Oolite Bulletins

Thargoid wrote:

And yes it is something of a mantra for many of us, simply because we get reports so often by people who are trying to use trunk for gaming and who don't know the "back history" nor have heard the warnings. Consider yourself the blessed exception to the rule

Were I an exception, I wouldn't have to stop every time before I post to ask myself, "Now, is this going to be misconstrued? How can I word it to make it clear that I'm aware of the situation, and am just passing along info that might be useful?" In this case, the answers were, "Yes", and "Some other way than you did."

But eh, no hard feelings, at least on my end. Software maintenance and development is a rough game, and one should not enter it from either direction without expecting to get one's hair mussed now and again. A few laser burns here and there are just the cost of doing business.

Thargoid wrote:

Sounds fairy snuff to me

You're the exception for 2 reasons -

Ah, well. Bad problem reports are easy. Approaching "good" becomes harder the closer you get. And this wasn't even a problem, just an expected (if unwelcome) reaction to a known code change. If I wanted a "fix", that's easy: Go run 1.74.1. But I kinda like having "You have abducted Captain Mort. Dock to make a choice." in my mission messages. I'm imagining all the gruesome ways he'll be terminated once the mission resumes. ("But but ... he ejected right into my scoops, honest! No way to avoid him." And in fact, he did get terminated correctly the next time I docked (by a flesh-eating virus, ewww!), but the message remains. I'm planning to try the released version tonight to see how it reacts to that commander's save file.)

Thargoid wrote:

So certainly no hard feelings on my side either, indeed it's nice to know a little more about people and their skills/abilities to know what level to pitch discussions at when bugs are reported...

Not so nice to know that caracal will pop off like that before he's had his morning cuppa, eh? My apologies to all involved, and sixty hours of scrubbing the docking bay with a trumble-bristle toothbrush as penance.

caracal wrote:

Eric Walch wrote:

It was never thought of that someone would want to cancel a mission. But, if you want to be a coward: I added now a cancel option. It will cost you 10% of the contract fee and also your status it lowered. The cancel option will only be there if you have enough money to cancel....

Just uploaded it as version 1.4.1.

Nice one, Eric. I cannot imagine ever cancelling a mission, but it's nice to know the option is there.

So I'm happy to report that there CAN be a legit reason to cancel a mission. OK, here are the particulars of a bug it got me around (Thanks, Eric!!!)

I was running RH1.4. Had a medium difficulty assignment and Constrictor Hunt at the same time. Got to the galactic jump-off point in the mission, and forgot that that would cancel my RH mission, so I jumped. Only it didn't cancel the RH mission, instead every time I went to a bar I got a screenful of entity names or such (long names, lots of underscores). Completing ConHunt didn't solve (as I had hoped it might.) And of course to complete the RH mission I would have had to jump around back to G1 - now while I have the creds for it, I'm now in G2 for now and plan to remain here for a day or two heheh.
Installing RH1.4.1 allowed me to cancel that missions and (so far) everything seems to be back to normal. Nevertheless, that bug does still exist (probably a conflict between RH and active ConHunt mission.)

Again, thanks for adding that function (which will never get used by me again LoL - well, unless something bugs out again hehehe )

OK, something's still not quite right with my Random Hits (though it's playable.) My standing with the Society of Bounty Hunters: they "regard you as a noobie random_hits_huntertitle02." (Messages to me refer to me as Eliminator - a tad lofty for a noobie, I would think )

EDIT: So I ran into some other bounty hunters, and they warned me that such-and-such in the underworld doesn't think kindly of me. The hunter addressed me as random_hits_huntertitle02 RAVEN (hopefully this clue makes fixing or troubleshooting easier.)

myst.RAVEN wrote:

OK, something's still not quite right with my Random Hits (though it's playable.) My standing with the Society of Bounty Hunters: they "regard you as a noobie random_hits_huntertitle02." (Messages to me refer to me as Eliminator - a tad lofty for a noobie, I would think )

Well okay, I was going to do some more checking before I reported this, since the commander I'm currently using has been switched between 1.74.1 and trunk so many times his cheeks are raw, but ... yeah, I'm seeing the same thing. I want to note for the record: this is with the bog standard 1.74.1, nothing experimental about it.

