Oolite Bulletins

Commander McLane wrote:

Beautiful work indeed!

However, due to the inherent screw-up of sizes and distances in Oolite, it is impossible to measure the height of an average male human in the Ooniverse. In relation to the ships humans seem to be a lot taller than 6 feet. In relation to the planets on the other hand, they seem to be a lot smaller than 6 feet. It's rather futile to try and find the one scale which can measure the Ooniverse and the entities in it.

mandoman wrote:

I tried to envision this in the perspective of an average height male human, about 6 feet tall.

Thank you, Commander McLane. I did say that I knew it was not perfectly scaled. I tried to use an escape pod as a measure, to some degree. Where I have it positioned is right below the point I specified the aft_eject_position. I just kind of built around it, and then tried to make the rest of the ship in comparison. Well, that's not completely true. I actually made most of the rest of the interior first, from the side hatch, and forward elevators, back. It isn't perfect by any means, but I think it's feasible. Just my opinion, though.

Nothing wrong with that. I also quite like the interiors of the Cobra III that are available on the intertubes somewhere.

Personally I imagine the ships a lot smaller than they are in game-meters. I know that they have to be as big as they are in order to be visible from the distance (so the rationale for their sizes is gameplay, not realism). But in my head they are actually smaller, by a factor of at least 3-4 (length-wise). Therefore the old idea that game-meters should be understood as feet (as far as ships are concerned) comes much closer to how I envision the ships.

But that's only me.

Commander McLane wrote:

Nothing wrong with that. I also quite like the interiors of the Cobra III that are available on the intertubes somewhere.

Personally I imagine the ships a lot smaller than they are in game-meters. I know that they have to be as big as they are in order to be visible from the distance (so the rationale for their sizes is gameplay, not realism). But in my head they are actually smaller, by a factor of at least 3-4 (length-wise). Therefore the old idea that game-meters should be understood as feet (as far as ships are concerned) comes much closer to how I envision the ships.

But that's only me.

Makes sense otherwise a standard Cobbie Mk III would be something like 32 floors high (if each floor was 2 metres in hight).

Well, that's it exactly. Even though I envision the interiors of my ships, I don't dwell on it long. The ships are fun, and the game is fun, maybe for the very reason that you don't dwell on the details as much as flying your ship. Trading, fighting off pirates, being a pirate, being a hermit, etc.... That's what makes the game fun.

More goofing around with ship interiors. Here are a couple screenies of the SolarWing interior. I have also included a couple shots with Mandotech Ind. mechanical representative, Mandobot, as a sort of example as to how the ship might measure out in relationship to a human. Not accurate, I know, but just a shot at scale.

I like the pilot's chair. Looks very 70's-retro.

Commander McLane wrote:

I like the pilot's chair. Looks very 70's-retro.

I never thought about that, but now that you mention it........

I'm working on the Mandotech Industries Station(s), and I find myself with more questions. I think I see how to create the shipdata.plist for it, as I have already done several subentities on my ships, but I seem to have a blind spot with the dock. For instance, the dock is located at the very front of the Main Station (the sphere farthest forward in pic #2 below). The problem I have is that the Main Station sphere is rotating, and I have that defined in the subentity entry for the Main Station, but how does that effect the dock? Do I need to name a rotational_velocity for the dock as well, so it will match the Main Station rotational_velocity? Also, I would like the secondary station (sphere farthest back in pic #2 below) to rotate in the oposite direction of the Main Station. I'll come back with that if I can't figure it out.

This is the SideShooter. Kind of a one sided ship. I think it's a kick to fly.

mandoman wrote:

This is the SideShooter. Kind of a one sided ship. I think it's a kick to fly.

Now, that's a cool design. How's laser aim? I would think with the laser of center it would be kinda hard... or is the laser on center, but the rest of the ship isn't?

Either way, super cool ship. Also, I notice you're using Fuduntu. A nice distro, I'd use it if I hadn't fallen in love with Ubuntu's Unity. (I admit it... I've fallen to the dark side of Linux)

I have to admit that it fires just slightly off center, but it comes darn near center. I didn't have any trouble adjusting my aim, and have had several very exciting dog fights with it.

Just a thought but can you not allign your view position with the weapon position in the shipdata.plist so that to the player the targeting is correctly positioned ?

Shipbuilder wrote:

Just a thought but can you not allign your view position with the weapon position in the shipdata.plist so that to the player the targeting is correctly positioned ?

Of course, you can set your view position to whatever you want. (In fact, if Mandoman says that the laser fires only lightly off centre it stands to reason that he did just that, doesn't it?) However, having a view position very excentric to the right would probably lead to awkward situations with manual docking.

I think I have it about right. Even though the "center" of view, or the cross hairs, are centered from the perspective of the cockpit, the lasers fire pretty near that point out forward, and aft. If you look at the last pic I posted above, you can see that the laser is firing toward the center of the view_point_forward. Docking, then, is no issue, as your view position center is from the view of the cockpit, so lining up on a docking slit is no problem. Not only that, but the ship is incredibly small, probably like a Merlin in size, so going into a docking slit is kind of like flying down a huge docking slit. It really is fun to fly, and I had no problems with using the lasers in a dogfight, or manually docking the ship with a Station.

I must admit that I like the concept of this ship. Rather like a B Wing fighter from Star Wars.