watching though, in case it ever gets fixed (using whatever methodology). It WOULD be nice if planet appearences more or less matched system descriptions... but not a showstopper if they didn't.

Ships: Right now, sungs_detailed_textures does me just fine for ships, UNTIL Griffs Normalmapped Ships is complete as a set. I DON'T (I've decided) want any OXP's that ADD new ships to the game (in general). That's "just me". The SuperCobra was very tempting... but I decided not to.

I AM currently working on, and integrating 5 or 6 OXPs that re-work station appearance (although sungs_detailed_textures does that too, at one level)... but this will add more variety to the stations. Systems will still have 1 station per system.

So far, I am ONLY interested in 1 OXP that is mission related; Random Hits 1.3.6. But I have decided to make drastic alterations to it. This is ongoing work. Basically, I am REMOVING all of the unimplemented beta stuff... stuff that "just takes up room". Also I am taking out all of the non-vanilla ships that occur (except for the mining machines that operate near the Seedy Space Bars).