Oolite Bulletins

Those are some fantastic pics, Redspear.. I would love my Oolite to look like that!

Redspear wrote:

Can you find the station?

Is it worthwhile (or possible?) to make ship and station materials shiny enough that glints of reflected sunlight would be visible at long distances? It might help make artificial objects stand out, and emphasise the distances.

Disembodied wrote:

Redspear wrote:

Can you find the station?

Is it worthwhile (or possible?) to make ship and station materials shiny enough that glints of reflected sunlight would be visible at long distances? It might help make artificial objects stand out, and emphasise the distances.

That's a GREAT idea!

Zireael wrote:

I can see the station! roughly 45 degrees up, to the right of the crosshair, roughly mid-way between the crosshair and the readings.

Interestingly, no (or at least not if I'm understanding your description).

The compass marker is a clue of course but it's actually very close to the crosshairs, at the angle you suggest. there's a tiny pink star in the background, just below that and slightly to the left is a dull brown/grey blob: the station.

spara wrote:

If you want to tweak the moon sizes in the Additional Planets, open planetinfo.plist and halve all radii from ap-moonX entries.

spara's right of course but if you tweak those settings without increasing planets/moons in the core they they might look pretty small...

Diziet Sma wrote:

Those are some fantastic pics, Redspear.. I would love my Oolite to look like that!

I hope that in the not too distant I'll be able to help you out there
(BTW, did you ever fix that 'square blobs' problem?)

Disembodied wrote:

Is it worthwhile (or possible?) to make ship and station materials shiny enough that glints of reflected sunlight would be visible at long distances? It might help make artificial objects stand out, and emphasise the distances.

They do catch the light as they rotate, functioning a bit like a lighthouse (something I've worked into a piece of fiction that I might post if I ever get around to finishing it... ), so there's a bit of that going on.
I suppose that shader settings could be tampered with but I think that's a model by model setting and not everyone has shaders.
It's a good idea though: keep visability but not the glaring oversizing.

Thanks folks

Disembodied wrote:

Is it worthwhile (or possible?) to make ship and station materials shiny enough that glints of reflected sunlight would be visible at long distances? It might help make artificial objects stand out, and emphasise the distances.

They already do.. one of my primary long-distance object spotting rules says "anything that glitters or flickers when you're out in space, is not a star".

Redspear wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

Those are some fantastic pics, Redspear.. I would love my Oolite to look like that!

I hope that in the not too distant I'll be able to help you out there
(BTW, did you ever fix that 'square blobs' problem?)

Cool!

As for the square blobs.. umm.. no.. Not only do I seldom use my Windows partition, let alone to play Oolite, since moving out to my brother's place a couple of weeks ago (I return home in a week), I haven't had time to fire Oolite up even once..

Quick mini-update for those who are following this...

Doubling the distance do the witchpoint results in a greatly increased encounter rate if you stick to the space lane.
I've remedied this by doubling the width of the space lane which both reduces encounters and makes it less likely that the player will unintentionally stray from the lane.

At this stage, adjusting the space lane width also seems to be a good way to fine-tune encounter rates without unwanted side-effects (as cim suggested earlier in this thread).

I also needed to double the torus multiplier in order to cover the greater distance in a similar time.

I'll post the code adjustments at some point in the future.

I think I've fixed the sun-skimming issue

Any requests or thoughts on anything I might have missed in terms of rescaling the systems?
(I know the suns are still tiny but the glare at least masks that a little bit).

If not, then I think this part of the rescale might be ready for playtesting

...ship rescaling will be the next part (gulp! )

Controversy time...

OK, so there's this rather spiffy chart on the wiki, [wiki]Ship_size_chart[/wiki], that I think Smivs made to illustrate the various sizes of the standard ships as they appear in the game (nice one Smivs )

I used this as a basis for thinking how big, relative to each other, I would like the various ships to appear in the game (I hope he doesn't mind).
Just like with my system rescaling, I've adjusted by two factors: ships are either the same size as before, 1/2 the size they were before, or 3.3 times smaller (roughly equivelant to the sizes quoted in the elite manual).

Bear in mind that this was made a couple of years ago and there are a few things that I might want to change.



I've left the original outline of the ships for two reasons: firstly because I'm too lazy to fill in the grid pattern; secondly because it helps to illustrate how much I have shrunk them.
I've also made the overall image more square in order to see an overview more easily (IMO)
The sizes listed are for the originals before I got my paws on them.

Opinions would be welcome here but here's a basic explanation for what I was thinking.

• Freighters and transports have remained the same size (to accommodate all that cargo)
  Fighters have been shrunk by a factor of 3.3 (or at least I think they were...)
  Fighter/Traders (a debatable category) have been shrunk by a factor of 2 (they've got cargo to consider but not on the level of the freighters)

This looks much better to me (although I think that Viper Interceptor might be a bit too small and I'm not convinced that I should have shrunk the Thargoid so much...)