Three other changes I've noted since earlier versions (1.36 and 1.38 ):

• You no longer get the ringing-phone sound effect as soon as you start browsing the bulletin board. For me, this is a welcome change. I still hear it when I actually accept a hit.
• The order of the mini-menu has been swapped, so that "show the next hit" is now first, instead of the "accept" choice. My recollection is that this restores the order they were in back in the 1.72 days, and is a very welcome change.
• A less-welcome change: I see the same three hits without any variation. Well, sometimes the names change, but it's always the same ship, the same price, at the same system. In the olden days (way back in 2008 ) you'd see the same hit come back occasionally, but would more often see new hits at each difficulty level. More recently, with 1.36/1.38, they all seemed to be totally random; I don't recall seeing the same hit twice during a visit. Now, with 1.41, same three on each visit.

As an aside, shouldn't this thread be moved to the Expansion Pack forum?

myst.RAVEN wrote:

OK, something's still not quite right with my Random Hits (though it's playable.) My standing with the Society of Bounty Hunters: they "regard you as a noobie random_hits_huntertitle02." (Messages to me refer to me as Eliminator - a tad lofty for a noobie, I would think )

Its a bug I introduced in 1.4.1. I tried to reduce the code a bit by using:

"random_hits_huntertitle"+Math.floor((score-1)/10)+2

But instead of "random_hits_huntertitle2" this results in "random_hits_huntertitle02". Its all because you cant declare types in JS and instead of a value addition. It does here a string addition here.

So not "0+2=2" but "0 +2 = 02" All because I started the equation with a string.

Surely "random_hits_huntertitle"+Math.floor((score-1)/10+2) would have be better to prevent the string addition. (Its in line 1104 of the file "oolite-randomHits.js" when you don't want to download a whole new oxp.

The other bug was probably fixed in 1.4.1. It only did not show with your 1.4.1 because the bug happened on the cancelling and that happened with you with 1.4.0. But I will double check if I really clear all variables on a Galactic jump.

Thanks, Eric - I actually understood all that! LoL (You must understand, it's been some years since I last did any programming - I guess certain concepts just stay the same!)

Anyhow, I made that change, and... no change (I don't understand why - it should have worked.)
I'm wondering whether it might work to just add the relevant zeros in the lookup in oolite-randomhits.plist... (hey, I may as well try it - will let know whether it worked for me )

myst.RAVEN wrote:

Anyhow, I made that change, and... no change (I don't understand why - it should have worked.)
I'm wondering whether it might work to just add

Probably Oolite is still working with the old cached version. Oolite only looks at the content of oxps if the number changes or one of the modification dates changes. If not it it uses a cached version of the oxp set from the last game to speed up the startup process.

When updating an oxp at the normal way this is no problem, but when editing one internally, you must hold the shift button on startup to force an cache update. And if it does not work, you can download version 1.4.2 were I fixed this. (And tested it this time )

EDIT: Commander McLane somehow managed to send the answer at the same time

myst.RAVEN wrote:

Anyhow, I made that change, and... no change (I don't understand why - it should have worked.)

Did you press SHIFT while restarting Oolite? This forces Oolite to clear its cache. Otherwise the unchanged cached script is used.

Yes, I did try that, a couple of times, both left shift and right. What I'm trying now (inserting 0s into the lookups didn't help) is to play through a contract to the end and see whether things come right - maybe there's something that's been stored somewhere and is waiting to be flushed out - so I'll be back in a half-hour or so

myst.RAVEN wrote:

Yes, I did try that, a couple of times, both left shift and right. What I'm trying now (inserting 0s into the lookups didn't help) is to play through a contract to the end and see whether things come right - maybe there's something that's been stored somewhere and is waiting to be flushed out - so I'll be back in a half-hour or so

Correct, the text on the F5 screen will not be updating its strings until your rank changes.

Ah, thanks, Eric - I'll just keep sending them to their maker, then, until these thugs think better of me (I've noticed that the same text appears somewhere else, in some message, but can't remember where, exactly - I'm sure it will fix itself at the same time, then.)

EDIT: In the interests of not spamming the thread, here's the update as an edit (damn, almost sounds like a GNN announcement...)
Anyhow, yes, it appears to have worked - the F5 text, at the very least, is fixed

I think you can kill the mark using an Ebomb, then you've got to kill his escape capsule if he uses one,

or select the option at a sleazy bar to dump the mission, it does cost 10% of the contract to do though.