Compare the original size of the Asp and the Krait to the Anaconda
I appreciate that the freighters are exceptional in that they are displayed 'side on' rather than from above, but still...

I am definitely looking forward to seeing if you can pull this whole re-scaling project off. I like what I'm seeing.

mossfoot wrote:

I like what I'm seeing.

Seconded!

mossfoot wrote:

I am definitely looking forward to seeing if you can pull this whole re-scaling project off. I like what I'm seeing.

Seconded! (or is that thirded?)

I think the size difference what you created is too high around 100t cargo space. Anaconda is good if leaved as is but Boas and Python can be 1/2 sized and all other in the 3.3 times smaller "class". The larger size is a big handicap between similar ships, the Cobra3 is especially large due to originally oversized imho so I think this should be as shrinked as others small ships.

I am thinking on another strict balancing rule if you use different resizes: most small ships should not be able to carry Military lasers. This give some chance to the freighters and use the large size to hold a (much) larger weapon. The few exception what I suggest is the Cobra3 (which is a good reason why this ship is larger and considered better than others) and Constrictor (which is the most advanced and very-very costly ship).

Redspear wrote:

• Freighters and transports have remained the same size (to accommodate all that cargo)
  Fighters have been shrunk by a factor of 3.3 (or at least I think they were...)
  Fighter/Traders (a debatable category) have been shrunk by a factor of 2 (they've got cargo to consider but not on the level of the freighters)

I suspect you'll find it easier to work with if you manage this by making the big ships bigger rather than making the small ships smaller (or a mix of the two: double the size of the big ships; reduce the small ships by 2/3). The Thargon drone is already hard enough to hit: making it a third of the size puts it about the size of a cargo container.

If you slow everyone down and bring the scanner range in a bit, it might work out, though.

Thanks mossfoot, Dizzy and Zireael

Please forgive the lack of quotes in the following, I'm both on a strange device and in a hurry...

Norby, thanks for your suggestions. I'd be inclined to agree with you about the anaconda if I didn't think that the 750tc cargo bay was a mistake. We can handwave it however we want of course but for me it grates that the jump is so high from a boa to an anaconda... I see it as being much smaller (150, maybe 200) and therefore it would be closer to the other freighters (in my mind at least).

Shrinking the cobra III to half size rather than 1/3 also means that at least a degree of matching rotation might be required for docking.

You're right about bigger targets of course and I do plan on reviewing equipment allocation and availability. For example, according to the elite manual, a sidewinder is too small to equip fuel scoops but can accomodate 1 missile...

I'd like to explore csotb's laser varients further but, another time perhaps... I do think that the asp and fdl should also have (the option of) military lasers though.

cim, I'm so grateful that you continue to find the time to help out on everyone's little projects on these boards, I just hope we're not wearing you out...

Yes, reducing speeds, scanner range and also laser ranges is very much on the cards. I realise that there are some other issues with regards to shrinking stuff but in part I feel duty bound to explore it for Paradox and also for the sake of experimentation.

Furthermore, the above reference to the sidewinder in the elite manual makes me think that a previous concern about cargo scooping, even if true, may not have to be a problem.

Thanks again folks

A quick update on my source changes so far, with changes underlined...

Moving Things Around - making use of all that extra space to improve the experience

Universe.m - line 1133 - to proportionally halve orbit of station

stationPos = HPvector_subtract(stationPos, vectorToHPVector(vector_multiply_scalar(vf, 1.5 * planet_radius)));

Universe.m - line 905 - double the base distance from witchpoint

double planet_zpos = (24.0 + (Ranrot() & 3) - (Ranrot() & 3) ) * planet_radius; // 9..15 pr (planet radii) ahead

Stabilizing the Encounter Rate - adapting to the lengthened space lane

Universe.m - line 114 - widening the space lane

#define LANE_WIDTH 102400.0

Stabilizing the Travel Times - adapting to the lengthened space lane

PlayerEntity.h - line 247 - increase torus to match witch point distance

#define HYPERSPEED_FACTOR 200.0

The decelleration adjustment I made earlier should still be sufficient.


That little lot (plus the Additional Planets SR tweak) combined with the previous ones will result in those screenshots I posted earlier.

As for 'fixing' the sunskimming issue...


HeadUpDisplay.m - line 1088 - for that full "scoop, scoop, scoop..." experience

double factor = ([stellar isSun]) ? 1.4 : 1.0;

There may be better values but these seem to work with suns and planets/moons of various sizes.

And (for the meantime at least) that seems to be the system rescaling done

A few more core changes (including changing some of those values above) will be required for what I have in mind for ship rescaling.